Omnibus Evil MFers in the news thread

It was a small tree (smaller than I am) so this was the main reason.

I was pretty annoyed at the time because I hadn’t planted the tree, the folks who developed the neighborhood did. They planted three trees in a row tightly together and even when we moved into the house (we bought the house before it was built; we are the first and only owners) it wasn’t looking healthy. This was the middle tree and I think it just couldn’t get enough water/nutrients/whatever because it was stuck so tightly between two others.

But it was just a mild annoyance. I was basically of the opinion that yeah, it’s pretty ugly and I agree it should go, I’ll take care of it, and I did. It wasn’t too hard to get rid of it either; a small dead tree doesn’t take a lot of physical effort to remove. Then I just needed to cut it in half once and the whole thing fit in a compost bin easily.

ETA: My point is that in over a decade, this was the worst experience I had with the HOA. It was something that was a minor annoyance and I couldn’t even disagree with them. So they’re definitely not all nightmares to deal with.

Would it have still been under warranty? (Half joking)

That’s not a bad question but it was years after we moved in that it fully died so at that point it was moot. If it was only months later I’m sure they would have taken care of it themselves.

I would be loath to argue that a dead tree does not need removal. I do feel that a homeowner will generally take the responsible action and does not need to be incentivized by a committee of his neighbors (or that he should be forced upon buying his property to give a committee of his neighbors the legal authority to incentivize him).

Sorry about starting a hijack (even if HOAs deserve an evil MFers thread just on general principle).

Ya got a chain saw? What time to you normally get up in the morning?

Luckily a hedge clipper was good enough to cut it in half; it was a small tree, the trunk wasn’t much bigger than a branch from a big tree.

Dead trees are vital parts of forests and groves and arbors. They supply nesting places for a variety of birds and insects whose contributions to the local ecology help sustain other plants and animals. I only remove dead trees on my lands if they are a clear and present danger to homes, power lines, roads, and other structures. Other landowners around me do similar. Requiring the removal of any/every dead tree strikes me as overbearing.

Do I understand correctly that you live out in the country, or possibly exurbia, and have a lot of land? That is very different from an urban setting, where everything out of doors impinges on other peoples’ properties in some way.

I don’t have “lands”. I have a yard the length of the house and half that in width, and a humungous old tree that occasionally drops limbs.

If you have a huge property it’s highly unlikely that you’ll have an HOA.

Agree. But it’s kinda funny, we have some sort of covenant’s on this subdivision. One is how many cows you can have. Umm. Dead ones I suppose, we live at 11,200 feet, all lots are very, very steep, and you’re lucky to grow a weed.

The good weed can be grown inside (don’t do it myself)

Too bad if they’re convicted these duty derelicts won’t be sentenced to the same prison.

never mind

Agree 100%. Most of the chainsaw work I do involves trees that have fallen and are compromising our fencing.

It’s been two decades since heating with wood, but standing dead was what we looked for.

Same here (although make that four and a half decades). “Widowmakers” is what Dad called those trees.

A 17-year-old in suburban Seattle and two of his friends were returning a defective airsoft gun to Big 5 when a self-appointed security guard who claimed to be “conducting overwatch” decided to shoot him dead in the parking lot, while his hands were up, lest he rob the karate dojo next door.

He “felt like he did not have time to call 911, and that he had a duty to act to stop the individuals from hurting someone innocent, and to protect his son who was in the location next door,” police wrote in their report.

Oh, fuck this guy. What a bunch of self-aggrandizing bullshit.

Someone on Reddit pointed out that in addition to airsoft, Big 5 also sells real guns. "I saw him bringing a gun into a gun store, so naturally I assumed it was a robbery’ seems unlikely to hold up in court.

Sheesss. I’m not making ANY excuses for that guy, but those guns do look real. I thought they would look like a Super Soaker or something.

I thought they had to have an orange tip on the barrel of something.