This is interesting. Somehow, a bunch of idiots have begun to accuse me of lashing out against them in this whole JesusCrispy thing. Which means that the trilogy of News of the Stoopids which used to be here is now gone. Instead, here's an EMail I got from an idiot:

Y'know what: the hell with it. Let's talk about the Romans for a moment. The Romans were a bunch of neanderthals with swords and shields. And, according to this fable, they managed to kill this kid when he bothered them. Personally, I don't bother with swords very often, and generally resort to things like Uzis and napalm. So ask yourself this: do you really want to get involved in a holy war against the unholy.
See, I'm not a satanist; I'm a pragmatist. I don't tend to jump at shadows; I turn on the bloody light. Let there be light, and there's light. By the christian measurements, that makes me a deity, apparently. Kneal before Gremlin; booga booga booga.
It's over. It was an amusing idea back before atomic structures were discovered, but it's outdated and sad now.
Now, let's look at this logically for a moment. We have a very simple set of possibilities here. Either some sort of deity exists, or it doesn't. Personally, based only on that, I'll assume that it doesn't. But let's play devil's advocate [heh] for a moment, and consider that it might. If so, then it might be a single deity, or a whole race of them. It might be a holy trinity, or it might be a single bird called Quetzalcoatl. Or, it might be something entirely else--something undocumented in modern times. There have been thousands of deities mentioned in history; not all of them are still especially vernacular.
The point is this: there are those of us who question the existences of things like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and anything regarded as a deity. And we may be wrong to question these things; these things may well exist, though empirical data suggests otherwise. But that's not your problem. You have a larger problem: you claim to be holy and good, yet overlook the parts of your bibles that you don't like--the bits decreed by Yeshua [Jesus Christ, for the dumb ones] like women being prohibited from teaching and having opinions and all people being prohibited from vexing [annoying and beleaguering] strangers in their lands. So, before you release your sanctimonious and uninformed attitudes against me, you might wanna make sure that your deities--real or fictitious--are okay with your practises first.
It doesn't really matter whether your deities exist; it matters whether you break the codes you're sworn to uphold. If you were a true JesusCrispy, you'd be required to stay the hell out of my affairs.
If, on the other hand, you're nothing more than a frightened little geek trying to get me to tell you that it's not all in vain, I can't help you. I can only insult you and break your fingers.
It's just that simple. Go away.
Of course, that's just my opinion; ordained by me.

--Gremlin

DES MOINES, IOWA [NotS]
 
