"Good neighbors build good fences. Oh, mine? All these enslaved Ewoks built mine."
-Endorian Poet Laureate Chewbacca, six months after the destruction of the second Death Star
Do you live in suburbia? If so, chances are that you have a neighbor who loves his or her lawn. Interestingly, my field research has shown that there is a high probability that this person also happens to be a complete and total asshole.
You'll be walking your dog, poo-bag in hand, abiding all the applicable laws, and the next thing you know, Jenkins in the yellow house around the corner is threatening to call the police if Rex happens to even set foot on his precious fucking lawn. Inevitably Mrs. Henrietta McRagingbitch will claim this is the third or fourth time she's spoken to you about this, the cops are on their way, and your dog is going into the wood chipper behind PETA for sure this time.
Fuck that noise. First of all, your neighbor is full of shit. At most, this is only the second time they have spoken to you, and chances are that you weren't even aware of their existence until just now because jerks like them have long since dulled any pleasure you got from knowing the people around you. After spending every free daylight hour baking under the sun, breathing in a mix of fertilizer fumes and lawn mower exhaust, your neighbor has lost a small part of their small fucking mind; specifically, the part that points out that having neighbors who don't want to want to see them suffer might come in handy when society finishes collapsing and the gangs of Australian, buttless chap-wearing marauders decide its time to victimize the neighborhood.
Seriously, how long are you going to put up with this tyranny? At what point are you going to stop waiting around for Lord Humungous and his gang to show up, and start making this asshole suffer yourself? You know that Humungous is only going to turn on you and run you down with his Zamboni when he is done raping your neighbors fake wishing well. You need to make a stand. Your need to grow a pair. You need to literally or figuratively fuck your neighbors lawn!
What motivates this person to be such an asshole regarding their grass? Is it really about the lawn itself? Is it some kind of suburban claustrophobia wherein they feel that living roughly twenty feet from the next set of windows is beginning to feel like nineteen-and-a-half feet? Or do they just have some kind of unhealthy, overprotective attachment to their ugly, stupid children and feel that failing to prevent your dog from urinating on their property will keep little Ricky from becoming the star of his remedial soccer league? You need to figure this out in order to truly violate them and "win". Winning is all important to the hateful man.
-When it's solely about the lawn-
The most simple explanation for this malady is that they work really hard maintaining a nice looking lawn. There's nothing wrong with making things pleasing to the eye. That's why the world loves slutty college freshmen. However, there are risks to having the sexiest lawn on the block. If your lawn is appealing, people and animals will notice. They will appreciate the work you have done. They will admire it. And, most importantly, they will want to fuck it. You must come to understand this mindset, this fear that all the work they have put into making a beautiful lawn will only lead to negative attention. Your neighbor is terrified. Your neighbor is terrified that you are going to rape the living shit out of his special blend of Kentucky and Hawaiian grass seed like a tertiary character on CW teen programming.
And so you must.
Now, am I seriously advocating that you waltz over to Jenkins' lawn one sunny morning, walk to the center of it, drop your pants and underwear and start grinding your crotch against his grass? Well, sure, I suppose you could approach it like that. Its certainly creepy and will get the point across. Personally, I think that is both a little too blunt, and not nearly devastating enough.
First off, you need to prolong the asshole's suffering for as long as possible. Simply getting it all over with in one fell swoop is only going to give him about fifteen minutes of duress, unless he or she has a stroke. You do not want either of these to happen. You want to inflict weeks, if not months or even years of intense emotional agony. You eventually want Jenkins to spend his nights in a cold sweat, staring at the ceiling and occasionally looking out his window, wondering if his beloved lawn is a dirty, filthy, lying whore. And you do not want to be held responsible if they have a stroke.
The first thing you need to do is prepare. You will need to do some light reading about actual lawn care, which can be achieved by skimming books at Home Depot or, better yet, a local home and garden center. Buy some window boxes, and begin growing flowers in your bedroom window, but leave a 10"x5" open space. Acquire an old, manually operated push mower, and store it somewhere besides your house, such as your brothers house in the next town. Find a new route for walking you dog - one that does not take him past your neighbor's lawn. Set aside a small amount of money to eventually repair your own lawn mower.
Once all the preparations are made, it is time for you to be personally introduced to the lawn. You need to approach your neighbor one afternoon while he is tending to his lawn and give him a compliment. Do not compliment the beauty of the lawn itself, however, as this may rouse overt jealousy and suspicion in him. Compliment his handiwork. Maybe you should praise his skill at removing weeds or his obvious ability to maintain proper PH levels. What you are trying to do is win his trust so that he will invite you on to his actual property.
Next, you need to find a way to get him to let you actually care for his lawn. Explain to him that you wish you could get your lawn to look so nice, but its impossible because you own a dog. I recommend asking him to instruct you on his mowing technique. Trust me, this dude has a technique. There is a pattern to his movements because the way in which you cut your grass can effect the way light falls on each individual blade. If you are especially good at this seduction, he will actually allow you to push or drive the mower while he instructs you from the side. Simply being allowed to observe him in action, however, will suffice. Your goal for this portion of the operation is to become at least a relatively minor component of his lawn care process. Remember, he has to blame himself for what is to come.
