But I don't wanna go back to high school

So I'm having a great first week or so down here. Everything's going great. Lots of work but comparatively it's a cake walk. Then classes started on Tuesday, and somehow I managed to put all three of my classes in the same room. I don't even think you can do that shit if you try. So basically every other day I'm stuck in a large room with no clock and no cell phones allowed for 4 and a half hours listening to three different people drone on about economics, economics, and economics.

So in the middle of this hell-block my second professor cheerily announces that the average in his class is a 65. So, basically... fuck that guy. He asked how would he know that he challenged us if we did well. Hey, how about the people who listened get A's and the people who didn't get F's and you don't just make shit up on your exams for the fuck of it. How about that? How about average is a C like in every other educational institution in the US and you stop being a pompous douche bag. That's just an idea I had. Then in the last economics class in that room I sat behind a giraffe-necked fucker so I never actually saw the professor, which was extra awesome since she was speaking with a Romanian accent and God forbid I try to read her lips to make out the consonants.

So just as I think that my classes will all be at least semi-challenging/interesting, I show up to my 8am MWF class and within the first 30 seconds I knew I was boned. I can handle a difficult professor this year. I'm ready for that. I wasn't ready for my sociology professor pairing us off so we could introduce each other to the class, though. Yeah that's right. Matthew O. is 19, he lives in East Ellis, he needs a job, and his favorite color is who gives a flying fuck about Matthew O. Back when I was a young pup, I'd have been ecstatic to waste 30 minutes of my class time not learning something so Jenny could tell us that Susy likes to play the guitar but she just can't play the G chord. Now that I know my options are a).learn a lot and and pay a lot for the privilege to do so or b).go back to living in the fucking ghetto and getting shot at, I say, "Fuck you, Susy, and fuck you, Jenny. Sit down and shut the fuck up and let that pathetic excuse for a boyscout camp counselor teach us something about sociology."

You'd think that maybe after wasting all that time we'd actually do something right? Correct, the answer was no. Good call, you're catching on. No, instead he asked everyone to stand up, then he said, "On the count of 3 we're all going to yell as loud as we can. "
...
Oh you've gotta be fucking kidding me. Can you give me the hall pass so I can go out and bang my head on my locker? And now I'm thinking, okay, we're all adults; the only place you're going to convince a room full of adults to scream in unison is at a Tony Robbins seminar. But, sure enough, on the count of 3 they busted the fuck out of my ear drums, which conveniently made it difficult to understand the final 10 minutes of class he actually taught. I was aaaaalmost concerned that my semester would go well. For the sake of this blog, lucky me.

This Chipotle is awesome!

No really, from now on when I want something to write about I'm going to Chipotle. Such colorful people they have there. This time, I was getting a burrito and there was a man standing at the end of the counter accusing the employees or the system of losing his online order. I'm sure that happens from time to time. As one congressman will tell you, the internet is a series of tubes (skip to near the end) so it's easy to understand how a few burritos might get clogged up on the way to the local restaurant. This guy didn't get it though. He acted like he's never so much as had one dropped call in his entire fucking life.



I personally think the normal thing at that point would have been to resubmit the order. Not this guy, though. This guy picked up his cell phone and said, "Well let me see what I should do," as though he were going to scare the employees into magically finding his misplaced order in the system. I got news for you, Bucko, unless your personally calling the president or an Arizona highway patrolman, they're probably not going to give a fuck who's on the other end of your I-didn't-get-what-I-expected hotline. Now being a man of about 40 and looking rather poorly placed in government, I'm guessing that you're really calling your wife. Oh no, Jesus (really that was the employee's name), find this man's order now before his wife picks up the red phone!

Let me get this straight, you show up to pick up an order at Chipotle, and they didn't make it, so instead of asking them to make it, you call your wife to see what you should do? That conversation must be "Honey, if I stay and ask them to make it now I'll be home 5 minutes later than I said I would be. Do I have permission to stay and have them make it or should I pick up something from the grocery store so I can get you a gallon of ice cream to make up for their incompetence? Also, tonight during foreplay I want to be in charge for a few seconds. No? Ok, Baby, whatever you say."