Define irony: a slumlord reproaching the practises of slumlords in an article about slumlords.
Ed.
Good old Ed.
Ed Moss is, by chance, the manager of the house I’ve rented while I’m in town researching a novel. So it was amusing, if ironic, to find him complaining about other landlords in CityView the other night. Granted, his opinions in that article were logical enough: landlords should keep their promises, avoid letting houses go to hell, promptly correct problems like exposed wiring, cracked windows, and so on. But that’s where the irony seeps in, and screams.
This house I’m renting from Ed is literally the apotheosis of his documented hellhouse. Exposed wiring, cracked windows, unfinished carpeting, unpainted walls...the list has shortened slightly over the last four months, but it’s still long enough to fill a sheet of notebook paper--a sheet of notebook paper which my roommate and I have rewritten and resubmitted to Ed a dozen times since we moved into the place in June.
Originally, the shortcomings were understandable. I got to town and was staying with friends--two of which, also by chance, were Corey and Paul of SlipKnot--until SlipKnot left for OzzFest, and the remaining tenants of that house split up to live elsewhere. That long, dumb story, entitled Notice to Vacate, is online under News of the Stoopid at gremlin.net, incidentally. My roommate and I called in what could be described as a favour from Ed, who my roommate knew years before. We managed to move into the unfinished house two weeks before it was supposed to be available. The understanding was that the house would be completed on schedule.
Two weeks later, little had changed.
Two weeks after that, rent was due again. Little more had changed.
A month later, rent was due; we saw Ed long enough to hand over seven hundred bucks before he fixed a couple of incidental things and disappeared for another month.
There’s a pattern here: Ed shows up to get his money, fixes whatever looks easy, and splits until rent is due again. At this rate, the house should be fully completed just about the time Buck Rogers returns to Earth.
The reason: Ed is busy. Ed controls fourteen houses in this town. To some degree.
For example, he controls a house on Jefferson; we know this because the tenants there are some old friends of ours. Which is why we also know that Ed no longer owns the house.
In an apparent attempt to dodge property taxes and to skirt the responsibilities of the owner [a practise we know Ed to detest, according to his quotes in the last CityView article on the subject] Ed has signed the ownership of the house over to our friends, and, evidently, backdated the contract by several years. The good news is that, now that he’s no longer fixing our friends’ house, he’s got a bit more time to fix ours; the bad news is that, most likely, what he’s up to is fraud. Which leaves me wondering: if Ed goes to prison for twenty years, how much longer will it take to replace this shattered window I’ve been staring at since June...
Of course, the answer to that is simple.
The last time we handed over the periodical list of unfinished characteristics to Ed, we made it clear that, unless those items were fixed to our satisfaction by the end of September, we’d be moving out. It’s October now, and we’re still waiting for most of this to happen.
So let this serve as a warning to potential future victims.
Ed Moss makes a lot of promises and appointments. He also makes a lot of excuses and postponements. On the rare occasions in which a promise is finally kept, it’s far later than expected, and often carried out by some questionable third party who seem overly curious about the electronic components within the house and the local availability of crystal meth.
Ed is a veritable encyclopaedia of legal advise, explaining that any landlord who walks into a house without first giving the tenants forty-eight hours’ notice is trespassing, though he rarely gives out much notice before arriving.
Ed is a gregarious fellow, letting you bum him cigarette after cigarette, and playing your guitar at you while you’re trying to type, instead of actually fixing anything before he leaves.
Ed Moss is a good guitarist, but a poor landlord.
Of course, that’s just my opinion; you’ve got my word on that...

