(NOT) Truly

Written on April Fools' Day last year, but not a joke; just publishing today:

Of course. The day after Easter Sunday. Sun shining warmly. Spring in the air. Birds singing.

AND THE SHITHOLE NEIGHBOR TURNS ON LOUD TALK RADIO OUTSIDE RIGHT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF OUR FENCE.

Without pausing to consider, I fumed out loud, "TRULY, DIE IN A FUCKING *FIRE*".

Immediately following saying those words, the radio was shut off.

*****

While I'm grateful their self-centered, insensate, inconsiderate noise ceased, I still felt stressed out. Why does one have to complain at all for somebody to stop and consider the unwanted negative SPREAD of their noisy disease and its impact on others, and choose NOT to do that?

I do not actually want to have confrontations with neighbors. I do not actually enjoy verbalizing and spreading unpleasant feelings. I just cannot comprehend how so many people do not see forcing noise on strangers or people living in close proximity as a deeply upsetting personal attack and openly hostile display of not giving a fuck about anyone around them.

People who shit on others without shame are NOT TRUSTWORTHY. That is how I feel, anyway. But I know with my rational mind that many, if not most, of these noisemakers are not intentionally shitting on others. They are mostly oblivious, or careless, or do not process sounds and other stimuli the same way as those of us who hear and feel it like hammers pounding in our heads and guts. They do not care about birds, nor are they capable of enjoying sunshine in silence.

*****

I do not truly want our new shithole neighbors to die in a fire. If I saw them on fire I would rush to help them. I would even rush to help them if their house was burning even if I knew they were not in it.

Probably the worst I really wish for is the ability to blow up their stereo using the power of my mind and melt its surrounding container into a pool of angry lava without actually hurting anybody. Okay, maybe I do want a cinder or two to land on their crotch and singe their jeans and blister the head of their hipster needledick just enough to raise a single blister and leave a tiny scar.

HORRIBLE VIBES

 From one of my fave tweeters, Vinny Thomas @vinn_ayy

preventing ppl from sitting next to me at a stadium event by emanating HORRIBLE vibes

— Vinny Thomas (@vinn_ayy) May 10, 2023

*****

Screamed out the window at construction crew next door and their shit radio and their pack of HALF A DOZEN RELENTLESSLY BARKING DOGS today.

Those dogs were LOVING it.

The crew was positively STUMPED -- frozen, looking around -- by the shrieks of a burning angel seeming to come from behind a canopy of spring-leafing wild cherry trees.

*****

Sometimes it works. Probably because sometimes people truly are clueless about how terribly loud they are, and not actually intentionally inconsiderate.

*****

I don't expect the other neighbors impacted to thank me, but I sort of fantasize that somehow they do.

When You're In My Neighborhood ...

Don't come into someone else's neighborhood and park your dumb-ass car in front of the fucking fire hydrant. And/or right in a blind corner. And/or drive so fucking unnecessarily fast where people's kitty cats, squirrel friends, hound dogs, and small children are doing their energetic young-minded best, totally prone to running out into the middle of the street.

Like slow the fuck down and/or learn to walk a few fucking feet you impatient self-centered inconsiderate fartknocking life-endangering motherfuckers.

You're not the ultra-capable omnipotent omniscient fucking GOD behind the wheel you think you are. How do I know? Look at that stupid fucking phone you're holding onto (oh wait I don't need to tell you to look at it YOU ALREADY ARE). You don't know how to drive, you're a menace, and where you're going is not nearly as fucking important and urgent as you seem to think it is.

I hope when Jesus takes your wheel you don't bring any other lives down with you. I don't know a single bushy-tailed rodent whose life I don't value more than yours, you self-important cocksucker.

VOLUNTARILY SHITTY AIR QUALITY

 I love this time of year in the wet (but not as wet as you probably think it is) northwest. I love BEING OUTSIDE in early November.

But of course just as soon as the huge forest fires stopped raging and went into smolder mode -- as soon as the air quality started to improve -- here we've got a couple of fucking neighbors who have now decided it is too cold for words and they MUST BURN WOOD! ALL DAY! ALL NIGHT!! STOKE THE HOME FIRES AND TRAP ALLLLLLLLLL OF US LIVING NEXT TO THEM IN THE SHITTIEST SMOKE-POLLUTED AIR QUALITY EVER!

It is hard to take people's take on air pollution seriously when they never say word number one about how absolutely shitty and PERSONAL it is to shit on your neighbors this way.

In the past few years as forest fires have become a yearly dark stinky cloud every fucking year for weeks and months on end (made worse by not having rain for weeks and months on end), I literally did not even notice how bad the smoke was the first time it laid a blanket of smoggy gloom over the Strait of Juan de Fuca here. You know why I didn't perceive the air quality as being significantly degraded? BECAUSE I HAVE GROWN UP SO USED TO INDIVIDUALS BURNING WOOD FOR SIX MONTHS OUT OF THE YEAR AND POLLUTING EVERYTHING AROUND THEM IN THE PROCESS.

