I have found myself in the unenviable position of liking my new neighbors. I'm not sure how this happened, but there you have it. They're good people (as opposed to The Good People), and I just can't bring myself to hate them for their mild idiocyncracies.
Well, maybe "mild" isn't the word for it. Eddie and Sean, on the North side, have a bad habit of throwing their old charcoal over the fence onto the golf course...I approve of this, but I wish they'd make sure the damn stuff was out first. Eddie has a weird "Latka"-like accent, and his wife is a glorious peroxide blonde who doesn't give a shit if the world sees that the roots are showing.
Their kid, Jordan, is this painfully shy boy that's in a couple of my daughter's classes, and has this look on his face that says he knows what the world has planned for him, but can't do anything about it. My daughter has had to get between him and a few sophomores with mayhem in their itsy-bitsy brains, several times this school year. Needless to say, the kid was glad to see us move in, and he now rides to school and back with my kids, rather than on the bus, where mysterious and grim things occurred to his lunch, etc. My son is trying to teach him how to fight, but he just hasn't got it in him. He's a nice kid, but he's one of life's victims.
Michael, on the South side, is much like myself...A working stiff made good, who is enjoying the best place he's ever managed to get into. He takes meticulous care of his property, and - and this is golden - he brings the dog in when it starts to bark. This alone makes me overlook any other weirdness...Such as the fact that his wife has been "visiting in California" for a very, very long time. My guess is that either she left and he won't admit it, or he's buried her in the cliff face out back. As long as he keeps the dog quiet at night, I really don't care.
Across the street is Old Man Crosby and his vast clan. There's four generations living in the house, and dozens of children-toting descendents in and out all day. The whole bunch of them are polite as hell, and once he sent one of the younger ones over to tell us our front light was out (a HOA violation), rather than calling the HOA.
The back neighbor is, of course, the golf course, which keeps me well supplied with golf balls (I am 80 feet above the course, 45 degrees off the fairway, and 200 yards from the tee. They have some horrible slices here in Oro Valley, but they're strong as fuck.), which I will cheerfully return during the next mini-PGA tournament, with the aid of my daughter and a couple of wrist-rockets.
So what the hell do I do? I can't really enjoy myself unless I have at least one neighbor I can hate, bicker with, and engage in those feuds that live on in neighborhood lore, long after the participants are all dead.
Oh, well, I can always join a church, I suppose.
Or Kill Me
Life is over, Roger's moved to the 'burbs. :x
Seriously though, look at it this way, that means you expend your hate and spew your inner turmoil away from your home and in that, your home isn't associated with the "Goddammit I don't want to go home because of......" bullshit!
Home is your (for lack of a better term ok) 'safe place' :D Which is actually a good thing!
Quote from: Niamh on December 17, 2010, 08:24:11 PM
Life is over, Roger's moved to the 'burbs. :x
I've been in the burbs for a couple of years, now.
And I LIKE being the neighborhood assmonkey. But I have to have worthy targets.
Pretty cool.
Mrs LMNO and I keep to ourselves, pretty much... we're fairly isolationist with out housing. But just the other day we got a flyer in our mailbox, addressed to "Childless Couple: Dude with Cool Hats and Girl with Great Hair", inviting us to a holiday party across the street.
This could be epic lulz, or boring as hell.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on December 17, 2010, 08:26:10 PM
Pretty cool.
Mrs LMNO and I keep to ourselves, pretty much... we're fairly isolationist with out housing. But just the other day we got a flyer in our mailbox, addressed to "Childless Couple: Dude with Cool Hats and Girl with Great Hair", inviting us to a holiday party across the street.
This could be epic lulz, or boring as hell.
I'd go. You can always get drunk and rowdy if it's boring, and never be bothered again.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 17, 2010, 08:25:28 PM
Quote from: Niamh on December 17, 2010, 08:24:11 PM
Life is over, Roger's moved to the 'burbs. :x
I've been in the burbs for a couple of years, now.
And I LIKE being the neighborhood assmonkey. But I have to have worthy targets.
I should have said country club burbs, sorry....
Then I suggest pretending to take up golf. You will find no end of targets and you can have a lot of fun in the cart while you're hunting. :wink:
Quote from: Niamh on December 17, 2010, 08:29:27 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 17, 2010, 08:25:28 PM
Quote from: Niamh on December 17, 2010, 08:24:11 PM
Life is over, Roger's moved to the 'burbs. :x
I've been in the burbs for a couple of years, now.
And I LIKE being the neighborhood assmonkey. But I have to have worthy targets.
I should have said country club burbs, sorry....
