L.A.W.N. -- Lusty Advocate for Wayward Nihilism

It has begun weeks early. As I type my walls are vibrating, and my neighbor is dripping sweat about to fall over, pushing his slave-driving mechanism back and forth over a chemically-dependent lawn, green unnaturally early. He must love it, because the instant the lawn turned this week he's out there.

The guy across the street mowed last weekend before his lawn was 50% green. Now that it's 75% he made sure to get up at 9 this morning and let everyone know 6 months of sheer hell was upon us like some starving grizzly bear looking for a mate.

I really, really must know what's with this ritual, why people enjoy this, what they get out of it, why these lawns are so important, what it does for them, what drives them. If I walked around the neighborhood taking an informal survey, I'd just end up getting punched in the face. But it beats hearing lawnmowers, smelling that exhaust, thinking about the greenhouse effect and all the money we give to petro-chemical corporations, imagining fields of wildflowers paved over with rolls of sod, watching birds flee to trees like ghosts.

The only wildlife I see in lawns around here are dogs squatting over brown patches laying chocolate eggs. 

We need an acronym, so if you come up with a good one, let me know. Here are some:

L.A.W.N.

Likely A Wonky Nationalism

Leaping Anally While Needy

Look, A-holes Waking Neighborhood

Lacking Any Wisdom (about) Nature

Lusty Advocate for Wayward Nihilism

Lusciously Against Wildlife & Nature

More Green Funerals

I'm not morbid, that's my wife. I'm just interested in this for a few days. The UK seems to have many more websites on this topic than the U.S., like http://www.greenendings.co.uk/index.htm, where you can get newspaper and cardboard coffins (have we been trained to think these types of coffins imply people hated the person inside, or otherwise looked down on them?).

A few months ago I picked up a book by Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade. Now, like many books I buy, I haven't made my way to it yet, but I hear it's very enlightening, good easy prose, and funny / charming. Anyone read it?