Eventually, your neighbor will have to take a break from lawn care. Maybe he will be "headed up to the lake for a week". Maybe he will have to attend a funeral. The point is, something bigger will temporarily remove him from the stewardship of his one true love, and that is where you begin the actual affair with his lawn. By now, you should have won his trust. He sees you as his disciple. Seriously, you are not merely his student. He is lawn Jesus and you are his Peter. This guy is probably convinced that he is somehow saving everything that is good and decent by passing down his knowledge of keeping a fucking patch of green plants exactly two-point-three inches long. And so, he is finally entrusting you to tend to his greatest responsibility while he is called away to wear a mesh speedo and drink Budweiser while floating on an innertube on Sebagosaki Lake.
During your temporary stewardship of his lawn, you may be tempted to have inappropriate relations with it. Doing so would be totally counter productive to the long term goal of absolutely destroying this person. No, during your tenure, you must do the best job you possibly can maintaining his lawn. While you need to prove that you truly care about his lawn, he cannot know about your true intentions.
When he returns, he will be pleased and he will let his guard down as that first Summer ends. He will sleep easily through the Fall and Winter, because he knows that you are watching out for him and his lawn.
The destruction begins in the second year.
The first phase of destroying this asshole is to change the dynamic of his own relationship with his lawn. The following spring, stop complimenting his skill at maintaining the lawn, and start complimenting the lawn itself. Tell him that his lawn is beautiful. Compliment its smell, it's greenness and its softness. It now has power over you, not him.
Continue your neighborly relationship. Keep it friendly, respectful, but personally distant. Never let on that you hate him with every fiber of your being that isn't allocated to hating every other living thing.
Retrieve the manual push mower. Think of it as your stealth bomber. On Midsummer's Eve, while he is sleeping, quietly mow a small section of his grass with a push mower. Only mow about a two foot strip at most; just enough that he knows it was mowed by someone else. Return the push mower to wherever you are storing it and thoroughly clean the vehicle you used to transport it, inside and out, so as not to leave any evidence.
At the end of the summer, sabotage your own lawn mower so that it visibly breaks down in front of him. Ask to borrow his mower so that you can have a nice looking lawn before you take your mower to be repaired. Mow his lawn when you are finished with yours, claiming you thought you'd surprise him by doing him a favor.
And so ends the second mowing season. Your neighbor is now confused and slightly concerned that hs lawn is sending you the wrong message.
Shortly after his first lawn care session of the year, cut a pair of 5"x5" squares of grass from the middle of his lawn while he is at work, and put them in a window box in your bedroom. A few weeks later, invite him over for a beer. Place one lawn section in the fridge, in a place where it will be easily spotted and leave the other in the window box. Be sure to point out the window box when you show him the bedroom. If he asks about the grass, quickly change the subject. When the tour is over, tell him that you have a variety of beers in the fridge, and insist that he pick his own. When he sees that chunk of grass in your fridge, he will realize that you are the Ed Gein of grass.
And that's when you violate his lawn with your genitals. Oh yes. And by the way, congratulations, you just won.
-When it's about claustrophobia-
What if it's about more than just the lawn? What if your neighbor feels that the world is slowly, but obnoxiously encroaching on a little more of their personal sanctuary with each passing second, and is using you as the focus of their otherwise helpless rage?
In the previous few centuries, American's who couldn't stand vinyl siding or lawn ornaments had the option of regularly moving farther and farther out into the frontier. Now the only American frontier is Alaska, and, really, if you hate obnoxious, filthy people, the last place you want to be is Alaska. So what is someone like this to do? Simply put, they turn into judgmental, semi-confrontational assholes.
As a hateful man, you may come to view the suburban claustrophobic as a comrade in your war on the obnoxiousness of the world around you, as they clearly hate everyone as much as you do. DO NOT BE FOOLED. The suburban claustrophobic may be like you in some ways, but his methods are cowardly and weak, there is no joy in his actions, and he ultimately lives only to bring misery to others, not to advance the cause of hatefulness.
The suburban claustrophobic will never confront you directly if you are the target of their rage. Close range human contact makes them incredibly uncomfortable because they are unable to assert dominance over other adults. Instead, they will strike at you through your children or your mailbox. You will know that you are dealing with a suburban claustrophobic when one of the following things happen;
** They confront your children about problems they have with things your children are doing on on your property.
** They post defensive, religious signs during the holiday season and leave pamphlets about Satanism, drug abuse and spousal battery in your mailbox.
** They attempt to form a home owners association and/or neighborhood watch in your sparsely populated neighborhood whose sole purposes are to attempt to have you legally evicted over trivial bullshit like leaving a snow shovel out on your driveway while you go inside to relieve your bl adder or have your teenage offspring stopped by the police for walking on the street after 4:30 PM.
Violating a suburban claustrophobic takes far less effort but more monetary investment than dealing with a true lawn asshole, as you have to damage your own property values. The lawn they are concerned with is not so much the physical green space as it is their peace of mind and feeling of limited control of the world around them.
