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For the Love of a Foul Mood
Entry 10/10/2014 12:31:42 PM – Mentat 757
I have been in a hell of a foul mood since this morning when I received a call from my mother informing me that the reason why she had been pulled into surgery yesterday morning. It wasn’t about the fact that I hadn’t been told that the reason why there was surgery yesterday for the skin grafting that they had performed to thicken up her thin skin around the ankle area. Seriously that was to be expected. The thinning skin around her ankle since the accident has been an issue of contention since they put the pins and plate to hold together her ankle some months ago after the accident with the Monster Child. What set it off this morning was in fact the news of her coming home maybe on Sunday and that for a while afterwards, she’s going to be laid up and have to keep off her foot and have it elevated while she’s healing. What set me off is the fact that this is going to put me in a difficult position with her husband. Now this is why… Three weeks ago this Sunday there was an incident between he and I.
It started with going over my mother’s for dinner.
I went a little bit earlier than usual, partially because I know how my mother has been since breaking her ankle and she usually ran dinner a bit earlier because of it. So when I was over there, while my mother was finishing her cooking (boiling potatoes for mashed potatoes), I watched a few of the subscription videos in advanced. By the time we sat down I was sort of confused about Twitter and the fact that my ADD was acting up (thanks largely to the various aches and pains in the back of my head and sinuses as well as the cramps from whatever I ate two or three days ago). So I was trying to do a quick scan of the messages and why I received a notification and who it was from… And was about to give up the search as dinner was about to be served, when my mother’s husband starts asking how big a piece of pork.
It’s the same question week to week to week… How big do you want? And unless I’m ill, ate really big for lunch or queasy, I have settled for the same amount and the same size of any cut of meat — be it meatloaf, pork, beef roast — it’s bigger than my mother’s but smaller than his. So I just said, “use your best judgment.. You know how big I usually have…”
He asked again, I said the same thing…
Then he gave me a sliver of a slice from the end of the roast as I was putting the phone to the side. He had a smug look on his face like, ‘this is what you get for not answering the question I asked.’
I looked at him, then my mother and instead of allowing myself to be ruffled by it because he had the scowl going when I didn’t react the way he wanted, and said something about being an asshole and having my nose in my phone. So with a little drama and putting my hands in the air said I was going home and would be by the next day.
I remember hearing noise about it, and the next thing I know the serving fork and then the carving knife came at me. They both hit the chair at the table and fortunately for me: they both missed.
He followed me to the door, and while I’m now hazy as to what happened at that point, remember saying I didn’t want to hit him, but he hit me. At the back door he hit me…
He hit like a girl. Or rather not like someone with so many years of military experience in the Marines. But that didn’t mean I was just going to stand there and take it either. So, I struck back. It was damned sloppy though… I was in sandals and couldn’t get a good stand or counter, but at least self-defensive. I pushed him to the garbage bin, with a light choke hold and as there was another sloppy scuffle where he was holding me by the collar for a long time, but after my mother intervention and my warning him that I was left-handed and that hand was free to strike, he let me go and I left the house.
In hindsight, my attitude in this — with or without ADD — was bound to happen. If I’m asked the same thing over and over for course of at least two years and my patterns are clearly defined, I get tired of answering the same question or saying the same thing ad nausea. In the past I would have really had an explosive moment because such painstaking banality used to drive me to utter distraction. After all how many times can you ask, “how big a piece do you want?” and not catch a pattern to it without the normal cues (to the exception)? Now, I simply ignore it or brush it off.
I told my mother the next day I would give him a week’s time to apologize for his act of violence. I went on to tell her that if he simply screamed at me, I probably would’ve apologized for me actions; but the instant he hit me and threw things at me — he wouldn’t get any respect from me until that action was apologized for. My mother told me that it would be a cold day (in hell) before he would ever apologize for what he did. That convinced me right then and there and confirmed it at a week’s time when he didn’t seek me out to apologize for this act of violence he was a bully (at best) or an abuser (at worst).
Since then, my mother has done her best to keep the two of us apart. She’s pretty much told me that dinners with her and her husband are a thing of the past. When it came to laundry up until this week she and I would be going instead of putting me in the car with him (and doing it alone at the laundromat).
She’s told me that the reason why she’s holding off is that she wants it to be at the “right time”. She’s told me that she’s afraid that he might hit her if I confronts him. She has put me in the right difficult position of trying to make me promise I won’t confront him while she’s currently in the hospital. While I didn’t actually promise, I did say that I would do my best not to confront him during this time.
The problem with me is that this has gone on for too long. I’m not about to let go of it. It’s built up rancour and more anger than what I’ve dealt with dealing with the two ex-douche nozzles I used to deal with in Olneyville. I’ve been in one too many abusive relationships and I refuse to sit idly by while a bully thinks he can get away with hitting me Scot-free without repercussion or apology. And it’s only a matter of time before our paths cross, and it’s not going to be pretty; particularly when I happened to have perused his coupon for Cialis… Yeah, excuse me… you have anger and violence issues, the last thing anyone would be worrying about is whether or not they can keep their penis erect… But that’s just me, right?
Anyway, that’s what’s really set me off… Because between my mother might be coming home Sunday (and having to watch the dog), coupled with my pussy-footing around my mother’s husband, coupled with the difficulties that will crop up next week with the laundry and everything else… I just think it would be easier for everyone (or perhaps needs to come to a head) by confronting it, instead of ignoring it like the Pink Elephant in the room.
Well, I’m going to wander for the time being. Mail to check, dog to walk, and listening to something that should sooth the savage nerves. Until the next time.
Surprises, Bumps & Train Wrecks
Entry 10/09/2014 09:57:21 AM – Mentat 756
“Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.” – Carl Jung
Ah, what a train wreck yesterday turned out to be.
Things seemed to have been going remarkably well. I started my morning with the extreme surprise of coming in contact with someone I hadn’t seen or even heard from in almost 30 years. A bar-friend that I used to get together with that used to trawl the old bar, No Name — long since gone and replace with a state agency — and then afterwards head to the old Seaplane Diner for a late night breakfast to work the alcohol out of our systems. While I didn’t remember him when he messaged me — getting confused with someone else from about that time — when he told me he was from North Providence, I remembered correctly and instantly. I remember that he used to dress up like a hair-glam rocker; complete with clothes and hair. I remember he was mostly a shy one when we were out. I remember when we used to go out, he would order himself a plate of fries and then drench them in condiments. I remember a couple of his friends. Chris B who I tried to date and failed rather spectacularly. And I think another Italian kid who I only remember his name as Dante. And a woman name Lorna… Heh, I couldn’t remember her name and Chris had to remind me; thought it started with an R… But at least it has an R in it.
Interesting memories back then; some of which I’m rather surprised I can remember so clearly and so precisely being so close to the time of the car accident back when I was about 20 years old and somewhere between that time and when I had been raped 2 years later is a very messy time for me to try to remember through. On the one side, I no longer had my journals for that time (destroyed in a flood) so it’s not like looking at 2004 – 2005 after my break up with Rick… And reading into those journals seeing an entirely different person I don’t remotely recognize writing them… On the other hand, sitting here — in the here and now — it’s rather surprising how clear those memories are in spite of the dire times back then. Sure the memories seem to be darker than average — but it’s more about lighting (and the lack thereof) more than the mood. Well that and the smells of cigarettes, bad smoke machines and spilled alcoholic drinks. But those were the times outside of work…
Going on simultaneously was a rather surprising chat with someone — who’s name will be discretely omitted and referred to as C — on a chat/meeting site. The fact that he admitted being able to sing gives him automatic respect (as I’ve said in the past — me singing produces the same sounds as torturing cats). He was flirtatious, gregarious, he was keeping up with what was going on and most importantly I didn’t have to reiterate constantly what I was trying to say and perhaps even what I meant. A definite plus and something that I find attractive. He was even closer to my age than most of the men I’ve flirted with in the last couple of years. It made the afternoon go well given I wasn’t at the Deskside, instead watching my mother’s Monster Child (stories to be told in a moment).
Then the train wreck. As I was wrapping up my time at my mother’s during the last 45 minutes. The conversation takes a turn into surprise. C doesn’t want to chat anymore and wants to meet. Given the intensity and the change of direction it had taken me completely be surprise. In those moments, I didn’t know what or why, but I reacted hard. I became brutally honest and in doing so pushed him away hard. It fell apart after that… C was distracted by driving… I was flummoxed and having anxiety.
I can tell you that because of it, I had my first absence (petite mal) seizure since being back in the Tundras of New England. It wasn’t long — longer than normally experienced. A fact that if my mother were to hear about this would demand my going to a doctor pronto.
I can tell you that I fell immediately to sleep and slept uninterrupted through to the morning.
I can tell you I feel both embarassed and guilty because I didn’t handle the situation properly. I apologized, but expect nothing in return. Nor that he would return.
And this morning after meditating and beginning this journal entry, I can tell you precisely where the anxiety came from… It started in the unconscious. It came from seeing the similarities of C’s situation and the years of hell living with Rick a decade before. It came from the emotional torment and blame that I had gone through at his hands. And most importantly it came from the similarities I had been seeing.
– that C had a child
– that he was only recently out and not out to many people.
– that there was a travelable distance between where he was and where I am. 60 miles (96.5 km) which compared from Atlanta to Dalton is close enough for government work.
