[no, that’s not a typo. wither. as in “withering away.” as in, a pun. sheesh.]

i listen to the young turks in the morning. ben mankeiwicz is the cat’s meow. cenk uygur is the bee’s knees. (and i say this not just because cenk has quite possibly one of the best names ever to grace a radio show, but because he’s sexy in a vaguely disturbing middle-aged former-federalist turkish-angelino kind of way. which is exactly how bee’s knees are sexy. i bet you didn’t know that.)

they’re supposed to be on from 6am to 9am. they weren’t. the AAR station wasn’t helpful at explaining why they’d been replaced this morning with some random dc-area guy with a mic.

occasionally i’d listen to sam seder (9am-noon) after TYT. i was never the biggest fan, but his liberal ranting in NYC tones worked as background noise when i was picking up dogshit from the back yard. (and no, i’m not putting it in condoms. put down that phone.)

sam seder’s gone from the timeslot, and has been replaced with some dude by the name of lee rayburn. BOring. and again, not a peep from the AAR website on who he is or why he’s on the air, killing my brain cells between the departure of sam and the arrival of WOR’s freakily-freudian-looking lionel.

my listenership is about to decline to zero. at least until lionel joins AAR - a guy who enjoys making haggis for friends is worth a listen, at least for a few minutes.

brilliant. my daffs are popping up happily. (click on the camellia photo to the left to see the short gallery - the last photo is the best, IMO: it looks like the flower is cupping its hands next to its mouth and shouting. go on, take a gander.)

but that’s not what’s unbelievable. what’s unbelievable is that the guy building the monstrosity house next door cut the frakking cable TV line to my house. so now i can’t watch the daily show. and that’s enough to drive a girl to… well, i won’t get into that. let’s just say it’s not pretty. but nick frost might approve.

it comes down to this: you just need to ask the right person.

nick frost came up with what is by far the best (and, damn it, implementable) course of action regarding the house next door. it was beautiful in its simplicity, and had edgar wright doubled over in laughter.

1. break in to the unfinished house
2. pry up the floorboards and fill the space with hundreds of condoms filled with dog shit
3. replace floorboards
4. wait

so much simpler than the ritual sacrifice of ravers in the living room we had been planning! (although i should’ve asked nick how to get the dog to poop into the condoms…)

p.s. hot fuzz nearly had me peeing in my pants.

‘cuz i know y’all been waiting with bated breath to see what the spring has brought to my little corner of the galaxy. heh.

the phone line still runs through the damn thing.

the governmental nannyism suggested by this article, or the fact that CNN puts up bullet points of “story highlights” so you don’t actually have to read the articles?

i must admit, i’m hard-pressed to answer my own question. i wouldn’t mind the ban with two modifications:

1) that it only apply to minors (a child labor law, essentially); and
2) that the determination not be of “abnormally thin” based on BMI, but rather a case-by-case determination of the health of any given model.

and as to the CNN bullet points — is this further evidence of a shortening attention span of the general public, or evidence that CNN thinks its readers don’t, well, want to actually read… ?

but here’s a quick image to update the goings-on with the monstrosity next door.

if you can’t see a difference (besides the use of cheap plastic-bag tyvek instead of the more expensive, insulating type; however, it’s in keeping with the rest of the construction: 2×4s, pre-assembled roof joists, blah blah blah…), it’s the fence! 7 FEET high, we had it installed yesterday.

next up: a giant phallus painted with the flag of el salvador in our front yard. just to be neighborly-like.

things that shouldn’t be popping up out of the ground, are.

so, the building next door proceeds apace. i went over to wish the owner a feliz año, and we chatted a bit. the conversation is going well enough, until it takes this turn:

“how long are you and your husband planning on living here?”
“what? well, we bought the house because we love it. we’re not planning on moving.”
“oh, i see… he’s in the army, isn’t he? what if he gets sent to germany or something? plans can change.”
“what are you getting at?”
“well, if you ever decide to sell, talk to me first. maybe we can make a deal without a realtor.”

at this point, befuddlement begins to turn into suspicion.

“ahuh. i’d have to discuss it with my husband. but like i said, we’re not planning on moving.”
“oh, i know. but if you do. i could buy your house. i could get rid of the driveway easement and put a nice circular driveway in front here.”

he’s waving his arm, describing a semicircle that encompasses pretty much our whole front yard. all the beautiful heirloom azaleas. the rhododendrons. the red maple trees. the dogwoods. hundreds of daffodils.

i boggled. his property is the servient tenement to our dominant; we have a thirty-foot-wide easement across the width of his parcel for our driveway. i’m starting to think he didn’t research the encumbrances on the lot before paying twice the assessed value for it. that, however, is his problem, not mine.

“excuse me? you clear cut a gorgeous property, covered with flowering trees, bushes, violated your own tree conservation plan… to build that… thing… and now you want me to sell you my house so you can rip out my front yard and not have to deal with the inconvenience of the easement?”
“oh, i say too much.”

no fucking shit.

as one of my neighbors said to me, “he may have the right to put up a house like that, but he’s a jerk to do it.”

i feel as though i should come up with a new category for this post, but it would likely be “NIMBY” and that just isn’t very nice. change happens, progress is unimpeded by common sense sentimentality. it pains me, though, that just this spring, this was the view from my bedroom balcony:

lovely. just lovely. a vision of dogwoods, azaleas, lilies of the valley, a thicket of gooseberries, rhododendrons, and filled with butterflies and birds. unfortunately it wasn’t our property, and its prior owner wanted more than we could afford for it. so it was sold.

months passed with no action on the lot. no one knew who had bought it, or what was planned for it. finally, about a year ago, the new owner introduced himself. he was going to build a house for his family on the lot. it was inevitable, i suppose, and someone building for himself was preferable to a developer. then, in late november, the dreaded event happened: the clearing of the land.

how sad, all that land exposed, all the trees gone. ah, well. again, inevitable. at least i had been reassured by the county that the large trees would be properly protected from the excavation and construction. unfortunately, whoever was in charge of positioning the house - the architect, most likely, and the owner, eager to build the biggest house possible on the parcel - didn’t take that into account. “tree protection” apparently meant “root destruction.”

so, currently, my bedroom balcony looks over a big, red hole. and a conversation with the arborist indicates that they’ve done what i feared — they’ve pretty much guaranteed the death of a 100-year-old tulip tree on my property. what will happen next… *sigh* i’m sure i’ll blog about it.