[dovate.com] » 2007 » May
Renting an apartment in an exclusive area of the city on a relatively low salary can be a treacherous thing. I believe that I’ve found myself in a good situation – finally – but today was punctuated with the worst tenant to landlord conversation I’ve ever had. This was a conversation with my old landlord, or the batshit crazy old bitch whose proper name I won’t use here.
For 2 years I was a good tenant. I paid my rent on time and I complained little. I didn’t hassle her when 100 pounds of brick dust fell into my closet. I cleaned it up, washed all my clothes and installed a drop cloth. She knew about the problem, but how much can you do when the house is slowly falling down?
When she kept the heat low I didn’t do like some of my neighbors and bother her about it. What good would it do? She never turned the heat up. During the cold winter of 2005-6, she turned it down and put a locking box over the thermostat. She said oil prices were too high. Even though the apartment had a misfit old door with 2-3 inch gaps open to an uninsulated back porch area, I didn’t complain. I hung a heavy blanket in front of it to keep out the winter air. I put on a sweater and drank tea in the evenings. By choice or by circumstance, my liberal ass considered it my civic duty to conserve energy.
When one of her workmen repeatedly broke into my apartment and stole beer out of my refrigerator, I did complain. I have to say she was nice enough to change my locks. Good for her.
When she wrote me a nasty letter about things in the hall (that weren’t mine) I left her a polite message letting her know that her nasty letter was directed to the wrong person. I never heard back from her. When things broke… like the front door, I was a good tenant and fixed it so that other tenants could enter and/or exit the building. I never whined about not having luxuries like a fire exit or locks on my windows.
Why was I so mute to all these problems? Because she wasn’t the worst landlord I’ve had. All I’ll say on that is that in an old apartment there was a toilet in the unit above mine. Just before I moved in a man died on that toilet. He sat there for a week. Now that’s not the landlord’s fault. It was really just a combination of a weak blood vessel in the brain of a person who didn’t have any friends. The smell is what finally got someone’s attention.
After he was removed, they decided not to replace the toilet. Even thought it leaked a lot, the workmen were able to save their boss a few bucks by scrubbing the putrefied flesh off the enamel. They told me all about it while later investigating one of those leaks in my apartment. Eventually the toilet fractured, cracking in half and spilling raw sewage into my hallway. I really complained after that.
I won’t even get into the mold, flies and snowdrifts.
This was also the same landlord that sued a friend of mine after a (sober) girl leaving his apartment fell over a 4th story shin-high banister and fell – absolutely horribly – to her death. They were a real class act.
But getting back to my more recent landlord and today’s conversation, in a few hours, my lease terminates for good. I received a note – pinned to my door – outlining what I needed to do before vacating. It was the usual stuff, clean, scrub, paint… (Paint?) I cleaned, but I have to admit that I didn’t paint.
She left it to me to arrange the return of the keys. The note said something like: “It is your responsibility to arrange to return the keys to me by 12 noon on May 31, 2007.” The problem was she doesn’t pick up her phone. Her mother – who does sometimes pick up – doesn’t take messages and told me that she wouldn’t return calls. This made my listed duty of arranging the exchange kind of difficult. Since my only real communications with her have been by mail, I figured I’d just send them to her that way.
Then this morning she calls me to let me know that she expects me to get her the keys within the hour. I told her I was at work and asked if maybe we could work something else out. Bitch flipped out. She screamed, she yelled and eventually she hung up on me. So now I’m complaining. Along with this screed here, I will return her keys to her by mail. Since she hasn’t returned the call I made to her after she hung up on me, I guess I’ll go ahead and send them that way. I’m thinking I should get certified mail with some kind of delivery confirmation.
Years ago, I wrote fake product reviews for epinions.com. Eventually I was banned from the site, but I stand by my work. This is my review for “Ropel Animal, Rodent and Bird Repellent.”