– that I don’t drive and haven’t for 21 years now.
Combine this with the memories of constant incrimination and derision that I had gone through with Rick and it all came flooding back in flood and fear.
I know, I know… they’re different people, different circumstances and on and on and on… Consciously it makes perfect sense and is perfectly logical. Unconsciously? No matter what mastery one can have on conscious thought — it’s a dark place, full of emotions and deeply hidden problems that can creep up and pounce when you least expect it. And that’s precisely what it did.
The best I can do at the moment is ride through the regrets that I had created and let them pass. I regret bring such demons so early to the table. I regret that I scared a good man with baggage I thought that I had gotten the best of. And I regret how it’s ended. But hey… It’ll pass like it always does… I just have to face what it was that scared me and handle it better.
As for what I mentioned earlier in this entry. Earlier this week she was in for getting the plate removed from her ankle/foot because it was sticking too close to the surface and was interfering with the healing process. So in the morning and through until about the time that her husband gets home, I stay over her place watching the dog and ensuring he doesn’t have any abandonment issues through that time. Jack — her monster child — being a rescue still has it months later.
Further developments this afternoon comes from my aunt who received a voicemail from my mother telling her she’s going into surgery for it again this morning. My aunt couldn’t hear her mostly because she’s going hard of hearing and won’t do anything about it… So I left a message on my mother’s cell with the hopes of finding out more news on this…
There’s more to this too. My mother’s going to be going back to the hospital next week for a more detailed mammogram. Last week when she went for her routine examinations — or as she’s fond of call them “breast squishings” — they reported finding a dark spot on her results from her other breast. I can’t remember which one, just that it was the other one that had cancer in, in the past.
I’m not too worried about it. It’s one of those wait and see what’s going to happen next with her. I just wished she would stop smoking.. That would make it a bit easier.
Well that’s about it for the time being. Until the next time.
One Step Forward, One Step Back
Entry 04/12/2014 01:08:01 PM – Mentat 695
I swear to god sometimes when it comes to programs, it sometimes feels like for every step forward some software programmers take, they also seem to take a step back. Take Steam for example. They try to make their gaming platform/software environment stable and then all of a sudden, one of the latest patches will cause my PC to want to un-mount the 2 TB monstrosity I use for storing my games on it. No explanation whatsoever, no warning, nothing… Close Steam and suddenly I lose access to the gaming drive. It’s not consistent about it either. I’ll go for weeks and reboots at a time with the drive and the Steam Client behaving perfectly normal (and acceptable), and then there’s this string of client closes that cause the S: and T: (the added drives that use the SATA 6 connection) to just disconnect without notification. Sure, I can do a quick reboot and everything’s all right, but the thing is — it should behave without issue. This wonderful quirk of course, screwed with Warframe (which inhabits the same drive as the Steam Client), causing the update to fail repeatedly. After an uninstall and reinstall of Warframe and it’s back up to working. But not without not following the installation instruction set it’s given causing the game to load locally on the boot drive. Given it’s not that big a game (at about 5 GiB), it’s 5 GiB I don’t want on the root partition. And during this entry, I got it changed out without issue back to the original drive.
Then there’s the new version of Skype. Sure it fixes various problems with the program (problems I’ve never really experienced), but since 6.10 it’s been forcing advertisements to show up in chat windows and during video call/conferences. All right, I’m annoyed with that and try to find a work-around to make the advertisements disappear (like they used to show up in AOL, Yahoo when I used to use it and MSN Messenger). Turns out that Microsoft being the pernicious gits they are changed the way advertisements show up in the windows between version 6.10 and the newest 6.14. All right again, I found the fix for that — namely the adding of the hostnames to the HOSTS file — but now whenever I enter a video conference with a friend in 10 seconds Skype freezes/locks up and stops responding. Tried an uninstall/re-install of the newest version and the issue remains. Hell, the only way to get the camera to work again is to reseat the USB for the camera. Checked to see if it were a power problem with the motherboard/USB/Power Supply and it turns out I can leave the motion capture software supplied by Logitech up for hours. I can even leave Skype open on the options window and the Webcam continues to work without lockups. But the instant I go into a conference with a friend, 10 – 15 seconds it locks up. So for the time being, I’m going to keep to the older version (prior to the spam advertising) as the camera continues to work without lock-ups or freezing.
Moe is being… Well, persnickety. I noticed that he hadn’t been drinking all that much of his water and seems to be hellbent on drinking the water from the bath tub tap. While there is a leak if I don’t close the faucets properly, I suspect that it’s still not enough water for him to get through the day. Particularly given that he hasn’t had wet food in some time. And the last thing I need is for him to come down with a UTI. Tiger got those a few times in his life and that’s both money and vet trips that I can’t afford at the present time. So after quite a bit of experimenting, I think I found the solution. The food needs to be on one side of the room (near the stove), the water the other (near the bathroom) and the litter has to be near to the cupboard in the kitchen in order for him to drink from the water bowl more and from the faucets less. Oh he’ll still take a moment or two to drink from a faucet — like the kitchen or bathroom sink if I’m around it — and even sometimes drinking from the bath tub faucet when he thinks I’m not looking… But at least he’s drinking again and things seem to be back to normal there.
More along the lines of “normal” has to be the fact that after several weeks of staggered sleep patterns, I’m finally returning to a more normal pattern of 6 – 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep a night. Well, until last night which was entirely my fault. I became overwhelmingly tired around 8 PM and ended up sleeping until almost 11:30 PM. So I stayed up for a couple of hours because of that — piddling about watching a show or two (namely The Listener) as well as playing some easy games until I got tired enough to pass out once again. So I got 7 hours of sleep last night, even if it wasn’t in one sitting.
I also had a low point during the week when I had a sort of “relapse” of rage as I was heading down to the supermarket to try my hand out at another slow-cooker recipe. Seems that when I get closer to the old address in the Valley as it’s across the street from the supermarket, the more I have these visions of wanting to inflict any number of aggravated violences against the two douche-nozzles at the apartment (landlord and that thing). The last couple of times I’ve been able to convince myself to simply let go and go forward and that’s usually a calming enough effect to drive it out of my head. The last time however, I went full tilt to the point where the rage had been almost overwhelming. The kind of overwhelming where I wanted to seek either of them out and slap the living shit out of them. Sure, I realized that I had taken a step in the wrong direction and that I was able to calm down enough to move forward from it — it was still more than a surprise that I allowed myself to sink low enough to that level again. Perhaps it’s because of this (and my bout of hypochondria) which had caused me not to sleep as well as I could have.
Then the real fun that came afterwards when I got home with the ingredients for the Sausage and Bean Stew… There I am, chopping up the onion when what does my cat do? Scare the piss out of me by jumping up onto the table from my blind spot. Jumped out of my seat and ended up gashing myself with the knife. I had flashbacks to the time I cut my finger on some broken tile back in the basement of the house in the Valley. Bled like a stuck pig then and again when I was chopping the onion. I sliced myself again when trying to move the chopping board and knife to the sink. While it wasn’t enough for stitches, I did bleed enough through the afternoon while I waited for the bigger of the two gashes to coagulate. At least I didn’t bleed all over the driveway and backyard like I did last winter.
[Last Edited: 04/14/2014 10:57:15 AM]
All right I spoke too soon. Sure I got a couple of nights of “normal” sleep, but that didn’t last as long as I was hoping. As I said earlier in the journal I passed out too soon. The night before, I didn’t actually fall asleep until after 2:30 AM. Then I woke up around 5:30; passed out again at 7:30 and woke up again on 9:30. I didn’t do all that much through the day (it was after all, Sunday); passed out again at 2:30, woke up again at 4:15 and now as the evening winds down, I’m feeling worn out and drag-ass. I should go to bed about this time, but knowing me if I did that, I would end up being wide awake at 2 in the morning. Then last night, I ended up going to bed at a semi normal time (almost 11 PM) work up about 3 hours later and couldn’t get back to sleep until almost 5 AM, mainly because I had heartburn from the ribs I had for supper that night. Sure, I ended up getting 6 hours of sleep, but it wasn’t all at once. Because of this scattered and uneven sleep patterns, I’m finding it extremely hard to focus on anything longer than 20 minutes. It also makes me extremely emotional and my sugar seems to be all over the place.
I’m really not at all sure what is causing this wacky sleep patterns (and subsequent lack of focus). It might be the weather as it’s suddenly changed from frigidly cold to spring-like warm. That and the humidity seems higher than usual: 60+% at least for the moment. But I’m not entirely sure. In either event, it’s annoying and working my health and nerves.
Not too much else at the moment. I need to get ready to walk the dog. Then make something for lunch. Until the next time.
Facing the Anger while Healing
Entry 03/23/2014 08:07:29 PM – Mentat 691
It’s been just over a couple of weeks since I last wrote, and just over a month since I’ve moved into the new place. And while I’ve had a million and one ideas of dealing with the DIY catastrophe of this apartment, I’ve been (not so strangely) avoiding wanting to even do any of the spring cleaning necessary prior to doing the actual project. Part of me has been slack about it because the weather’s just not been the right sort of warm to open the windows and shake out the dust, cobwebs (metaphorically speaking) and what not of the place. It’s an excuse I know, but a good one nonetheless. Sure, I’ve been maintaining the place well enough; cleaning where I need to… The rest? Eh, It can wait another day as I wait patiently for spring to come…
Part of me has been taking advantage of the quiet to heal from the two years of anger, rage, frustration and overwhelming want to beat the living shit out of two douche-bags as a means of working out that anger and rage. But there’s another part of me that I’ve come to realize isn’t wanting to heal at all… More on that in a moment or two though.