I almost kicked him in the groin on the way out just to see if he was an ugly cross-dressing woman. I'm not sure if he was trying to get free food out of the deal or honestly didn't know whether or not to just leave. I know she said she wanted you to communicate more, but what she really meant is that she didn't want to come home to you and your buddies having a surprise poker game (or tea party in your case) on a Friday night. I'm pretty sure the lack of burrito-readiness doesn't require a consult.

---

Skip to 10 minutes later, and I'm in the car destroying a burrito and chips and I reach for a can of Pepsi out of the case I keep in my car. I put it between my legs with one hand and went to open it and the damn thing exploded. Not in the, "Oh no, you shook my Pepsi up, oh no" way. It was more like, holy fuck they put an M-80 in my fucking beverage. I barely pulled up the tab and the pressure from the heat and the over-filled can almost completely blew off the metal tab that usually bends inward.



I actually checked for my nuts at first. Not checked to make sure they were okay, I actually checked for them in general... ya know to see if they were still there. It was about that point that I realized how quickly a grown man could lose his testicles to something a small as a 12 oz. can of sugar water, so maybe I should go easy on the pedo stache touting dumb fuck at Chipotle next time...

Nah fuck that guy.

Waterpark is that way, bitch

Ah, Kansas City in the summer time. This is when the pride of Kansas City really shines: fountains. From the Country Club Plaza to Kauffman Stadium to Crown Center the fountains are in full spray. Of course only the latter offers a place for children to run through the fountains as a unique way to enjoy downtown KC. See picture below for an example of normal kids having normal fun.



Isn't that just special? Yes, it is. You know what's not special? The retarded grandma at the corner of 75th and Wornall letting her grand daughter play in the fountain in front of the flag pole. First of all, you're at the corner of 75th and Wornall. You are seven fucking miles from Crown Center where that behavior is considered acceptable. SEVEN! Secondly, you're letting your 6 or 7 year old play on the corner of a mother fucking intersection in her bathing suit while you sit on a park bench facing THE OTHER FUCKING DIRECTION! What the fucking fuck!?! Maybe you were too busy talking to voices in your head because you're clearly way the fuck out there on cat-lady island.

Also, playing in the fountain. There is no confusion this time. This isn't like the trash situation. It's just THE fountain. There are a few puny jets coming out of one spot in the ground. Hey grandma, it's there to decorate the fucking flag pole, not for you to put your grand daughter on display in the same community a large rapist lived. I got news grandma, you can't turn your back to the fountain and expect to smell a predator coming. Not every crazy person is retarded enough to roll around in gasoline. They caught that guy, and the chances of someone copy catting that fuckwad are about a bajillion to one.

I'm getting too lazy for this

Then again, we're all getting too damn lazy for a lot of things. My favorite example is the people who stand in line for the escalator ignoring the 10 steps next to it...



It's OK, though. They probably all just got back from a flight and their arms are tired or some other lousy excuse for a joke. Clearly I'm a sad example of what to follow in terms of "can do" attitude.

So right now, I'm in my apartment and it's 90 degrees in here. The back door is wide open and the fan is on blowing in the cooler outside air. When you're busy pumping 80 degree air into an apartment to cool it off, you might be fucked. So I'm sitting here on my couch next to the fan, playing a game and a fucking June bug dive bombs my crotch.

Yep, that shit happened.

And now, it's missing....

I can't find the June bug that killed it's engines mid-flight just so it could land on my junk. We're not talking about one of those pansy-ass sized June bugs either; I thought this thing was going to rack me when it "landed." I say "landed" because if you've ever seen a June bug fly it's with a complete lack of grace. Imagine if those large people at Walmart driving the motorized shopping carts were zipping around on ice, cause that's what I think about when I see a June bug flying around.

Anyway, onto something irrelevant. I was in Chipotle today, which is probably my favorite place to eat, and there is one employee there who is entirely too fucking frugal with the food. I'm paying you $6.50 for a burrito of which 90% of the contents are what they eat in third world countries. Granted the other 10% is steak, but c'mon I know Chipotle is making money hand over fist on this shit. And it doesn't matter where in the burrito assembly line she's working, this woman completely throws off the cohesiveness of my burrito. So I'm thinking about how much I hate this woman and this jackass shows up, and starts ordering in Spanish.