What excited me most about my new house in suburban Philadelphia was my 3½ acre yard. The yard in fact, sold me on the house. Sure it needed a little work, but it would be a calming activity to cultivate the land to my liking. The overgrown lush greenery and chaotic flowerbeds stretched across the rolling yardscape, before dropping suddenly into a small valley cut by a rushing creek full of crawdads and tiny speckled fish. In the evenings deer would emerge from the nearby woods and graze on my lawn. Occasionally a groundhog would stick his head from an underground den, or go lumbering clumsily across my yard.
The place obviously needed work. Before my new yard could be arranged to a simple state of subtle beauty I found that it would be necessary to repel nature with an abrasive chemical spray. I purchased several industrial drums of Ropel Animal, Rodent and Bird Repellent on the advice of a friend. It advertised a repellent force to nearly every creature disturbing the desired order of my yard. Pesky squirrels, groundhogs, deer, rabbits, cats, dogs, mice, moles, songbirds, doves, raccoons and possums would no longer be a problem. I immediately went to work. I sprayed the trees to repel the birds. I coated every plant and inch of lawn to deal with the larger mammals. Through a homemade siphon, I pumped the chemical liquid into the ground. I even poured some into the babbling brook which ran through my property to see if it would repel fish as well. The fish were not repelled, but instead, died.
I am an admirer of nature and had no intention of killing the local marine life. Instead of continuing with lethal water treatments, I dammed up the river with concrete blocks at the property line and salted the riverbed to rid the earth of worms and parasites. On land, the repellent worked, but was not all and entirely effective. Often I would wake to the sounds of birds in my yard. Still, a squirrel could be spotted scurrying across my lawn, or a rabbit nibbling on a length of grass. High frequency sound machines, air rifle surveillance and even chemical sprays proved only to be a “band-aid solution” to the overall problem of free-roaming nature. Taking the tactics I had learned from the “creek solution” and aesthetic sensibilities drawn from local, suburban commercial districts, I leveled the yard, flattened the land and finished it with the permanence and strength of 6-inch layer of concrete.
The concrete did the trick and I learned a valuable lesson. Nature begets nature. Particular elements of the natural world cannot be removed. To remove nature - as became my ultimate goal - nature must be conquered and obliterated; paved, fenced in and dammed off. As I said, I have nothing against the natural world, in fact I quite enjoy “getting back to nature” from time to time. Just not at home, during the work week. Nature should be allowed to thrive in an allotted space, like in our many great National Parks. Everything has its place. Nature should, like in my yard, be isolated and cordoned into a planned field of existence, while the rest of the world should be allowed to thrive as to the dictation and planning of Earth’s ultimate masters; mankind.
I love my new yard. Ropel Animal, Rodent and Bird Repellant may serve as a temporary and attractive solution, but you will learn, just as I did, that if you wish to control nature, it’s all or nothing. Nature must be obliterated.
This morning I was greeted by a sad email from Germ Bookstore. It began:
Staff, friends and patrons of Germ Books mourn our beloved founder, Jennifer Yael Bates, who died on May 17, 2007, after a 20-month struggle with leukemia.
Ms. Bates’ passing eerily coincides with the Fishtown bookstore’s long-planned relocation from 308 East Girard Avenue to 2005 Frankford Avenue…
My only contact with Jennifer was by email. She had theories about the Toynbee tiler. Those theories never panned out, but they were definitely interesting.
Germ Books specializes in books about UFO’s, the occult, conspiracies and the supernatural. For the rest of this post, I want to talk about something I don’t mention nearly enough around here: My lifelong love of UFO’s.
Huh?
Why do I love UFO’s? If you want to see how religions are fostered and grown, UFO’s are the current theistic ground zero. UFO culture and lore is absolutely, without question the beginnings of a new religion.
