The Tale of Grass Blade or How I got Fined and Charged Again

I'm a blade of grass. The name's Grass Blade. Together with a lawn full of my relatives, I might look lush and green and harmless. I'm anything but.

I am grass. I'll grow as high as I can. And no matter how much you try to cut me down, I'll grow right back up. I reach for the spring and summer sun most when it's too hot for you to do a dang thing about it without suffering heatstroke. I will wear you down.



As for me in particular, I'm an ornery sumb*tch. I live right by these weird pipes on Homeowner's lawn. Homeowner can't get near us with a mower or string trimmer. Me and my amigos laugh when she tries. There's a line of b*stards by Neighbor Guy's garden wall that are just as safe as us around the pipes.

So she looks it up on one of them newfangled things. She dumps out a heavy load of salt. I gotta say that one stung a bit. I lived though. Then she pours on some vinegar. I ain't no pickle! She plants some low-growing groundcover to push us out. The weaker blades fall but the rest of us live. She lays out mulch to smother us. Some of us poke right back through. She gives in and gives me and my buddies a good haircut with some big hedge clippers. It's hard on her with the slope and the wall and the pipes.



A while later, the lawn gets up to maybe three inches and some low-down no-good Neighbor of Homeowner reports her to Philadelphia Community Life Improvement Program (CLIP). This Neighbor's own grass is three FEET tall. So's the grass of Neighbor's closest five friends. But them bigots all got it in for Homeowner - even though she never did a thing to them - so they report her. How's any of that for improving community life?

CLIP sends an "officer" out to take a picture and write up a ticket for a $75 fine. What?! I got a trim not too long ago and my beard's just coming back in nice-like. They says if she don't cut us grass in a couple days, they'll send a crew and charge her for the privilege. "Officer" conveniently don't bother looking at the Neighbor's taller grass and fining HIM.

Homeowner paid the fine 'cause she ain't got time to go to the hearings to contest these bogus fines all the time. She cut the grass too. I ain't never been so bald. Couple days later when she's out at work, they send a crew anyway. Then they mail Homeowner a bill for $200.

I'm still here growing with my pals. I ain't going nowhere. I'm too stubborn to die. I will return.

The Amazing Spider-Man 1981, Everybody loves Peter

Everybody loves Peter. No, really. - Betty broke up with him but still dates him. J
Jonah Jameson went to his school play. JJ even stayed with him when he was sick!

Doom - He keeps taking over the United Nations, but he can't hold it. Why bother? It's not the real seat of the world's power. No, we all know that the real power is in a secret cabal that's above the law.

Why does he need to enslave and terrorize his Latverian people do do the heavy work? The robot overseers he uses could probably do the work more quickly and efficiently.


JJ also loves Doom, much more than Peter. That tightwad hardly seemed to notice when Doom destroyed his mansion. He didn't even overhear from a few feet away when Doom ranted loudly about destroying the world. Talk about blind (and deaf) love.


How does Spider-Man do that? His Spidey-sense effect doesn't line up with his eyes; how does he see through the costume? How could he be so sure that the strong acid he used to dissolve the cuffs in the sewer wouldn't swirl around in the rushing water and eat him up?

Miscellaneous - Why does Jolly J Jameson have a Hitler mustache? Aunt May think Spidey socks are adorable! Is that Clark Kent/Superman in the phone booth? Why is a telecommunications professor lecturing about Spider-Man's grace?

Fining the Littered Upon Instead of the Litterbugs

Hi, I'm a piece of litter. I used to be a disposable coffee cup. Some inconsiderate douchebag decided he couldn't be bothered to carry me an extra block to drop me in a recycling bin. Heck, even a trash can might have worked if there were lots of coffee residue left in me that was too much for recycling to handle. There was a trash can less than ten feet away.

Nope, this guy just drops me to the ground. Since I'm in the way, people passing by kick me out of the way and partly down the street. Ouch! The wind then gets a hold of me. Whee!

Eventually, I end up on Innocent Homeowner's lawn, caught along her neighbor's garden wall. Homeowner's out running errands. She has been for half an hour already and she won't be back for another hour at least. Unfortunately for her, that's when the "Officer" "happens" along.

Officer has tickets, a fat stack of envelopes (Really? Envelopes? What kind of officer carries envelopes?), an itchy writing hand, and one heck of a bad attitude. He spots me chilling on Homeowner's lawn and takes a photo to document me. Cheese! Wait, I blinked! Take another one.

He then writes a ticket for a large fine. The punk calls me a dirty name: litter. Hey, I used to be a coffee cup. I had a legitimate and very useful function. Now, I'm just trash that got found where it shouldn't be through no fault of mine or Homeowner's.

Officer prints out one of those tickets with the bad picture, stuffs it in an envelope, then sticks it in Homeowner's door. About an hour later, Homeowner gets home to find she's out another large amount of money - when money's already tight - for a piece of litter she never had a chance to know was there let alone pick up. Of course, Homeowner would rather pay frivolous fines than save money to fix her leaky roof. Homeowner can't stay on top of any litter that blows along 24-7 365-366 days a year. No one could.

The actual douchebag litterbug gets away scott free. All the other neighbors on the same street with even more litter on the lawns? Officer didn't even bother with them even though anyone with eyes walking down the street could see. Yeah, I'm talking about you there with the newspaper pages and soda cans. And you with the food wrappers and coffee cups.

