Terrible Analogies

I was driving home yesterday, listening to the radio, when I heard this story about a 14 year old girl who broke into an ex-friends house, ransacked the place, and grabbed a few items to steal. Then, before leaving, picked up the ex-friend’s kitten, threw it in the oven, and cracked it up to 500 degrees before fleeing the scene.

The kitten died. It burned beyond recognition. It was so disfigured, one could not even tell the gender of the animal.

When asked why she did this, she replied, “Because I hate cats.”

It disgusts me to hear a story like this.  What kind of sick person could do something so horrific to such a helpless, fragile animal?  An animal who, quite possibly, ran to her side in awkward, fumbling kitten steps, looking for a treat or a loving pat on the head.   What twisted soul is capable of such extreme brutality?  

I find this so offensive because animals like dogs and cats bond with humans.  They have emotions that are readily apparent, rubbing up against us, licking us, wagging their tails, sleeping with us at night.  They love and depend on us.  Some bonds are so tight that the loss of a pet can be as bad as the loss of any other family member.

For someone to abuse an animal takes a special kind of inner turmoil, a singularly unique type of evil that must constantly eat at that person, damaging their very soul.

This girl…this sociopath, needs to be locked up for a long, long time.  What happened to her in the past that caused her to turn into such a barbarous, remorseless monster?  Was it a lack of proper parenting?  Was it the people she hung around with?  Could her head be filled with bad wiring?

….

As soon as I got home yesterday I picked up Nemesis, gave her a big hug, then a treat, then I watched this video of a german weatherman who picked up a cat that wandered onto the news set during his forecast:

Happy Friday? See you on Monday for my 200th post!

Let’s hear it for my classy neighbors.  

From the people who brought you “Loud Parties At 1am“, “Public Intoxication And You“, and that classic chestnut “Let’s Invite A Live Band Over, Because We Don’t Give A Crap About Our Neighbors“, comes this new bit that I’d like to call “Baby With A Bong“.  I hope you enjoy:

Bong on the ground in front of Joe Cool, who's standing in front of a stroller.

Everyone (?) has a neighbor from hell, and this is mine.  These people are the very definition of “white trash”.  Come on guys, this neighborhood is full of kids and toddlers.  Go back to the trailer park with your “too cool for school” attitude.  God has a tornado he wants to give you.

I have bad neighbors.

I never thought I’d have to admit to myself that I have bad neighbors, but I do.  

Now, as bad neighbors go, mine are pretty benign, but they are becoming a blight on the neighborhood.  In their oil-stained garage they have a pool table wedged in amongst mountains of similarly stained cardboard boxes.  The requisite chopper rests in the fire lane as adults and children shout obscenities at each other.  In the parking spot next to their house skulks a truck that hasn’t been running in months.  In fact, the truck often lies scattered and strewn across the driveway, revealing a strip of decorative dead grass that is otherwise hidden underneath the rusting, tarp-covered hulk of dead steel and flat tires.  

In the past couple of weeks they’ve taken to clearing out various pieces of junk from their garage and placing them in the driveway.  On any given day you can see an art easel, a dusty drum set, random tools, a dog house, a grill, various boxes and bags, etc…etc..etc….  I’m taking a wild guess here that they do this so they have room to hang out in their garage and play pool all day long.

The mind reels at what the inside of their house could possibly look like.

It’s at times like these that I’m thankful we’re part of an HoA.  Now, I know how some of you out there feel about HoA’s, but they’re there to serve a purpose, and they have quite a few tools at their disposal to resolve matters such as these.  My initial e-mail to the HoA last month was greeted quickly, professionally, and courteously, but due to the confidentiality of our communication I can’t impart what was said and/or promised.

Tonight I sent a second e-mail to the HoA, complaining that the problem has gotten worse.  I’ve made myself available to them should they need an official written complaint or a personal appearance by me.  I’ve made jokes in the past about becoming a board member, but when things like this happen it really makes the idea of effecting change from within quite tempting…

What really gets me about this situation is that I feel as if I’m the only one complaining.  I’m not living next door to these folks, but if I was you could be certain that I’d be raising holy heck about this situation.  I’m not a stickler either.  I understand and can appreciate bending rules, but when you go out of your way to become the bane of the neighborhood, you bring down the value of our homes, our community, and our living standards.  I’d feel nothing but pity and sympathy for anyone trying to sell a home right now with neighbors who obviously don’t care about anyone else but themselves.

Am I overreacting, or should I let these people continue to step all over everyone?

UPDATE 5/19/09: Steve over at the HoA sent me a nice e-mail this afternoon that makes me think that the problem is well in hand:

Thanks for your email. I cannot divulge details on what steps the association is taking, but we are addressing the situation. The other board members are aware too. I’m sure you are aware that in this day and age with all the rights everyone has that it can take time to resolve such issues. I too, probably more than you, wish I could rid myself of HOA problem children.

