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21 October 2008

Holy cow, I'm pissed. Someone stuck a Yes on 8 (proposition to amend the California constitution to ban gay marriage) in my front yard today. [More:]

My house is on a corner and I didn't spot the sign until I left the house to go pick up my son from school. I spotted it in the rear view mirror after I was already half a block away, slammed on the brakes, and circled back to the house. I was actually shaking mad when I yanked the sign out of the ground, not to mention utterly filled with revulsion that this sign was out there all morning (it wasn't out there this morning at 9 am). I shredded that fucking thing w/a knife I keep in my car and tossed it into my trash can.

Driving up my street, I noticed several other Yes on 8 signs that weren't there this morning, no doubt the work of the same hand as they were all placed on corner lots. I don't care if it's illegal, I yanked those fuckers up and shredded them too.

Then I was late to getting my kid. Oh well.
Oops, and I clearly don't know how to do [more inside]. A thousand pardons.
posted by jamaro 21 October | 18:32
Whoah that is very uncool. Aren't they crossing the line into trespassing or littering doing that?

Don't blame you for being angry.

Hope your kid forgave you for being late!
posted by gomichild 21 October | 18:33
Ugh, jamaro. That would piss me off, too.

I have only seen one such sign. A guy in our neighborhood has a Yes to 2 (Florida Marriage Protection Amendment) in his yard. I cringe when I walk by.
posted by LoriFLA 21 October | 18:36
Yeah, they've been fundraising pretty heavily and there are a lot more signs around here too.

It sucks that someone put one in your yard. That happened to me once. It was a local campaign, and I happened to be voting with the sign that appeared in my yard overnight, but I still called the campaign office to complain. The woman apologized profusely and said that they had a volunteer who delivered several signs to the wrong place. I felt better knowing it wasn't a shady act on their part. With this one, though, it'd be a lot harder to give the benefit of the doubt.
posted by mudpuppie 21 October | 18:36
That's a great idea, calling the campaign office to complain. I'll do that.

I also made a donation to No on 8, because ugh, this whole thing made me feel icky.
posted by jamaro 21 October | 18:41
There is just something about those signs. I noticed over the last week a few streets on my commute totally sprouting signs. Opposing ones. House by house. Welcome to Battleground.

That would so peeve me, to have a sign put in my yard. Eeesh.
posted by rainbaby 21 October | 18:43
I'm so glad you donated! We don't have the spare money right now, but the gf offered to do some phone banking for the No folks. They wouldn't give her the office address (which is telling and sad, no?) and were supposed to call her at the appointed time to tell her where to go. They never called, though. Makes me worry about how organized they are.
posted by mudpuppie 21 October | 18:44
I feels like a real violation against your person. Almost physically. BLAH! *shudder*

You should complain and, put the scraps of that sign on your lawn with a much bigger sign pointing to it saying that it was put their illegally and that as a result, you have donated $1,000 to the "No" side of the campaign. End it by wishing them all your love in Jesus.
posted by MonkeyButter 21 October | 18:49
There is a lot of agressive, uncool, unauthorized lawn sign graffiti going on around me, some on obviously public property some not. One hamburger drive-thru has a wall with a patch of grass facing the street, and somebody is really trying to make people think the Burger King has endorsed McCain/Palin.

I noticed a string of identical McC/P signs along a couple blocks of a major street in Grover Beach (one of the Five Cities towns) a week ago and wondered if it was a real conservative enclave or what. Then today, NONE of the signs were there. Couldn't be sure if political vandals took them or put them there in the first place, but I did notice a couple signs for a Grover Mayor candidate on lawns before and after, and I don't know the guy's politics (I can't follow the elections in all Five cities I don't live in) but I noticed his sign seriously copied an Obama design, so that's circumstantial evidence for vandals putting them there.

I also remember the June election when the County Supervisor incumbent (for Grover City AND my neighborhood) had out-yard-signed his challenger by 3-to-1 easy and lost the election by 12%. But then he had bigger "signs" working against him - a bunch of vacant McMansions blotting the hills overlooking Highway 101 that really turned the locals against his pro-development stand.

