By now I’m sure you’ve realized that the Leave Me Alone (Lemelo) party is pretty low maintenance.  Don’t knock on our doors, don’t inundate us with credit card offers, and shut the hell up and leave us alone.

But there’s always just a little more to say, so I’ll leave you with some Lemelo thoughts on a few last topics:

Taxes: I like taxes, or more specifically I like roads, schools, policemen and firefighters (but not in a Village People way), national defense, air traffic controllers, help for the sick and the elderly, and National Public Radio.  I don’t mind paying taxes; in fact, I don’t even mind paying some of yours if money is tight.

But you know what drives me nuts?  When half of my money has evaporated throughout the year and on April 15 you ask for more.   I’m playing by your rules, withholding the amount you said to withhold.  Why do you need more?  If you were my kid I’d give you a lecture on budgeting.  I am not cool with this.  I did my part without complaint, now leave me alone.

Passive Aggressive Satellite Companies: I grant you that this is a very specific bullet point, but it’s a problem that needs to be addressed before it spreads to other sectors.  Every time DirecTV or Dish Network gets into a pissing match with their content providers they drag their subscribers into the middle of it.  Recently DirectTV went to war with Viacom over their renegotiated price to broadcast channels like Comedy Central and VH1.  Rather than just working it out like adults DirectTV threw a ticker on the bottom of the Comedy Central screen that read something like “Viacom wants to gang rape your grandmother and kill the baby Jesus!  Please call the following number and tell them they can’t bang your Gram Gram!”

Well, Viacom wasn’t going to take this shit, but rather than handling their business they  tossed up another ticker just above DirecTV’s that said, “DirecTV calls us rapists, but they’re a bunch of liars.  Also, they pissed in your oatmeal this morning.  Please call the following number and tell DirecTV they’re a bunch of filthy whores and you refuse to eat their pissy breakfast cereal.”

Meanwhile, the already programmed ticker reminding us to watch Urkel’s celebrity roast was scrolling above these two messages.  I have a 60″ TV and when all was said and done I had about an iPad-sized image of Futurama on my screen.

What did DirecTV think was going to happen — that we’d all develop Stockholm Syndrome and sympathize with our contractual captors?  “Fuck you, Viacom!  You’ve pushed my man around long enough!  Attica!  Attica!”  No, I just added this to the ever-expanding list of reasons that DirecTV sucks.  Here is all of the interaction that I want with my satellite/cable company:  I pay my bill, you ensure that mindless entertainment keeps streaming into my house so that I don’t have time to confront my pathetic life.

Stoplight Cameras and Other “Big Brother” Monitoring: This was a hot topic when I was a kid.  The future was a dystopian hellscape where we’d be monitored 24/7.  Well, it’s here.  We can’t walk in public without being photographed by security cameras, Google Earth, stoplight cameras and, in my case the paparazzi (why can’t they leave me alone?).  On top of this we have DHS monitoring emails and phone calls, and rumors of surveillance drones soon to be buzzing over the continental United States.  As a Lemelo I should be furious about all of this monitoring, but honestly I don’t care.  If Biff at DHS is monitoring my email all he’s going to see is Paypal receipts for eBay album purchases and the occasional boobs email from Ricky Brent.  In reality the US government will leave me alone because I am a colossal bore.  I don’t do anything interesting.  I rarely even run a yellow light.

No, who really needs to leave me alone on this topic are the conspiracy theorists.  You are every bit as annoying with your Big Brother conspiracies as the Birthers are with their “Obama was not born” rhetoric (I might have the details wrong there).  Seriously, leave me alone.  If Google Earth catches me whacking it in my backyard hammock I’ll make it my profile picture.

Exception:  I don’t like this drone business.  A bunch of remote control airplanes buzzing around is going to disrupt my concentration come hammock time.  I’m old — I need to focus.

You Annoying Kids With Your Bass Heavy Car Stereos (shake fist here):   I like my music loud.  When I’m road testing a new album in the Mobile Music Laboratory I get out on the highway and I crank it.  But on surface streets, in parking lots and neighborhoods, and at traffic lights I lower the volume.  Why?  Because there are people sleeping in those houses, dining in those restaurants and enjoying their own music at those stoplights.  My right to destroy my hearing does not trump their right to enjoy a little peace and quiet.  (Note:  This goes for the Harley assholes, too.  Buy a muffler.)

The Lemeloes are firm believers in noise ordinances.  This seems counter intuitive — why would a group that wants to be left alone advocate for more rules — but it isn’t.  Government should do for the people what we can’t do for ourselves, and apparently we can’t be considerate of each other.  Why must “It’s my right” always default to the most obnoxious behavior? Blow your eardrums out in the privacy of your own home, Mr. Bass Man,  and let me enjoy some quiet in mine.

The same argument holds true for smoking.  We strongly believe you have the right to smoke a carton of unfiltered Camels a day, just don’t blow that shit in our faces.  I’m not allowed to leave my desk eight times a day to stand out front, drink vodka, and spray it all over anyone entering or exiting the building.  Enjoy your vice at home like the rest of us.

Hopefully this overview of our party has given you some idea what we’re about.  The Lemeloes are neither conservative nor liberal, but consider whether the proposed solution to a given issue results in us being left alone.  Party affiliation is nowhere near as important as our desire for quiet, private lives.

According to my complete lack of research we account for 299 million of the 300 million morbidly obese Americans Godzilla stomping their ways to early graves.  So why haven’t you heard of us?  Because that last one million is so busy flapping their gums about what we think, value, love, hate, and want that we can’t get a word in.

But that’s okay.  Let the Blues and Reds keep yelling.  I’m going to go sit in my hammock.

Thank you for reading.  Now go away.

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