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11th Nov, 2009

suck, trowa

my wank landlord

Don't go on vacation.

Does this seem harsh? Let me expand the thesis. Don't go on vacation. Because when you get back, real life sucks even more than it did before you hated it so much you ran away.

My wank landlord left the following letter for myself and my two housemates, reproduced here in full:

Yesterday was the scheduled safety inspection and you were notified about this through email. [Note: we weren't.] I walked in with the Inspector and both were shocked and disgusted over the total mess our house was in.

[Further note: I had completely cleaned the house only days before following a party I held. The only thing I didn't do was mop, because it's winter and raining and you can't open the windows. So here is where I start to get personally offended by the asshattery.]

We did not look into the middle bedroom, but the front and back rooms were in a shambles.

The inspector gave bad marks for habitation due to the mess. You are required to have the place entirely picked up and cleaned by Nov 25th. If you do not have the time, then you should hire a professional cleaner.

Specifically:

1. No clothes on the floor. Only furniture, and carpets on the floor.

2. The master bath mirror in the tub tile has to be free of scum. If permanent damage occurs to the mirror, the fix will cost approximately 200.00 because the tile will have to be replaced, and we do not have any more of that tile, and new tile would have to be purchased, plus the labour.

3. The tree in the master bedroom has to be removed.

4. We will remove the curtain in front of the sliding door in the family room, because the curtain is not working again and this the third or fourth time that we would have fixed the curtain. It will be up to the three of you do something that will work for you.

If the house is not in a presentable condition on the 25th, then we will begin eviction procedures. If all goes well:

In the future, we will give you 24 hours notice to come in and see that the house is remaining clean. If not, then we will proceed to evict.

We need the emails for the other girls, so that each of you can be notified individually of future visits.

Sincerely,

Your wank landlord



Really? Really? So his list of actionable offences comes down to clothes on the floor, which is not in the lease, a bathroom which is the responsibility of only that particular renter, not all of us, a ficus in a proper planter, and a curtain which was not provided by the landlord and is therefore not his property? And he thinks he can proceed with eviction on these grounds? Really?

Because it's not like the house is actually messy. It's not, because even when I get upset with the state of things, it's not actually a mess. We regularly sweep or hoover, we regularly clean the kitchen, we dust, and we tend the bathrooms. He didn't mention any of those things as problems except for a mirror, and so I really wonder if he gets quite what a complete asshole he sounds like threatening to evict us based on a curtain and a laundry pile.

I have not yet written a letter back detailing just how thoroughly I will trash him in court if he proceeds on this, but I am sharpening my typing fingers. Also, I hereby declare that I will move somewhere else immediately, where I don't have to wake up to this kind of shit stinking up my mailbox.

Don't go away. Coming back is a special form of hell.



Since first posting this I have taken pictures of every room in the house to prove we are not ecoterrorists bent on destroying a perfectly good house, done a radical clean (I clean when I'm angry) and eaten an entire package of McVitie's chocolate digestives for lunch. Aside from the pleasure of having my shoes organised by colour and design, the only real positive is being full of chocolate goodness.
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1st Feb, 2009

alanna2

gggrrrrrr

I got a fucking debt collection notice about not paying for a newspaper.

Facts of the case:
I CANCELLED THE SUBSCRIPTION. TWICE.

Fuckers. I don't think I have ever been so angry at the news media, and that's saying a lot. It's one thing when you fuck up with reporting, but when you put a notice on my credit score? Now it's personal. I hope whoever managed to NOT enter my cancellation into the computer TWICE loses their job. And their teeth. Possibly some internal organs. No, definitely some internal organs.


Update: It turns out that both newspaper and debt collection agency run cushy hours of 8 to 3 without weekends, which is better than I do, so I can receive a harrassing notice on Saturday and be left to fume about it until Monday at 8:01am. It was at this point which I called them, and by them I mean 'Jennifer' with an Indian accent--

Pause here to note that I don't care that she's not really Jennifer and that she's actually in India; she's working hard and it's not her I'm angry with anyway, but the fact remains that we both know she's not going to be able to do anything for me, I'm going to have to be transferred to a supervisor inevitably, and so the entire ruse only serves to keep me standing in the hall, emitting said fumes, instead of going inside to benefit from my free conference attendance.