--Gremlin

A couple of years ago, I wrote one of these things regarding the big REPORT DRUNK DRIVERS bit on those digital information thingys all along the freeways in Denver. That News of the Stoopid, for better or worse, no longer exists.
One thing I mentioned in that article was that I generally get on well enough with the police, assuming they don't do anything dumb. Ever since, I've been thinking of illustrating exactly what I meant by 'dumb'.
Now, I think, is the time for that.
Here's a good example: my licence expired. Fine. I wasn't exactly expecting time to stop just before my birthday, so the expiration didn't much surprise me. It also didn't much concern me. It also didn't much occur to me. And it furthermore didn't much get noticed until a Des Moines Police Offender--um...Officer--pulled me over and took it oddly personally that I hadn't renewed the thing. To me, it was odd. First, I don't really understand why the cops take it personally when a crime is committed; it's not like they get fired every time crime refuses to grind to a halt--more likely, they'd be laid off if we ever attained true world peace. Moreover, I really can't figure out why a cop in Des Moines particularly cares whether anyone in Denver has a current driver's licence. I don't expend a lot of concern on whether someone in Indiana has updated his fishing licence lately, after all.
Anyway, he wasn't at all pleased to discover that my Denverian licence had outlived its usefulness.
Also not at the top of his happy list were my expired number plates. There again, these are expired Denverian number plates, which don't directly affect anyone in Des Moines.
Granted, giving out tickets for expired licenses and number plates is all part of a cop's job; but this idiot didn't even realise that my plates had expired when he pulled me over for having a functional number plate light. Or, in more explained terms, pulled me over to tell me that the thing had burned out, apparently assuming that I'd never notice that he'd lied to me. And it didn't take long to notice, since he had me get out of the car to talk to him while his partner searched through the Formula for whatever Iowans consider weapons. No weapons were found. For those who have ever seen the Formula, you can guess that even if there had been weapons in there, they'd never be found. Hoffa would be found long before running into any carelessly stashed rocket launchers I might carry about in my car.
So: Officer Grumpy here pulled me over for having a functional number plate light, searched through my car without discovering any munitions, and wrote me a ticket for having everything expired. Great. The story should end now.
But it didn't.
So, since I have better things to do than fly home just to renew a licence, I gave in and got a DesMoiniac licence, so I can legally drive the hell back home [and just in time; I almost forgot how to drive, since there's a documentable connexion between able and allowed when it comes to things like steering] once I'm done here. But, for whatever deplorable reason, I'm not done here yet.
So Officer Grumpy pulled me over again. This time, it was because my headlight had burned out. And the first thing he told me, in the midst of taking it all far too personally, was that he'd already told me to fix my headlight, the last time he'd pulled me over. Evidently the 'last time' he'd pulled me over was back when I had that pesky functional number plate light. Of course, I tried to tell him that, if my headlight was actually out [it was, incidentally] that was the first time anyone had told me about it; but that was met with the tired old talk to the badge cos the twit ain't listening attitude, and the conversation kinda moved on to how my functioning number plate light hadn't been fixed yet either.
Oh, and my number plates are still expired.
There's a reason for that. And if Officer Grumpy had exhibited the interest and vocabulary to listen, things might have worked out differently. See, as difficult as it might be to get a renewed driver's licence from out of state [as much as the Department of Transportation love to boast that they can handle that sort of thing] it should be simple enough to have a registration renewed by--well, not EMail, since the Department of Motor Vehicles have only recently discovered fire and are soon expected to work out the agricultural revolution--but by snailmail or by phone or by smoke signals or by whatever means they're prepared to handle in nineteen ninety-nine. Oddly, despite numerous calls to these idiots, and copious promises that the plates could be sent to my agent here in Des Moines, I never seemed to get hold of them. What I've finally found out--just now--is that my registration for the emissions control distraction has also expired; and, while I don't need to care about that in Des Moines, I can't get new Denverian number plates until my car is tested--in Denver--for parts per million. How in hell I'm supposed to get it back to Denver to have it tested, so I can get new plates, so I can drive across Nebraska to get it tested, is beyond even the mathematical possibilities of quantum mechanics. Surprise.
Meanwhile, according to Officer Grumpy, I have until Friday to figure that out. Or else. Whatever that means.
The headlight is probably more within the boundaries of possibility, so I'm not terribly concerned about fixing the problem, though I really am wondering why I got a ticket for something I couldn't even have known was wrong. That's a lot like having someone break into your house, and getting a ticket for not stopping them or something. I thought the cops worked for us.
The number plate light, as always, works fine. Officer Grumpy knows that too. When he had me get out of the car the second time, I went back to look at it, and he was helpful enough to shine his torch at it to make sure I couldn't instantly determine whether it was working. He knew I'd caught him not catching me, essentially. That made him a bit grumpier.