Then I suggest pretending to take up golf. You will find no end of targets and you can have a lot of fun in the cart while you're hunting. :wink:
ho ho ho
ugh. Good neighbors. I hate good neighbors. For a brief time, I had a neighbor that would always say hello to me when I walked out the door, kept to herself, didn't really do much that I new of. Then one day, she came over to ask for a cup of milk because she was baking and had run out. She even brought her own measuring cup and offered to buy me a whole gallon in return. And this was all at the perfectly reasonable hour of 6 pm, when I wasn't doing anything important. It was awful.
Luckily, my neighbors now are the projects, and a broken home with bratty kids, a slutty mom, and a douchebag step-dad.
:lulz: I love your neighbors!
Roger, there's only one thing to do. Band together and start a neighborhood feud with the next neighborhood over.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 17, 2010, 08:30:29 PM
Quote from: Niamh on December 17, 2010, 08:29:27 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 17, 2010, 08:25:28 PM
Quote from: Niamh on December 17, 2010, 08:24:11 PM
Life is over, Roger's moved to the 'burbs. :x
I've been in the burbs for a couple of years, now.
And I LIKE being the neighborhood assmonkey. But I have to have worthy targets.
I should have said country club burbs, sorry....
Then I suggest pretending to take up golf. You will find no end of targets and you can have a lot of fun in the cart while you're hunting. :wink:
ho ho ho
:?
Sorry, sometimes my funny and other people's funny aren't in the same book. :sad:
I have good neighbors. We're on a corner lot, on one side we have the pot smokers with the dogs. One, the guy, is a landscaper and the other works at the natural gas company. On the other side we have a couple of older lesbians who are actually trying to sell their house. They are all very nice but we have zero in common with them so there isn't much mingling. I really appreciate the landscaper neighbor though, because when that bad wind storm came along and blew our trampoline into their yard, denting the top of their shed, they said, "meh, don't worry about it".
The old lesbians give out good stuff at Halloween too, so it's hard to put them on the shit list.
Quote from: Niamh on December 17, 2010, 08:42:30 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 17, 2010, 08:30:29 PM
Quote from: Niamh on December 17, 2010, 08:29:27 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 17, 2010, 08:25:28 PM
Quote from: Niamh on December 17, 2010, 08:24:11 PM
Life is over, Roger's moved to the 'burbs. :x
I've been in the burbs for a couple of years, now.
And I LIKE being the neighborhood assmonkey. But I have to have worthy targets.
I should have said country club burbs, sorry....
Then I suggest pretending to take up golf. You will find no end of targets and you can have a lot of fun in the cart while you're hunting. :wink:
ho ho ho
:?
Sorry, sometimes my funny and other people's funny aren't in the same book. :sad:
That was evil, anticipatory laughter.
Sounds like you're going to have to find another outlet for your hate that doesn't involve the street you live on. Give it time, Im sure there's someone in the neighborhood who will make you want to start working out the proper trajectory to their roof for a golf ball fired from a slingshot.
My neighbor across the hall is a nursing student who's bat shit crazy. (she pulled out a photo album of a bunch of artsy bondage pics staring herself and I had only known her barely 72 hours) She spent the next few months stomping up the stairwell and kicking my door at 3am because I wouldn't sleep with her and ended up sleeping with the girl that lives in the apartment around the back of the house instead.
My landlords live downstairs and are tolerable except for one thing. The husband is a true believer in magic, witches, warlocs, gnomes (no fucking shit, the guy has socks laid out for them in the storage area under the house. I wish I had a picture on this computer to post, it's fucking histerical) photo orbs, the power of crystals, and pretty much anything else you can think of. He tries to talk to me about this shit occasionally and it's all I can do to not fall on the floor in tears.
The neighborhood is great though. Walking distance to my stomping grounds and old school watering hole and the houses are old and beautiful. oh, and Oak trees. fucking Live Oak trees EVERYWHERE.
Quote from: Rev. What's-His-Name? on December 17, 2010, 08:45:33 PM
I have good neighbors. We're on a corner lot, on one side we have the pot smokers with the dogs. One, the guy, is a landscaper and the other works at the natural gas company. On the other side we have a couple of older lesbians who are actually trying to sell their house. They are all very nice but we have zero in common with them so there isn't much mingling. I really appreciate the landscaper neighbor though, because when that bad wind storm came along and blew our trampoline into their yard, denting the top of their shed, they said, "meh, don't worry about it".
The old lesbians give out good stuff at Halloween too, so it's hard to put them on the shit list.
It's not written in stone, but as a general rule, I've found Gays make good neighbors.
Quote from: The Dancing Pickle on December 17, 2010, 08:57:11 PM
The neighborhood is great though. Walking distance to my stomping grounds and old school watering hole and the houses are old and beautiful. oh, and Oak trees. fucking Live Oak trees EVERYWHERE.
