2002
Holiday
Greetings from Laurel, Brian, and Serena
Hines
This past year we’ve devoted
ourselves to getting in touch with our feelings. More
precisely, our feelings of moral outrage. We use our own
EMOTE©
system:
Express Moral Outrage Trenchantly & Entertainingly
(please
note the copyright symbol, ©, and do not use this acronym
without permission, or you’ll learn firsthand from the
Hines’ what “trenchantly” means, a word that most people are
clueless about, because nobody opens a dictionary anymore
with the damnable takeover of computer spellcheckers—its
outrageous!)
With so much moral outrage floating
around in our psyches, and the level rising higher with
every passing day of the Bush administration, we’ve had to
carefully choose how to focus our EMOTE© energy. Each of
us has had to pass over some outrageous problems that need
fixing, but we don’t have time to get
to:
· Vegetarian dog
biscuits. Get that @%!#@! out of stores so it can’t
make it into people’s homes. Do taste tasting with real
dogs, Mr. Barky! (Serena)
· CBS’s “Survivor”
series. No way should the sexiest gal, Erin, get voted off
the island weeks ago, while the sexiest guy, Brian, stayed
to the end. Regardless of how much the two Brians share,
this must never happen again!
(Brian)
· Today’s
fashions. What
is with the horrible plaids, bell bottoms, fringe, and
otherwise ugly clothes in all the catalogs? This is 2002,
not 1972! (Laurel)
It was coyotes, lot-partitioning, and
dysfunctional management
that did get us
raising hell. Do you remember that scene at the beginning of
Gladiator, where
Russell Crowe surveys the Roman legions lined up in the
gloomy Teutonic forest, ready to fight the Huns? “Unleash
hell!,” that’s the gladiator’s command.
We haven’t been catapulting any
flaming balls of tar, or marching a phalanx into battle, but
we’ve gotten pretty adept at composing fiery letters and
putting up inflammatory web sites. There’s nothing like good
old-fashioned righteous indignation to warm the
soul.
The coyote crusade began when a
neighbor got concerned that coyotes might eat the feral cats
that he and his wife like to feed. Our reaction was, “Big
deal. Cats eat birds. Coyotes eat cats. So more coyotes
equals more birds, which is better than
fewer coyotes and more
feral cats.”
Strangely, this pristine
logic didn’t satisfy our felineaphile neighbors, so they
threatened to have a federal Wildlife Services employee come
out and poison, trap, or shoot the poor little coyotes who
we feel personally close to, undoubtedly in part due toour
intimate childhood relationship with Wil E. Coyote.
Laurel was not about to have
any members of a noble canine species that starred in a
cartoon show needlessly sacrificed. So she linked up with
the Predator Defense League and other coyote defenders.
We’ve blanketed Spring Lake Estates with pro-coyote and
anti-Wildlife Services communiqués.
Also, about the evils of
partitioning lots in this area, when there already isn’t
enough groundwater. Another neighbor is trying to divide a
lot, but has run into Laurel and her “Stop Densification in
Spring Lake Estates Committee,” which makes up in Laurelian
environmental passion for its lack of a compelling name.
Brian’s crusade is
against the authoritarian, undemocratic, dysfunctional,
uncaring, incompetent (but otherwise, just fine) management
of an investment that we’ve put some money into. His
rabble-rousing ended up taking the form of a web site that
cataloged damning evidence against the manager of the
investment and urged fellow investors to join in a
shareholder revolt. As you might guess, this year we aren’t
expecting Christmas cards from several neighbors, or a
certain manager, a price we’re happy to pay for the joy
of EMOTEing©.
