We live on a steep hill which reliably ices over in weather such as that we have tonight, and just as reliably, I grow more and more irritated with the helpless sound of spinning wheels and engines burnt out.

My irritation has moved me, this night, to place some random traffic cones abandoned in the neighborhood by a gas-main project active this summer (also to my irritation, due to the construction contractor’s persistent practice of parking their heavy equipment on my muddy front property, foolishly left unlandscaped for fifteen fee to the street by the house’s original constructors).

Stay, I say, not just the fuck off my lawn, but also my very street. Perhaps I’ll save a life or some insurance rate increases, but clearly altruism is not my motivation. It’s more irritation flowering through misanthropy into hatred.