It’s been a while since I have written anything. The main reason is *probably* because I have been on a strict media fast. It makes me much happier burying my head in the sand. I’ve been happy playing with my little hydroponic garden with my 1000 pet ladybugs (who reproduce better than rabbits– all they do is screw and make babies!) and my homebrew video game projects and myriad other spinning plates.
I tend not to write much when I am happy. It’s more an outlet for my rage. Obviously. You people are rage vampires, feeding on the rancid bloodborne vitriol of my angst!
Drowning in a sea of morons is a voluntary choice. Once in a while they moron on you (I have just made moron into a verb) and you have to scrub it off (with bleach), but for the most part, it seems like you can go about your daily life without getting soiled.
Well, sorta…
But yeah, buy metals and commodities and hunker down and hope for the best because you have prepared for the worst.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Death Star. It’s easier here, getting things done. Well, sorta…
Never buy a condo under mine. Seriously.
A couple weeks back I found a wet spot in my guest bedroom carpet. Having no pets, it was a curious thing. So I vacuumed it up with the neighbor’s carpet shampooer and went about my daily life. The wet spot kept getting bigger. And more soggy. To the point where a pond was forming in the floor. And so I called the condo nazis to inform them that we had a leak, and to inquire about the process of getting it dealt with.
“We’ll send the plumbers over,” Gemeinschaftsleiter Frau Darth Murrischegesicht says, and so they did.
“Oh, this is definitely your AC condensate line,” PlumberBob tells me, after taking a 2-minute look at everything, “Not our thing. You have to call your AC guy.”
And so I call the AC guy, and he comes over, and we change the AC condensate line to drain into the water heater’s emergency overflow pan drain line.
Yet the pond continued to grow.
And so I called the insurance company and they said to deal with Gemeinschaftsleiter Frau Darth Murrischegesicht, and Gemeinschaftsleiter Frau Darth Murrischegesicht said to deal with the insurance company, and the plumbers said to deal with the AC guy and the AC guy and I did our best and it didn’t help.
Meanwhile, water began to leak into the ceiling of the downstairs neighbors. Which is why you should never buy a condo under mine. Seriously.
This whole situation is merely a microcosm of why governments are such bullshit– if there is this much moronism in such a simple situation, imagine what it’s like on a national level. Actually, don’t. It will depress the shit out of you.
So a week goes by with me getting angrier and angrier because the people who insist they know what they know do not actually know what they insist that they know, and are, in fact, surprising me at their very existence and continued ability to pick up food and put it into their own mouths. And the water continues to leak. Meanwhile I am pulling the weight of all the idiots who should be fixing this– 10 gallons of water per day out of just the dehumidifier and the whole place is starting to reek of wet carpet and mold. 5 fans on, hourly passes with the carpet shampooer to suck the water out of the carpet. Setting up buckets and pans in a one-man reverse bucket brigade to keep my downstairs neighbor’s place from flooding. It literally squishes up water out from underfoot when you walk in there.
Sounds kind of like a small-scale model of what is going on with the feds.
And so I recruited my neighbor and we picked up a hammer and a drywall saw and went to town on the walls. And surprise surprise, we found the leak. A broken pipe was pissing a geyser of water out into the insulation, which was running down inside the wall and into the floor. And so we called the plumbers and told them what was going on, and they said they would come by.
A few more hours passed and we said, “fuck this, let’s fix it ourselves,” and so we did. The plumbers showed up at 9pm, 8 hours later. I told them to take a hike, since we’d gotten tired of waiting and did their jobs for them.
So the next day, I go in and tell Gemeinschaftsleiter Frau Darth Murrischegesicht that she will be paying me back for the work I have done, the repairs, the new carpet pad, etc etc etc and she agrees, but get this– she insists that the plumbers come in and inspect the repair before she can sign off on it!!! HAHAHAHA!
Yes. I laugh. Heartily.
You fuckers refuse to do anything to fix a plumbing issue that is clearly your domain (it’s even in the condo docs) and then demand the final say in someone actually getting up to do it themselves!? And then send the same crew of droolers to inspect the propriety of something they both misidentified and refused to take responsibility for when it was clearly their responsibility?
Wow… How… government!
(yes, I just turned moron into a verb, and government into an adjective)
Not much more to say about that.
expatbob 