Moe’s being a bit of a quirk since moving to the new place. It’s been as though his mood and temperament changed based entirely on the change of environment. Sure, there’s parts of him that I recognize as the cat that first came into my life November last year… His strange neediness that hits after I’ve come to pet him or give him attention when he’s been quiet and/or napping. The fact that he’s wanting to be up around my face and neck when I’m sitting up and playing/working/watching something on my computer and yet the instant I lay down for the night, he will only sleep at the foot of the bed. And of course his talking to me whenever he comes walking up, or when I so much as pet him. Not so much the typical warning of a cat to a stranger, just… Likes to hear him (and me) speak.
Then there’s the other parts that I don’t recognize at all. His climbing up on anything he can reach to watch me or the house in general (his three favorite places are the lowest shelf in the cupboard, the top of the fridge once again, and the chest of drawers in the bedroom). His use of the center rug in the kitchen as a scratching post, completely ignoring the cardboard scratcher that’s over by the bathroom like it used to be in the other apartment. His fascination to almost obsession with completely wrecking my blanket from the underside of the bed at 2 – 3 in the morning while I’m sleeping. Like his getting into my portable closet to wreck the seam at the bottom… And of course at 2 – 3 in the morning while I’m sleeping. My personal favorite has to be the fact that he’ll sleep on one of the chairs at the table in the kitchen if I don’t make the bed… And the instant the bed is made, he’ll make his way back into the room to sleep on it. Or him sitting there in front of the microwave staring up at it… I can’t be sure whether he’s trying to figure out if it’s safe to jump up on, or not. He’s done nothing toward it so far… Other than staring at it. Though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he works out whether it’s something for him to get on top.
The neighborhood’s surprisingly quiet being that much closer to Atwells Avenue, Federal Hill and of course Tammany Hall. Sure, there have been a couple of moments during closing time of the Hall that I’m seriously wishing to buy a dozen eggs just to use on the drunken bastards that think that their lives are the only one that matters in a mixed commercial/residential neighborhood, but at least so far… with the windows closed and it still being more than a bit chilly — they don’t normally make half as much noise as they’re capable of. I’m sure though come the later spring to early summer; that sort of nonsense is going to change. I remember even down in the Valley the drunken disorderly noise that used to happen with the college kids after midnight.
I recently met with Mel the other day (the sister to the woman that used to live here in this apartment) and she had asked whether or not I had moved in. Told her (while I had been walking Jack) that I’d been there almost a month. She commented that her mother (that lives on the first floor) commented that she can’t hear me up here. I explained that I’m usually quiet (well other than the occasional talking to myself and other random noises) and that I prefer it that way.
Heh, walking away I realized I might have painted myself as the serial killer or axe murderer type of, “…he was always a quiet one… kept to himself…” sort of person. Not that I mind too much… At least people will give me the room I like for privacy and quiet.
So as I mentioned earlier… There are two parts of me that are sort of in conflict with each other: the part that wants to get over the anger and rage, and the other part that doesn’t. I know the part that doesn’t is a form of stubbornness of not wanting to let go. Of wanting to exact the retribution against two people I deem as scum that deserve as much grief as they have given me. I also know it’s going to be a long and slow process of moving on… As it was reinforced several times during my walk down to the local supermarket for necessities (bread, milk, etc.) that the closer I got to the old address, the more anger, aggression and pent up rage I felt, and my sort of ‘gearing up for possible retribution’ if I were to ever see them. Sure, I haven’t (so far), but the potential for it happening is really too great. And I’m sort of concerned I might follow through if only to see whether or not I can (or will).
The other problem I’m finding myself… concerned about is the fact that I’m having difficult times focusing on something. Take this journal entry for example. While I should have been able to write this out in an hour (and not almost an hour and a half at the moment) I’ve been distracted by doing at least twenty different things while writing it. Previews or a web series (or two) on YouTube. Looking up various information on actors here and there. Hell, I’ve tried even listening to easier to listen to music (classical, pop, some new wave) and I find I am unable to form my thoughts coherently enough for what I need to talk about. In fact, I get the impression that the problem is the closer I come to dealing with thoughts or emotions on the subject of this rage — the more I go out of my way to avoid it. Hell, even now while it’s quiet in my head — as I am only listening to the whispering sound of the fans on my PC case, I have in a small part of my screen — Man of Steel playing. It’s enough to keep my eyes a bit distracted — but not enough for me to immerse and run from the subject at hand.
I know this is a means of avoidance. I’ve done it in the past when I was going through the break up after Rick. It’s different this time, though. Back when I broke up with Rick I had been beaten down to the point of almost feeling soulless. And that path up from the depths of the purgatory I had put myself into because of that relationship was a long and slow path. This time it’s more like a hell that’s going to have me taking a different path to walk. One that feels as though it’s going to take me to learn how to apply myself forward, instead of running away (and distracting myself) the instant any of my buttons are pushed. Especially when I push the buttons myself.
Well, that’s about it for the moment. Next up, I’m going to try to apply myself in the near future to trying to write a short story. If only to help rehabilitate my ability to focusing more. Until the next time…
Sometimes I wish we could say things unedited
Entry 01/20/2014 07:33:00 AM – Mentat 689
“What I am doing is what someone should have done a long time ago. Putting you out of my misery.” – Londo Mollari, Babylon 5
Some letters you really wish you could send to people when they deserve it… This is one such example.
=================================================================
Dear Idiot Landlord,
You sir, are incompetent. Lazy. Delusional. Selfish. A prejudice douchebag. A micromanaging control queen. A hypocrite. The kind of scatter-brain that borders on the schizophrenic. You want to establish with everyone that you’re “good” and that you’re their friend: but that’s just a shill to take advantage of other people’s giving nature so that you can take all that you can from them. When you’ve gotten all you can and people refuse to give you any more of their generosity, you throw various tantrums — “cutting your nose off to spite your face” as we say around here — to shame them for not giving. When they tell you they’ve done enough, you then ignore them, you avoid them, you think they’re trying to take advantage of you by “shafting” you from your deserved monies. And last but not least — the cherry on the top of this putrefying mess — all the right (and wrong) elements for being a slum lord. You disgust me. I find I positively loathe you and at this point in time you had better be praying to whatever god you worship that I have obtained an intermediary to dealing with you or the consequences would have indeed been dire.
It’s 2014 and in the 10 out of the 26 months that I’ve been living here, I’ve had the distinct honor of working for you to learn just how much of a delusional hypocrite you are. You use the phrase, “I’ve been doing this… for more than 30 years…” like a mantra to establish that you have more than the necessary experience, but between the gallery you built in one of the worst sections of town and 7 out of 14 apartments in my neighborhood that I’ve helped you cleaned out from tenants that have moved out — I’ve seen half-assed, shoddy and poor craftsmanship that can only establish one thing: You’ve been doing it wrong the entire time.
Oh don’t get me wrong; the idea of opening a gallery in the former industrial part of the Olneyville neighborhood is certainly an ambitious undertaking. There’s a quite a bit of promise there if the other companies that have bought the buildings near to yours come through with their promise about apartment/condo housing and bistro-style office space. The problem is that your completion of the art gallery there is two to four years too early. As the neighborhood currently stands, it looks like a dump: the kind of place Ma & Pa Art Buyer wouldn’t want to be caught dead in. It’s depressed, has nothing in the way of personal security and comfort and generally gives the feeling to even the casual passers-by the impression not of a fine art gallery but instead of such art work falling off the back of a truck somewhere. The worst sort of elements for a commercial property that relies heavily on the pedestrian traffic of casual passers-by.
Like your Art Mobile — they both sit there unused (and I’m betting un-registered) at the new gallery location. Lofty and ambitious ideas that do nothing because you lack the trust of having good people help you with this venture. What would be called pipe dreams taking up wasted space…
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Call my bringing this up about the Art Mobile and Gallery as a foreshadowing that comes from casual observation.
You seem to have forgotten though what the priorities are in your life as dictated by your career choice. While it’s true that your family will always and inevitably come first, owning property is next in that list. You have done a poor job in handling problems that come to you about the apartments. Tenants have to chase you down about problems and issues within the apartments. And if their skin color is different than white, you can (and have) taken longer. Take for example the laundry list I had sent to you about my apartment a couple of months ago.
Three doors needed to be sanded down because the 100 or so layers of cheap pain that you had used to make the apartment “pretty” for the next potential tenant made the doors impossible to close. The back entrance door needed to be replaced because two panels had been broken in (one more than a decade ago because of a drug bust, the second where a previous tenant had been evicted from the apartment for excessive disturbances to the peace and known heroin use) and needed two locks instead of one because of a known thief in the house. An electric outlet in the spare room didn’t work. The electric/light switch in the bathroom was becoming useless (turning on when it was off and off when it was on at random times) and most importantly the kitchen sink faucet was useless beyond repair and leaking more and more with each use.