All UFO/alien stories bring gods down to a level close to human. They’re beings like us, intellectually superior, but neither omnipotent or omniscient. Just like all old religions, these new gods are in collaboration with our leaders. Unlike old religions, this collaboration doesn’t grant our leaders legitimacy, it makes them sinister, conspiratorial and something to be feared. This attitude towards government and leadership is a radical departure from nearly all of human history. In most UFO lore, gods and government are the enemy. That’s interesting.
But not all the alien myths see extraterrestrials as the enemy. Some stories couldn’t care less about government. On the new agey side of the lore, aliens are our brethren and teachers. Their purpose here is good and benevolent. Most stories are a mix of these 2 strains of thought. I love reading the myths and find them endlessly interesting and entertaining.
Overall, we see the beginning of a polytheistic faith with races of competing demi gods. Some are good, some are not, some can’t be described as either. Humans are much lower and are often pawns in their affairs. Our leaders are sometimes aliens themselves or in other stories merely in collaboration with them. Some aliens feed on our energy - mainly fear - while others are benevolent. The earth and all of humanity is some sort of experiment. (creationism/evolution) That experiment is in grave danger of termination. (Armageddon) The aliens are in some sort of ‘war’ or dispute over this. Love is the pure energy that transcends all else and serves as the real “God.” (Jesus/The Matrix)
While humans are pawns, being human (through reincarnation) is a really big fad among the dead soul community. Human life is apparently a much sought after incident. The emotional blindness and the visceral and primal emotional experience are like crack for interested souls.
Now I know this sounds insane, but it’s no crazier than any religion… which brings me back to the point that this is the festering theology of some sort of proto-religion. In 1000 years it’ll have a name and a lot of money.
So… do I believe that “they” are out there?
There’s a third group of people, best described as rationalists. This group is full of scientists, astronauts, historians, U.S. Presidents and plenty of other well regarded “nutjobs.” They disregard most or all religious and conspiratorial aspects of UFO stories, but acknowledge that there are occasionally some very compelling and unexplainable examples objects that fly and can’t be identified. What are they then? I have absolutely no idea.
I’ve never seen a UFO (with 1 exception that wasn’t quite spectacular enough to call entirely out of this world) but have spoken with people I trust that have seen some very strange things in the sky. The best story is from the rocky shores of Maine.
Many years ago, a good friend and his family sat on the beach, watching the stars when 2 objects appeared and “danced” over the horizon. They moved like insects, seemingly weightless and unaffected by mass or gravity. They moved like that, but they moved with incredible intelligence. He described it as beautiful. The experience affected him profoundly. Along with my friend and his family a dozen other witnesses were on the beach that night. They all watched in awe.
The objects were clearly solid and moving in 3 dimensions. The approached, receded, gained and dropped in altitude. All of this was done at impossible speed with impossible maneuverability. After about 10-20 minutes they stopped dead and one at a time shot into the sky and out of sight.
Years later, the video for Radiohead’s (sort of the token pop-band for this new religion, listen to the lyrics and read my synopsis of the new religion again) “Pyramid Song” was released. My friend told me that the UFO’s featured at the end of this video looked “exactly” like what he saw. Here’s the video:
What were they? I have no idea. I’m pretty sure they weren’t swamp gas, satellites or the planet Venus. Other than that, I have no comment.
Rest well Ms. Yael Bates.
I had a supposed Art History teacher who constantly repeated the phrase “esoteric knowledge, be careful how you use it.” He told us that Spartan women didn’t shave their legs, so that they’d look more like men in battle. He also called all the girls in my class who wore dark clothes or torn jeans satan worshipping witches with an evil lesbian agenda. When he died, no one found him for a week. Eventually the school wondered why he hadn’t shown up or called out. Someone made a call. They found him in his apartment.
My 6th grade science teacher incubated chicken eggs in our classroom. We watched them hatch and saw them grow. One day we found all our chicks floating in a jar of formaldehyde. In the same class, we had a goldfish. When it died of natural causes, the teacher prepared a handout titled “the day our fish died.” He cried in front of the class. Someone put tacks on his chair and he was on leave for a month.
