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In the news trade, the slow days of late July and early
August are known as the silly season
because, unless
Mother Nature cooperates with a flood or like disaster,
there is a severe shortage of real news.
This explains why you're always wearing shorts and a T-shirt when you read about three-headed gophers, livestock mutilations, UFO abductions, torrential rains of frogs, principled Republicans and similar oddities.
It does not explain what pundits are supposed to use for
topics in late summer. The first notion was to provide some
10 lists
for David Letterman fans who suffer
deprivation during his summer hiatus. Among them was The
10 Stupidest Things You Can Do in Colorado.
10. Run Pine Creek Rapids in an open canoe.
9. Climb Electric Peak in a thunderstorm.
8. Go cross-country skiing with Ken Torp.
7. Light a cigar in Boulder.
6. Send money to Colorado for Family Values.
5. Fish in the Alamosa River.
4. Bunjee-jump from a balloon.
3. Try to buy a hamburger in Cripple Creek.
2. Ski out of bounds.
1. Expect a bicyclist in Boulder County to observe stop or yield signs.
And as you can see, it's hard to come up with 10 good items, even in a state that offers as many stupid things to do as Colorado does.
Another list comes to mind after looking at the real-estate section of the Sunday Post. Go ahead, take a break, and grab that section.
Look at the garage doors. Often you will see shrubbery or trees in front of the doors, and there's lawn instead of driveway.
Could there be 10 Reasons That Garage Doors are
Obstructed by Greenery at New Houses in Metro
Suburbs
?
10. They've abandoned all pretense. Nobody really keeps a car in a garage, anyway -- garages are for storing junk. So why bother with the driveway and doors?
9. Since all upscale suburbanites drive Jeep Cherokees, they can wend through the woods and reach the garage, although normal cars couldn't.
8. The shrubs are required by a federal agency bdcause they improve safety. The leafy obstructions keep you from backing out of the garage at any speed above a crawl, which prevents you from inadvertently rolling over toddlers and trikes.
7. Suburbanites are so much greener
than the rest
of us that they don't even own cars, and to reduce global
warming, they install trees and grass in lieu of a
driveway.
6. In this era of reduced lot size and smaller setbacks, it's the only way you can impress the neighbors with your lawn.
5. The Denver Water Board supplies many suburbs, and it requires new developments to forego driveways for thirsty lawns which increase water sales and thus generate more money and power for the water board.
4. Conspicuous consumption -- the garages they actually use are around in back. The front ones are just to show that you can afford several sets of three-car garages.
3. The landscaping crew messed up, and in part of the picture that you can't see, there's a concrete driveway that leads to a plain wall.
2. Since attached garages are often remodeled into family rooms, why install a driveway?
1. The general contractor was extorting illegal campaign contributions from the landscape contractor, and this is the landscaper's revenge.
None of these seemed quite right, though, so I called Village Homes, one builder of these strange houses.
Those are just our show homes,
the woman
explained, and they look better with greenery instead of
driveways. Once they're sold -- usually two or three years
after the development opens -- we remove the landscaping
and put in the driveway.
So it goes. Every one of my stupid pet theories was wrong. Maybe I can find a UFO abduction next week.
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