An e-mail was sent to you to fix these issues as you seem to demand instantaneous communication at all hours of the day and night for anything you need to say but can take up to a day for a response to come back from anything sent to you. But I digress. The fact is , it took more than two weeks from the time you needed to “inspect” the apartment for what needed to be done to the time that the actual repairs needed to be done, citing that that the faucet needed to be special ordered (something that should have been kept in storage as this is not the only apartment that has such a facet/sink in the kitchen.
First, you refused to replace the back entrance door outright citing that it was an “unusual size” and it would cost an exorbitant amount to getting it replaced. An issue that’s really a non-issue considering that an incredible amount of the houses in the Rhode Island (hell New England) area are more than a century old and there are plenty of door manufacturers that still produce/store similar doors for these houses at reasonable cost. You even tried to pass off to me that I should go looking for you for such doors which you would replace if I bought. We had agreed upon using a thick piece of plywood to cover the section of the door that had been broken in and left paint for me to paint the walls and door — something I heartily agreed upon given my experience with you and paint and the catastrophic messes you leave when you rush-paint anything. That is to say you leave more paint on everything else than what it was you were originally painting.
While I might not have much experience in this sort of thing having chosen a career in computers and information technology, in the 10 months that I worked for you in basic construction, I learned a few things along the way. Common sense sort of things that one learns on the job. I know for example that if there’s too much paint on a door, you sand the door in order for it to fit. Sometimes you need to sand the frame, but you want to avoid that because it costs more to replace a frame than it is to replace a door. Still though if one cannot get a power sander, or even a hand sander, one can use a wood plane to do the job. Did you do this? No.
What you did instead was use a wood chisel on the door frame of one door, and a straight-razor tool (used for scraping) on the others damaging the grain of the wood in the process.
Oh it gets better too. You short out the power in the apartment without warning to the tenant known for running a Server level PC, then leave the power off for hours waiting for a qualified electrician to stop by and fix the plug/switch combination in the bathroom because you were unfamiliar with wiring done when you took the property years prior. A job I will add that was completed in less than 10 minutes by a qualified electrician.
And the coup de grâce was the faucet. Even after having to come and go for hours trying to get the proper equipment to mount the faucet to the sink, one of the connectors was broken in the process (citing poor craftsmanship of the part) and without the use of an incredible amount of plumbing (AKA Teflon) tape — it would’ve been left leaking worse than the original faucet. As it stands it still leaks, but though sediment and calcification it’s less than a ½ teaspoon a day.
A job that might have taken 2, maybe 2½ hours if done by professionals took more than 8 hours by you. During that time, your lazy ass tried to bribe me into doing the work you should have done properly (and efficiently) the first time through. And to make matters worse, I had other things to do with my time and had to still chase you for two of the things on the laundry list (insulation on the back entrance door, and the electrical outlet in the spare room.
The example that I give is considered a “fast” response. If the tenant’s skin was anything other than… pink… he would take longer to respond. In one instance, days to a week before he would contact the tenant. I had been there when he had refused to accept calls from one of the tenants (the very one with a severe cockroach infestation) allowing it to go to voicemail and making excuses to me saying, “that’s his way of reminding me I need to go to his apartment.”
Then there was the problem with cockroaches and mice in the apartment building. While I would like to applaud you for the almost timely response you took to handling the problem November of 2013, this issue has been ongoing for the entire time I had been living here. In fact, it was brought to my attention by the Hispanic family that had 3 of the 6 apartments in this building. An issue that they brought up to you for months, eventually getting tired of the non-activity and moving out somewhere else. In fact, if looked at from an outsider’s point of view, the only difference between the issues 2 years ago and now was 1. You had to clean the apartment that was the most heavily infested (it would never sell if any cockroaches ran across the floor), and 2. the majority of the house at the time are RISD alums — a college you get your interns from.
This list goes on, with each and every tenant getting fed up with the sloth and non-activity of maintaining the property and moving elsewhere. And yet each and every time they moved out — they left not only a hell of a mess, but “surprises” as well. Like the tenant that stained the bathtub with oil-based paint that had set and was impossible to remove even with hours of thinner soaking in it. Like the same tenant leaving you with a $3,000 water bill (something you stated had something to do with growing marijuana in the house), Like the other tenant that stuffed handi-wipes down the toilet to the point that the only way to fix that was to rooter the sewer system. Like the cockroach problem that you had to get a monthly exterminator contract for.
You have made excuses for all this blaming it on the horrible attitude of these tenants, never once admitting or even contemplating, these are the actions of people tired of being shit upon. By society and most importantly by you through your inactivity, poor experience and ignorance. Problems that could have been easily avoided using a simple matter of policing the area on a regular basis. Something that can be done by simply doing your job on the property that’s yours to do: weekly clean up of the property of refuse and leaves. Shoveling when needed. Hell even stopping by routinely after a complaint and ensuring the complaint is taken care of. It’s not as though you can’t do this. Your Galleries are just a stone’s throw from the three buildings in the neighborhood.
Yes, let me make something clear here — it’s your responsibility to ensure the sidewalks, parking lot, even walkways are clear on these properties — not the tenants. You can either do it yourself, use your eligible to drive sons to do it, or some third party with a plow and snow-blower (it’ll be cheaper and more efficient than just shoveling). And don’t throw a fit when your tenants refuse to do it. It’s not their property, they’re not responsible for and lawsuits that might occur… And if they feel like being generous about it — you are still responsible to ensuring the shoveling for the property was done correctly according to RI law, not the tenants.
The thing is, out of the 26 months that I’ve been here, I’ve seen next to nothing of that rent money put back into the properties you manage in this neighborhood. You have two apartments on the first floor of one building and the first, second and third floor of the second that are missing storm windows for the last two winters. The one apartment building that seems to be in somewhat decent is — not coincidentally — the one that you use for materials storage, which also used to be the one you had an office in for years that is now the apartment of a Providence Police Detective.
All it takes is someone with a high school education to figure out that if rent is $600 a month for 14 apartments for 1 years, you’re looking at more than $100,000 ($100,800.00 actually) gross income. And rest assured I know, you charge $100 – 200 more a month for the other apartments to cover the costs of an apartment filled with artwork that looks more like a hoarders nest than a storage area. You blurt this out to prove to me by charging what you charge for my apartment, you’re a “good and giving” man. Add in the factors of how little you put for costs for renovating/cleaning up the apartments when the previous tenants move out of the apartment, it doesn’t take a detective the likes of Sherlock Holmes to figure out — barring personal living expenses for the litter of kids you spawned into this world — where the majority of that money’s been funneled: the art galleries and art mobile sitting there doing little.
No let me take one thing back as I sit here and wrap this up. The art gallery does one thing for you actually: it creates the illusion that you’re a giving person to the art community by promoting local artists. A philanthropist to the Rhode Island Art Community for more than a decade. It makes me wonder what that very community would think of you if they found out how much of a slum lord you are, how you use people and pay them under the table (and without tax record, I strongly suspect) for either less than their worth and in one case even below minimum wage. How you use people ’til they can’t take you any more — hell even can’t stand your guts at all. And when they give up, how you slander them for their disgust in you and your “sparkling” personality.
Friends and family keep telling me, “let it go…”, “move out and move on…” But the thing is, I feel like this has been going on for a long time. And if I were to do like so many others before this, when will it end? How many more people are you going to use before they either take you to court or even beat the living shit out of you for being such a dreg. A douche bag.
If I had my way, I would personally find a bit of enjoyment punching your teeth so far down your throat, you’d be biting your asshole while you were taking a shit. But as it stands, as we are supposed to be part of a civilized society the only restitution I have is to not pay you until the current problems have been properly handled, or take you to court for your gross negligence in maintaining a safe (not to mention clean and efficient) living environment. A clean community that tenants and residents can take a certain amount of pride for living in. And pray I don’t go back to my old ways and becoming an activist… that’s when it’ll get truly ugly.
In Disgust,
Michael Andrew Baldelli
P.S. While three of your residents at this property are non-drivers (myself one of them) does not mean we’re second class citizens. This does not automatically give you carte blanche permission to be parking your expired/no license plate piece of shit vehicles here, nor leaving a tenant’s junked car sitting there for months (and in their previous location years) at a time un-monitored, un-maintained and unkempt. I know for a fact that two of these three tenants have people that come to visit them routinely, and given the dangers of parking on the road can get rather difficult between the construction and the speeding tow trucks for the junkyard at the end of the road… Well, let’s just say we pay rent and we see signs in the parking lot these spaces are assigned to the apartments in question. Just because this area can be considered “private property” does not mean they’re immune from other laws about what looks like “abandoned vehicles”. Especially when such toxic chemicals such as gasoline and oil (not to mention steering fluids) leak into the water table (remember – there’s a drainage gutter that leads directly to the Woonasquatucket River which is considered EPA protected)
You once suggested to a tenant that he sell his other broken down vehicle for money (to pay off an outstanding debt). I strongly suggest you heed your own advice in this.
Here’s a few of my “favorite” things…
Entry 03/18/2013 07:37:53 AM – Mentat 682
“The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom…” – Bell Hooks
Once again I’m aware of the fact that it’s been a number of weeks since I’ve last written. And while it’s no excuse for it (even if I’m feeling the need for it), truth be told it’s only been recently that there’s anything that’s been truly newsworthy enough to sit down and write a journal entry. I mean sure, there’s been quite a lot of niggling things going on, but it’s not as though I need to sit down and write every time that it occurred; the problem with that it is that I often have such entries turning out more frivolous than necessary. But now, yes… As I said, there’s events to talk about.
