I read an excellent post today from Skiver Don about his particular distaste for suburban living. He makes some very valid points about the problems with living in situations where you are crammed up the asses of others...most of which I can completely relate. I have trimmed a couple of excerpts from Don's post just to give you an idea of the lunacy that he experiences, but I must recommend you read his full write-up of the comedy...it's quite good.

My next-door neighbors on the right side are a pair of 90-something-year-old women. My wife and I affectionately call them "the old lesbians." [Disclaimer: I have nothing at all against lesbians. We call them "the old lesbians" because they ARE old lesbians, and have lived together in their house since the late '50s.]

He has quite an amusing tale to tell about the lesbians, but his description of the neighbors' dog Bruce is a crackup:

Forget about having a barbecue in our back yard. Unless you're deaf, it's pointless. So is playing catch with the kids, or simply sitting outside and reading a book. WOOF. WOOF. WOOF. WOOF. WOOF. WOOF. WOOF. WOOF. Like clockwork.

And furthermore, his other neighbor (Sal) who despises Bruce:

Sal wound back and punched Bruce right in the teeth through the fence, yelling at the top of his lungs to shut the $%^&* up, you piece of ^&*)(#.

Anyway, it's a great story, and it brings up some interesting points about the way we live...we in the vast tracts of beige-washed vinyl and cute little pushable lawnmowers with the little nylon hoppers in tow, to catch our grass clippings.

I know that my friend Mat has hit on this topic on many occasions, he is just as fascinated as I am about this whole subset of society...this funny, tragic little subculture. I want to know: What the hell makes us do this? Is this some sort of recessive gene that makes humans want to band together in weird little communal tribes? We share a street, the lights, back yards, fences, breathing space...I can smell my neighbors' coffee in the morning, the sad thing is, I haven't the faintest idea which neighbor! That means they can sure as hell smell my pancakes and my morning BM...

So why? Why the hell do we do it? It's not particularly convenient, always walking on eggshells...trying not to piss off those who know where you live and sleep. It's not particularly inexpensive. For the money, a guy would be a lot better served to build in the country...at least it would afford him a little privacy! So about this (possibly) recessive gene...do you think we are just acting out what our 50,000-year-old instincts are telling us to do? You know, build a thatch hut, or a wigwam, or an igloo, or an adobe shelter or whatever, in small colonies for protection and community? Obviously we don't need to do it. Frankly, we'd be a lot happier if we didn't, if you ask me.

"Hey sweetie," my lovely wife said to me a couple of weeks ago. "The neighbors (we don't know their names) are mowing their lawn....ours looks like shit. Better go outside and get started."

H-E-L-L N-O

It was hotter than the blazes of hades. 93 Degrees Farenheit, humid as a spit bath from a Saint Bernard. Did that matter? Not a lick. My wife was insistant: mow now, our lawn looks shaggy.

So naturally, being in full "lounge mode" on the couch for what seemed like the first time in months, I looked at her blankly and replied "Who fscking cares?"

And here's the truth of it: I really don't give a shit about how shaggy my grass is compared to the neatly manicured obsessive behavior that is stuck to the ground of my neighbors' homes. Here it was, hotter than hell and these weirdos are out scalping their dead grass (the whole neighborhood was brown, except my little patch of scrubby brush and crab grass). I let mine go for over two weeks because I knew if I cut it, mine would crisp up and turn a tan shade of poo just like theirs. My wife was fine with this, I was not. I didn't want the kids getting road rash from falling in the yard. If I was cool with that, I'd just pave the yard in green concrete. No more mowing. Here's my theory: Another recessive gene! This one drive us to hunt, gather, farm etc...

Now I'm just rambling, but I don't get it at all. My wife grew up on 9 wooded acres in the country, I in subdivisions. Now, she's the one that wants to play beige-vinyl goddess, and I am flying both middle fingers at full mast walking to the street to get the mail in only my boxer shorts at 1 o'clock in the afternoon...laughing at all of the uptight jackasses that surround me. Sometimes I just want to sit at the end of my driveway (where my kingdom ends and the "community" begins) in those boxer shorts. I would like to take my toaster with me! I would pull an extension cord to the toaster and sit there at the farthest reach of my little kingdom, in my boxer shorts, making blueberry toaster waffles and launching my son's soiled diapers onto the hoods of passing cars...I would show them. All in an attempt to break myself of what obviously is a genetic predisposition to being a suburbanite. If you happen to see me doing this, you have my full permission to zap me with a tazer or mace me or whatever. That will mean that I am in need of therapy, medication or both.

No real point, I guess, just some musing.