Roger Ebert:

Of all the gizmos forced upon us by the modern world, is any more melancholy than the leaf-blower? The device is manifestly useless. It blows leaves from one place to another, and then the wind blows them back again.

Leaf blowers are noisy, polluting, silly things. Leaves are beautiful, natural, normal things. How did we get to the point where we feel we must use the former to get rid of the latter?