First things first is that the douchebag that had been living below me has finally moved his “the world owes me everything” ghetto ass out of the apartment. Since just before Christmas I’ve had to put up with rap and urban music from about 9 in the morning until 9 in the evening — sometimes even later depending on whatever the hell was going on between him and his on-again/off-again girlfriend/wife/whatever. Then there’s the fighting that the two of them would have going on at all times of the day and night. There were more times than naught dealing with police out in front of the house in equal measures between them and the downstairs couple next door. And it seems that last week even the police showing up here for the third floor men last Thursday, but I’ve yet to get the details on that the last couple of days. Oh, and let’s not forget the amount of noise his two kids used to make at 5 – 5:30 in the morning banging with the cribs or on the walls because they were bored and wanted to get up. It was enough to wake me up before my morning alarm and I’m considered a heavy sleeper. Then there was the noise from them during the weekend where I swore heavy pieces of furniture were being thrown around the apartment. At first I thought it was fighting, until I take my earbuds out and realize that I can hear the little rug-rats screeching with glee that I realized that they were playing. Believe me, I called the cops a couple of times and while they would quiet down for a day or two, the noise would return unabated. Eventually I gave up and kept to myself waiting patiently given that my landlord told me that they were moving out a couple of months earlier.
Then there’s the amount of garbage the two first floor apartments used to generate. All right, I’m one person and I’m lucky to generate a bag of garbage every 6 or so weeks. Usually a bit more during the summer because I don’t want fruit flies buzzing about the garbage and the house. The Guatemalans upstairs and the asshole next door can usually generate about a bag of trash a week or two. However, between the two families downstairs, both with two kids each, they would generate six garbage cans full each week! Seriously I don’t even remember when Jon and I were young seeing that much garbage going out the door like what these two downstairs would generate each! And to make matters worse — both of them are frelling pigs. Neither of them really tie up the bags when they threw them out and if any of the garbage fell out onto the ground — including soiled diapers — they would leave it wherever it fell on the ground. I even had to give up complaining about that given the landlord did nothing about discussing the issue with them, or he simply gave up because they would give him flack and do it anyway. And direct confrontation did nothing as well. If anything they would generate more trash on the ground in spite of Jim, Julian (the upstairs neighbors that no longer live here) and I throwing it into their part of the first floor hallway to get their attention.
As I understand it, the other couple on the first floor are supposed to be moving out soon. While it will put a financial burden on the apartments here, at least I’m hoping the amount of garbage I’ve been seeing on the ground since the two of them have been here should lessen. Not to mention less police visits for disturbing the peace and domestic violence… Although given what I’ve been seeing going into the basement this weekend, I get the impression that they’re not moving like they said they would be. If anything it seems more of their garbage is being moved into the basement like it’s their own personal storage space. I’d hate to break the news to them but that’s not how it’s going to work here given that a majority of the douchebag’s (the next door douchebag) paintings that he tried to store in the basement were moved out thanks to fire code violations.
Then there’s the serious WTF moment up the street at Amherst. A week or so ago, I put the barrels out there and come back the next morning to see that one of them had in fact been stolen. Telling the landlord this, he says something about it possibly being taken into one of the apartments for cleaning (yeah, I’m having problems imagining that this is the case, but stay with me here). A day or so later at the other apartments on Tuxedo seem to have had some sort of fight and decided to throw one of the roommates out. This also involved about 30 bags of trash in the process most of which ended up going into the trash cans for both Tuxedo and Amherst and including one of the recycle bins in the process.
Seriously they were told that the recycle bins were just that, but did that stop the 20-somethings from doing what they did? Of course not. And further, looking at this sort of thing coupled with the idiots here at my apartment, I’m beginning to feel really old and crotchety because it seems that it’s selfish, self-centered 20-somethings that think they can make up their own rules as they see fit. It makes me wonder whether they were actually raised to be responsible or are they just that stupid not to know any better because they run on the belief that “it’s not theirs”. In either case, I’m in no mood to be cleaning up their mess and there’s positively no amount of money in the world that will have me sorting out other people’s trash because they’re too stupid to know any better. And if there is a possibility of my doing it, I would be charging a month’s rent per clean up; because that’s how pissed off I’d be having to clear up other people’s stupidity (and selfishness) with their trash and recycling.
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As for me… Well, I’m having breakfast, listening to my coffee maker sputtering as it tells me in its own way that the coffee is done brewing and watching a couple of shows that I’m finding myself having a difficult time trying to watch. It seems that I’m finding it more and more difficult to sit here and watch the shows that I used to enjoy watching. At first I thought that it was a personal problem, but I’m more than happily cutting through the various gay-related soap operas clips that I watch on YouTube for hours at a time. No, it’s more the fact that the writing in at least two of the shows that I’m still watching is becoming more and more… vapid. The stories seemed, rushed… contrived… Not to mention extremely predictable… And lack the sort of elements that I like watching.
Hell, take Arrow for example. The more than I watch Stephen Amell playing the role of Oliver Queen — the more I see that he was picked not for his acting ability, but for his chest, washboard abs, chiseled jaw and piercing blue eyes. The more he acts, the more I see just how bloody empty he is. Acquaintances and people on Usenet are telling me that it was a character development problem and that it was slow at the beginning. I disagreed vehemently stating that he was better when he was secretive and calculating and that if anything they’re dumbing down his character in order to make his partner Diggle (played by David Ramsey) look more wise. Dumbing down never works with me and I get off-put by the story faster than you can say, “Oi! Skinny man!”
And then there’s Kristin Kruek in Beauty and the Beast… When they finally got rid of the sexual tension and made Katherine kiss Vincent she’s become a quivering stupid mess. Watching the most recent episode “Any Means Possible”, they making Katherine too doe-in-the-headlights like and adding way too much “catch the beast” dragnet drama. Especially with Sendhil Ramamurthy as the ADA out to catch Vincent. It’s like the time JJ Abrams and his two other ass-monkeys (otherwise known as Orczi and Kurtzman) did to Jennifer Garner’s character — Sydney Bristow — in Alias the instant that she slept with Michael Vaughn (played by Michael Vartan). They basically turned her from super agent able to take on SD-6 and the world into.. W-O-M-A-N: an agent incapable of independent thought and action without the approval of the man that she’s opened her legs for. I’m feeling like I want to bail on the Beauty and the Beast because of this (like I did with Alias when they jumped the last shark that I could tolerate for season 4) as well.
Sitting here and writing this, I definitely think should be getting back into reading books. At least with books they can do things and go places that television can’t go: getting into a character’s head. Not to mention doing intricate back story that doesn’t have to be squeezed into a 40 minute episode timeslot. And a place where only bad writers will change premises between books in a series. Although given that I have three books here in my queue (Empire State, Game of Thrones and Seeker) not to mention all the books on my eBook reader… I’m not entirely sure I’m up to reading in bed, given that will last for about 5 minutes before I pass out snoring loud enough to wake the dead. But I’ll consider it given that I’m going to be needing a break from something else soon enough.
Another thing that I was thinking about last week occurred when I saw a message in one of the communities that I’m part of. Seemed that it’s coming up on that time of year when the “National Day of Silence” occurs and seeing someone commenting on it and waffling, I ended up looking for the entry and posting a copy of it to the thread. I reread the entry to ensure that my feeling that I had written about the event hadn’t changed (it didn’t, I still think it’s a step in the wrong direction, though I digress), and after a bit of going through other journal entries, I recall that the feeling that I had when I was writing those entries wasn’t quite the Sisyphean task of journal entry. And then I realized in scanning some of the entries what one of the problem was… I had been writing with an emotional element that I haven’t been quite feeling for quite some time: unrequited love.
Yes, the very thing that often leaves me a quivering and gibbering mess… the very thing that I would prefer to express and not be so well hidden in the recesses of my heart and mind. The very thing that after a while, I get tired of having and hiding and want to be rid of it entirely if I cannot express it and it’s not going to be reciprocated. Here’s the thing though; I know what it is that I need from it in order to write the way that I do: from the heart. From the wild hair that sometimes ends up across my ass about something. It’s the friction that comes from not only wanting to do and say the right thing, but also the part that comes from competing for someone else’s affections. That showing off the best parts of me to prove that I’m worthy.
Strange thing that as I’m sitting here. I have no problems with self-love at all. I am comfortable with myself enough that I have no problems with all these thoughts and what not in my head. But I lack the sort of friction that will get me going in such a way as to go off on some sort of tear. In essence, I’m too comfortable and far too calm for that sort of internal friction anymore. In either case, it’s something that I’m going to have to work out…
Which leads me to the last part of this journal entry… A part that I’ve been holding off writing about because it’s involving another human being. While it’s easy to keep the person anonymous (as I haven done in the past with other people that have requested anonymity), I find it to be a somewhat difficult path to be walking given that it’s going to involve a lot of complex descriptions that I’m not used to expressing in type. Sure, I can say it aloud easily enough. But putting it down to words leads to misinterpretation in ways that can do more harm than good. So… With that in mind, I’m going to press on with this when I get home as I should be getting ready for work at the moment… I’ll see if I can’t put a bit more thought into it before I begin writing it down. Until later perhaps.
