Lawn Violations, Literal Fortresses, and One Man's War With Geometry

A homeowner in a mid-Atlantic suburb received a violation notice from his HOA regarding an "unauthorized structure" in his front yard. The structure in question was a six-foot wooden palisade fence. Not around his property. In front of it. Like a medieval siege wall between his house and the street.

The homeowner did not dispute the fence existed. He disputed that it violated anything. His interpretation of the HOA bylaws—which specify that structures must "maintain neighborhood aesthetic standards"—was that a wooden fortification absolutely maintained them. Medieval. Aesthetic. Standards. He even submitted architectural renderings of 14th-century castle walls as comparative documentation.

The HOA sent a cease-and-desist. The homeowner responded with a 47-page legal analysis of the word "structure" that somehow involved Euclidean geometry. The dispute lasted eight months. The fence remained standing throughout.

Meanwhile, in Florida, a woman called police because her neighbor's parrot would not stop screaming obscenities at 4 a.m. The officer who arrived discovered the bird had learned approximately 200 curse words, all of them creative, none of them repeatable in the incident report. The owner claimed the parrot had picked them up "from the neighborhood." The woman who called could not prove she was the original source. The parrot is still screaming.

And in California, a man tried to return a frozen pizza to a grocery store because it had arrived at his house still frozen. He demanded a refund. The cashier asked if the pizza had been cooked. The man had not cooked the pizza. When informed that frozen pizzas required cooking, he asked if that was a design flaw or a feature. He left without the refund, still unclear on the matter.

The palisade fence is still there.

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