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Because I'm bored and randomly surfing the internet when I'd rather be working, I'll blog a bit just to pass the time because I've been in an extremely reclusive state for a while.
I'm kinda fed up with the City of Omaha and their little ordinances. Of course, some of them are ordinances every town has, but I seriously disagree with them. Naturally, there's something to cause that distaste for human law, and to some extent, particular individuals in my neighborhood.
Recently, someone called the Humane Society on my mom's puppy because she barks a lot, was left out for a bit, and some other reasons. Now, I don't particularly have a fondness for the pup, but I'm not one to just ignore the facts. She does bark frequently, but that's because she's a social dog. She's an alpha female full-blood Siberian Husky, which means she's a lot to handle (which for my family, isn't a good thing). However, the apparent description of the complaint was that she excessively barks all the time. This is a highly exaggerated complaint. Being home most of the time on weekends (and evenings and nights on the weekdays), I know just how much she barks, and it's anything BUT excessive. She occasionally whines and barks when she's left alone due to her social nature, and when she becomes too much to handle, we put her on the back porch in her kennel for a while. She doesn't like it, so she barks and whines. That's normal, in my opinion. Who would want to be caged like that when they're normally all over the place? I certainly wouldn't. But apparently someone just can't stand barking dogs. One would think that if you had a TV going at the very least that the barking dogs across the street would be drowned out. I wonder if this person has a TV, and if they do, do they even use it? It'd make sense if that was the case. If they use it, though, then they're being a nuisance on their own, and that's not right.
And what about leaving the puppy outside on her own? Well, apparently fanatic animal lovers say that you can't leave a pet outside for more than 15 minutes without supervision, even if the animal is on a chain. So I guess that means that training her to use nature instead of our kitchen floor for personal use is out of the question. If anyone has extra newspaper lying about, shoot me a message. I'll probably need it. As well, she apparently needs a doghouse if we're going to leave her outside. Since when has a doghouse been a requirement for leaving a dog outside for a few minutes or even hours? It's pretty ridiculous. I can understand people not wanting animals to be abused or neglected, but that's going a bit far. Obviously we check on her and take care of her. We're leaving her outside to help train her and get some fresh air. Apparently we can't do that in good ol' America anymore, because owning a pet is real serious business.
And of course, what's a good neighbor to do when someone's lawn is getting a bit tall or has a bunch of stuff lying around on it? Make a complaint, apparently. We've been called on our lawn before (note: it's not just the city patrolling and catching it, it's someone actually calling in). Now I refuse to mow the lawn. Why? It's physically demanding work and I don't like physically demanding work. It physically hurts me to do it because I have a bad back. My mom can't do it for the same reasons, but her back problems are exponentially worse. My sister can't do it, she's too young. Who does that leave? None other than my eccentric, b*****d of a brother, who keeps putting things off until it's either last minute or too late. And that's assuming he'll even do it at all. And this is no exception to the "do it at all" clause. We have enough problems trying to get him to do anything around the house, we don't need some stupid neighbor nosing about in our business, especially regarding the yard. We try to get him to work on it. We typically fail. As for stuff sitting on the lawn, we had a lot of huge storms this summer which left a ton of branches in our yard. Apparently we can't have that. They're branches. In OUR yard. You don't mess with our branches. They're just fine where they're at. The only other things sitting on our lawn are maybe a couple of sports balls and some trash, of which the latter we take to the curb to be hauled away each week.
Another issue I'm having RAGE issues with is the charge for sidewalk maintenance we received. I don't see how Omaha expects people to just have a spare couple thousand dollars or so lying about to pay for the maintenance with, what with all their additional taxes the city loves to hit people with (the Wheel Tax is HUGE, believe me). I believe that something like that is the city's responsibility, not ours as citizens. Mowing outside our lawns? That's petty compared to this. We can take a few minutes to chop up some grass (though this is still an issue for us, as mentioned in the previous issue). We can't just cough up a couple thousand dollars on a moment's notice, especially when we're facing extreme financial crisis on a personal level. They gave us about a month to come up with the money, I think. My mom's jobless and my paychecks even at my old job wouldn't have paid that much unless I took on 14-hour/12-hour shifts, and I just couldn't handle that much customer service. I couldn't even handle the eight hours I did have. There's no way we'll come up with that money. Fortunately, they have a number to call for people in our situation. I just don't think it's right that they should charge us for maintaining the sidewalks. If it's sidewalk within our property lines, then that's OUR sidewalk, and you don't mess with our sidewalk.
Back to the person who makes calls on us and our neighbors. I'm seriously trying to figure out how to deal with them personally, because they are a true nuisance in the neighborhood. They exaggerate their complaints and cause all kinds of trouble for the neighborhood. They don't keep to themselves, which is a blatant invasion of privacy, and it's not something I'm willing to compensate or compromise for. I might write to the mayor about all these ordinances and file a complaint against the city and another one against those folks who keep complaining about us.
Really, these people need to be taught when it's appropriate to make complaints. A lot of consistent smoke coming from the building, but it's not on fire? Perhaps they're smoking weed. Despite my stance on the matter, it's still illegal and that would merit a complaint, especially when it affects you, which is really when a complaint has any merit to it whatsoever. Does our lawn affect you? No. Does our dog affect you? Only when it's biting your head off for being terrorists. Stay away from our house, stay out of our lives, and we'll gladly leave you to your own devices. Mess with us, you'll feel the RAGE.
So now that I've got that little rant out of my system, it feels pretty nice. Though it does lead me through chain of thought on how the economy works, but I just don't feel like posting another whole entry's worth in a single entry. I'll save it for a time when I can back up my disgust.
-Hero
 HeromanXZeroProtoman · Mon Nov 10, 2008 @ 06:31pm · 0 Comments |
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