-- Chuckle for the day.

-- Chuckle for the day. And here I thought Norway was one of those countries where the gun control was fabulous. Apparently not.

--It’s damn hot.

The State Fair starts this week, and I’m sure that some nimrod will say “well, it’s always hot the week the Fair starts.”
People do that here. The weather is always a leading edge indicator of
whatever momentous social event is in the offing. If there’s a
blizzard in mid-March, well, the boys state hockey tournament must be
happening over in St. Paul. Or is it the boys state basketball
tournament? I can never keep it straight. If there isn’t any snow in
February, the Winter Carnival must be going on. People are actually
having to dig in the dirt to find the moneyed medallion,
dontcha know? The fact it’s August right now couldn’t possibly be
correlated to the heat wave. No. It’s State Fair time. That’s why
it’s hot. The heat wave has been going on for three weeks, by my
count and we haven’t had any rain at all during that time. Lawns are
going brown, flowers are dying, earthworms are kamikaze-ing themselves
onto the scorched sidewalks, looking for any bit of moisture with which
to keep themselves alive. The AC is whirring away nicely in the
background, however, spreading cool air to all. It’s been on since
Friday and I don’t know when it’s going to be turned off, but
hopefully soon. Providence has smiled on us this summer---for once. In
the past we’ve been the ones struggling to keep cool with a single
window air conditioner while our neighbors smirked from behind their
shut, chilled to the touch, windows. But not this year. We’ve got
central air this summer and it’s a lovely, lovely thing
What’s even better is that despite the fact I’m just watering the
lawn every other day for maybe fifteen minutes at a time (I won’t buy
a sprinkler. I just won’t. It’s not my lawn to begin with.),
“my” lawn is surviving in this heat and my obnoxious next door
neighbor’s lawn is completely fried. It is a horrible, sickly yellow,
like a rotted egg yolk, and I am willfully resisting the urge to dance
with a wicked, unrestrained glee upon the dead grass while shouting,
“SO THERE, YOU ASSHOLE!”
Our house is sandwiched in between two houses owned by alpha males. One
is better than the other in that he is retired and is in Scottsdale six
months out of the year. The other one, however, is the bane of my
simple existence and is here twelve months out of the year so there’s
no getting away from him. This man’s life revolves around money: the
making of it, the lavish spending of it and the making of more. He
particularly enjoys making other people who don’t have as much of it
as he does (namely, the husband and I) feel like shit. It’s obvious:
he gets a kick out of it. He is the epitome of a cake eater. Well, why
do you put up with him? you ask. I do try to avoid him, but his wife is
nice and his kids are nice, so I can’t completely alienate them
because of his juvenile behavior. Our space is also very cramped, and
there’s just no room for a Hatfield/McCoy feud. The rocket launchers
would cause me as much trouble as they would him, so what’s the
point? Well, it’s all about how you react to his insults, isn’t
it? you say. Ok, sure. I will admit that I’m not as strong as I would
like to be in this situation, but I’d bet you anything Mother Theresa
would have taken a bat to this guy long ago. If he doesn’t get a rise
out of you one way, he’ll try another, and another and another until
he finally achieves his Nirvana. Then he will be satisfied that all is
well in his world, all is shit in yours and that will be the end of
that until he needs to feel good about himself again. Which will be
sometime in the next week or so. He’s just that persistent. But, his
lawn is making me ridiculously happy. His precious, well-tended, highly
manicured lawn that he mows with a thousand dollar riding mower (in this
neighborhood? Ridiculous) is toast. Dead. Fin. Finito. It ain’t
coming back, either. Last weekend he instructed his son to mow the
lawn, despite the fact it didn’t need to be mowed and in the process
he fried it. Any idiot knows you don’t need to mow when it hasn’t
rained, but obviously the obnoxious neighbor was clueless. I do feel
bad for his kid, however, because he’s the one who’s undoubtedly
bearing the brunt of this disaster, but my pity is in such small supply
it’s practically nonexistent. Daddy was the one who said to mow, the
kid mowed, and it’s Daddy who’s at fault. And his lovely lawn which
he takes so much pride in is dead. Now, if I can just restrain my glee
long enough to keep a straight face when I needle him about it, I’ll
be good. I’m not a good person, I know. But if you had to live next
door to this guy, you’d be happy too. --Memo to Minneapolis Bicycle