First of all, this guy does not speak Spanish as his primary language. He was talking on the phone before he got up to order. Secondly, who the FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? You walk into a Chipotle and look around and think, well clearly I'm in Latin America, I must need to order in Spanish. FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE. You speak another language. High-fucking-five. So instead of traveling or joining a fucking group to practice, you walk into Chipotle and just assume that because the people behind the counter look Hispanic, they must speak Spanish, and they clearly want you to speak in their native tongue to order a FUCKING BURRITO.

That's like if a UPS driver showed up to my place to deliver a package and saw that I took my shoes off inside, so he takes his shoes off and comes in. No. Get the fuck out, UPS guy. Take your smelly sneakers with you, you crazy bastard.

You gotta be fucking kidding me

6:15am

That's when I crawled in bed. Oh wait, scratch that, it wasn't bed. The last time I slept in a bed was at my parent's house two weeks ago. No, 6:15 is when I went into my old office where no one works and curled up with a couch pillow and comforter on the floor.

I had been up all night working on a project that was due yesterday (admittedly catching up on movies I hadn't seen yet at the same time) and I didn't actually feel comfortable with my progress on the project until that point. You see, the assignment came in and I was like, "Herp Derp, hey, if you need help, I can help out."



It was one of those things you say but then you're thinking to myself, there's no fucking way I actually have time for this. Like if you stop to hold a door open for someone and they're taking their sweet time on the sidewalk and you're thinking, "GO, you fucking lunatic! I don't have time for this shit! I'm going to slam this door in your face when you get here if you don't hurry the fuck up!"

Anyway, of course the project makes its way back to me. Long story short it was good experience, but there was no fucking way I should have taken the project. So I wake up in the morning, completely exhausted and crawl out of the office with my hair matted on one side and little sleep flakes all over my damn eyelids and I'm like... fuck this day. Already I can tell it's going to be one of those fucking days.

At about 11:30, I'm down a cup of coffee, a pepsi, another nap on my bed-floor-place, and I'm still alive. I'm just 20 minutes shy of finishing the project, when from nowhere, the project manager is behind me handing me a pack of gum. Thanks? I'm sure that since I didn't go home last night, my hygiene isn't as stellar as it could be, but I've still got to be better than some of the part-time staff. I mean, you could just give me a piece of gum, and I'd be happier.

"I brought you a present," she says. Yeah, I got that.

"It's a present because you're either going to be happy, or not happy about what I have to tell you." Well if you're here to tell me that you can smell my breath from 50 feet away I'd say this is a make you feel shitty inside present.



"The project got cancelled. We weren't able to retain it based solely on the parsing portion."

Oh fuck you me.

At first I was like... Ok. 'Cause shit happens, ya know? It happens to me all the fucking time to be exact. And she certainly didn't have to give me a pack of gum, which I know she had bought for herself. Then a few minutes went by and I was more like... lajsdfl;jkasdl;kfjaiodsjfajkdsfl;aijdspo;fjald;skjffuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. Day can't get any worse, right? Spent all night working on a project that got cancelled just 20 minutes before completion. I'm exhausted and have to spend the rest of the day training so there's no way I can slip out early. The day is pretty well in the shitter.

So an hour goes by and a couple of cops show up. At first, that was fine with the majority of the staff. It's become an almost bi-weekly occurrence to have one or two of Overland Park's finest show up to investigate a 911 hang-up. We have a phone center here and those little pricks dial 911 and then just hang up and don't say shit to anyone about it all the damn time. I even went as far as to change the code to get an outside dial-tone from 9 to 8 to prevent accidental 911 calls. Think that helped? Fuck no. These little fuckers probably wait until they think the OP cops have forgotten what I look like and call them just so they can come out and talk.

