One of the reasons why I hate suburbia

There use to be a time in this wonderful country when a home and yard were nearly sovereign territory for the owners. While in some neighborhoods there were justifiable limits on what a family could do on their property, just about anything was okay as long as it did not interfere or harm the people living next door. These were people that bought a house for it to become a home, not some strangely considered investment believing that while they maxed out the credit cards the house would be their piggy bank.

Now in these wonderful preplanned and highly regimented suburban developments full of little drones whose sphincters pucker up to microscopic sizes the moment an errant leaf has the audacity of landing on their prized hunter-green colored lawn spoiling the carpet like flow. Such situations automatically results in the drone mounting his or her equally prized riding lawnmower with vacuum attachment and padded insulated cup holder bringing it to life and spewing forth all sorts of carbon dioxide from the four-stroke engine so the obsessed homeowners can cruise across the lawn to that misguided leaf so that it and any of its brethren will be sucked up, bagged in a non-biodegradable trash bag, and then be dropped off in a landfill to spend several centuries buried.

Making things even more ridiculous these insidious little drones are not only obsessed with keeping their precious yards, despite the near hazardous levels of fertilizers used, pristine. But like some bad example of an East German informant network with neighbors spying on neighbors on violations of the smallest of rules these drones run off and report possible acts of independent thought to the Homeowners Association which in turn acts like some damn Orwellian suburban Big Brother forcing the offender through threat of lawsuit to tow the party line.

Yes, this is the new America where brave men and women put their lives on the line even now to protect property values and "aesthetic guidelines" so the collective group of weasels, chickenhawks, and anal retentive mindless parasites are not visually disturbed by such horrible things as wrecked cars on cinder blocks, empty liquor bottle collection littered about the yard, and the American flag flying proudly in the breeze. What a wonderful country.

Veteran battles homeowners group on flag issue

By Zinie Chen Sampson - The Associated Press

Posted : Wednesday Dec 2, 2009 20:53:08 EST

RICHMOND, Va. — A 90-year-old Army veteran who earned the Medal of Honor during World War II is battling his homeowners’ association for the right to fly the American flag from a pole in his front yard.

Col. Van Barfoot says he erected the flagpole in September. The homeowners’ association at his suburban Richmond subdivision told him that the free-standing pole violates aesthetic guidelines and ordered him to remove the structure or face a lawsuit.

Barfoot earned his medal for actions in Italy in 1944 and is one of about 90 surviving Medal of Honor recipients. He’s also been awarded the Purple Heart and other decorations.

Neighbors have expressed their support, but ultimately it’s up to the nine-member association board on whether they will grant an exception to the rules.