In the Aftermath of Journalistic Drama Queens
Entry 10/31/2012 10:23:38 AM – Mentat 669
I find my looking back over the last week, with a sort of combination of smugness and disgust. Smugness in the fact that while Hurricane Sandy did it’s damage 300 miles (483 km) south and west of here, I could tell that by the pattern the storm was traveling it wasn’t going to do much of anything other than in the usual southern areas of the state (which is typical when you look back at the history of hurricanes that struck the area). Disgust in the fact that the meteorologists and news reporters for the big three stations (WPRI-12, WJAR-10 and WLNE-6) had sensationalized the news so much that it had caused too many of the locals to panic needlessly. I mean, sure it’s one thing to report the probability and the potentiality of problems that both Tropical Storms and Hurricanes can bring to both the coast as well as the low-lying areas of the state(s). But the way that they were making it, combined with the word Nor’easter (proper as it was) — using it locally did in fact cause an even bigger panic than usual. Hell, it was almost amusing listening to my aunt that had called a couple of days later (and three days before the storm was going to hit land) when she said to me that we’d be getting a blizzard in the process. While that might have been true of the Virginia and DC area, as all hurricanes turn counterclockwise (as it does in the northern hemisphere), this meant that we here in the northern states would be getting the warmer (and even tropical air) of the mid-Atlantic states, and simultaneously the mid-Atlantic would be getting the colder/arctic winds that we’d be getting for this time of year.
Instead, I simply told here that the temperatures were too warm for snow, and the path of the Hurricane (at the time) was continuing its way toward New Jersey as expected and reported by the NOAA.
By about the weekend, I simply gave up listening to the news. Local news continued to make such a big stink of the looming disaster in the making, and simply paid attention to what the NOAA was reporting without the local commentary. My landlord (and manager) made routine calls from around Friday through Sunday asking for status updates and checking to see if the checklist of things that he wanted me to do for the three properties here in my neck of the neighborhood had been taken care of.
Each time he called, I continued to stress to him to stop listening to both the local news (that he had watched from his iPhone) along with the news that he had been watching in the area (he’s currently on vacation in the New York area). I advised him that the news is no longer doing its job of reporting responsibly and is whipping the sheep in the area into a right, frightful panic. If he wanted to know what was going on with the storm, to tune into sights like the NOAA that are simply reporting the storm and trajectory allowing him to interpret what he saw in his own way (from the years of experience of living through such weather). I also told him that each of the projects that he had requested were done, and all that we could do here in the Tundras of New England was to take a typical “wait and see” approach to where the storm’s heading and what’s to be expected if the worst does in fact happen.
The thing is though, by Monday — the weather that I could see for my area (Providence) was nowhere where it should have been for a life and property threatening storm. With the exclusion of the occasional to routine gusts of wind, that this was going to be a simple rainstorm. While the local weather stations and the National Weather Service were reporting continued gusts of wind and rain through to Midnight, I didn’t see much rain and even less wind by 8 PM that evening. And even more amazing was the fact that the power — which is well known for going out in my area during a stiff breeze — didn’t once falter. Not a blink.
Tuesday morning there was still rain and reports showed that we’d continue to see rain (but little wind) over the next two days.
My mother and I headed out to do the bi-weekly laundry, and for a moment when we got to the local laundromat at the butt-crack of dawn thought that the owner wasn’t going to make it in. Turned out we showed up the same time he did, and he let us in turning on the televisions to the local news and weather channel, which was reporting non-stop on the aftermath.
While having morning coffee and between loads heading from the washer and dryer, the caffeine kicked in and I started catching some of the things being said on the television. The first that I caught was listening to some Connecticut Official (not sure if it were a mayor of the governor of the state… I’m guessing it was a Mayor), talking about how if there’s flood waters to “go to the highest portion of the house.”
After I picked up my jaw from the floor where it hit, I thought, “Umm, no. If you see flooding in your area, you get the hell out. If it looks too dangerous, only then do you look for the highest part of your house to escape it.” I couldn’t be sure whether or not the news had edited it for content, or whether the elected official was that stupid to say it…
The second, which got me thinking, was listening to a reporter in New York City talking about the flooding and how the cars had been “strewn” about the road because of the flood waters. For the next three sentences it became apparent that strewn was his word of the day as he used it several more times. He then wrapped it up talking about how the subway system was 180 years old and that they got flooded and how this was the worst storm ever because of that. He went on further to say, ‘this was the worst storm ever.’
Something told me he wasn’t quite right about that and so when I got home I did a little bit of research. First off, the subway system in New York City wasn’t 180 years old, but in fact only a small portion of it is 143 years old. The other is that friends reminded me when I talked with them about it later on that there was worse flooding that occurred with Doria in 1971, Beryl in 1994, and Bertha in 1996 were in fact worse. And let’s face it compared to Hurricane Sandy; Hurricanes Edna, Carol and the Great Hurricane were infinitely worse in the 20th century.
It makes me wonder as I sit here working on this journal entry; has news reporting truly sunk to even lower lows on fact checking and being responsible when reporting the news? I can’t but think that ‘yeah, it has.’ It’s one thing to report the news — particularly when it comes to the dangers that happen with Mother Nature in all her fury. But when the news seems to be a cascade between warning locals of the potentials of reporting the impending problems with a Hurricane, Tropical Storm, Blizzard, and so on… to double barreling it with news stories showing people panicking by making runs to the local hardware chains (like Lowe’s, Home Depot, Ace, etc.) and selling out Portable Generators and about the usual milk and bread runs (sell-outs) at the local supermarkets, isn’t that the line where responsible news reporting stops, and creating a panic begins?
I seem to remember some time after the Arizona Representative’s (Gabrielle Gifford‘s) shooting something about the how rhetoric was (partly or wholly) responsible for this shooting occurring and how journalists were going to be more responsible about such things in the future to prevent such calamity occurring. While this seems to be true as the only political rhetoric that seemed to be generated at the moment isn’t from the news sources at the moment, but in fact the politicians trying to get into office, I wonder… Is it going to take a death (or serious harm) due to stampede or panic to get News Sources and Reporters to stop with whipping people into a froth because of FUD and/or exaggerated (and often egregious) facts?
I could impart tons of Common Sense to this, but the thing that I’m learning more and more as I get older is that “Common Sense is neither common, nor sensical.” The only thing that I can impart though is, “stay to good judgment and knowing one’s limits”. Well that and keeping a level head the entire time.
Anyway, I’m off for a bit. I have some work that needs to be done. I’ll be back later on to talk about the rest of what’s going on.
[Last Edited: 10/31/2012 02:58:24 PM]
Well that particular project took less time than I thought it would… Two hours less time than I thought. But then again there’s only just so much you can do about painting wires and pipes on a wall without pouring paint onto them to make them a uniform white. Only problem with that approach is that you’ll get paint stalactites off of them (and that’s not what one wants to have happen with a wall that’s going to be used to display artwork). But I digress…
So in the last week while surviving the non-drama of Hurricane Sandy, I made the decision to join NaNoWriMo in the hopes of getting over the long-standing malaise of writer’s block. In the last three days, while I’ve had plenty of time to think of a story that I could possibly write, I haven’t had any bloody idea what I should give a go with. I thought about doing the sequel to Companion but it seems to be a cheat; not because I have parts of it written already, but because it’s something that I really need to do. Not to mention that it seems almost wrong given if I were to do the sequel there’s no point to the original on the site.
I thought about doing Symbiosis. It’s an original. It’s a draft I could re-write the story from scratch without any problem. After all the draft is taken from the perspective of the alien that ends up off-course from Earth, with a sub-set of the story ending up with the human. I could always turn the story around and do the opposite for the site. Still though, I did struggle at the point of getting to the under-ice base and couldn’t for the life of me choose a direction, in spite of the fact that I knew the end result from beginning to end. Yeah, that was definitely part of the writer’s block — at least for that story.
Hell, I could always choose something completely different out of my head. The only thing is… What?
In any case, it starts officially in about 8 hours, and given the choices, I might go with Romance or Science Fiction — my two modus operandi. Hell, I could always do a combination of the two, which I’ve done a couple of times. Better to sleep on it tonight and see what comes to light in the morning.
That’s about it for the time being. I think I’ll watch a couple of shows that I’ve become terribly behind with and then off to take over the universe in the only way I know how. On the bridge of the USS Huntress, as she patrols the various sectors of the United Federation of Planets. Yes, I’m off to play Star Trek Online for a bit before calling it night.
Until the next time.
A Respite to the Drama
Entry 08/19/2012 09:28:40 AM – Mentat 662
“The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.” – Oscar Wilde
So yeah, it’s been more than two weeks since the last time I wrote a journal entry. And yeah, I admit readily that I’ve made way too many attempts at writing this entry. It’s not so much that I don’t have anything to say or what I’m going to say is completely frivolous; it’s because there’s still unresolved anger (and fury) when dealing with the deadbeat and the shit that he’s defecated around the homestead. Sitting here at the moment, I think I’ve made a dozen or so attempts at writing this journal entry all of which ended up derezzed in a fit of frustration and fury. I know that it’s soap opera material, and I know that it should be talked about (if only to continue to work through the anger issues that I have pent up from this unresolved nonsense), but I fear that every time I get near to it… Well, I find myself storming about the apartment and fighting impulses that I shouldn’t really be having. I might go into those if only to draw perspective for my future self when I decided to look back at this time and say to myself, “I know what I was thinking and even what I was feeling; but why did I allow it to get the better of me?” So I’ll start a bit with the frivolous before attempting to move into the issues that have been bothering me the most and hopefully they won’t end up disappearing into the ether in a fit of frustration and rage.