Well, it wasn't long before the two officers were standing outside talking. Then two officers turned into four, then the four turned into a eight with several cars. I immediately start looking for downloaded movies I might have laying around to delete. They're all gathering outside and eventually they come in and ask to speak to the facility manager and they all go into my boss's office and have a little pow-wow. 10 minutes go by and then the facility manager comes out and points at me and does that come hither finger gesture. Meanwhile I'm thinking, oh fuck oh shit oh fuck oh shit oh fuck oh shit oh fuck.

He gets me aside and says, "Apparently there's been a threat on the building."

OH FUCK OH SHIT OH FUCK OH SHIT OH FUCK OH SHIT

So, yeah, some fuckwad called in from a pay phone at a gas station in KC, MO and told the police that they needed to get over to our building because a bunch of people were going to get hurt. Ok, yeah, thanks but no thanks. I wanted to get the fuck out of Dodge. Instead, the manager told me he wanted me to go with an officer and search the building for anything out of place, such as, oh let's just say, a fucking bomb.

Do I seem like the kind of person you want to send in search of something "out of place?" Sure I know the building well enough to notice something like that. Hell, I even stayed the night, but the cold floor is no Holiday-fucking-Inn, so you'll excuse me if I don't exactly feel like my senses as sharp as a tack.

The manager takes the upstairs and I go with an officer downstairs. We're looking in every single door, every cabinet, and the only thing I can think about is that I'm probably unlucky enough to find a fucking bomb somewhere, and it'll be booby-trapped or some shit and I'll be the damn asshole that triggers it in a nervous, sleepless bomb-searching frenzy.

You know what though? Fuck those cops. If they thought there was the possibility of a bomb, wouldn't it have been nice if they had brought the dogs?... Or a squad for that type of thing? Jeez, if only such a thing existed. Oh fucking yeah, they have that. It's called the fucking bomb squad, so where the fuck is it? More to the point, why are we searching for a bomb? From what I heard, that was just one possibility. I was actually more afraid of some crazy mother fuckers showing up with guns than I was of someone getting in and leaving a bomb somewhere. Any crazy fuck can get a gun these days it seems, judging from the current state of my neighborhood. We got done checking downstairs and everyone is standing outside, and we call the big boss, who's on vacation. After a quick briefing of the situation, he decides that we can just resume work as normal.

Wait.


No?

Please, no? For the love of all that is holy... no? How about just this once, since someone called in a threat, we just, ya know. Not ignore it and go back to work? I mean, yes, it was very probably some irate dickhead who didn't qualify for a project, or perhaps even a disgruntled employee, but why in the fuck should we just continue as usual? Shouldn't there be some kind of stake-out or something? ISN'T ANYONE GOING TO GIVE A FUCK?

Turns out no, not really. It took about 15 minutes before I finally walked by the HR rep and said that I was going to change the security codes. Oh gee, Mike, good idea. Why didn't anyone else think of that? Well? Why the fuck didn't they? I'm going back to school in less than two months and I always wonder how they're going to get along without me. After this, I'm pretty fucking sure I can't wait to get the hell out of here. I actually left work at 5 that day, right on the dot. I left my job in Overland Park and drove straight to my apartment in the ghetto to be safe. Explain that one to me, mother fuckers. Explain that.

Door Chimes and Dingbats

The other day I began to wonder if when I moved out of the ghetto I would have anything to write about, then this shit happened...

After getting politely let off with a warning by the Overland Park police officer, I knew it was time to do something about my car. Driving it off a cliff sounded nice, but instead I decided to "call in some favors", which is fancy talk for have my dad call in some favors.

I brought my piece of crap ride (I used to talk nice about it, but now that it's breaking my heart I'm going to talk shit on it -- and we wonder why we give cars girl names) to Warrensburg to have my dad's mechanic friend work on it. First of course he wanted a go at it himself. So after a new brake light switch, new fuses, new bulbs and a disappointing result, we decided to leave it in "professional" hands. (I'm not trying to utilize quotation marks more, I just don't want to mislead anyone into thinking I actually went about this in any kind of a professional manner. Quite the opposite, I promise.)

To get my car to the mechanic I had two options: take it to the mechanic, whose shop was 15 miles away, or have someone follow me there and leave my car there for him to work on and have the person who followed me take me back into town. Somewhere around the time this was presented to me my dad disappeared (aka immediately).

