I've made an executive decision because I have the authority to do so because I am the master of my domain here at Chez Smoke Bandit. I make the rules. I call the shots. I decide when it is appropriate to use racial slurs. And I am officially not going to do any raking this year. Not one leaf. "Why would this assbutt who just voluntarily implied that he is a racist refuse to rake?" is what you're not wondering because you're not reading this. I'll tell you anyway: I shall not rake because I have concluded that raking is the worst. Can you think of a more dreadful chore? Let's discuss.
Truly, I prefer scrubbing my toilets to raking and my toilets are where people poop. People come into my house and deliberately poop there and to me, that's a far preferable work environment to wrangling nature's slippery little tree turds. To be clear, the people who poop in my toilets are exclusively invited guests and they rarely come by just to poop, yet it does happen on occasion. Tres-poopers are not welcome and will be prosecuted to the furthest extent of toilet law. Tres-poopers is like trespassers but with pooping. Try to keep up.
Sure, nobody relishes doing the dishes, but unlike leaves, dishes don't fly around everywhere all willy-nilly, unless you live in the Beast's castle. Even there, I'd argue that those dishes were not out of control - think about the performance they put on for "Be Our Guest." You've got to have your affairs in order to pull off a display like that. Leaves, on the other hand, are decidedly not into the whole disciplined choreography thing and instead flail through the air like Angry Birds and that tendency does not bode well for those who rake or those who are green pigs. I've been playing a lot of Angry Birds.
Doing laundry isn't great either, but it's not so bad in the winter when your dozens of pairs of overalls and nothing else, or whatever you guys wear, come out of the dryer all nice and warm. There isn't a better feeling during the darker, drearier months than hopping into a soft straw bed in a fresh, piping hot set of sleeping overalls after a long day of accidentally crushing animals - just ask Lenny from Of Mice and Men.
Window washing is admittedly annoying because you have to lug the ladder around the whole house like Bert, the sooty chimney guy from Mary Poppins. I haven't seen that movie in about thirty years so I don't actually recall if Bert was notorious for struggling with ladders, but I do know that Dick Van Dyke had trouble with twelve steps for much of his life. I really should be working for SNL, what am I doing writing for you idiots? Anyway, when my windows are crystal clear, it makes it easier for neighbors to see the weird stuff I get up to inside my house and I. Am. An. Exhibitionist. I'm not actually, I'm just making conversation here because someone has to.
Dusting is okay because I have insider intel: you can just pretend to dust things and nobody will ever know the difference because you can't really see dust. It's pretty much invisible, unless we're talking like inside-a-pyramid dust. Assuming you're not roommates with Imhotep, feel free to use my little trick next time someone tries to makes you dust. And don't tell my mom. She can never know.
Vacuuming can resemble fun because it's a little bit like driving if you just pretend that you're an imbecile or have dementia or have never driven before. So if you lose your license when those DWIs pile up, you can always use your imagination to hit the open road on your Dirt Devil, speed limits and drinking-while-driving laws be damned, just like Tim Horton on the QEW. And the best part is that nobody is going to breathalyze you while you're cruising in a Dyson, unless your wife is a total prude.
Taking out the trash can be stinky, but so can you, so you should shut up about that before you give someone the wrong idea. Yeah, you know, maybe I should toss you to the curb so I can watch a large man who likely has a history of domestic violence heave you into a truck too, moron.
Mopping is pretty bad. I'll give you that one. Smearing stank-water around with a filthy, sloppy mess of Rastafarian hair never made sense to me, but now we use a Swiffer so mopping is moot. I am not being paid to promote Swiffer, the greatest household invention since the housewife. Honestly, Swiffers may be better than housewives. Swiffer's slogan is "Swiffer: Stop cleaning. Start Swiffering," while housewives' slogan is "You can't watch the game right now because you need to help me raise our awful kids." You decide.
As you've gathered, I've spent considerable energy dwelling on this matter so I feel comfortable declaring that raking wears the Bad Chore Crown, which is not a piece of headwear that you can purchase at your local chapeau shop unless you can deal with abiding by their rigid, arbitrary "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" rule. Hypocrites.
Seriously though, where am I supposed to put the leaves when I rake them? Somebody tell me. I'm not being facetious. You can't dump them at the curb because they just blow throughout the neighborhood and I already have a hard enough time making friends with my neighbors because of the weird stuff they see me do through my pristine windows.
Or do you actually expect me to put them all in bags? You're recommending that I spend a whole weekend stuffing approximately a billion leaves into plastic bags? No. No, I'm not doing that. And guess what? Regardless of any action I might take, those same leaves are going to regrow next year and then fall right back onto my lawn anyway. They just won't LEAF me alone lolol they're not all good jokes, okay? I'm just a regular guy who doesn't write for SNL.
A third of an acre doesn't sound like a sprawling estate on paper, but trust me: when you're standing in the middle of my yard in November in the rain with a plastic rake while it's forty degrees and windy and you've forgotten to do your taxes again, you start to think otherwise. That is why I'm going to take the easy way out this year and just mow the bejesus out of them. It's going to be a goddamned massacre and the lawn care "experts" who insist that this tactic is detrimental to the lawn can take it up with Congrass. Lorne, I am available and I am willing to do full nudity both on and off camera. Just no raking.