In 2nd or 3rd grade I had a bus driver who used to threaten the kids, drink beer and drive with the door open. Some of the kids complained to their parents. When confronted, he accused of conspiring against him and wouldn’t let us off the bus. He was transferred to another route.
In 6th grade all the kids who had done well on an IQ test were bussed to a school for physically and mentally handicapped children. Our classroom had an observation chamber behind a 2-way mirror. It also had a padded closet. We watched dystopian movies like 1984, Farenhight 451, Animal Farm and videos about the Holocaust. In the hallways deformed children cried and screamed. I still wonder what in the hell was going on with all that.
Also in 6th grade I had an English teacher with an unusual teaching method. On Monday morning she’d write our assignments for the week on the blackboard. Then she’d go to the back of the room and watch talk shows on a small black and white TV until Friday. She also ate a lot of hoagies. One time my friend was playing tag during class when he knocked the UHF dial off her television. She demanded that he pay for the repair.
This is a selection of lowlights from 3 of the best public schools in the city. On average it wasn’t this bad. I don’t mean this to be a reflection of the Philly public school system as a whole, I just wanted it to be entertaining.
I’ve moved and mainly readjusted which means that I can go back to wasting time writing worthless content for this site that I find it necessary to maintain. With these glowing words of endorsement, here’s today’s thing:
Until a few days ago, I lived at 10th and Spruce. At 939 Spruce street was some lady named Bonnie who worked for Glaxo Smith Kline. I never met her, but I knew she lived there. Why? Because every Sunday morning, a small group of animal rights protestors would show up at her door with bullhorns and big pictures of mutilated monkeys and shout at her window for 45 minutes.
Without getting into a discussion about the case for or against animal rights, I hated those goddamn kids. If self-righteousness could ejaculate, they were its product. They made me and most everyone they touched, more , not less likely to support GSK and it’s well-paid team of highly trained animal killers. Since their method of protest (going to people’s houses and shouting threatening slogans) was banned, the group has turned its attentions to stores and restaurants that traffic in foie gras.
Today I saw them outside DiBruno Brothers at 18th and Chestnut shouting some crap. I know it’s not my place to pick causes for others, but foie gras? Have they picked up a newspaper recently? Foie fucking gras?
Another thing I’d like to know is have any of these protestors ever interacted with a goose? I love birds, but geese are natural assholes. They’re aggressive, they bite, they attack unprovoked. In a way, I guess that makes them a little like us humans. The big exception is that they’re geese. I guess I feel sorry for these geese and their delicious fatty livers, but I just wish those kids would shut the hell up about them.
And that’s the only conclusion I have.
No I didn’t quit posting, I’m just moving. I’ll be back in a few days.
While away please enjoy these videos. They’re related in the most sinister of ways. Remember to wear your helmet.
If you think I’m posting this for you (Ari) you’re right:
So I was just browsing a thread on a message board. Against my better judgment I clicked on a video link for something hosted on extremevideos.org. Yes it was a mistake. Be careful around helicopters. Trust me. That was fucked up and I have no idea why I watched it. Jesus.
But anyway, that’s not the point to this post. Next to the horribly fucked up video was your usual set of advertisements. Prominently displayed all over the page, were ads for septapassperks.org. What is septa pass perks? Here’s their description:
Sure riding SEPTA is already rewarding.
HAHA!!!!!!!!
But now we’re also giving our most loyal riders discounts and special offers to some of the best destinations in the land.
What are they talking about? The land? Is the Main Line Hobby Shop now some sort of mystical realm?
How do you get the Perks? Easy. You simply purchase a SEPTA weekly or monthly Pass at any SEPTA sales location. Once you have the Pass, you’re entitled to discounts with any of our participating Pass Perks Partners. No special coupons or member cards needed. Just flash the Pass and you’re an instant VIP.