In spite of it being August (and usually the worst time of the year for yours truly thanks to the combination of heat and hormones), I find it’s been remarkably cooler than usual. Right now (and for the last couple of days) we’ve had rains and cooler temperatures hovering in the mid 60’s F (~18 C) thanks to the fact that once again a high pressure front cut through the area the days before. While I haven’t heard from family saying “global warming”, it’s apparent that the weather patterns have changed a bit through the area. Saw a bit on the news about jet streams and polar ice cap melting, but it’s the usual witch-doctors (otherwise called meteorologists) trying to make sense of weather patterns based on short-term history rather than things that climatologists and archeologists can see in the really long-term. While it might be a stab in the dark even for me based on my limited knowledge of long-term weather (i.e., the Year without a Summer and I remember reading that weather during some of the colonial winters here in the Tundras of New England being as high as 75 F (23.8 C), but can’t for the life of me find it online), I think it’s overall par for the course. While it’s not as hot as I recall during high school (reaching temperatures up to 100 F (37.7 C)), I recall there being weird times of hot and cooler weather going on during the end of the Summer here. Well that is before the “trade winds” change around Labor Day and we suddenly get temperatures near to 50 F (10 C) for the weekend before it picks back up. On the whole, while I have had nothing more than fans running in the house, there have been moments where I find myself complaining like an old college roommate about the house being set to “London Broil”. But at least it wasn’t like in June where I did have to rush to the Cinema at Providence Place or the Providence Public Library to enjoy some “free” air conditioning. Nah, in fact I’ve only gone out the door and down to Donigian Park a couple of times to enjoy a bit of cool under the trees and near to the Woonasquatucket River until the sun was sufficiently near to the western horizon and the temperatures were cool enough to come back into the house.
Amusingly I’ve found myself comparing the difference between summer here and in the Crotch of the Bible Belt (Atlanta, GA, USA) on a number of occasions when dealing with family and friends complaining about the temperatures being stiflingly hot and a couple of relatives kvetching at me that I really should get an air conditioner for the house. While the humidity has occasionally gone through the roof here in the Tundras of New England, on the whole the summer temps haven’t been anything like what I remember of when I used to live in the Grant Park area or Druid Hills. Really, now there’s a place where having an air conditioner for the house is mandatory. Here though? Well unless you’re elderly or infirmed, a little heat and humidity here is character building.
Heck, I even found myself secretly missing living in Atlanta if only because there was a sort of simple thrill bouncing from house and home to places that had air conditioning as a means of appreciating just how hot and humid it was south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Though I definitely don’t miss dealing with the Mid-Westerners that had flocked to the metro-Atlanta are in the 21st century. Those are some rude folk and contrary to what anyone else says — ruder than anything that I’ve encountered living back here in the New England States. Besides, living here as a long as I have, I’ve come to realize that other than driving (which everyone in the United States is rude by nature when they get behind the wheel of an automobile), New Englanders are gruff. They don’t sneer when you’re nice to them (they looked shocked more than sneer), and have actually shown more manners to me since I’ve come home than any Mid-Western transplant has done in my final months in Atlanta. Although, I know that some New Yorkers and New Jersey-ites are rude as hell — with the exclusion of the deadbeat — I’m fortunate in not having to deal with too many since coming north. So I’ll leave them out of the comparison for the time being (until I get to travelling again anyway).
As a means of staying cool (both from the occasional rises in temperature to my simmering fury at the deadbeat), I admit that I’ve been watching a lot of television programs. I’ve come across 2 sites that I would recommend for rerun television as well as new stuff that seems to be updated a hell of a lot faster than Hulu as of late: One-TVShows and WatchSeries. While a majority of the feeds are from sites in India and some are cross-linked to hell and back; it’s commercial free, it’s in good to excellent quality, and can be watched usually at any time. It seems that prime-time US/EDT is a bit slow for download/streaming, but on the whole if you don’t mind the wait until it’s completed about a third to half of the episode, it’s worthwhile to idle the time by. Heck, I’ve been able to see such shows as Space: 1999, Torchwood (seriously, the first season sucks pretty damned bad), Game of Thrones (and I’ve commented on this on Twitter already, but I’ll comment here just for the sake of it: It’s a soap opera! And friends shouldn’t ride me about my wanting to watch Emmerdale and Verboten Liebe. At least they admit to being a soap opera: Game of Thrones has some heavy denial mode of the testosterone side of the population), Thunderbirds and MacGyver. Heh! I was even able to find Battle of the Planets and remembered instantly what kind of a hack job had been made of it when they Americanized it. Checked out the reboot of Thundercats and find the jury’s out on the change in attitude for the cartoon. WatchSeries has more older shows and series (I think the earliest I scanned in the list goes back to the 50) than One-TVShows, so I’m going to have a bit of fun momentarily reliving shows from my childhood. Particularly with shows like Space: 1999 and Thunderbirds.
Another means of passing the time and keeping myself cool has been starting up the hobby of social Geocaching. I’ve been trying out the programs that I’ve had on my phone: Facebook, Google+ and yes, I did download and install (and created an account on) FourSquare. I have to say that by far the worst is FaceBook’s. First off, if the site doesn’t have a page, you have to create it. This can be really bad given that as a places editor there this has created a hell of a lot of duplicates in a hell of a lot of places. Then you can’t check into a place while you’re enroute. While it seems to be common sense — I find it to be particularly draconian given that there are times when someone would like to check into a place ahead of time if you’re a bit of a distance from. Like Fenway Park if you’re in Providence — as it’s an hour away and when one’s there might forget to check in. G+ and FourSquare seem to allow check-ins from anywhere — with both expecting the honesty of the user to control the user instead of the program/app. Further, both G+ and FourSquare don’t seem to rely on creating a unique page for the location; G+ seems to pull from the White and Yellow Pages for businesses and I suspect FourSquare does the same thing. The really good thing that I have to say is that FourSquare and Facebook have an integration now that allows check-ins to show up on Facebook’s Map — a definite plus if you want to see where you’ve been and why… Although for privacy G+ has this beat hands down as the check-ins only show up in a limited manner (friends that also use G+ for check-ins) and the map is only accessible to you and whoever you allow to view it. And the G+ will routinely remind the user that the application is on and is tracking (in spite of it being set to self-only).
While I haven’t actually gotten serious on social Geocaching (I’ve been a bit strapped for cash and travel has to rely more on my walking than bus/transit system), I think I’m going to go with a combination of G+ and FourSquare. While I’m not too keen on the whole “Mayorship” competition of FourSquare, I do find myself mildly amused with badge collection in spite of the fact that I find myself in agreement of the whole achievement system anywhere.
Well, I’m going to take a little break for the moment. Play a bit and then lunch before I come back and work on the rest of this.
[Last Edited: 08/20/2012 11:48:43 AM]
My word, I completely forgot that I had this journal entry started yesterday. Walked away for lunch and then some old-time television like shows, went off to my mother’s for supper, came home a bit later than I expected, watched a couple of more episodes of older television before I crashed out for the night to have weird dreams and weirder hallucinations when I was semi-conscious. Seriously, out of all of them, I think I found the semi-conscious hallucinations to be the most disturbing.
Seems that I decided to listen to a bit of music with my iPod before I passed out and when I woke up at about 2 in the morning to pluck the earbuds out of my ears and shut it off before passing out, when I looked at the cover of Oceanlab’s If I Could Fly, I distinctly remember seeing demons circling around the head of the artist on the album cover. Keep in mind they didn’t move, I think if they did, I would’ve snapped awake immediately. No instead it looked like a still shot of them included on the cover. I also remember as I looked at it, that wasn’t the cover that I recalled for the song, and that this must’ve been a new song that I didn’t realize I had downloaded. So, I shut down it off, put it on the nightstand and passed out immediately. When I woke up this morning just before the alarm went off, I took a look at the cover could make out it was something about the artist’s hair that I could see where I got the semi-conscious hallucination, but couldn’t reproduce it in my completely conscious mind. Still though, it did give me quite a bit of pause while I was making coffee this morning as I’ve never personally experienced anything quite so vivid even in my semi-conscious mind. I’m sure that I’ll be looking into this more if it continues…
There are two other things that I need to talk about, but honestly I think I’m going to avoid it. The first, I don’t want to jinx. The second, well I don’t want to deal with the incendiary rage that might flare up if I approach talking about the deadbeat. Seriously, it’s bad enough with what’s been going on with him that I don’t need to revisit the annoyances. That and I’ve done well enough with this journal entry that I don’t need to be deleting it because I don’t like the direction it’s gone. So, I think I’ll leave this one semi-frivolous for the time being while I wait patiently for resolution on at least one of these two issues.
Until the next time.