Skip to 10 minutes later and I'm halfway to the small town which shall remain nameless. I'm actually a little afraid to say it, because the town is so tiny, this guy might be the only mechanic there (poor fuckers) and then everyone would know who I was talking about and yada yada yada I'm homeless.

As I'm pulling into the town, I don't know exactly where the garage is, so I call the mechanic and tell him I'm at the corner of Main St. and Other St. and he tells me to keep going.

...

Keep going where, you fuck? How fucking insane would you think I was if I told you to go to the corner of 31st and Holmes and told you when you get there to keep going until you got to my house. It would have been different if I had said something like, I am headed North on Main and I'm crossing Other, but I didn't say that. All I said was I'm at the corner of Main and Other and for all this guy knew I could have been a fucking hot dog vendor on the corner. Instead, he assumes I'm headed in whatever direction he is and tells me to keep going. Already I can tell this is going to go swimmingly.

30 seconds later I get to the garage, having reckoned with him that I needed a cardinal direction to continue. I pull up and hand the keys to the mechanic. Now, folks, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I've been brought up better than that, and having this mechanic looking at my car for the price of pizza was certainly a gift, but I couldn't help it. I mean, maybe if the horse wasn't missing so many damn teeth it would have been easier. Did he play hockey before he became a mechanic? Did the tooth fairy pay him more attention than she paid the rest of us? Something about this guy's past told his teeth to get lost, and they listened.

So now I'm presented with sitting on patio furniture in the garage (what?), or in the waiting room. I chose to sit at the patio furniture and watch this guy work on my car. I wasn't overly concerned that he could do something to put it in worse shape than it already was (perhaps more details on this to come?), but if I'd have sat in the chairs in the waiting room, someone would have had to scrub the gross off of me with steel wool.

So it wasn't too long of a wait, maybe 10 minutes watching this guy test everything I'd already tested before he climbed into an awkward position under the steering column and, after a few seconds, the lights came on. "Are they on?" he asked. I replied that they were and he crawled out and said "Loose wire above the brake light switch."

Ok. That's all well and good. So I sat there for a few moments waiting for him to get back under the wheel long enough to reattach a wire, or patch something or glue something or get some duct tape, or ya know, anything. But instead he just walked away. At this point I figure out that that's all pizza is going to buy me. Hesitantly I ask if that's it, and he confirms my fears. So, I climb in and not wanting to be a jackass, I tell him I'll make sure he gets some money for his efforts (if the town had an ATM I wouldn't have had to make an absurd promise like that).

Here's where things start to go normal: The brake lights lasted maybe a day. Maybe. Luckily I was still in town, and I waited out the weekend, doing very little without transportation, and took the day off on Monday to take my car back to the mechanic. The afternoon rolls around, I return with my car, and pizza, and $20. As soon as I show up he comes outside, and I hand him the money, a sign of good faith if you will. I take the pizza inside expecting my car to make it to the garage. What an idiotic expectation that was. I look out into the street and there was the mechanic with his legs up in the air as though he were operating the pedals with his hands and driving with his knees. It is at this point I realized I have murdered someone in a past life.

A few minutes go by, there are some clicking noises and some blinkers applied, some ratcheting, and finally, "OK, here is your problem. This box controls the brake lights and the blinkers and there is a loose wire in here somewhere, and you need to replace this module." Reader, I can tell you that this time I took him in complete faith, because when a guy like that uses a word like module, you know he's got to be speaking the truth. So even though the problem wasn't fixed as I left 2 pizzas and $20 lighter, I was completely confident that when I got to NAPA and bought the new part, I could install it myself and this would all be over.



"That's a door chime."

"What?"

"It's the door chime for when you leave the doors open," my dad reported as he returned from across the street with the "module" in hand.

Fuck. I fucking knew it. "Haha, you actually thought shit was going to work out! FUCK YOU, BITCH!" Angry voices were taunting me in my head now. Maybe it was the all-too-awkward position of upside-down driving man I had assumed that was causing blood to rush to my head. Maybe it was the $20 the mechanic was pocketing while he ate a big slice of pepperoni pizza. Whatever it was, I felt sick.