I always feel like a VIP when I flash my transpass.
Truthfully, it’s not a bad idea. What is a bad idea and what my question is, who in the fuck over at Septa thought it was a good idea to buy up all the graphic ad-space on a site that restricts its content to snuff videos? I mean, what the fuck?
If I wrote industrial music, made noirish sci-fi thrillers or directed moody post-modern stage performances, I would definitely use this soundscape.
Me and my friend are recording the sound generated by the high voltage(400kV) powerline, in this case located in Porjus, a small swedish village north of the arctic circle. The sound is recorded with special contact elements, mounted in different ways on the pylon. Different sounds is heard depending on the national power consumption, but the nature itself also influence the timbre. Wind, birds and insects can be heard on the recordings. Note that this movie contains four passages of sounds. You will probably need headphones or a good sound system to hear the impact of the sound.
More info [here]
First of all, I firmly believe that all 5 candidates should be forced to rule Philadelphia as an oligarchy.
Secondly, yesterday in the Metro I read the results of a study that found no correlation between IQ and income. Tom Knox proves that. Millionaire or not, over the last couple nights of debate he’s colored himself as the stupidest candidate.
Moving On
I remember why I and a few dozen other people voted for Dwight Evans in 2000. I like him. He’s probably a lot of people’s second choice. If we had a ranking voting system in place for the first round of a crowded election (like we should) Evans might actually win. But we don’t and he won’t. That’s a shame. For the record, here’s my ranking: Nutter, Evans, Brady, Fattah, Knox. If we really voted with a weighted system, I’d put Evans first and think harder in the runoff if he made it to the next round with Nutter.
In order of sheer, unapologetic arrogance, the candidates rank as follows: Fattah, Knox, Nutter, Evans, Brady.
Another thing. I don’t hate Chris Matthews. I never have. Sue me.
Fireworks
Fattah’s comment to Nutter’s level of blackness last night was as desperate as Bob Brady’s hope to be Philly’s next mayor. Still though, it was interesting to see Brady attack Knox to Fattah’s advantage, while Fattah attacked Nutter to his own. While I enjoyed watching Knox piss himself, while he shouted physical threats at Brady I’d hate to see Fattah win this. I like him less and less as this campaign wears on.
Predictions
If history means anything, the stupid, rich, white guy will win. Sorry to the smart, black public servant, but I’m pessimistic. Then again, you never know, this is Philadelphia. Where’s Marty Weinberg these days?
I was scrounging through old files on the computer when I found something I wrote just before I quit smoking. The quitting was eventually successful, but the words still resonate:
I’ve given all that there is for me to give. Now I sit, smoke a nicotine-free cigarette and give this page whatever it is whatever’s left. For the first time, this cigarette tastes harsh.
Let’s start from the end. It all ended one day a couple months ago. I was elated. My classes were complete.
Actually let’s start with these nicotine free cigarettes. They’re on my mind recently. Mainly the part wherein I smoke one, suck the resin from the inside of my mouth, stare blankly at the room and light another – hoping that this time my mind will be tricked. By the third or fourth, I just hope that my lungs will begin to hurt. I hope that I’ll start coughing. I hope that breathing will become strained and nicotine or not, my body will be too damaged for the night to light another. I hope that if I repeat this for enough days in a row that I’ll forget all about the nicotine that used to be there. I’ll realize the abuse for abuse’s sake and give up the whole thing entirely.
So my problem, the bulk of my displeasure is work…
^ that’s an old statement. All of it. I continued on about some random shit, but eventually found a way to work in this line:
I feel that in the last few days, when I crack the door to enlightenment, enlightenment is sitting in the corner laughing at me.
And that’s all for then. Thanks for sharing this trip down memory lane with me. I hope that if you’re quitting smoking these words come as a comfort to you. I actually almost quit writing because the second I put a pen to paper I’d want a cigarette. Then I’d just write about that. Things are much better these days.
