It's not the quantity that matters

Last week I got a message in my mailbox from my town's police department stating that this week it will be sending a special task force into my neighborhood to write citations for living standards: too many people in one house, RVs parked on lawns, fences in disrepair, weeds, dangerous trees, etc. It's a new branch of the police called "The Quality of Life Task Force" and it's their mission to come around and inspect every home in the area and write up violation warnings, give the residents 3 days to fix said violations, then come back and give citations to those who haven't fixed anything.

(Author's note: Sounds to me like a veiled attempt at looking for Mexican families who sometimes live 3 or 4 families to a house... but they couldn't call it "The Racial Profiling Task Force" and get away with it, so they write up a few white residents along the way to make things look on the up and up. I really figured with my usual luck that I'd be one of dummies to get swept up in this scheme.)

Anyway... Monday as I was reviewing footage, I realized that I was constantly hearing what sounded like thunder booms outside, despite there not being any storm clouds. Then I heard my dog barking furiously at the fence, so I went outside to call her back in... that's when I spotted the squad car across the street and the police officer actually pointing at some weeds and commanding the resident of the house to get the mower. It was a weird moment, until I remembered about "THE QUALITY OF LIFE TASK FORCE!"

I ran to look out my front window and lo and behold, there's a giant dumpster right in front of my house and every person in the neighborhood has already come by and filled it to the gills. I opened my door to get a closer look and that's when a yellow carbon copy sheet of paper that had been jammed in my door frame fell at my feet. I picked it up, dreading what violations were going to be cited (imaging having to get trees cut down in 3 days time, for instance). It was from "The Quality of Life" pigs, alright; but none of the boxes were checked. Instead, scrawled at the bottom it reads: "You're good to go! Thanks!"

Wow. You mean for once in my life someone has cut me a break? Meanwhile, I'm noticing that half of my neighbors have come home from work early and called in reinforcements to scramble and clean up their yards. How I passed, I have no clue.

What I do know is that I now have a giant dumpster outside my house that keeps getting emptied twice a day and is just as quickly refilled by a long parade of pickup trucks, wheelbarrows, and foot traffic. You'd think that a pyramid or the Taj Mahal were being built around here (albeit, a very crappy one). And on the side of that dumpster is the sign that makes this whole thing so amusing...





See it? Look closer...





Apologies for blurriness. It's a challenge to hold a camera still while laughing, but do you see it now? It's the "QUALITY OF LIFE" dumpster. Yes, indeedy. Just knowing that it's a QUALITY dumpster is making my life better every time i open my front door. Once again, unintentional irony never fails to give me the giggles.

Update: How about a night shot of the quality dumpster, taken around 2am last night, when no one would see me and I was too tired to giggle.