Meanwhile, he asked, without any logical provocation, whether I had any drugs, weapons, or--and I'm not making this up--big snakes in the car. Why would I have a big snake in my car? Sure, I've had big alligators in there, but never snakes. Anyway, after I told him I was fresh out of drugs, guns, and large boidae, he told me that I wouldn't mind then if he searched my car again. And that's interesting. Since that was a declarative, and not an interrogative, I didn't bother granting or denying his request, which, it turns out, means that he didn't search my car, because I didn't tell him he could. So he searched my car anyway. And he found nothing. Surprise again.
The last time I ran into this sort of harassment with a cop was ten years ago, when I got pulled over for wearing a seatbelt. Or, more accurately, I was wearing it, but Stoopid couldn't tell that since it was a nineteen seventy-four LeSabre convertible and they were lapbelts. So he searched the Buick [though he didn't search any of us, which was kinda cool, since that's where all the weapons were] and finally produced a foot-long balsawood dowelrod and declared that, according to Iowans, it was a weapon. Then he threw it into a random frontyard and gave up on us. Idiot.
At least he never pulled me over again.
As for Officer Grumpy: I'm sure he'll run into me again. And my functioning number plate light will probably be out during that magical moment between him pulling me over and me going back there to look at it. And that's the sort of legal behaviour which leads me to a few points...
First: I live in Denver. I don't care where my licence is from, or my number plates; if unfortunate circumstances mandate that they come from a place like Des Moines, then so be it. Still, I'm a citisen of Denver. Bear that in mind.
Second: because I'm a citisen of Denver, I don't pay income taxes in Des Moines [whether I pay them in Denver is irrelevant to this] and I never will. My company is based in Denver. Regardless where I am in the world, that's where I am at the corporate level. So I'm not actually paying Officer Grumpy's salary. That's the good news.
Third: while Officer Grumpy doesn't represent the Denver County Department of Motor Vehicles, neither do I; and I refuse to accept responsibility for their idiocy regarding renewal policies.
Fourth: this all ties together because Officer Grumpy wants to believe that I've moved to Des Moines. I haven't. I have no reportable income from this town; I'm here researching a novel. I told one cop that I was researching a novel on what dumb cops do to smart people; now that I'm writing this, that could be considered true. Anything else I do here is recreational. Even website design is done in cyberspace, and laundered through the office in Denver. Des Moines is irrelevant to my wherewithal. I'm effectively on holiday here, and have no need to become an Iowan at all. And if it's possible to automatically become a denisen of a city the instant you enter it, then I'd have to have stopped in every town between Denver and Des Moines to reregister my address, and every time I go into West Des Moines, or Clive, or Urbandale, or whatever suburb, I'd have to update all my papers. I live in Denver. Accept it.
I suppose I could just go home to Denver. That's an option. It's not the sort of option Des Moines would prefer, of course. Income tax or not, I've probably spent more than Officer Grumpy makes annually [at least on paper] on various junk since I got here. But if Des Moines and Iowa would prefer that I go home and stop helping their economy, that's always an option.
There are lots of options.
See, you're being lied to about the purpose of the police. Sure, the advert wizards promise that their function is to serve and to protect, but that never seems to happen. They don't serve. Try to get a cup of coffee out of one sometime; it never, ever happens. And worse, if you try to give them a tip, they think it's a bribe. There's no service involved in this. Granted, you can occasionally give them a tip in exchange for protection, so that element of the job can exist under the correct circumstances; but, in general, they're not real protective either.
If cops are really supposed to be a service industry, we should be able to fire them. We should be able to dock them for insubordination. We should be able to demand our money back. We should be able to reserve the right to be served by a competitor. Cops aren't a service industry; they're a monopoly bent on world domination. And it's time for that to end.
New rules:
If you pull me over for something, prove it. Pull me over for speeding, prove it. Or, the ticket you wrote becomes exhibit A in my libel suit. Do you really want to play by the letter of the law? Fine by me. My lawyer can beat up your lawyer.
You don't have my permission to search my car. If you search it anyway, you're breaking and entering.
You don't have my permission to touch me. If you touch me anyway, it's assault and battery.
You don't have my permission to fine me. If you fine me anyway, it's extortion.
You don't have my permission to pull me over. If you pull me over anyway, it's stalking.
You don't have my permission to talk to me. If you talk to me anyway, it's verbal assault.
I'm done playing games with these idiots. I'm not going to redefine the things I say down to the vernacular, just so they can understand them. We're talking about a gang whose colours are black and navy, which anyone in the fashion world will tell you is a bad combination.
If you want to bother someone, go bother the little twerps in the silly Japanese economy cars with the roller skates for tyres and the sonic warfare radios. Go bother the ubiquitous drunks who beleaguer the polysyllabic writers in restaurants. Go bother someone who's actually doing something illegal. Don't pick on those of us who aren't actively committing a crime just because you assume we're safe. We're not. Smart people are never safe; we're just sneaky enough to appear safe until it's too late. Sorry if that infringes on your copyrights somehow.
Bad cop; no pension.
That's just my opinion; those are still legal, I think...