A few calls later I had my car in the shop next door, and the mechanic there tells me there's a short, and it will cost $xx/hour to find it and fix it. Haha, are you kidding me? I don't even have mirrors. My A/C hasn't worked in 3 years. I get in and out of my car through the back doors. If I lock my car, I have a set of "break-in" tools I keep in the trunk. Did you catch that? Not if I lock my keys in my car, rather, if I lock it at all. There was a period of time when I drove around with my passenger door bungee corded shut, and you think I'm going to pay you a few hundred dollars to find a loose wire? Fuck you, guy.

A few more hours went by, and another friend of my dad's volunteered his skills as an electrician. We traced every fuse, we looked for wires loose, we did everything imaginable. At one point we thought we had it, but for some reason, the left turn signal caused the whole thing to go down again. So at this point I'm proud to report that I drove my car back to the original mechanic and left it for him. I'm driving around town in my dad's Blazer. You, kind mechanic, have pizza and my $20. Fix my car, dammit.

Well that suuuucked

I'll keep this short since I'm not in the mood. I got attacked by wasps in my own damn bathroom while I was giving myself a haircut. More appropriately, I disturbed the nest they were building on top of the fucking bathroom door. Guess I won't be leaving my backdoor open for air while I'm at work anymore. So I'm standing outside the bathroom with a half trimmed head and a family of jackass wasps chillaxin' all over my shit.

Needless to say, I was running a bit late to work by the time I'd killed the fuckers and finished getting ready for the day. As I'm turning off Metcalf, I hear a siren kick on and I looked behind me (physically turning around of course because my rear view mirror fell off in the heat last week) to see I was getting pulled over, so I thought, "Yeah, that's about right."

When the cop was walking up, he was very friendly sounding when he said, "The reason I pulled you over was 3-fold." Oh really? This should be good. "First, you don't have any mirrors," ...check... "second, you didn't use a turn signal back there," ...yep... "and third, your brake lights aren't working." Wait what?

I immediately began to explain that I was running late because I had been attacked by wasps and the mirror I had tried to super glue back on and he stopped me and politely asked for my driver's license and insurance card, which I gave him. Then he asked, "Do you have a current insurance card? Looks like this one expired in May."

fuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

What the fuck is wrong with today? With everything? This is the second time I've been so disturbed at my apartment that I can't fucking wait to get to work and both times I've gotten pulled over less than a block from the front door. Hell, the first time I was actually in my parking space!

Someone is behind this. Someone... somewhere... somehow. Fuck you, whoever you are. Fuck you.

Oh, and if you're wondering whether or not I got a ticket, the answer is no. The cop smiled and said, "I'm going to let you off with the warning so you can spend some money on your car instead of a ticket."

Oh... guess these aren't working, huh?

You've heard the story about the dryers. If you haven't, skip down to the first post and read upwards, ya know... cause that makes sense. I suppose it's time to check the settings of this damn thing.

So a couple of weeks ago, I'm looking around my apartment and realizing that if there were a couple of talking chipmunks living in and running a detective agency out of my piles of laundry, I probably wouldn't notice. Yep, it's time to do my laundry.

I gathered all the laundry that I felt like doing at the time (2 out of 10 loads) and headed for the elevator. Now, knowing that the dryers wouldn't be working, I thought I might as well throw my clothes in the washer and .... uh... drape them over something? I wish there was a place where I could hang laundry in my apartment. What's that? The door frame? Fuck you. Haven't you been reading? This is my apartment. There is no fucking molding around my door. I'm on the third floor and it's like my doors are holes hollowed out of stone.

Regardless I figured it would be nice to put on a clean shirt and I headed for the basement. When I stepped off the elevator and I thought, "Oh crap, what if the washers have been shut off since the dryers are probably not repaired (to be fair they have only been broken for a few months at this point). " Well I was already in the basement so I went for a gander and lo and be-fucking-hold there was a third option I hadn't considered (shameless Alice's Restaurant reference).