Riders:
If you’re going to ride in the street, obey the traffic laws or pay the consequences!I
had a close call on Saturday afternoon and this event has signaled the
end of my patience in dealing with bicyclists. I won’t bore you with
the details, but suffice it to say a bike rider came careering around a
corner, oblivious to the fact he had a stop sign, and, already halfway
through the intersection, I had to slam on the brakes to avoid running
the man over. Fortunately, I succeeded in stopping and while I was
sitting there in the middle of the intersection, shaken and thanking
God I hadn’t hit the man, wondering if I’d
done anything wrong, doubting myself and my actions while at the same
time knowing I had no reason to, I spied in the rearview mirror a lone,
gloved, middle finger waving righteously in the air as he pedaled his
way down Zenith Avenue. All of my sympathetic emotions in that moment
were replaced by a single, overwhelming, blood boiling fury. I have had
it! The next time this happens, I’m gunning the engine of my crappy
car and running the bastard down. Living as close to Lake Harriet,
Calhoun and the Isles as we do, there are a lot of riders in the
neighborhood. These lakes have lovely trails surrounding them, so
it’s no small wonder people would like to enjoy them. Some riders are
skillful and professional in their riding, and they obey the traffic
laws when riding in the street, but the majority of riders in this
neighborhood are not like this and it’s patently obvious. The only
reason most of them are on the street is because someone assumed it
would be a nice, Brady Bunch-like activity to get everyone in the
family on their bikes for a group ride. Maybe they’ll stop at the ice
cream shop on the way home if everyone’s good. It’s not a normal
event for them. The rest of their time they’d be in their Lexus
SUV’s, blowing through traffic like a hot knife through butter whilst
yapping on their cell phones. Most of the time, you wind up gritting
your teeth and bearing it. These people ignore the traffic laws; they
have their kids on training wheels in the middle of busy streets,
making the assumption that since their kid has shiny blonde hair and a
Barbie bike you’ll take pity on them simply because they can’t make
it through an intersection without slowing traffic up. They wave nicely
at you and expect you to give them a break from normal expectations
because it’s a family activity
and who in their right mind, in this day and age of families breaking
up left and right would deny them a little quality tooling around time
despite their slowness? And most of the time, you let it slide, even
though it grates at the soul to do so. What are you going to do? Honk
at a little kid who’s doing their best to deal with their parents’
idiotic expectations? Hardly. But this attitude has bled over into
adult, dilettante riders, who are on their way over to the lakes to
cruise for single, spandexed meat. These are the riders I object to.
They obviously expect the same treatment and are oblivious to the fact
the standards are higher for them. This guy was one of those people. He
had a shiny helmet and a nice mountain bike, but it was obvious by his
flabby waistline he was not a regular rider. What precisely gives these idiots the right to think that
because they’re on a bicycle and in the street the rest of us have to
stop and bend to their whims? When you’re a kid and you get your
first bicycle, your parents tell you flat out that if you’re in the
street, you now have to follow the traffic laws. That means stopping at
stop signs even though there’s a steep hill on the other side and
it’s going to slow your momentum and make it more difficult to make
it up that hill. The hill is of no consequence: you stop at the stop
sign, end of story. This also means staying on the right side of the
road and not riding right down the middle of it. It means signaling
your turns. And it most definitely means yielding. I mean, how
difficult is it for these riders to follow the law? If they were
driving in a car, they’d do it. Better yet, if they were in their car
and another car didn’t follow the laws, there’d be holy hell to
pay. Why is it different when they’re on a bike? Why do these people
think that because they’re riding a bicycle, the laws miraculously
evaporate and they can do whatever they damn well please? Don’t tell
me that bicyclists are preventing the release of more noxious fumes
into the atmosphere. Don’t tell me they’re helping congestion by
riding and not driving. Don’t give me any excuse for them, because
I’m not buying it. I’ve had it. And the next time one of them gives
me the finger for their violation of the traffic laws I’m turning the
car around and gunning for them.