That nature stuff is bad for you.
Golf destroys your back. I've known people who have been to very bad days in Iraq, have come home and spent weeks avidly mashing the snot out of others in armor, blown down every highway on rice - fueled crotch rockets, and then incapacitated themselves trying to play 9 holes.
I don't know what to say except some places jsut don't have utilities that include hot and cold running assholes. Give them time.
Is their likeability a worry at all, as far as keeping weirdness from happening around the homestead?
Quote from: Richter on December 17, 2010, 08:59:23 PM
Golf destroys your back. I've known people who have been to very bad days in Iraq, have come home and spent weeks avidly mashing the snot out of others in armor, blown down every highway on rice - fueled crotch rockets, and then incapacitated themselves trying to play 9 holes.
I don't know what to say except some places jsut don't have utilities that include hot and cold running assholes. Give them time.
Is their likeability a worry at all, as far as keeping weirdness from happening around the homestead?
I just don't feel right without a warm, personal enemy close to home. :sad:
Does the golf course have a pet "Pro" player? They can be one of those fine, self loathing types. Better at their sport than anyone in the area, but worse than anyone who REALLY gets around at it, accutely aware of that fact, and channeling it into fastidious adherance to course rules, or need to be snide about their skill.
Quote from: Richter on December 17, 2010, 09:20:44 PM
Does the golf course have a pet "Pro" player? They can be one of those fine, self loathing types. Better at their sport than anyone in the area, but worse than anyone who REALLY gets around at it, accutely aware of that fact, and channeling it into fastidious adherance to course rules, or need to be snide about their skill.
The type that is tragically
almost good enough to be a pro?
Don't know yet.
You'd love my neighborhood. To the left is an awesome older couple, but on the right is a massive fucking douche bag. Anger issues, destroyed his trees by topping and de-limbing them because he didn't want to pick up after them, and has threatened to shoot my older dog for standing on his lawn for 2.5 seconds. Dude's kids were inside and he CAME OUT to tell us to get our dog off his lawn or he'd shoot him. We call him the Yahoo.
Across the street are the Dukes of Hazard. Umpteen beaten up cars, a retarded-looking dune buggy, squalling grand-brats, and they yell at each other a lot.
Down the street is a couple with musical Christmas lights. They turn them on in the evening and turn them off in the morning, so "Rocking around the Christmas Tree" and a handful of other horrid Christmas songs play alllll niiiiight long.
I'm sure you'll find a target for your hate, Roger.
Quote from: Nigel on December 17, 2010, 08:36:09 PM
:lulz: I love your neighbors!
Roger, there's only one thing to do. Band together and start a neighborhood feud with the next neighborhood over.
DO EEEEETTT
Quote from: TGB on December 17, 2010, 11:17:22 PM
Quote from: Nigel on December 17, 2010, 08:36:09 PM
:lulz: I love your neighbors!
Roger, there's only one thing to do. Band together and start a neighborhood feud with the next neighborhood over.
DO EEEEETTT
seconded
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 17, 2010, 08:16:22 PM
So what the hell do I do? I can't really enjoy myself unless I have at least one neighbor I can hate, bicker with, and engage in those feuds that live on in neighborhood lore, long after the participants are all dead.
Give it some time. Just because they live next to you doesn't mean they have to be your enemies, hey, *everybody* could by chance happen to live next to you, and it'd be odd to blame them for being good people, right? Fortunately, enemies have the tendency to make themselves known all by themselves, unlike (often) friends.
Also, I second Niamh's suggestion of joining the golf course, that sounds like a proper target-rich environment if anything!
Quote from: LMNOMrs LMNO and I keep to ourselves, pretty much... we're fairly isolationist with out housing. But just the other day we got a flyer in our mailbox, addressed to "Childless Couple: Dude with Cool Hats and Girl with Great Hair", inviting us to a holiday party across the street.
Awwww that sounds sweet as hell!!
You're the Dude with Cool Hats!! and "Great Hair" sounds like a rather generic compliment--unless your wife has extraordinary great hair i dunno--that they really want to get to know the Dude with Cool Hats! So be sure to wear an Extravagant Hat. It could be awesome (possibly counting on you to make it happen--why not?), and if it is boring, not too big of a loss, is it?
Relax Roger.
You simply haven't had a night on cactus on the back porch with your laptop and the mandatory attire. One night you will and while you are typing and screaming at the radio then I predict your worries will be groundless.
Can just see it now... Roger is put in charge of the neighborhood watch.
When Roger does the above all he wears is engineer boots and a Stetson. I don't think he will be put in charge of any watch.
Prediction: local delinquents BEGGING for the police to taken them before Roger finds them.
There needs to be a pillory.