Throwback Thursday:

When I wrote this story in 2017, Putin wasn’t invading the Ukraine, but he was already a shirtless asshole.

Most of my neighbors are so fucked up I can barely look them in the eye, but the wife and the boy keep dragging me into conversations with them.

Recently, the wife forced me to talk with “Putin.”

Putin is my 60-something Tucson neighbor who walks around the complex with his shirt off (all-year round) and his two bullshit “attack” dogs. Both dogs look like pussy flaccid penis retrievers (one golden, sort of, and one black lab). The dogs don’t bark at women, and most of the time I see Putin he’s talking with some female neighbor. But Putin has them snarling at every dude that walks by like they are a couple of pit bulls on acid.

And for the past 3 years, I have walked by a lot. I don’t say a word, I don’t look at Putin, I’m thinking: those dogs get loose and I’m going to snap both their necks.

But it’s not the damn dogs’ fault, it’s the half-naked idiot on the other end of the leash who’s encouraging this shit.

I can’t remember why, but the wife was visiting Tucson. Here comes topless Putin and his two dogs. Putin says to her: “they’re friendly when they get to know ya.”

The wife reaches down and starts talking to the dogs and Putin. I walk around all of them and head for the car. I never knew Putin had a silly southern accent — one of those half-Kentucky, half-cracker-barrell, dukes-of-hazard accents.

Once we are in the car, I tell the wife, “You are like a Republican now, encouraging Putin and all.”

“Yeah, he’s weird.” she says.

Then why the hell are you talking to him… I think it, I didn’t say it. But that’s the Savage rule – kinder to strangers than kin.

The boy “borrowed” the condo for two UA homecoming weekends. A week after the second visit, the maintenance guy saw me come out of my condo and asked me: “Hey, are you renting from that nice young man who lives there.” Fuck.

I walk to my parking space, and the neighbor who manages the property next door looks over and asks: ‘Hey did that nice young man move away?” Double Fuck.

While my Tucson neighbors have their issues, it’s nothing compared to the red neck wackos who surround us in Gilbert. To our east, for the past 20 years they have stockpiled every Walmart after-New-Year’s-special on outdoor Christmas decorations. Then Thanksgiving weekend, they cover their lawn and house with 20 years of Christmas crap.

It’s a lighted “wonderland” of mis-matched colors, moving white deer, inflatable characters from Santa to Snoopy, piles of shiny shit and wires running in every fucking direction. Little kids and old people come from miles around and stare with demented amazement.

For a living the “douchebag decorators” run a landscaping business and a vending machine business out of their garage. So their driveway and the street are filled with landscape pickups and two mid-size delivery trucks. All of which block the goddamn Christmas decorations anyway, dumbshits.

Instead of ignoring or discouraging this kind of crazy, the wife hired them to maintain the lawn and bushes in front. So now every weekend, I have to talk to them as the illegals cut the grass and fix the 30-year old crappy sprinkler system.

I guess I could fix this shit and do my own yard work… maybe talking to the neighbors isn’t so fucked up after all.