Steve comes off as a bit of a heel-clicker who enjoys his job a little too much…just the sort of person I’d expect to tackle tough situations such as these.  Go get ‘em, Steve!

An example of what can be found daily on their driveway. You stay classy now...

The infamous truck that hasn't moved in months. If I lived next door to this garbage I'd be on the phone with my HoA every day of the week.

An hour before I was scheduled to leave work for the day today my supervisor asked me how difficult it would be to write a script that would push a registry change to a few hundred servers with a logging trail we could use for auditing purposes.  Oh, and by the way it needs to run on Saturday, which means I won’t be there to supervise should it fail.  As an added bonus I’ll also need to access the domain controllers, even though the admins have no rights to these servers.  No pressure now…

And so, for a furious sixty minutes I laid the foundation for the prog, getting the needed files pushed to a test group of IPs utilizing the magic of psexec, and managed to get logs reporting back to the host server.  My concern is that not all servers have the same admin rights.  I’ll have to investigate that issue tomorrow morning.

Okay…that last video was fake, but this video isn’t.  I feel sorry for this kid.  I really do.  Ya see, I was at a party once and was dared to eat a mystery pepper some shady looking guy with a bad limp and a lazy eye dramatically produced from a pocket of his greasy black trench coat.  With what looked like a well-practiced sweep of his arms he hoisted the pepper above his glorious mullet and shouted to the heavens daring God himself to consume the hellish, seedy mass of pulpy flesh.

“No problem,” I thought, as I brazenly stepped forward and accepted his obvious challenge.  But after downing this orange pepper of doom I soon discovered that there’s only so much heat a human being can endure before your body starts to involuntarily convulse, your eyes weep uncontrollably, you begin to spastically hiccup, your entire body turns brights red, and you start to sweat profusely.  The next thirty minutes for me were a vague, blury montage of searing pain, vomiting, and “friends” feeding me liquor and beer instead of milk and bread.

Ah….Good times.  Good times….

I guess not all party games are fun to play, eh?

Seattle weather in southern California.  It’s amazing how quick (the royal) we are to complain about the rain, but when your life revolves around outdoor activities, when it rains your weekend trail running plans are completely shot to hell.  Driving becomes impossible because Californians simply can not drive in the rain.  It’s like an “idiot chemical” messes with our synapses at the slightest hint of inclement weather.  Our rods and cones get jacked up.  Electrical impulses between our brain and our appendages become interrupted and incomprehensible.  We deserve the jokes.

It’s as if we’re hardwired to do stupid.  In fact, I firmly believe that there’s a complex underground, secretive cottage industry that revolves around anticipating what stupid thing we’ll do next, then attempts to warn us not to do what we’re thinking of doing.  Like, oh….I dunno, playing in traffic, running with scissors, or lighting a camp fire and pitching a tent in a parking lot of the local dollar store.  We have to be told that this sort of activity is unacceptable.

Then you have the times where we’re too sly for our own good.  Like a monkey farking a football we’re often left scratching our heads trying to make sense of our surroundings.  For example, I wanted to give my San Marcos GNC on Auto Parkway a few hundred dollars for items I needed, but I was unsure if they were going to open back up five minutes from now, or five minutes from then…  Needless to say I simply left, unable to comprehend exactly when they intended to return, opting instead to order online from a different company.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to believe the wicked string of bad luck I had encountered within the span of a few hours.  Taking the easy way out I decided to just give up on life.  Stripping off my clothes and tossing them into the parking lot I quickly realized that I was not cut out to endure cold, windy, and wet climes whilst naked.  Hoping against hope that I would stumble across a store that specialized in togas, imagine my surprise when, in a fit of delirium brought about by exposure to the freezing elements I blindly shoved my way through the glass doors of a random store and found myself here:

Finally, my luck was turning.  Warmed again by a bolt of newly-acquired bleached, albeit scratchy material majestically bound about my glorious naked torso and cinched tight with a strand of stately golden rope, I confidently strode outdoors like a victorious god into the embrace of a dimming sun as it strained warm rays through stifling dark clouds.  My restored belief in the kindness and dignity of mankind was, alas, shot down in a ball of fiery demonic flames when I caught sight of this travesty:

I firmly believe that there’s a special place in Hades for self-important bastards like this.  Mental defects such as this “person”, who can’t park straight because they believe that the world revolves around them, deserve to be the target of divine wrath and swift holy vengeance.

I have a reoccurring dream.  This dream is to purchase a fleet of beater cars.  Obtuse, heavy, and ugly.  And with these vehicles I’d hunt down and park inches away from jerks like this.  I’d park one on each side of these jokers, making it impossible for offenders of common decency, such as this individual, to get into their cars.  And I’d sit there, in my royal robes and sun-god smile, and laugh.  I’d point with a sharp, judgmental finger, and laugh.

…And so, this is how I spent fours hours of my life this past Saturday.  Ya know….just in case you were curious.