CORRECTION CASEY IS A FEMALE

I need to correct my last entry, Casey is a female dog and yet I refer to her as a he.  I do that a lot with small animals, referring to them as he or she almost interchangeably. 

CASEY THE MINIATURE SHIH TZU, PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE!

I just want to apologize to the City of Overland Park for the criminal career of my eight pound Shih Tzu, Casey.  He is blind and afraid of thunder, so every time it rains he panics and despite efforts to contine him he repeatedly has escaped into the front yard and wandered about the neighborhood in the rain.

Casey has escaped so many time he is becoming the most expensive dog I have ever had.  


Of course some of the neighbors have tried to prevent Casey's arrest by the local fuzz and yet others seem to have made certain that anytime they see a little dog on the street that the call animal control to check out my block and to see if Casey, the terror of my block, is ravaging the neighborhood again.


Of course everyone has an opinion about Casey and why he went bad.  All I know is that I am happy to save him from the authorities who of course saved us from him.
Hopefully my new scheme of imprisoning Casey will be successful.  He is a climber you know.

I do want to say that we have a political adversary or two on the block and they have systematically targeted us for code violations and this dog cannot go into the front yard without a major mobilization by Overland Park because these charming conservative crackers make sure they come out.


Of course it is under the "rat system" where the complainant is anonymous.  Will Overland Park survive this "crime wave"?  I don't know
but I know Casey has survived a dozen rabies shots and he is an eight pound weakling.


My cat, who weighs about twenty pounds thinks this is all most amusing. 

CHICKENS IN OVERLAND PARK, KANSAS

Overland Park needs to get with the twenty-first century and part of that catching up involves promoting local and, yes, suburban food production.

Chickens could be raised just as they are in many states so that people can have humanely produced and better eggs than they can get from the gigantic and cruel chicken factory farms, farms that may need to be abolished for a host of reasons.

I was cheered to see that a David Crupper on 95th and Lowell is making an effort to make humane chicken coups part and parcel of suburban living.

Of course the chickens could be another excuse for Overland Park charging fees and fines. Hopefully we get chickens without a lot of expensive and unnecessary bureaucratic chicken shit.

Overland Park Hunkers Down

We often hear about how extraordinarily affluent Overland Park is. Yet here in the heartland of
Republican optimism a change can be seen as you drive the streets of Overland Park at night. If you see
anyone else on the road it will be an unusual event.
There is almost no traffic after nine o'clock at night. Nights are very quiet in Overland Park. Nothing seems to be going on.

Another thing is noticeable. Suddenly there are cars, cars, cars parked everywhere. There are the vehicles of relatives that have already lost their homes or apartments due to hard times.

Overland Park is not separate from the rest of society after all. Meanwhile the real estate train wreck may be just about to deepen in Johnson County. Commodity prices fell twenty percent and the stock market may reach 10000 by Christmas. Overland Park is hunkering down and capitalism is showing its warts even here. Of course capitalism is a metastatic cancer worldwide. Maybe those aren't warts after all.

Time for a change in codes administration?

Well, with Overland Park grabbing another fifteen square miles of territory I guess those who like codes administration growth are going bonkers. After all, even if the rest of the economy is in crisis the Overland Park codes administration can look forward to growth, just like a cancer tumor.

Now a few thousand hapless souls will be able to experience the gentle terror of Overland Park Codes. They call it Neighborhood services or some sort of deceptive crap like that. It is codes enforcement, not neighborhood services. Maybe Overland Park can stop being so damn cute and enforce codes as codes, not as part of some effort to set up the neighborhood associations that are supposedly doing something on their own.

Where are all the goody-two-shoe Christians that seem to dominate Overland Park's culture? Why aren't they spiffying up the neighborhoods and doing real work to help others in our community? I guess they're too busy waiting for the second coming and harassing fertile females. Too busy condemning everything they do in private to help I guess?

I guess it's really none of my business except that these religiously attired clowns want to run the country but seem to do damn little to help others in their own communities, and of course they make a big show of the little they do. They are always in our face trying to talk about abortion and sex and drugs and they let the whole rest of the world go by because they thing some dude in a dress is going to pop in and solve all the problems of the world like a tooth fairy.

Bad Codes Increase Greenhouse Gas Levels

Ecological Impact of municipal lawn policies

While we property owners may see codes at the enforcement end, the underlying regulations are flawed and in need of reform. So while there is a whole universe of suboptimal enforcement practices there is another parallel one, a policy universe, of essentially irrational codes, codes that ignore important parts of the real world, like the effect of those codes on carbon dioxide, levels and other emissions.

Take, for example, vegetation policies. Current codes conform to the idea of growing bluegrass lawns and mowing them twenty or more times a year. Does this make sense in terms of carbon emissions?

How much carbon is produced every time we cut an acre of lawn? How does that compare to the carbon dioxide converted into oxygen by that same lawn? I wonder if the lawn gets rid of more carbon dioxide than the mowing makes? I don’t know what the answer is. Someone should do the calculations.

Soaring carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are pushing our beautiful planet into a period of global warming that threatens to destroy much of the human and natural world. Municipalities and counties are on the front line of combating global warming. It is a mission worth being passionate about, because all future generations depend upon our success in decreasing carbon dioxide emissions and increasing photosynthetic production of oxygen from ambient carbon dioxide.

Another Environmental Specialist takes a special interest in my driveway

Well, I saw the Overland Park Codes person come by yesterday. I didn't personally encounter her or him. I just saw a figure in the yard walking across my driveway. By the time I got outside the catlike codes person was already inside a
white pick-up marked "Overland Park".

I was happy that I had hectored Daniel to get his bottle of deruster off the van bumper. Anyway, if that bottle had been out there I'm sure I would have a fine, a possible visit from private contractors in order to put up the bottle and or another visit to Overland Park's Palace of Justice.

Of course the private contractors may be sent out anyway. I have had them come out before only to tell codes personnel that the yard was in compliance with codes. The so-called Environmental Specialist nonetheless directed them to trim a little grass at the edge of a fence. It was a farce and I will not be surprised if it is a farce again.

The yard is parched, it's the beginning of August and not much growing is going to take place. Everything is cut and even the garden vines are almost completely weed free. Still the a Codes Inspector can find something to complain about. Maybe walnuts on the driveway are a violation. I saw some of those out there.

All I know is that I believe I complied with all the complaints that Codes had whether it be cutting the lawn, removing materials from the van, tagging the van and making sure nothing bigger than a walnut was on the driveway.