Yet another rant I've copied over from my old web site. This one is about my favorite (not!) yard tool, the leafblower.
Leafblowers
If there is any proof that true evil exists in the world then it has to be that some damn fool invented the leafblower. They are like a disease. Once they infect one household pretty soon they are in every house on the block.
There are many people in my neighborhood who are slaves to their yards. I call them Yardslaves. They are either too obsessed with their yards or they just don't have enough to do. In any case, they all have leafblowers. During fall, a weekend doesn't pass when you can't hear at least one leafblower out running. Sometimes you hear two or even three. Sometimes they all get synchronized into a hideous harmony that sounds like a thousand fingernails on a chalk board. And since my neighborhood used to be a forest, there are enough leaves to keep the Yardslaves busy for hours!
The absolute last straw was a few weekends ago when I was awakened on a Saturday morning at 7:30! There was this idiot on his roof behind me with his little spawn from hell. There was no way anyone could sleep through that madness! I can only figure he was cleaning out his gutters with the thing. Either that or he's nuts.
So the moral of this story is if you are a Yardslave and you really have a problem with leaves in your yard, buy a rake. You might get a little more excersize that way. And you will certainly not piss your neighbors off quite as bad.
Update: September 2, 2004
Now that I've moved to the middle of nowhere, I never have to listen to leafblowers unless I go to town. When I have to go to my old house to do some work for preparing it for rental, I'm simply amazed at how noisy the place is. I must have been blocking some of the noise out before. I think more people have leafblowers now than ever before. I was there for about five hours the other weekend working outside painting windows. I think there was at least one leafblower going the whole time!