--eventually being transferred to the supervisor actually at the paper, who then repeats to me everything 'Jennifer' told me from the records on their database, which, I interrupt to repeat, are inaccurate, because they clearly don't reflect the fact that I CANCELLED TWICE. Just to be absolutely clear with him, I say that I consider the debt notice to be illegal harrassment and that if I don't get a confirmation phone call from billing telling me that I've been removed from the debt collection agency's list by end of business hours, I will take legal action. What legal action is, I don't know, but this has worked for me in the past. Unfortunately, it didn't work today, so now I'll have to go through this again tomorrow to find out if billing has been changed, and then I'll have to call the debt agency because if the paper is incompetent enough not to note my DOUBLE CANCELLATION they're certainly incompetent enough to not notify the debt collection agency that I have no debt with them.

I hate humanity, some weeks.
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4th Oct, 2008

suck, trowa

in which you are turds.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27008935/?GT1=43001

Seriously? How does this CAUSE stress?

You are turds. Congratulations.
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11th Aug, 2008

gwen

continuing the day of WTFness...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26143098

Take a deep breath, people, because this one's a doozy.
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tired chase

hate. hate hate hate hate hate hate.

Seriously. Hate.

WHAT THE FUCK IS SO HARD ABOUT CLEANING, YOU CUNTY BITCH?
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2nd Jul, 2008

suck, trowa

christ almighty, people.

Way to miss the point.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2288658,00.html

Really, is it necessary to be quite so embarrassingly stupid? It's a book about inspiring students. That actually inspired students.

Sigh.
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24th Jun, 2008

flag

can kiss my ass

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/23/asa.advertising

For the curious, or those who don't read the Guardian to find out who's newest in the race for modern-reality-o-phobic vitriol, the ad's been pulled. Also, Bill O'Reilly got himself involved in this. The man isn't British! Save that kind of crap for your own people-- we clearly have plenty of assholes who are plenty willing to jump in and can at least claim to reside in an English puddle of their own poo.

28th Jan, 2008

methos

venting

I'm venting here because there is no-where in my house that is removed from my f&#@ing #*(&@)!(@#(@)*!)@843739820!9281_#*#&($@ housemates.

I was having a great evening. I really was. I was jammin' in the kitchen with the dog, chillin' with a glass of wine on the couch watching my favourite shows. Then... DUH DUH DUH! They return.

First one in the door: Allyson. Starts talking about herself, because that's the only thing that would occur to her. She fainted at the gym because she was dehydrated. I nod a lot and make my way to the kitchen with the intent of getting my food off the stove before the dinner rush.

Second one in: Stephanie. On the phone. Sure, fine. Starts to make her dinner.

Suddenly Allyson is there too. It's a small kitchen. Two people-- pushing it. Three is overwhelming. I'm trying to assemble the food processor for blending my soup.

Allyson: No, like this.

Me: It doesn't do that.

Allyson: There's got to be a way.

Me: No.

Allyson: What's in your soup? It looks like vomit.

Obviously, this conversation is not endearing me to her. I catch myself snapping and try to back off by complimenting her fajita mix. I hate fajitas. See the effort I'm making? This is a social nicety lost on this girl.

Fourth person in: Kate. Who comes into the kitchen to start making her food.

Me: Allyson, excuse me, I'll get the processor out of your way.

Allyson: Kate, doesn't her food look nasty? It's soup though. (doesn't move, even when I rip the processor out of the wall)

Me: flipping her off as she leaves the room...

Kate: Trouble?

Me: I'm just going to eat.

(Exeunt to the couch... now occupied by Stephanie and Allyson, despite the place setting, the computer, and the glass of wine clearly placed before my seat)

Stephanie et Allyson: Oh, are you leaving?

Me: Yes.

The hell of it is that I really was having a great night and was looking forward to them coming home. Now I'm more than happy for a private room. I'm too old to put up with this crap. Would it help if I actually managed to find a home populated by people my age? I wish I knew. All I do know is that I'm this close to shunning the physical presence of anyone younger than thirty.
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30th Nov, 2007

flag

stuff and things and books and moving and dear lord, why

Re: the flagging of other people's content; whatever happened to turning a blind eye to things you didn't want to see? Why are we all vigilantes of censorship? Unless Orrin Hatch forces you to sit before a computer and read offencive content, no-one is holding you hostage and forcing you to look at it.

Things I can imagine going horribly, horribly wrong with this policy:

--People flagging political content from opposing POVs--am I the only person who thinks election time plus censorship is bad?
--People flagging fictional content and porn, even though they obviously had to, you know, read it, in order to know it was porn
--People-- young people-- flagging personal rivals over petty school disputes, and getting their friends to gang up and do it too

Is it just me, or does LJ have a chronic lack of forethought? Honestly, who do they employ? Do they have any business experience? Any kind of any experience?

