Your Trash Is Now My Problem
the commune's Rok Finger explores waste-management solutions for the new world 

Friday, Jul. 14, 2000
Hello, good people. Once again we've got a situation on our hands. I'm sure you don't need me to elaborate what I'm talking about. So I will.

Several weeks ago young hooligans whose names I'm unaware of began dumping their garbage on my lawn. As you may have read in this column previously, I used to run a private landfill out of my home. Apparently this gives the right to Johnny Goodtime and his friend Charlie Havingfun to pour there throwaway refuse on my lawn. No siree bob!

I can't stress this enough: DO NOT THROW YOUR TRASH ON MY LAWN.

Sorry for the all-caps, but I'm just so frustrated, I don't know what to do. As you may have read previously in this column, I only get mad once a year. I call it my annual "stress out," and it's usually without event. Besides that one year I killed a drifter, but I'm sure I don't need to go on about that again; I'll save my regular readers the drifter spiel.

I have but one point: Garbage tossing has to stop! Some people tell me to "chill out" or "relax, five-oh," but I'm serious. I'm sick of tossers. I've put up with way too many fads over my 68 years in this country, like boogie woogie and denim. I won't put up with another one.

A few years ago, several of my sixteen mailboxes were destroyed by thoughtless juveniles playing "mailbox baseball," as they call it. I call it vandalism! Shameless, pricey, and loud. Do they think this is funny? Destroying my mailboxes? Ringing my doorbell and running away? Smearing blood on the bumper of my car to make me think I've hit my own son on another drunken late-night drive home? I guess they do.

It's a sad state of affairs these days. Don't even get me started on those Washington bigwigs and they're shenanigans. I've got too many problems close to home to solve. And I want those little wayward ragamuffins to know I won't put up with monkeyshines no more. The next time I see them approaching my mailboxes or my lawn or even the street on which my house rests, I'm firing several warning shots from one of my firearms in my expansive collection. These warning shots will be right at them! I mean business! No more!

I apologize to regular followers of my dogma for this little rabid sidebar, and hope to get back to my regular column next time. I just have to let the hooligans know judgment day has come.