My grandpa was one of these people. He did not care about my dad's asthma. Rather, he did not believe that his wholesome naturally man-make-FIRE in homemade FURNACE wood smoke could possibly cause another man to NOT BE ABLE TO BREATHE. My dad later wound up on oxygen for years and died of emphysema, and I believe living for years under my grandpa's smoky thumb contributed to it. 

So instead of taking a walk in my own neighborhood on this beautiful sunny Saturday or even just spending more than a fast moment passing through the backyard as quickly as possible trying to hold my breath, I AM INSIDE. BITCHING ABOUT THIS SAD STATE OF UNHEALTHY HELLISH AFFAIRS.

TRUTH: HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE.

I'd say I can make up for being stuck inside on a beautiful sunny day by instead going out on cloudy days when it's raining, but it's often EVEN WORSE when there is cloud cover trapping all of the smoke under a lid of grey.

People do not know or care how fucking poisonous they smell. Another reason why I hate hearing the word "toxic" used to describe politically incorrect behaviors or personalities or relationships. It's fucking ridiculous coming out of the mouths of people who never say (much less DO) anything about actually toxic air, water, etc.

Barking & Bitching

I'm *really* excited about the dog barking in our neighborhood. At THREE O'CLOCK IN THE MOTHERFUCKING MORNING.

Oh ... nice. It just stopped AFTER, LIKE, FIVE MINUTES or whatever as soon as I typed that. I guess five minutes isn't a really long time. UNLESS YOU WERE FUCKING SLEEPING.

I wasn't. So it just gave me something great to exuberantly bitch about!

*****

I've got a lot of bitch drafts in the hopper, just waiting for the right time to post them.

One of these days ...

A Midnight Clear NOW WITH ADDED CHEMICALS!!!

Just after midnight. Christmas day comes to a close. Nearly-full moon.

I step outside to enjoy the stillness of this night, AND SMELL YET AGAIN THE HORRIFYING SCENT OF LAUNDRY CHEMICALS PERMEATING THE ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD. Like I walked into a giant chilled box of dryer sheets.

I cannot fucking live in a land of vaporized douche powder. It's disgusting. I hate people. I want to get away from them. I don't want to smell you. You sicken me.

The lack of appreciation for clean backyard air, the inconsiderate freedom people have to needlessly, unproductively pollute each others' outdoor homes perplexes, alienates, depresses, poisons and angers me.

I don't want to be near any of your shitty all-night bright lights, your noisy leafblowers and lawnmowers, your desires to febreeze every inhabited tract of land. Fuck off. Go pitch a tent in the detergent aisle of your nearest discount or grocery store if that's what you want your world to smell like and be lit up by a thousand migraine-inducing fluorescent lights. I hope you sanitize yourself until your skin melts off.

Spring & the Scent of Dryer Sheets

It's a beautiful fucking morning with birds and freshly cut green grass in our backyard.

I'd be out there eating breakfast and enjoying it, except when I step outside I'm assaulted by the noxious mucous-membrane-piercing chemical burn smell of a neighbor's nasty fucking drying laundry being blown out of her house and broadcast throughout the neighborhood.

The smell of fake poison spring has sprung.

More Bitching about Neighbors

I even feel bitchy about our mostly-GOOD neighbors. Because the truth is that I do not want to have visible neighbors at all.

I don't want to see my neighbors, I don't want to hear my neighbors, and I don't want them to see or hear me.

I don't want to see their dog, or see/smell/step in their dog's shit, especially in our own fucking yard. I don't want to live close enough to a neighbor's yard that wherever they throw their dog's shit or direct their dog to squat that the smell of it drifts over to my life in my yard. Especially if they have a black lab or large dog with soft, wet, giant shits.

I don't want to HEAR my neighbors' dog(s), and especially do not want to hear that low, persistent woofing for sometimes hours without ever once hearing my neighbor say "shuttup" to the pesky motherfucker. I also don't want to hear any neighbors' tiny dogs and their chirpy, anxious yip-yip-yipping.

I do not want to hear my neighbors at all. Not his daughter's boyfriend parked in the driveway talking on his cell phone like a little bitch, not his worker bees, not his friends, not his cunt of a lazy ex who honks when she pulls up instead of hauling her fat ass out of the car.

I do not want to hear my neighbors' power tools or hammers or engines starting up or car doors slamming or VOICES. I don't want to hear any of that EVER.

I don't want to hear my neighbors' engines revving or cars warming up. And I don't fucking EVER want to hear the sound of a large vehicle's back-up warning system, those brain dead beeps you can hear from blocks away. I am glad that I learned this because now I know never to ever live within a mile of any place any sort of dump truck, loader, pick-up & delivery vehicle, or garbage truck visits regularly. No carpet store, no nursery with landscaping materials like bark, no city facility with large mounds of gravel.

