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Monday, April 9th, 2007...5:06 pm

True or False?

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Old men with leaf blowers should be shot.

Updated to add: It seems quite clear that Jeff Beck has a leaf blower.

26 Comments

Filed under Evil Zoe

26 Comments

fluffy
April 9th, 2007 at 5:42 pm

Ooh! Ooh! First!

True. Yet they know not what they do because they’re quite deaf.
shula
April 9th, 2007 at 5:55 pm

Stupid things, leafblowers.

I mean, blow them WHERE?

So, yes.

True.
Phil
April 9th, 2007 at 6:27 pm

…..yep. And not just the noise pollution, it’s an insane and unnecessary use of energy.
Living in Canberra
April 9th, 2007 at 6:28 pm

Stupid things those leaf blowers. Whats the point of them? Use a frickin’ straw broom or a rake if the leaves bother you that much, don’t just blow them around the yard. Must be one of the more pointless gardening inventions ever!
Meredith
April 9th, 2007 at 6:45 pm

True. And questions for our times: are leaf blowing crimes worse than hosing concrete crimes? Should there be a dob-in-a-leaf-blower hotline?
Meredith
April 9th, 2007 at 6:45 pm

Hey where’s my gravatar! I don’t want the burka.
aj
April 9th, 2007 at 7:16 pm

true,

God, my crusty aged neighbour thinks of it as extention to his ….shall we call it, his lunch box and always has his hand on it. Leaf Blower that is.
elsewhere
April 10th, 2007 at 10:19 am

Young men with leaf-blowers, in fact anyone with a leaf-blower, should be shot.
Mindy
April 10th, 2007 at 11:42 am

Yes. Did he wake the baby? Shooting is too good then, I say draw and quartering. Or tar and feathering, or keelhauling or some other really gruesome medieval torture that will make the papers and make leaf blower owners think twice.
Dean
April 10th, 2007 at 7:08 pm

False. Just take the leaf-blower and give them brooms.
JahTeh
April 10th, 2007 at 9:36 pm

The first thought that came to mind was that old trick of stuffing a potato up the exhaust pipe of a noisy car and the second thought was whether to stuff it up the leaf blower or the old man. You’d better make it both to be sure.
Colin Campbell
April 11th, 2007 at 6:21 am

I delegate my guilt on this one to our contract grass cutter. Complain to him. We are always out when he comes.
Gianna
April 11th, 2007 at 11:41 am

zoe, i sympathise deeply. but i think in Sage you have the inbuilt solution (or Owen, if he’s also cranky). you just get him to have a go at the drums (or pots and pans) at midnight. this worked a treat in Asterix!
hope you and bub and all are doing well. get back to blogging you lazy wench.
Ron
April 11th, 2007 at 4:30 pm

This old man is going to defend leaf-blowers!

I have a very large paved area and the leaf-blower does the job in 10 minutes compared to 2 hours or more with a broom (have you checked the price of millet brooms recently? They wear out so fast on paving bricks). I blow the leaves into a corner against a wall so they can easily be picked up and put in the compost heap.

PS I only use the blower on weekdays when the neighbours are at work so should be able to get at least one brownie point.

PPS Why were old men singled out? Don’t young men and women of all ages use them?
Armagnac Esq
April 11th, 2007 at 5:57 pm

“Don’t young men and women of all ages use them? ”

I see funky young things heading out with the leaf blower all the time…

In fairness, things people other than old people do that mean they may deserve drawing (as in H, D and Q but I think drawing is the most evil of the 3…) include:

Using F%^%*% angle grinders
Playing bad music loud at any hour
Playing good music loud after 11 on a weeknight and 12ish on a weekend
Revving, doing burnouts in or otherwise imposing their 4 wheeled pen*s substitutes
tap-tap-tapping all day on some stupid project that should be rammed into their belly button
etc etc.

However if I hold my microphone up to buggles when she’s letting fly and then run this through the Fender valve then they’ll know what annoying sounds like.

Hey, gudday btw, been virtually non-virtual for months.
Zoe
April 11th, 2007 at 8:29 pm

Ron!

Why were old men singled out? Don’t young men and women of all ages use them?

Oh, no. Only old men. Well older than me.