There in the corner hidden behind a dryer and right above the drain in the floor was a fucking bum. No, really. A bum. A bum pissing into the drain no less. And this is what runs through my mind.... "What do I say, what do I say, what do I say." What do I say? What the fuck? I'm not going to prom with the guy. Why wasn't my first instinct to get the fuck out? He turned and looked at me mid-stream and all I could get out was "Uh... guess these aren't working, huh?"

I can easily think of 290 phrases that would have been better suited for the situation. Not too far down the list is, "Oh I didn't realize this stall was in use..." followed closely by "What the fucking fuck?!"

Ha Ha. Let's play a little game now...

Let's play a little game I like to call "The Pretend Game."

Here's how the pretend game works: You say "Let's pretend that yada yada yada didn't happen." But in the place of yada yada yada you describe something that happened to you that you want to have not happened. Or in some situations, you describe something you want to suppress deep down into your subconscious for five or 10 years.
I'll start. Let's pretend that I didn't wake up two nights ago to someone throwing trash off of their third story balcony. Of course by trash I don't mean a bag of trash. No, sir. Do you think I mean two bags of trash? Nah, not two. Maybe it's more than 10? Yeah, it was more than 10. Well then you may ask how many it was, Mike? and I would have to say, "Well, count with me."




One, two, three... eighty-fucking-five? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS!? Do we count the fan? Is that "a" trash or "some" trash? Does each dresser drawer count? Maybe you're a sanitary disposer working for this fine city and you count trash by how many dumpsters it fills. So this would be 1 trash to you. I like to take the approach as the violated neighbor in this situation (cause, well fuck, that's what I am) and count it based on how many parking spaces it takes up. So to me this is two trashes worth of trash.

So all this shit starts hitting the pavement from three stories up at midnight on Sunday, and my first thought is, "Oh yay, someone's fucking shooting again." So I wasted my time crawling around on the floor until I realized it sounded more like someone just throwing shit around. I got up to peak and sure enough, there was an arm throwing one bag of trash every 5 or 10 seconds. That person kept throwing trash --taking a break here and there-- until about 1:45am. I took that picture the next morning when I realized that no one had actually done anything with the trash that night. That surprised me, because I awoke to the sound of the trash truck backing up, and I thought to myself, they must have been moving it to the dumpster in time for trash pick-up.

Why would I have thought that? I'm too fucking logical, that's why. As you can see it was all still there, while just out of the frame of the picture sits the empty dumpster. The worst part is, I know that the trash truck had to drive damn near on top of the garbage to back up to the dumpster to empty it. Did THEY pick it up? Fuuuuuck no. It's not their job. Oh wait. Yes it fucking is.

I'm going to go ahead and get down on the floor for this

Well, it finally happened. Seven months of living in an apartment overlooking Troost and I finally heard my first shooting. I always thought when I heard it I would just accept it as part of the neighborhood. I keep my mouth shut and keep to myself. I don't bother anyone, I don't expect to be bothered.

A couple of weeks ago, I left my balcony door open to let the night air in. I was especially tired so I fell asleep on the couch around eight or nine. At 1 am I woke up to "kill-that-mother-f***er-with-lead" gunfire. I mean someone was shooting like they got their bullets at discount price. People were screaming, car tires started squealing out, and I'm pretty sure I rolled off the couch and hit the floor loud enough to let whoever was shooting know I was home.

So there I was lying on a half-eaten bag of Doritos when I realize that the gunshots are coming from the nightclub across the street. I don't think I've ever been so freaked out in my life. I could explain in so many words how close that place is to my apartment, but it would be easier for me to invite you over to chuck objects at the clubs windows. My first thought was to call my dad. He's the one person I've always felt closest to, and I needed to talk to someone quickly. He answered in a groggy voice, "Are you in trouble?"

To which I replied, "Well I'm fine for now, but some crazy assholes are shooting at each other across the street."

Now I love my father, and I know he was just waking up, but I wasn't really ready for: "Well as long as you're OK. How much longer do you have on your lease?"

... "Uh.... "

... "Until September."

I can't really recall the rest of the pleasantries we exchanged, but I said I love you and let him go back to sleep. I waited another half hour or so and finally crawled across the room into the bathroom where I got dressed in the dark. I drove across town straight to work..... and got pulled over in the parking lot. FML.