I don't want to see my neighbors' friends. I don't want to know who they are, and I certainly don't want them thinking they can cut through my fucking yard to get to his.

I don't want to see or hear my neighbors' kids or even know they have any, whether they be screaming infants or sullen teenagers. I don't want to wonder whether or not I should call them cops when they have a party or a fight. I don't want to fucking KNOW if they're having a party or a fight. I want no auditory or visual or olfactory evidence of those things to penetrate my peace and quiet in the center of my property.

I don't want my neighbors animal shit or dead-car fluids or septic tank seepage or lawn and garden chemicals to sully any of my own groundwater or picturesque streams.

And if a cougar ventures into my yard I want to be able to kill it. With a gun. I guess that's a little off topic.

I don't want my neighbors to know whether or not our lawn is mowed or whether or not we even HAVE a lawn. I don't want them to know whether or not there's moss on our roof or if I'm standing paralyzed in the morning dew feeling wet grass tickle my ankles. I don't want them to know what I'm wearing or not wearing when I'm inside or outside. I don't want them to gawk when my girlfriend absent-mindedly sticks her hand in her bra and fondles her breast while standing at the kitchen window.

I want to be able to shoot anybody who trespasses, and for it to be obvious what is mine and how you should fucking keep out. I don't want any fucking public trails inviting strangers to mosey on by or through, way too fucking close for comfort. I probably wouldn't ever shoot someone, but I at least want to be able to look at them with extreme hostility and tell them they're not welcome, not now and for their own safety, not ever again.

I need a buffer. A deep, wide, green, dark buffer no one can see through. I want to make believe that I am untouchable by people surrounded by a thick denseness of forbidding nature. I want to have chickens, but I don't know about roosters because they are loud, and they are loud in the morning, which is the worst.

I understand how mean and unsociable it is to not want to get to know your neighbors. To pretend they don't exist and avoid making eye contact with them. I do think that is missing out on something good. But I feel in my bones that I'm missing out on more by not having quiet wet growing places all around me to explore and get to know intimately, like I and my closest family are the only ones to smell and touch and investigate and hear them in all the decades that I live there.

I'm sad that the possibility of having this kind of freedom from others and privacy is nearing impossible. IS impossible if even a small percentage of the people in the world demanded it. That this place is just overrun with people and their sounds and their dog shit and their own shit.

I feel sort of petrified by the fear and likelihood that I'll never have this. That there will always be neighbors in my peripheral vision. That I'll never be able to melt into green invisibility.

Even if you're able to afford a few acres out in the woods or country, sound carries farther where it's quiet so you just need more. And you have to be constantly vigilant everywhere now for where they'll put the next landfill or development or resort or border patrol station. People are everywhere and most of them show no regard for maintaining a big space cushion between each other. They show no shame over their sounds and growling oversized useless pickups and stupid fucking mobile phone conversations. I SHOULDN'T KNOW THIS MUCH ABOUT YOUR STUPID LIFE!! Not without using stealth, anyway. Or reading your stupid blog (like this one).

I don't want to see the headlights of the cars pulling into my neighbors'. I don't want them to be able to penetrate the gloom that should surround me.

More Gravel Raking?

What the fuck is that sound on a pleasant windows-open September weekend? Someone raking gravel again? Someone stroking a very long tube of cardboard with very dry, calloused hands? Someone brushing metal with sandpaper in three foot long strokes? Oh, it's someone sweeping their driveway.

Schhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiit! Schhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiit! Schhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiit!

I would like to stick that broom handle straight up that motherfucker's ass.

Oh god. Now someone is striking up a conversation. Two BOOMING men's voices. HIIIIII. Blah blah fucking blah. I hate the sound of people. When I'm at home, I don't want to be reminded you exist within earshot of me. Go inside and watch some football or something.

Dryer Sheets

It's bad enough having to walk down the PERFUME aisle (laundry detergents, fabric softeners, etc.) at the grocery store -- a fucking migraine waiting to happen, but at least you can kind of avoid that aisle with a little planning.

What you CAN'T avoid are the people in your neighborhood who use those products, especially scented dryer sheets, and are equipped with blowholes in the sides of their houses to disseminate the cloying aroma of their laundry drying so it can be smelled as far away as three blocks.

Woe is me with my office window facing our idiot neighbor's garage where her washer and dryer are located. I can't open my window to get REAL fresh air; I have trademarked APRIL fresh air foisted upon me like a toxic gas.

That shit should be against the law. It's a fucking health hazard for a lot of people with allergies, migraines, asthma, chemical sensitivities, etc.

I don't mind when I can smell the smoke from their marijuana, just please don't make me smell that ghastly laundry perfume, mkay? NASTY.