--Gremlin

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA [NotS]
 
It’s times like these that I realise exactly how dumb the majority of homosapiens really are.
At the moment, one of the hottest, most sellable controversies in the land is the violence inspired by Hollywood. And the sad thing is that no one seems to have given it any real thought at all.
For that matter, no one seems to realise how long this controversy has been going on.
Once upon a time, homosapiens figured out how to draw. The first things they drew were depictions of homosapiens killing Smilodon californicus [sabretoothed tigers] and Mammut americanum [woolly mammoths] and each other [each other]. Violence in neolithic times, long before the FCC were created.
In more recent times, magic lanterns evolved into celluloid projectors, and films evolved into talkies, television, videocassette, and DVD; and mankind evolved into a brainless collective with a yactometric attention span.
A small minority of homosapiens have heard about the 1914 blockbuster Gertie the Deinosaur--a cartoon about a brontosaurid thingy which acted nothing like an Apatosaurus exculsis and which is often misidentified as the first cinematic release. It wasn’t. That would be Carmencita Dancing--a film of a belly dancer shot in 1892. Which gives you an idea where Hollywood really got its start.
More recently still, the MPAA have begun telling us what they think of films. In 1984, Gremlins was released and underrated as PG, inspiring the PG13 slot, which, ironically, was first affixed to Red Dawn, which wasn’t as violent as Gremlins. In 1995, Showgirls was released and wedged into an NC17 rating, which seems to be the only reason anyone went to go see it.
And now, it’s gotten worse. In 1999, Eyes Wide Shut was sliced up and optically altered to ensure a R rating, while The Phantom Menace only got a PG rating because LucasFilm sent the MPAA a copy in which Darth Maul wasn’t sliced in half. And that makes me wonder why in hell we’re listening to this organisation at all.
Meanwhile, long after Hays declawed Betty Boop, Beavis was prohibited to say ‘fire’ because some idiotic kid got hold of a lighter. Which brings back memories of the nineteen forties, in which people were constantly dropping anvils and pianos on each other after watching Bugs Bunny.
Now here’s what you don’t know. Standard practise in violent films includes such things as subliminal foleys over gunshots--when the arbitrarily good guys shoot someone, the sound of a lion roaring is often mixed in with the blast; the badguys’ gunshots are spliced with women screaming. Just another way you’re being manipulated by the powers that be.
It’s funny: I was reading a book last night purporting to explain the filmmaking process [and written by the director of ExecutionerII, if that tells you anything] which mandated exactly how a film is to be made--twenty minutes of Act I, followed by an hour of Act II containing two plottwists, concluding with a fifteen minute Act III in which the Question from Act I is satisfactorily answered. Don’t tell me how to write a filmscript. I write things because I want to, not because I give a damn whether anyone else likes them, or thinks that the appropriate amount of time is spent on the various elements within.
But, lucky us, we live in a world where a malfunctioning mechanical shark set the standard for filmmaking--hint that the monster exists, let a few people be eaten by the monster OC, look for the monster, compare scars, meet the monster at the end of the film. It never used to be that way; only since Jaws was released, despite the filmscript, in 1975.
On the subject, a record number of Carcharodon carcharias have been killed since Jaws was released, putting them onto the endangered species list. Not that endangered species lists impress me much, but I haven’t heard any complaints about the mistreatment of the mutated makos in Deep Blue Sea yet--just that the sharks weren’t very nice to the cute, fuzzy homosapiens. Which I find really funny, since everyone’s so concerned about overpopulation [though you can easily fit six billion homosapiens into Montana at once] and the extinction of inhuman life [id est, a school of Isurus sapiens] is considered so devastating.
So that seems to be the controversy here: modern films are inspiring sharks to eat people, and people to shoot other people. Or something.
Which fails to make much sense.
The big concern seems to be the dead issue of Littleton, Colorado. For those just tuning in, a couple of smart kids killed a bunch of annoying kids and made it a lot more fun for the rest of the smart kids to wear black trenchcoats and listen to Marilyn Manson. That was Littleton. Again. It’s not the first time it’s happened. It’s just the first time is hasn’t been called Darwinism. Don’t believe me? Which is more fit to survive: someone who lives alone, or someone who lives alone, counting on help from a god they’ve never met. Darwinism.
Because sometimes we get pushed too far. It’s not because Manson did a cover of the Eurhythmics; it’s not because the badguy shot the goodguy in a film; it’s not because Bugs dropped a piano on Fudd. It’s because the idiots who are taking over the world couldn’t tell you the world’s mass [six sextillion kilogrammes, plus 0.0000001% of its mass through accretion per billion years] but would like to tell you that homosapiens wouldn’t be so violent if they spent less time sitting narcoleptic in front of a television screen--like it was back in the shiny, happy times of Richard the Lionhearted and Alexander the Great.
That’s just my opinion; this opinion has been rated NIQ200.