So, the show goes on. There are also a couple vacant lots opposite off-ramps here that are total sign farms, but mostly for the very local elections. And in the last week both of them have seen YesOn8 signs replaced by NoOn8 signs. A 'sign' of things to come? Probably not, but we'll see.
posted by wendell 21 October | 18:57
Welp, yes on 8 makes it pretty difficult to contact anyone via phone. They only have an form on their contact page and websearching didn't turn up a phone number to their local office (probably because it's all being run from outside the state, fucking bigot carpetbaggers). I posted this to the local neighborhood listserv:

An Open Letter to the person who planted a Yes on 8 sign in my yard

Some time this morning you planted a Yes on 8 sign in my front yard, a sign which I did not request. My house sits on a moderately busy corner and I suppose you thought your sign was very visible there, against the wall of ivy.

I just wanted to let you know that at 3 pm, I shredded your sign into several dozen pieces, bent the wire frame in half and tossed the entire mess into my garbage can. Please keep your political viewpoint--one that is completely unshared by me--out of my yard.

I noticed you also deposited several other signs all along Porter today. I have made a donation of $50 for each sign I spotted on Porter to the No on 8 campaign.

Further unwanted signs on my street will trigger more donations to No on 8. I could go into the interesting psychology of the placement of your signs demonstrating your inability to respect the boundaries of others, but I'd like to keep this short.

I like the idea of putting the tattered remains of the Yes sign back out there with a big homemade No sign and a warning about tampering = more donations.

I don't get easily riled but when I do, I stay mad for quite some time. Oy.
posted by jamaro 21 October | 19:20
Ugh.
posted by Stewriffic 21 October | 19:27
I could go into the interesting psychology of the placement of your signs demonstrating your inability to respect the boundaries of others,

BURN! That's excellent. Yay you!
posted by Stewriffic 21 October | 19:29
Man, lawn signs make everybody crazy. I saw a Obama/Biden sign near one of the shopping plazas upstate this weekend (on the corner; not near anyone's house or business, even), and after all the talk about lawn signs here and elsewhere, I almost stole it just to know what it would feel like.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 21 October | 19:31
And I don't even have a lawn!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero 21 October | 19:36
Wow, I would have thrown a fit over this too. Good on you for donations.
posted by divka 21 October | 20:25
I remember that in LA, more than 5 feet into the lawn is trespassing.
posted by brujita 22 October | 00:40
Once when my Mom was running for County Board re-election, I was given a list of properties to "sign". I dutifully plugged a sign into the yard of the Jones family on Elm Street. The next day we got a call that one of our signs was destroyed, right across the street, and while replacing it I noticed that the Jones sign was in pieces on their porch. I crossed the street and began replacing it, too, hoping that there was just some kid going crazy.

Well, Jones came out on the porch and started yelling at me. "What the hell are you doing putting a sign in our yard? I'm gonna call the cops, etc." I explained that I had a list and it said Jones on Elm and weren't they Jones and wasn't this Elm? "We didn't want no sign, get outta here."

I went home, and looked in the phone book. Turned out there was ANOTHER Jones on Elm, but one block up.

You'd think they'd regularly get mail mixed up and so forth and be aware of this sort of thing. The requesting family, for instance, could have warned us and saved us a sign. The other family could have been nicer about this all-too-easy-to-make mistake. Or at least fucking mentioned it to me when I was just there putting a sign in their yard, instead of treating me like a trespasser.

Anyhoo.

The thing about wildcat signs, which tend to happen in say Chicagoland, is that they have very short lifespans. Signs aren't all that cheap anymore.

The other thing about signs is that kids like to do things like switch them from one yard to another.

It's hard to distinguish political vandal, in other words, from "look at the stupid sign, wonder if I rode my banana bike through it".
posted by stilicho 22 October | 01:11
Holy hell, if anyone did that to me, I would flip the fuck right out. I'm totally freaked out about the possibility of 8 passing as it is. I think my head would have exploded. Your response was great, jamaro!
posted by scody 22 October | 01:48
Yes, I'd be more than peeved! Livid is an appropriate word for this!

If it happens again, maybe you can use it to your advantage by covering up the "yes" with a huge "NO" - that way they end up paying for the sign and you get a sign that's against their position...
posted by mightshould 22 October | 07:21
Some of you may remember my broken iPod story. || I saw

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