Begin by taking up "composting". Notice the quotation marks. By composting, I mean leaving things like scrap metal and old wooden planks with nails sticking out of them in heaps on the edge of your property so that they can slowly rust of rot into minerals and fertilizer for future generations.
Put up your halloween decorations the first weekend of August. Don't just go for the traditional pumpkins and friendly, dancing skeletons, either. Conjure up a scene of reanimated, desecrated corpses of Liberian child soldiers attacking a group of missionaries, or a larger than life, 3-D tribute to the great Cannibal Corpse album covers of the early to mid-nineties. We're talking Tomb of the Mutilated, here. On November 1st, put red christmas lights up over your halloween decorations and them leave them up until next May, never taking any steps to fix any damage that may occur to the props throughout the winter. Come the first weekend in May, smash the decorations with an axe and throw them on the compost heap.
Help your children build a clubhouse. Start by purchasing an unfinished, wooden shed designed to look like a cottage. After a day or two, start adding on to the cottage. Knock a hole in the roof and build a poorly constructed tower and crows nest. Next begin building a half-pipe on one side of the structure. DO NOT FINISH THE HALF-PIPE. Begin to build a wooden tire swing that expands out from the tower. DO NOT FINISH THE TIRE SWING. Leave the tire swing in condition that resembles a gallows and leave the tire sitting on your lawn. Dig a partial mote around the club house, but stop before completely encircling the structure, and casually note to any neighbors who may have contact with the claustrophobic that you think you may have hit an old septic tank while digging. Finally, decide that the entire structure is unsafe, smash it up with an axe, and drag it towards your ever expanding "compost" heap.
Read up on local laws regarding livestock. Can you raise chickens within city limits? If so, build an enormous henhouse and buy one hen. Allow the hen to be killed by local predators. Partially smash the henhouse with an axe, and throw it on the compost heap.
Continue adding to your "compost" heap. Eventually, it should begin to close in on their property. At some point, the city will force you to clean up your mess. And that is when you demonstrate that your neighbors themselves are powerless to stop you by sexually violating their lawn.
-When your neighbor is merely being over-protective of their stupid, ugly children-
Maybe your neighbor isn't really concerned about their lawn or the world encroaching upon their sanctuary. Somehow they have formed a bond that requires them to constantly protect their apparently helpless, common senseless, immune system-less children instead of finding them to be cloying little wieners like you do.
Weird, I know.
What do you do if one of these hyper-nervous, overbearing, under-tolerant spore factories starts attempting to encroach on your existence by threatening to call the cops on you or your normal, healthy, intelligent children for walking your dog past their property?
First of all, when confronted by an over-protective parent, do not apologize to them. Be honest with them. You did nothing wrong, and as such you are not sorry.
Read up on your town ordinances regarding animals and property. If the laws allow your animal to be on another person's property so long as they are on a leash and are not causing damage to the property, you are in luck.
If you plan to fight back, do not stop walking your dog past their house. Do not, however, allow your animal to defecate or urinate on their lawn. Just allow it to move across their property. Also, be sure to carry plastic bags to retrieve any droppings. You need to be as responsible and in the right as possible. As long as your dog is not actually damaging their lawn, there's really not anything they can do, short of building a fence, and if they build a fence, you've won early.
When they next confront you - and believe me, they will confront you - calmly explain that you always remove any excrement, you've read the town ordinances, and there's nothing illegal about what you are doing. Go on to explain that while you are sure to remove any excrement your dog may leave on their lawn, you are doing so only for aesthetic reasons, and that you don't care about the well-being of their apparently excrement eating children.
Have a change of heart around the holidays. Send the family an apology letter. You were being rash. You really do care about the well-being of their children, and their mother bear behavior just caught you off guard. Then send them a gift basket containing floss, toothbrushes and paste, breath strips, anti-worm medications for dogs, lysol, rubber gloves and antibacterial soap. Continue sending gift baskets every Christmas, Easter, May Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day and on Abraham Lincoln's birthday.
Go to Sam's club or another bulk goods store and by the biggest container of antibacterial gel you can find. Keep it in a conspicuous place and whenever they pass your property, make a big show of using it. Hose down the street or sidewalk once they have passed by. Make it clear that you regard them as unclean.
Over the course of the next few halloweens, you need to establish your house as The House to Visit on halloween. Give out Dove Bars wrapped in five dollar bills. By the time their children are old enough to insist which houses they HAVE to hit up, you will be an impossible to resist target. When their children show up, give them Payday wrapped in a coupon for a bottle of Purell, a wink and a grin.
Finally, make some guacamole on the Fourth of July. Put it in a disposable diaper, and leave it uncovered in the fridge to oxidize for a few hours so that it turns a brownish color. Eat the brown guacamole from the diaper with your bare hands while walking back and forth past their property, alternately sobbing "Look what you made me do! I m eating my shame!" and singing the Star Spangled Banner. Then sexually violate their lawn for good measure, ensuring victory.
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