--Gremlin

Our house; that was where we used to sleep.
At the time of this writing, the clock is ticking. It’s a long story.
For all practical purposes, it begins on 15th May 1999. That’s when the announcement was made.
On 15th May, Buddy Quick, the former co-owner of the property at 1092 and 1094 Twenty-eighth street in DuhMoines, Iowa, unofficially mentioned that he’d sold his share of the house to his partner and apparent boyfriend, Jim Scharper [who can be reached at 515-360-7808 to likely refuse to comment], and that he was giving the tenants of the house their Thirty-day Notice: by 15th June 1999, the house had to be empty of all parties.
Which almost makes a degree of sense. Almost.
The wrinkle: the unofficial [verbal] Notice to Vacate was based on the stipulation that the tenants of both halves of the duplex pay a pro-rated amount equivalent to half the monthly rent. In other words, since each half of the house was paying six hundred bucks per month, each half was expected to surrender three hundred for the ability to remain in the place halfway through June.
In still other words, the tenants had two weeks to find a new place to live beginning on 1st June, or a month to find a place willing to move them in on 15th June. Where such a place might be remains a mystery.
The unofficial and verbal Notice to Vacate having been more-or-less delivered, a bunch of labourers began to show up, hammering things, moving things about, spraypainting a sign on the garage telling us we couldn’t park in our rented driveway anymore, and leaving this hideous thing parked across the front walk of the duplex.
This might be a good point to mention that I was never an official tenant of the property. Instead, I’ve been staying there since I got to DuhMoines. So it doesn’t really involve me, except that I really hate it when dumb people do bad things to my friends.
One of my friends is Corey Taylor.
Corey Taylor is the lead singer of the band SlipKnot. That becomes relevant here in a moment.
SlipKnot have been signed with Roadrunner Records, and have since been signed to tour with OzzFest. So, for Corey’s part, the unofficial, verbal Notice to Vacate meant little: he was leaving for the road either way. Granted, he was less than pleased that our mutual friends were now searching frantically for anyplace that would let them move in on either two weeks’ notice or 15th June, but he was no longer directly involved.
Until....
On the final day, 23rd May, an hour before Corey and the rest of SlipKnot were slated to leave on the bus, Corey was taking a final load of personal items out to the car when he accidentally walked into the damned thing on the front walk. The departure was delayed as he was rushed to hospital to have his face stapled back on. SlipKnot are now suing the parties responsible for the attractive nuisance.
Meanwhile, the neighbours at 1092 Twenty-eighth managed to secure a new place for 1st June. One third of the tenants at 1094 was on tour, another third had found a place to move on 1st June, and the final third, who was with me at this point, was still searching for just about anything.
We found it: a very nice place which opens on 15th June. Perfect.
Except:
So, yesterday, I was back at 1094, breaking into the place with a MasterCard [the door was locked] when some idiot with a Mister Haney accent told me A) he thought everyone was gone already and B) he had a key to the place if I wanted in. I went ahead and finished my credit card transaction with the lock and otherwise ignored him. That twit, it would appear, was Jim Scharper--the new sole owner of the property.
And now, things become a bit sillier.
At eight this morning, Buddy Quick appeared in the doorway to the room I’ve been sleeping in. Anyone who’s ever heard of me can probably guess that eight in the morning is an unlikely time to catch me awake. Dumber than that, I didn’t quite bother to shoot him for breaking in and waking me up.
Which I easily could have done. I looked a few things up.
In the state of Iowa, a verbal Notice to Vacate is nearly as relevant to any situation as something beginning with ‘A guy walks into a bar’. That is to say that, realistically, no one has yet told us to be out within the next thirty days.
