Home Owners Associations

I recently moved into my first home and, as such, I am experiencing the joys of dealing with an HOA for the first time. Actually, overall, my HOA seems to be doing a lot of good things for the community. Despite that, the fees seem to be a bit too high.

The thing that irritates me the most about HOA's, condo associations, etc, is that they dictate such silly little details about the appearance of your house. Now, my neighbor routinely leaves empty soda cans and other pieces of litter on his front lawn. So what? The thing that REALLY pisses them off is that my backyard fence is the wrong SHADE of brown. See picture below. The color on the left is the old and "bad" shade of brown. The new "proper" color is on the right.

That really peels my paint.