House of Eratosthenes

We live on a corner lot. Actually, our new house faces three streets, not just two. This has created a problem for us, since I notice I have a sprinkler-head replacement job to commission every time a head fails to retract, and a careless driver subsequently cuts across our lawn. Regretfully, neither of these is a remote possibility.

I say I am one of the morons. The first stab at this had to do with a shin-high picket fence, which I abandoned after some jackass destroyed it pulling out of our driveway. I’m the jackass. This is the second proposed solution, it went in this morning.

This one has more of the makings of a successful project: Minimal “rebound” visits BTFHD (Back To Fucking Home Depot), economical price tag at the end of it, structurally stable, successful messaging. Ah yes, the messaging. Hence the point of this post.

What is the messaging? It is not one of “You’ll screw up your car if you careen onto my damn lawn”; it’s more of a veiled threat. “You don’t know what’s here, but something is.” Or more precisely: “Your damn tires will stay intact, if you keep my damn lawn intact.” Or more bluntly: “Keep the fuck off.”

I should explain for those who don’t live in California. It seems when you learn to drive here (I didn’t move here until I was 26), the test of your driving competence has something to do with you having a pulse. And, not much else. Also, California motorists seems to be disgracefully ignorant of exactly why it is they think they’re in some kind of a hurry. They’re constantly driving like they have to reach a bomb they need to defuse, across town. That means “California stops” all the time, and cutting across corners.

Like, corners on lawns. Like mine.

I shall not abide it. Every busted sprinkler head is money out of my pocket, with a zillion scheduled appointments with my only semi-reliable sprinkler-head guy. Who charges by the hour. Before I figured this out, I wasted a lot of resources routing precious (rationed) water through these busted sprinkler heads, and making a bunch of failed appointments with the semi-reliable sprinkler-head guy.

Then, this morning, I finally nailed the problem at the source. Which brings me to the subject of this post:

My sprinkler-head problem, and my solution for it, aptly illustrate metaphorically the peculiarities of the times in which we live. I can summarize it in eleven words: You can’t get anything done unless you first message the morons.

Being one of the morons, I should further qualify “moron”: It doesn’t mean idiot. It means clueless person. The idiosyncrasy identified has to do with the fact that this doesn’t apply to messaging geniuses. You can waste time doing that, or not bothering, it doesn’t affect the outcome. But the idiots have a lot of influence. So much, in fact, that if you think you got something done, you are gravely mistaken about that until such time as you take the time to message the morons. It’s a “tax” that applies to just about everything we do. You haven’t got the job done until you get jiggy with the idiots.

It wasn’t always like this. Which brings about the question, what changed? I think Craig Ferguson came closer than anyone else to identifying the pivotal event:

In sum: People who don’t know what’s going on, have influence on what’s going on, that is not shared by people who do know what’s going on.

There is simply no way that can be a good thing, indeed, no way it can be anything but a very, very bad thing.

And: If what you are doing is worthwhile, you’re never done doing it until you take the extra time for those extra tasks. To message the morons. To make some sort of pact with them. Like I just did.

Have you considered tire impalement spikes, or would that get too expensive for you?
- pdwalker | 10/26/2014 @ 20:20
This particular need is more about the threat of harm than about the harm itself. It’s all about people waking the fuck up before they go around my corner.

In fact, we have the hope that a lot of the past damage came from prospectors looking at our house, when it was available. We know that is not completely true. But, I think the impersonal types have a great deal less business happening on by here, now that we’ve taken the property off the market. The target of my manipulation here, is the rare exception to that.

And, I don’t want to get too saucy about it because there may very well not be anybody. The wife and I might be all of the (remaining) problem. Although I wouldn’t count on it…
- mkfreeberg | 10/27/2014 @ 01:57

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Moron MessagingSunday, October 26th, 2014

Moron Messaging
Sunday, October 26th, 2014