Also, the landlord or owner of a property may not enter without having first provided a written notice that he will be at least two business days beforehand. The exception to that would be a circumstance of emergency--like, if the house were on fire. Breaking and entering simply to wake up an armed gremlin and remind him [verbally again] that everyone was supposed to be out by 1st June doesn’t impress anyone as being particularly emergent.
Which probably means that the verbally orchestrated ‘deal’ struck with the remaining third of the original tenants of 1094--that Buddy and Jim would give him forty-eight hours to get the hell out--is also irrelevant to reality.
What could happen, according to my lawyers, who make more than the damned duplex is worth, is that these idiots could provide a written Notice to Vacate, from which point the thirty days could begin. Following that, on, for the sake of argument, 7th July, thirty days from now, they could provide another written notice giving the tenants a further three days to go away. If, at that point [10th July] the tenants hadn’t yet left, they could file for an official removal by the state, which would, realistically, take another three months or so to occur, since the state have better things to worry about than the problems of some whiny guy with a hillbilly accent and his evident boyfriend.
Then, there’s this.
Apparently, the property at 1092 and 1094 Twenty-eighth is destined to become a Bed&Breakfast once the tenants have moved out as early as 10th October or so. Why any idiot would attempt to place a Bed&Breakfast at Twenty-eighth and Cottage Grove in DuhMoines, or what that idiot will do next week when the thing predictably fails, is beyond me. But, that seems to be the plan at this point.
Which means that all the construction being done every day from dawn to dusk will be moving inside the house, and completely renovating the place.
Which means that anything which exists now will be destroyed, regardless its current condition.
Which means that Buddy’s intention to walk through the place on 9th June with a city official [the official is an interesting way of making sure someone’s backing him up on whatever damage might exist] before deciding whether to return the six hundred dollar deposit seems excruciatingly dumb to everyone who’s heard about it. The deposit is supposed to cover the expense of repairing damage, and not remodelling to turn a residential house into a business. Withholding the deposit for the purpose of remodelling may very well be considered fraud, in the professional opinions of my attorneys.
So, here we are. A week from now, we can move into this new place I’m renting. Thirty days plus three days plus however long it takes to get anyone official to care from whenever Buddy and Jim get round to officially serving us with a Notice to Vacate, they can actually make us leave. Beyond having to contend with the mindless complaining of a couple of nearly-comprehensible Iowans, we have little to worry about for quite some time.
Still, it bugs me. Not that I’m a big fan of most of the laws in effect [whenever I get pulled over for failure to use my indicator light, I apologise to the cop for overestimating his ability to divine my intentions there in the Left Turn Only lane] but it bothers me even more when a couple of idiots do dumb things which happen to be prohibited by some astonishingly logical law. And this sort of thing seems to happen a lot. Most people seem to assume that a landlord can just tell them to get the hell out without due process, and they’ve got to go; less think that they’ve got three days to find a new place; almost no one realises that they’ve got the sort of timespan they’ve legally got, because most landlords never bother to follow the letter of the law before evicting someone for whatever reason. Also, for much the same reasons, tenants tend to believe that the landlord can simply walk into the place whenever he likes, because he owns or manages it. Due to the common practise, if not the common law, performed by landlords, most people think they have no rights at all.
So: next time your landlord does something dumb, make sure he’s legally allowed to before you go along with it. Chances are, he’s trying to intimidate you into an unnecessary situation. Question everything.
Of course, that’s just my opinion; and that of my lawyers.

