(no subject)

[which_chick]

I fixed a sink all by myself today. Well, mostly all by myself. It was close enough.



Also there was a suspicious cardboard box outside the bank that closed half of Main Street (that's actually what it's called) for most of the morning, which I only noticed because we were trying to go to the hardware store, which is on Main Street. Apparently someone thought it might be a bomb. It turned out to be an empty cardboard box, along about noon. I'd like to point out, for the less-local readers, that excitement took place in the town of Everett, where I went to high school. There are two stoplights in the town. Two. It's the sort of town where a huge barn of a (no lie) reasonably-functional (you could live there and fix it up -- it's not a hellhole like in Fight Club) victorian house with 12" ceilings, real hardwood floors, balconies, and pocket doors is going to sell at sheriff sale for around 60K. (Am not lying. Will tell you what it sells for when it sells.) This is not the heartbeat of America, here. It's the hinterlands. And yet some poor motherfucker WHO LIVES AND WORKS HERE is paranoid enough to get wound over a fucking cardboard box in front of the bank, like we might possibly be important enough to terrorize. People. Reality check, here? Someone has delusions of relevancy, damn it.

Finally, because I cannot bitch about this anywhere else, the fucking summer person who moved in the damn doublewide is cutting down everything shrubbery-like between his fucking trailer and the lake. This is not on his property. This is on our property. However, Dad (who overrules me on these things) thinks it looks "better" with just trees and grass and no shrubbery so he's letting the fucking summer person cut down all the stuff he wants to cut down and lop all the branches off the trees left standing so that they look more parklike. God damn it.

Last summer, there were fawns bedded down in the brush that the summer person cut down. They lay silent and quiet until I almost stepped on them while bothering the local odonata. When I almost walked on them, they burst up and loped away on their wobbly legs. It was too cute for words. However, this summer there will be no fawns there because THERE IS NOT ANY COVER. Wildlife does not live in "park" settings, folks. Wildlife needs the fucking shrubbery and if you take the fucking shrubbery away because you think it looks better without the shrubbery, then don't bitch to me that there isn't any fucking wildlife.

As for cutting down things that are not theirs? The fucking Cogswells did it. The fucking guy on the other side of the lake who wantonly blows away black rat snakes (These are poisonless constricting snakes that eat mice and voles and chipmunks and stuff. They do not hurt people and cannot kill or eat a person. They are attracted to places where there might be mice and rats and voles and chipmunks and stuff. Persons who FUCKING BUILD DRY STONE (no cement, so lots of crevices for rodents and snakes) WALLS ALL AROUND THEIR PROPERTY AND LEAVE OUT TONS OF BIRD FOOD should probably expect a few black rat snakes around the place.) in his yard because he "doesn't like snakes" did it. (Y'know, I don't fucking like the summer people, but I don't blow them away for no goddamned reason.) Way, way too many people have cut property that does not belong to them and I feel a bit like Barbossa doing his big speech in PoTC: For TOO LONG... Yeah. Damn right.

It does not help that my dad tells the awful stupid doublewide-owning summer person that he's IMPROVING the landscape. Damn it.

And do not talk to me about ninja bikes. It's a sore subject at the moment.

Comments

[ksleet.livejournal.com]

During the anthrax scare shortly after 9/11, the post office was shut down in Dismal Small Town because somebody found some white powder. Because of that I was unable to file my traditionally deadline-extended taxes that day. On one hand, it was ridiculous: what sort of moron would waste his time terrorizing Dismal Small Town when heck, Peoria's right there? But on the other hand, it repeatedly turns out to be a fatal mistake to overestimate our enemies.

Also, were something to happen to that burg it's risky to assume that foreign terrorists would be the ones at fault. A co-worker and I there had a grand old time one day with PBS's online Effects of Nuclear Weapons simulator figuring out exactly what megatonnage would have been required to wipe the place off the map. Answer: not very many at all.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this.

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

I thought you had a hate on for deer last fall, what with the overgrazing and the ecology-destruction and so on. Cute little fawns turn into adult stomachs -on-four-legs, don't they?

On the other hand, it's your land, not his. Or more specifically, your father's. If dad wants to own a barren park, it's his lookout, I suppose.

Local cranks can and do bomb banks, especially in areas where a lot of sheriff sales are going on. Tends to make the financial institutions unpopular with the recently destitute. Would expect such a package to actually be in the building, if that were the case.

Some idiot kids set up a dry-ice-based explosive device in a school about halfway between the Logan Valley between you and me a few years ago, during the first big terror scare. Didn't they hurt a teacher or something?

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

Why is your dad letting people cut down his plants? Oh, because it "looks better". Sigh. Well, when the land is yours you can kick those like him and with their stupid doublewides out. ;)

When I was a kid we had a neighbor who would shoot the rabbits in his yard with wrist rockets. I don't think he had a garden or anything, though he might have done. I was about 6 and this upset me fiercely. So I planted a garden of my own, with carrots, and a hand-made sign that said, "It's okay for rabbits to eat these carrots." My mother pointed out that rabbits generally couldn't read, which didn't make a lot of sense to me (reading was my *life* at age 6), but I drew a picture of a rabbit eating a carrot on the other side so they'd be able to see that it was okay. Not sure why I'm telling you this, but I'd be pretty fiercely upset by someone shooting the black snakes as well.

Sara

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I don't adore deer, but many of the summer people like to look at them and they bitch like hell when they don't think they're seeing "enough" deer, whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean. One of the really easy ways to ensure that you can see deer is to provide them with places where they feel safe. (These are summer people. They look at "seeing a deer" as the epitome of the wilderness experience. They aren't, y'know, clueful.)

And I reckon Dad likes the barren park look because Dad grew up in damn near downtown Camphill, PA. Dad is not from here.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of Brian Wells (http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/erie_collar_bomber/index.html) for some reason. Ph33r the Evil Mastermind.