This prize fish was caught within seconds of the first cast of the afternoon. It was eventually thrown back.
My sole catch was slightly smaller than the one pictured. As I was reeling that baby in, I saw a 2-foot long big mouth bass chasing after it, ready to bite. Using my catch as bait, I lured the bass to make his move. He did, both fish escaped and I was left with nothing but an empty hook. Later we grilled burgers.
At the end of the day, I may not have caught anything, but I did kill a lot of snails.
There was a time when David Hasselhoff was my hero. I was 8 years old. Knight Rider was my favorite show and Michael Knight was the best co-star a talking Trans-Am could have ever had. How the mighty have fallen. Witness the descent:
The first time I saw this I almost passed out from laughing. Now I can’t stand to watch more than 30 or 40 seconds of it.
This is incredibly depressing.
—–
* special note to co-workers: These ^ are already ordered.
After the collapse of this civilization and the slow reconstruction of the next, humans will look back at to the Art of the late 20th and early 21st century and see no names. Today’s great artists will be tomorrow’s footnotes and curiosities.
This isn’t to say that the idolatrous, elitist and narcissistic character of today’s artworld will go without some future scholarship, just that it will only be discussed among aberrant academics in their doctoral theses.
The real focus of post-American hegemonic world civilization will be our advertising. Like marble-carved gods stand for Rome’s, advertising will be our monument to the future. Just like Roman Art, by the time anyone decides to care, the names of our graphic designers, editors and propagandists will be unimportant and forgotten.
I’d have to write a thesis to prove this point and I sure as hell haven’t done the research to do that, but trust me. I’m right. Think about it.
This isn’t to say that I don’t like today’s Art. I love it. I just don’t think it has a whole lot of historical importance or significance. Which reminds me, go to Zoe Strauss’s Under I-95 show this Sunday, under I-95, Front and Mifflin, 1-4PM. For our time, it’s a gravely important event.
One other thing. Advertising imitates art. The other day I was searching for pictures of crack whores (don’t ask) when I came across the porn site crackwhoreconfessions.com. The images on their front page really reminded me of something.
(First photo Zoe Strauss’s “Camden Crack” other photos, uncredited from crackwhoreconfessions.com)
April saw an enormous spike in search terms referencing animal mating videos and vagina. People were led here after googling boar, kangaroo, elephant, rhino, wild pony, pigeon, hippo, elk, donkey, horse, monkey, rottweiler and bear mating videos. Many of these terms had multiple hits and/or word variations.
In addition, dovate.com saw an enormous surge of interest in vagina. The word itself was responsible for 13 unique hits. In addition to these, I saw vagina associated with: licking, tight, scary, broken, old, poison oak, inside, real peoples, best, whore and a couple others that are just a little too disturbing to repeat here.
Unfortunately, every single one of these searches was fruitless. There are no animal mating videos or vagina information here, and I’m not planning on changing format.
But anyway, as I do every month, here are my favorite 30 search terms, vagina be damned:
30. wall of kelp
29. extra sensory perception disclosure
28. garbage lady
27. unplanned cumshot
26. hyper dimensional resonator diagram
25. dovate reanimation of dog
24. naked old guy
23. pig template
22. human anus pic
21. colon cleansing new kensington pa
20. alien fuck
19. dog fuckins
18. cast fetish chat
17. who won the superbowl in 1918
16. selling love
15. urban outfitters huffing
14. theodore roethke root cellar is disgusting
13. barbaro news
12. gay helicopter
11. make me feel safe
10. space jesus
9. artificial girl illusion
8. licking is harmful
7. metaphysical bigfoot
6. dreams about excrement in a bathtub
5. foodery cat
4. steel reserve hoodie
3. where to buy meth in philly
2. buy hitech chastity belt made of steel
1. proper attire for dayton ohio cocktail party