Free at Last
Entry 07/30/2012 09:01:59 AM – Mentat 661
As I sit here and realize that it’s been more than 3 weeks since I’ve last sat down to write a journal entry, I know in my heart and mind that I’m not really all that surprised that it’s been that long. Particularly when you consider that the primary reason why it’s been that long has been my fighting the rage of betrayal, being used and stolen from and the want to lash out at the culprit with my bare hands instead of taking the long, arduous (and tedious) route of going through the judicial system for restitution and compensation. Especially when you consider the saying, “you can’t get blood from a stone…” when it comes to the Waste of Human Flesh that I’ve been living with. Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself on this. Let’s continue then where I had last left off.
So I had a countdown going for the 15th of July, where I had given the deadbeat an ultimatum about moving out given that he didn’t pay rent for the month of July. I had even offered to him that I would hold his things and watch the cats if he were to take the route of checking into Butler Hospital for their alcohol rehab program given that it was apparent that he had a drinking problem as he seemed to always have beer (and sometimes harder stuff) in spite of the lack of food for him in the house. While I had given him a couple of days to consider this, in that time I had spoken with the landlord who had offered his services as a mediator to the escalating conflict that was going on with him in the apartment and freeloading off of everything. The date that he offered for the mediation was the day after the Waste of Human Flesh was supposed to have been moved out — July 16th.
Like any meeting when there’s a witness involved, the Waste of Human Flesh made the appearance of being “moderate” and even “cooperative” and “willing” to set things right. However, when it was time to “put your money where your mouth is”, it turned into another round of broken and empty promises. The thing was I was going into this meeting with the cards sort of stacked in my favor. During the fiasco toward the end of the month that I had talked about in my last journal entry was that the deadbeat was waiting for a check to come in from the PA work that he had done at the Dunkin Donuts Center for X-Factor when they were auditioning for new contestants in the area. I had the luck of being able to intercept it before he could get his hands on it. For about four days I simply held onto it as a means of leveraging payment out of him when I handed it over.
Then I started to mull over the history he’s had with me. The constant broken promises. The way money would evaporate the instant he had received any for whatever work that he had done and how it always ended up being transformed into beer or cigarettes. It’s not as though he had to worry about food — in the times that the fridge did get stocked with food, it was almost always at the hands of his ex-wife using her food stamps and welfare to feed him (a point that he had boasted about on a couple of occasions even though she had helped him carry up the groceries that had been bought). Any other times, it had been demonstrated that he would freeload off of friends who would bring food over to have a meal with them. So I opened it to verify his constant stories about how child support was bleeding money off of him.
When I saw the check, I saw no mention of garnishments being taken out. Which meant one of two things: he lied about it to me, or more likely he lied to his employer about not giving them the garnishment case number. In either case, he lied.
I was furious and disgusted.
Instead of confronting him with the evidence, instead of running to Family Courts with this, I held onto it to see whether he was going to be honest about it and pay up the money that he owed me. Particularly given that during the meeting with the landlord, I had renegotiated the deal the deadbeat and the landlord had offered about giving me half of the security deposit as waiver for the month’s rent that he owed for July. The reason for this was simple: the deadbeat has never once lifted a finger to clean the apartment and given the sad state of affairs in the two rooms that he squatted in here positively filthy (as you get a small taste of the squalor here):
And if he were to waive the security deposit for the rent, he’s get the better deal out of it… That was something I wouldn’t have. At the end of the meeting and mediation with the landlord, it had been decided that he was going to owe me a grand total of $945 ($550 as stated around the middle of June, $350 for the rent for July, and $45 for the month’s utilities that came in just prior to the mediation). I also gave the deadbeat 24 more hours to solidify how much he was going to be willing to pay when that check for his work came in.
The next day when he woke up, I told him it was time to make up his mind on how much he was willing to pay me from the check he was waiting for — he continued to waffle to set a promised amount. Fifteen minutes later he finally said he’s pay at least $100. I handed him the check and told him that I had intercepted it and was waiting to hear him commit to an amount.
He went outside to smoke a cigarette at that point. What he didn’t know is that the landlord had left the apartment across from ours unlocked and I watched him smoking the cigarette and open the envelope to see how much he had received from the work that he had done. When he came upstairs he tried to pull that he hadn’t looked at the check and that he’ll deal with paying me after he takes a look at it.
That’s when I tore into the living room as he was laying down after his smoke and “relaxing” as though he were ready to fall asleep again and hit him.
He’s damn lucky I lead with my right instead of my left as all I did was hit him with a glancing blow to the shoulder. If it were my left I could’ve easily knocked his lying ass out with one punch.
I told him flat out that I looked at his mail and that I was justified in my action given that he had continuously lied to me about payment. I didn’t trust that he was going to lie to me about something that wasn’t taken out of that check and told him that it would’ve been in his best interest to sign over the whole check as that would cover at least more than half of the $550).
Of course he refused.
I confronted him about selling the car for money which was a scrap heap and out of registration as well.
Of course, he refused that as well, saying that at the end of the month that he wouldn’t have anywhere to live and it was possible that he was going to be living out of his car (I didn’t believe that, but I’ll get to that a couple of times shortly).
In the end, he promised to pay half of a $347 check of which I told him that was unacceptable and wanted $200 — paid in cash — and wanted to see the money when I got home from a moment to get out of the house, which of course he said he would do.
And he did not. I got home two and a half hours later and found him in the same state I left the house: smoking a cigarette outside and wearing the same clothes he was wearing when he woke up from sleeping. He did take a shower though; the shower was wet when I got home. No sooner that I got home he changed his clothes and off he went. By the end of the night when he didn’t show up by the end of the night, I decided it was high time to put the chain lock back into play.
The deadbeat didn’t come home for another three days. In fact, he didn’t even try to show up at a respectable time: somewhere between 2 and 3 in the morning is when I heard him struggling with the door. I almost opened the door, but when I heard that he wasn’t alone — he brought a woman along to “protect” him from my fury — I decided to leave it locked. That’s when he threatened to call the police and have them demand to let him into the house.
Yes, the police showed up in about 20 minutes. While the police convinced me that this was the wrong decision, when I explained the amount of money that he owed and the fact that he had made a promise to pay that didn’t come through as he was gone for the last three days; one of the two officers turned around and said to him, “If you were my roommate and owed that much money, being locked out of the house would have been the least of your concerns.”
I had promised them that he was safe in the house until the morning and that the issue would be addressed with the landlord when he could be contacted.
I did get in contact with the landlord. I decided from the discussions that we had at the beginning of the month that I would be taking the apartment next door, as it was becoming painfully obvious that the deadbeat was going to be digging in and squatting at the apartment thinking that he could buy himself some time by delaying his eviction. Part of the reason why he thought this was because if I were to stay in that apartment, the landlord would feel a bit conflicted in having to evict the two of us. After all, when it came to paying rent, I had always done it on time. Without me there, then he knew his time days would be numbered.
The rest of the story was ugly, and not something I feel the want to write about. While there had been no violence, the fury that I felt in dealing with this deadbeat was a test of my patience and my limits. While I didn’t hit him again — the want is still there. Particularly given my reliving these feelings as I’ve been writing this journal entry.
I was able to move out by last Thursday.
I was able to transfer the utilities from one apartment to the other. Based on the call between the utility company and the landlord — the utilities for the apartment were shut off and locked down in the same way they did when the heroin addict was living here. In this apartment. As of right now — they remain off.
The landlord and I had a brief discussion regarding the deadbeat’s want to meet with the landlord. I did warn the landlord this is the sort of thing that the deadbeat’s well known for doing and that at the last minute he’ll change his promise about moving out and instead will continue to procrastinate about leaving. While the landlord didn’t want to believe what I said (as it was hearsay to him), I suspect that the landlord did listen.
I contacted my mother who used to work for Family Services in the Rhode Island Court System regarding the deadbeat’s habits. She in turn handed the information over to her husband who was still active within the court systems and he is being investigated for fraud and evasion of child support payments (according to my mother’s husband, it is over $20,000 in order for his federal taxes to be withheld from him when he mentioned this back in May). His wife will subsequently be investigated for Welfare and Food Stamps fraud for allowing the use of those monies to paying for his groceries.
Today, a Rhode Island Constable came to the house and knocking on my door, thought that this was Apartment 2L. As I explained to him that it’s based on the front of the building and that my name is Michael and not the deadbeat’s, he began knocking on the correct door. Before shutting the door on the Constable, I explained that the deadbeat usually stays up all hours of the night, doesn’t get to bed until 7 AM and that he’s never answered the door in the 9 months he’s lived there; the constable tried anyway before leaving a sticker on the door to call his office. Doing a little research on the Constable’s office, either the deadbeat’s been served for Child Support Evasion or Eviction papers by the landlord. Either way, I’ll know in a couple of days.
Tomorrow, once I’ve finally rid myself of the anger, impatience and fury by being played by the deadbeat; I’ll be calling a couple of numbers that had been given to me to see if I can’t arrange for a little help legally for filing this civil case against the deadbeat. More on that in the days to come.
Well, that’s about it for the time being. While I feel good to have finally gotten this all off my chest, I have to say that I hope to never revisit this again. Every time I recalled the way that he lied and used me, and ultimately stole from me the more I found myself getting up away from my desk, going outside to find him at the first opportunity and turn this civil case into a criminal case because I believed that was the only way this would be resolved.
I’m off for the time being. I have a couple of episodes I want to watch and then head to bed early. Tomorrow, I need to look into selling a few things to make rent money. Until the next time.
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