What I don’t get is why leaves on the paving is a bad thing.
Ron
April 12th, 2007 at 9:25 am

It’s not just the leaves especially at this time of the year as they are so pretty – yellow and green and red and orange and black.

Every week I have to ‘whipper-snip’ (yes, more noise pollution) the weeds that just love to grow five or six inches in as many days. By the end of the barbering process I end up with a large-sized wheelbarrow full of them. I would love to write that I don’t use Round-up on these weeds due to environmental concerns but in truth it’s because I don’t want to poison my dogs both of whom love to munch on said weeds (perhaps I’m not feeding them right?).

As I said above, it’s much easier on my back and my sanity (I’m so easily driven to distraction by repetitive tasks such as hours of sweeping particularly when I could use the time to read your wonderful blog) to ‘blow’ these weeds, and other detritus, into a corner in about ten minutes or so.

However, from now on (actually now that autumn is here, my blower will be rested until October or November), be assured that guilt and shame will be my close associates in the future when I pull that starter handle and press the trigger.

One last thing, although the leaves do look pretty on the paving, they can be quite dangerous during the disintegration process as, combined with fine coating of moss on the bricks, they become slippery although the worms thrive in them.
Ron
April 12th, 2007 at 9:30 am

Oh no … the final humiliation. My use of a leaf blower and my twilight years have put me into the ranks of the moderated.
Zoe
April 12th, 2007 at 9:54 am

Sorry, Ron, have rescued your comment – no idea why it moderated you.

The leaf blowing I really object too is the kind my neighbour does, which includes blowing leaves ON THE ROAD into a pile. Outside my house. I don’t really care much if he does it outside his house.

And your puppies are gorgeous.
Ron
April 12th, 2007 at 10:05 am

Now for some honesty: I hate the blowers too but they are heaven-sent for arthritic joints.

The whipper-snipped weeds I refer to above are those pesky ones that love to grow in the paving gaps.

Yes, the pups were gorgeous now they’re ‘gorgeouser’ in an elderly-dog fashion – must update that pic, or at least date it, as they are now nine!
The Devil Drink
April 13th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

If you’re having trouble with your joints, Ron, a blower probably’s going to do more harm than good. Keep it simple: suck on the skinny end and fire up the fat one, that’s my advice.
FDB
April 13th, 2007 at 3:12 pm

In Defence of the Leaf Blower

My mum has one.

That should be sufficient for everyone, but as I share your basic reservations (noise, waste of energy etc) let me share a second rationale: turn the thing to suck instead of blow, and attach the catcher to the back (most have this option).

The leaves are sucked through the fan blades and Presto! Pre-mulched green waste which will break down and handle more easily for composting.

Using them AS blowers is lazy, inefficient and anyway… for the cost of buying and running one, old men (I’m looking at you Ron) could and should do what old men have always done – exploit the labour of the young!

They work for peanuts (well, jelly beans) make slightly less noise, and it would help build a sense of community-spirited responsibility and respect which is so sadly lacking in today’s Maoist-educated, Xboxian youthes.
Amanda
April 14th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

People who make me go that blog on the false pretenses it would be about the 60s guitar hero should be shot.
Ron
April 17th, 2007 at 11:40 am

Did I mention my blower (it also sucks, FDB, but fills up the catcher bag SO fast – luckily I remember the commas there) is electric and not as noisy as the petrol ones?

As for ‘exploit[ing] the labour of the young’, they are capitalists already and want $20-$30 an hour. What happened to the Boy Scouts ‘bob-a-job’ weeks?

PS A bob, for all you youngsters, is a pre-decimal amount, ten pence, the equivalent of ten cents. Now I think about it, I can see why BAJ disappeared – can you imagine anyone today, let alone young whippersnappers, doing anything for ten cents?
lynn white
April 20th, 2007 at 9:18 am

well, I for one don’t want whippersnappers with whippersnippers. Think of the OH&S!
Nabakov
April 25th, 2007 at 1:04 am

Why not develop an ‘Old Man with Leafblower’ blower?

Then you can sweep ‘em up into a corner and deposit the debris into a compost bin or prune farm.

Hey, I’m just the ideas guy here. It’s up to others to make the dream a commercial reality.