I heard a saying once that the good lord made the countryside,people made the city, and the devil made the small town.

After two years in a place we moved to in the hopes of finding some peace & quiet, now I know what they mean.

One of our neighbors is the mayor’s (grand)kid.

She hates us, and our animals.

The cops just came pounding on our door.

***UPDATE***
so, here’s what happened:

My mom & dad live across the street from us, next to the cat-hating mayor’s grandbaby. No, we don’t know if it was them who made the call, It could’ve been the people on the corner who let their dogs run loose & trap cats to bring to animal control. It coulda been the city councilman aroud the corner. It coulda been the cop married to the neigborhood gossip who have weekly parties you can hear down the block & let their friends park in our parking lot and we’ve never complained because we’re nice neighbors & hey it’s a parking lot, but until 2 weeks ago never had the courtesy to ask us over. (I may adopt a new policy: If I can hear it, i consider myself invited & free to drink their booze)

The dogs (supposedly) were barking at our house late last night (we have a noise ordinance in effect after 9PM)

Last night around midnight, i’m sitting in Mom & Dad’s living room, reading the intertubes and composing my next post about why Keith Olbermann is the worst person in the world*

BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!!!!

I call out an alarmed “whoisit”

My dad gets the door, it’s a police officer, answering a “complaint” about the dogs barking. condescending little snot. the house belongs to my sister, so i go get her, she wheels out the door, to the sidewalk. cop stands on the porch over her, screaming at her about the dogs, and how they’ve come out “several times” (bullshit*)

He ignores our assertion that we’re being unfairly targeted, that our house has been vandalized & someone cut a hole in our screen & let the cats out.

When we ask for his name & badge # argues that “we don’t have badge numbers” When we press him for his name he gives his last name, reluctantly.

When we point out that we have no way of knowing if he’s a real police officer her opens us his jacket to show off his badge & taser (FL cops are notoriously taser-happy) I assume he had a gun as well, it’s a safe assumption.

He made it clear that they had been hanging around our house (where we were not) upwards of 20 minutes “listening” to the dogs bark “unprovoked”

He claimed it took an hour and a half to find us at our parent’s house across the street where everybody

the only other time they came about the dogs was well over a year ago, and they were jerks then too

I’m mad at Keith Olbermann & Glenn Beck is making sense.

I tried to ignore the “keeping tabs” segment of your show, wherein you and the odious Michael Musto indulge some creepy middle-aged guy compulsion to pick on Britney, Paris, and Lindsay for the imagined offense of being young, female, and visible.

I grimaced when you bent over backwards to kiss David Schuster’s ass while supposedly apologizing to Chelsea Clinton and her entire family for his obnoxious remarks.

Because I thought you were a journalist. One of the rare few in the mainstream media that would say outright “George W Bush is a criminal.”

So imagine my dismay that you can’t even pause your personal segment of the MSNBC kingmaking spin machine to observe that over the weekend Pres. Bush vetoed legislation that would have barred the CIA from using waterboarding and other means of torture ?

Not that Bush’s actions suprise me, but your silence certainly does.

the love affair with your own reflection is getting old Mr O’Reil– oops, Obam– oops. Olbermann.

Adventus: Haven’t we met before?

Has the UCC contacted any of those freedom of religion defense funds? I’d love to see some fundy $ going to help them

Do NOT leave Comedy Central on after Stewart & Colbert are done.

Here’s how a real leader deflects a sophomoric personal smear…

To help people who were harmed by last week’s tornadoes while we were arguing politics.

American Red Cross
Mid-South Chapter
1400 Central Avenue
Memphis, TN 38104
901-726-1690

United Way of the Mid-South
phone in a donation at (901) 433-4300.

h/t random babble

I would still be supporting John Edwards. Hearing him talk made me think I was back in church – but in a good way. He’s the preacher I wish I was.

And for a while, even though I was bothered by supporting the “white guy” in this particular contest, he was my candidate.

Then I realized he didn’t have the chops. All his pretty speeches couldn’t cover up the fact that he had no real plan to get us out of the mess we’re in.

When it became apparent the voters were aware of this fact, he changed his tune to “electability,” and I knew what he was really saying was: “you can’t trust the VOTERS to elect the GIRL or the BLACK GUY”

And if the Democrats as a party are going to distinguish themselves from the Republicans, I think TRUSTING THE VOTERS is a damn good place to start.

So I’ll work to elect whichever candidate gets the nomination.

I think Hillary Clinton is the the BEST QUALIFIED to be president.

She’s been doing this work for decades, since college, years before she met her husband.

She’s faced some of the worst slime the right can throw at a person and, not only survived, but come out a winner.

This is a woman who, as First Lady, stood up to the Chinese government on their own turf and said “Women’s rights are HUMAN RIGHTS” despite pressure from the world’s other remaining superpower to soft-pedal her remarks

She is a brilliant, savvy, negotiator, and one. tough. lady.

Barack Obama is young(ish) and idealistic, and there’s something appealing about him, and he’s got a lot of people out voting in the primary who maybe wouldn’t have come out to vote otherwise.

He’s worth some consideration, and I’m more impressed with him than I was initally.

I share his opposition to the Iraq war, but I’m tired of his carping on how he “opposed it from the beginning”   He wasn’t in office to vote for or against it, for one thing. And the lecturing threatens to alienate voters who initially, if reluctantly admitted our involvement might be a necessary evil, myself included. Now we ALL know it was just evil.