Taking a radical departure from the regular topic in this blog, here’s a little humorous offering from comedian Tim Hawkins. He has a music degree and has played in Carnegie Hall. He uses his guitar to poke fun at institutions and conditions of life. In this bit he pokes wonderful fun at those of us who are getting older:
Now, if we could just get Tim Hawkins to write a series of HOA songs!
The Gates of Allen Station, shame, shame on you.
Yes, folks, another Texas Homeowners Association is taking the idiotic and pathetic step of DNA testing all dogs in the neighborhood. Swab your doggie’s cheeks, submit the DNA sample to your HOA. That swab goes to the lab and your pooch is branded for life. Now, if your dog brands the lawn of the HOA president or a board member, the feces fits the crime, the owner gets the fine. The thought of HOA officials dropping to their hands and knees and probing poops with thermometers and scoops just defies the imagination. The HOA claims it’s a way of stopping canine terrorists from messing up the neighborhood.
Well, frankly folks, it’s just another way of wrecking a nice neighborhood by turning neighbor against neighbor. First of all, who’s motivated to institute such a practice? It costs a couple hundred bucks per pooch per swab. And the owner of each defiling dog is fined hundreds of dollars. That money is going into someone’s pocket. It’s a real revenue generator.
But second, it won’t work. Once homeowners start getting angry at being fined, they’re going to start collecting poop from all over and tossing onto the board president’s lawn. He’s going to get innundated. Of course, he’ll submit hundreds of different DNA samples from the hundreds of brown spots in the front yard. And of course, he’ll charge thousands and thousands of dollars in lab costs to the HOA’s ‘secret’ reimbursement budget. The homeowners will be assessed, of course. Everybody will hate everybody, the president’s house will really get bombed now.
When people get stupid, stupid things happen.
guest blog by Nila Ridings
The blog linked below is from the Huffington Post. It’s lengthy but is well worth reading. The author was doing mission work in Nicaragua helping destitute families improve their homes and villages. But upon returning home she was greeted with threats of fines and lawsuits over mildew in her driveway! It’s beyond appalling.
For a society, a community, to function in an orderly manner there must be not only rules, but a firm belief in the need to enforce just and fair rules and laws. Political philosophy says that where laws are unjust and unfair, then the democratic government is not legitimate, cause the reason for forming a social contract and surrendering freedoms is just that.
Take for example the society of criminal known as the Mafia, or La Cosa Nostra (which literally means ‘our thing’). It had its enforcement squad for those who did not want to abide by the rules – called Murder, Inc. But, they were criminals anyway.
Our elected representatives and national leadership has lost its way long ago. Obama, in today’s news, makes a statement to the audience and cameras, “what did we do to PISS OFF . . . .” From the President of the United States on national TV! What will Michelle tell a kid who asks, Why did the president say a dirty word?
CAI operates outside society’s rules, as they once were, and does its own thing. We need to return to those values as stated by Rev. Jim Wallis, and paraphrased by me:
We have . . . substituted ‘market value’ for ‘moral value’. . . . Do we want [property] values to prevail everywhere and in all things? Are there some areas of life where [property] values should not determine what is most important — personal and family relationships, ethics and religion, community and public service and social justice? Are there certain things degraded when [property values] are allowed to be the ultimate measure? Are there certain social values and practices that are higher than market values?
