pet peeve of the month

I am being mortally attacked by sinus bullshit this evening. All the flowering trees and plants decorating the city of Portland are so beautiful, but my allergies suffer with every burst of blossom. It royally sucks. My eyes are itching, I can hardly keep them open from being overwhelmingly sleepy, I am sniffing constantly, and my head is pounding. So, considering all these limitations, I am opting for lighter fare tonight and offer up my inaugural installment of "pet peeve of the month." I am guessing in this blogging life there will be plenty of wasted and uninspired evenings ahead, and if there is anything the uninspired are never short of it is things to be annoyed by and pissed off about. So, without further ado:


APRIL 2008 PET PEEVE:
People who water their driveways
This practice drives me absolutely nuts. Not even the tiniest bone in my body understands why some humans are compelled to clean a place specifically designed for parking a car. I want to say to them:

"Folks! -it's a car! -it's tires are dirty! If you clean the driveway, you will just drive your car's dirty wheels onto and muss it up. Don't you people know there are water wars (Bolivia) and water refugees (Iran)? Don't you realize that the Great Lakes aren't going to be "great" for much longer as their water levels decrease annually? Haven't you heard the news about Atlanta and Beijing possibly being abandoned at some future date owing to an utter lack of resources? Don't you realize that water councils and BES's and storm water managers around the country are working tirelessly to conserve this precious resource and here you are with a giant hose spraying off your fuckin' DRIVEWAY??? Your driveway looks fine! Does it really need to be clean? Think about it. I mean, honestly I think watering grass is pretty damn stupid and wasteful (ever tried eating grass?), but this driveway watering thing is at the level of pure idiocy. Please, please stop."

And these jokers never hose it off quickly, like just give a swift once-over. No! -they are always spraying and spraying, and going over the same area multiple times, trying to get each and every little bit of leaf-matter and debris and dirt off of the driveway and into the gutters of the streets. All that water, just washed away into the sewers of our city where it co-mingles with raw sewage and dumps straight into the Willamette River and then rushes in a mad, poopie torrent out to sea where it will never have a fighting chance of ever being useful to anyone ("Warning: Please don't touch the water in the Willamette between the Burnside and the Morrison Bridge until after noon on Friday"). Poor water (and don't even get me started about the salmon, the poor salmon!).

There. I feel better now. My allergies still suck, but my churlishness is abating.