How is that helpful? That'll really teach litterbugs not to litter anymore if you just fine the people whose lawns the litter ends up on. It especially helps if you ignore all the other litter lying around.

If you see litter in a public park, are you going to fine the dying cancer-stricken wheelchair-bound person the trash blew up against? Or the person who dropped the litter on the ground instead of in a trash can two feet away? How is it fair to fine anyone except the litterbug?

Thanks a lot Philadelphia Streets and Walkways Education and Enforcement Program (SWEEP). Their description: City-run program created to educate Philadelphia citizens about their responsibilities under the Sanitation Code. I recall no education about this before a fine got stuffed in my door.

Fantastic Four 1978 The Incredible Flying Bathtub!

Stop making Sue Storm dumb! Why can't she think to use her powers to turn invisible on her own without getting orders from Reed? She should have known Mr. Fantastic couldn't be beaten by a colied wrapped around him. And why does she have to practice her powers and the others don't?


If Ben can lift 50 tons with his strongest finger, why does it take two arms and lots of effort to life 100 tons?

The Fantasticar: As the Marvel mash-up says: it's a flying bar of soap! It's a flying refrigerator with the doors removed! Sue -- and Thing -- can't be too happy Reed repurposed their fridge. It's a flying group bathtub with tiny compartments! Cozy. What happens when it rains? Not very aerodynamic, is it? No wonder the ever-loving blue-eyed Thing ain't always clamoring to pilot it like he does everything else that flies. Why does Sue get a compartment as tiny as Herbie's?

Reed's the dumbest smart guy in the world. Consider the Fantasticar. Also, when he told Magneto that he hadn't taken the man's powers. He could just have never told or at least waited until Magneto was in cuffs. Of course, they'd have needed plastic cuffs. And if you make a tunnel out of a sealed environment, the atmosphere's going to escape anyway.

Miscellaneous - Villians buy action figures of their enemies to play with? Reed looks like a limp noodle. Come on, Kong wannabe, climb the building! Those peaceful people will eventually get slaughtered if they keep calling others ugly. Yeah, who wants to rule this mess of a world?

Riding Sidesaddle: Propriety, Flexibility, and the Bow-Legged Way

Why were women forced to ride sidesaddle way back when? Every description I've read sounds beyond uncomfortable. And heaven forbid anyone go at a gallop and fly off!



Weren't the skirts of the time more than voluminous enough to accomodate riding face forward? They contained enough material to cloth twenty orphans or so. Must have been awfully hot and heavy to wear and not in any good way.

Women tend to be more flexible if you believe countless Hollywood depictions. Cheerleaders doing splits. Yoga chicks locking their legs behind heads. Guys doing splits to horrible cracking sounds, crotch grabbing, and screams of pain...



Not to be indelicate but don't women have more need to spread their legs wide for giving birth and such? It's not a dirty thing to be ashamed of. What do guys need to spread their legs for?

The cowgirl position = fun in the sack. The cowboy bow-legged walk = funny-looking. What more is there to say?

Fantastic Four 1967, Thing in a Diaper!

The Thing's a big softy - He looks more puffy Michelin Man than hard rock. And why does his underwear uniform look like a diaper?


Invisible Girl? Why isn't she the Invisible Woman? They have a female on the team and she always has to be the damsel in distress. She's always the hostage, she does anything that Reed says, and she's always scared. Insulting!

Vacations and islands - Who vacations in Transylvania? Was that episode a tribute to Scooby Doo? What's with all the islands? If Mr. Fantastic's so smart, why did he fall for that island scam? I've got a bridge to sell...

Those men saved Dr. Doom's life, healed him, taught him magic, gave him pretty much everything like a charity case. Why make him their ruler too?

Why does Mole Man look like Doc Ock?

Avast! Thanks for Not Letting Me Use Your Software...

Realizing I haven't scanned for malware in way too long, I set out to update the seven malware programs on my system. Yes, I know they all complain about each other but they can just suck it up since no one of them is good enough to be The One.


Updating from within Avast! proved impossible (remnants of two versions back!, connection kept unconnecting and and killing unresumable loooong downloads!). So I uninstalled the program. Ahhh, cathartic deleting! Except a certain component refused to be deleted no matter what, not even in Safe Mode or with Avast!'s deletion tool. Yes, they actually made a separate program to delete their stuff... and it still didn't work.

I then downloaded the 160 MB plus newest version of , scanned with the other six scanners, and installed it. Opened it to tweak the settings and, among other things, checked the option to not allow malware to close the program, closed the program. I hate a slow startup full of programs I don't want running all the time so I opened up msconfig to remove the program from starting up automatically. I then opened up services.msc to change the Avast services from Automatic to Disabled. This is how I usually leave things so that once in a blue moon I can go into Services, set it to Manual and run the program once before Disabling in again.

All my settings set, I restart, go to Services to set Avast! to Manual so I can update to the latest malware definitions and run the program once. Denied! The option in Avast! I turned on to keep malware from closing the program now isn;t allowing me to turn the program on. What a conundrum! What maroons! I uninstalled the program once more and deleted the whole mess. Except, of course, for that one last component that refuses to get off my system. Thanks a lot Avast! And no thanks anymore.