And here's the other thing. The supposed benefit of this is that we can choose to limit our journal entries to people of age. Age of consent? Because that's the point of all other age ratings. A young person is supposed to be protected from the big bad scary world until they are old enough to understand the consequences, ie give consent to the de-flowering of their fragile tiny minds. When they're five, sure, I'm all for some sensible limits. When they're fourteen, instead of seventeen? I have a big problem with that. Why? Because when I was an underage reader, the internet was the place where I learnt about being gay. I didn't know another gay person until college. I was too embarrassed and shy to check out sexuality books from the library, too afraid my parents would see magazines or movies and ask me questions I wasn't ready and didn't know how to answer. But on the internet I had almost total freedom of the mind, and you know what? Fanfic was enormously helpful to me. Not because it was accurate about gay life or gay sex (we all know that's a joke), but because it was the first time I'd ever met a large group of people who were comfortable and happy to talk about being gay, in the complete absence of all negative context. If I hadn't had that extremely positive experience under my belt, I really honestly think I would have had a harder time coming to terms with myself.

I grant you that my exodus on the internet happened before a lot of what makes the internet a much more dangerous and far less pleasant place as it is today. There were no viruses in those days. Flamers were just starting to pop up, and everyone knew who they were and who they were affiliated with. Yahoo! Groups were new and gave us unprecedented access to like-minded folks the world over. But I think the world of the internet still offers what for many under-age readers is the only place to learn about and express themselves, when who they are isn't like anyone around them, when who they are isn't acceptable in the 'real' world, and when who they are shouldn't be censored out of existence by the squeaky wheel intent on changing the world around them in the worst possible way.

Oh well. Clearly, no-one asked my opinion.

I'm moving on Sunday. I'm utterly unprepared, but fortunately I'm only moving bedroom things, not an entire house of things. Unfortunately, my bedroom things have to travel an hour on fast roads and over a long bridge. Where I see this being a problem is with the mattress. Considering renting a truck or something.

Edit: Have now rented truck.

More meme fun. This from [info]octavius_x.

'Bold the books you have read;
Italicize the books the books you intend to read;
Strike the books you didn't finish.'

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Twice, which should count. Also, the second time I read it, I was forced to participate in a debate about which side God would be on, and that game was totally freaking rigged.)
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion (Of all the authors on this list, Tolkein has the longest wind, I swear)
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick (Another debate about God, but infinitely worse was the dead silence that followed the professor's question 'What do you think the white whale represents?')
Ulysses (Both the original and the James Joyce)
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey (Am I the only one who thinks Penelope got a seriously raw deal?)
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities (No Dickens. Ever.)
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair (Film was better)
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs Dalloway (I actually cried. Sad story.)
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : A Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales (I was that person at the literary conference attempting to read it with the right accent. Sorry to everyone.)
The Historian : A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (HATE) (HATE) (HATE) (HATE)
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead (I love eutopia, utopia, dystopia... gimme more of all of it)
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein (Too many freaking times. It's only 'sublime' once.)
The Count of Monte Cristo (HATE)
Dracula (Lestat is the only vampire for me...)
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : A Novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (Amanda will kill me if I don't say yes)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse (A great example of a good book where NOTHING HAPPENS)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist (I imagine it's better in song)
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables (see Oliver Twist)
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince (Gave me nightmares.)
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes : a Memoir (Speaking of underage trauma, I didn't need to read about tuberculosis sex, or whatever that was. Obviously that was before censorship hit schools.)
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners (Too much Ireland. More Wales! Feet in Chains, anyone?)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
The Mists of Avalon (HATE)
Oryx and Crake : A Novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (My father gave it to me)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : An Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island (Got bored)
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers (Even more bored)

Once upon a time, I gave a paper about the decline of the classics being taught in schools. At that point, I believed that students below my year were no longer being required to read the cultural bulwarks. I don't know where this list came from, but it's an interesting compilation. There's not a single item of Shakespeare on here; and while friends know my feelings on Shakespeare, the Renaissance is almost unrepresented here, no Marlowe, no John Donne, no Machiavelli; the Middle Ages is completely absent, and all of Greek and Roman-dom has been condensed to three classics. But I like and appreciate a lot of the books on this list. Interesting meme.