--Gremlin

Okay, maybe it's me, but....
Let's entertain a scenario here for a moment. It's two in the morning, and for whatever kooky reason, you're awake, sitting alone in one of those abnormal restaurants which actually stay open after dark, and--just for the sake of argument--typing something important enough to bother typing into a laptop. We'll toss in all the cool little assumptions: you're sitting next to an outlet, so your battery isn't melting away like an iceberg in Panama; you've got enough coffee to last you for several minutes, and aren't yet considering hoarding the stuff lest the serverita neglects to ever come near your foodless table again; the ashtray is reasonably unfull, and you've got an extra pack of Camels; you've got a really great, if moderately sketchy, idea which you're all set to write the hell down once and for all. What could possibly go wrong....
Possibly, something like this:
It was a dark and stormy night. The wind blew like an impoverished CrankWhore just released from prison into a dark and dingy alleyway. Bats circled overhead like small, leathery, mammalian flying things. And, suddenly-- 'Hey! Hey there! Hey! Hi! Sorry to interrupt, but--hey! Hi! Hey, is that a computer? That thing? There? It's a computer, right?'
Now, let's think about this for a moment. It's a rectangular plastic thingy, about nine inches by twelve by two. It's got a bunch of keys on it, and a big screen. It's got stickers reading ‘Intel Inside' and ‘Windows98'. It's plugged into the damned wall. From this, we can reasonably determine that it's a mustelid commonly referred to as a ferret.
Of course it's a bloody computer! Idiot!
But, anyway....
It was a dark and story night...blah blah blah...And suddenly...and suddenly...um....
So at this point, whatever the hell suddenly happened is gone. And that's bad. And that, from any idiot's perspective, has got to be the exclusive fault of the gregarion.

Gregarion noun [gremlinism] Any member of a huge group of gregarious twits who can't work out that, just because they never got enough attention as children, it doesn't mean that any of the rest of us give a damn whether they exist at all.

Okay, so being, like, nice isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's not something I'm personally very good at. And it always kinda creeps me out to confront a drippingly nice stranger anyway. But the simple practise of not being a complete and utter bastard all the time probably has a degree of merit.
Even still, there are limits.
If you're walking through a door and someone, for whatever codependent reason, is trying to sneak through customs in your back pocket, it doesn't take a hell of a lot of effort to sorta fling the door open a bit wider so they can make it into the building as well. That's fine; I can handle that. Spotting someone trekking in from the neighbouring zipcode with three canes and a wheelchair, ambling like the wind, should not obligate you to assemble a tent and reroute your mail to this new physical address just to make sure they never have to touch that pedestrian door handle all by themselves, okay? That's a limit.
Saying hi to someone is fine. Hi. Hello. Wuzzup. Nada. Cool. Later. Bye. The brainless patter which replaced logical interrogatives some fifty generations ago is fine, in moderation. But this hey hey there hi hey, can you hear me hey hello hey, I hey um hey hi incessant whining thing has got to be exterminated. Okay? Ignorance is bliss, but I can't ignore you without your help. You've got to shut the bloody hell up somewhere in the first hour, or the whole I'm-not-listening rouse becomes satirical.
Or maybe...maybe this would be better. What if I just don't wear a pin reading Ask me if this is a computer [which, thinking about it, would only lead to gregarions asking whether the pin were a computer] and we'll take it as read that A) it's probably a computer and B) it really doesn't matter to anyone but me whether it's a computer or a ferret or what. Whatever it is, it's mine, and you can't use it to read your damned EMail.
And on a sidenote about EMail: damnit, do NOT send me anything reading ‘hi im a swf19 i like cheese do you' because my viruskillers read these things and assume that the Russians are invading, okay? It's www.m-w.com. It's free. Don't come back until you've learned at least a thousand new words.
But about gregarions....
I'm not saying that I never want to talk to anyone in a restaurant. Hell, I'd love to talk to my server occasionally--especially within the first hour after I've run out of coffee. It's that I don't want to talk to anyone against my will. And the problem there is that precisely the sort of people I don't want to talk to are the sort of people who are too damned dumb to figure it out.
For some reason, you can't just tell them ‘leave me alone', or suddenly it's all your fault that they suck. Somehow you're the badguy. Half the time, these vegetables will want to start a fight because you're, like, ‘asking for it'. How am I ‘asking for it'? If I didn't want to talk about how hot that really ugly drunk chick is, what in hell could lead these idiots to assume that I'm all for beating them up? Not that I'm opposed to beating them up, per se, but I'm really trying to write something on my ferret here right now.
And the alternatives to ‘asking for it' never work. Here's what really happens:

STOOPID: Hey, is that a computer? GREMLIN: Gavaritya nye Phanglaski. STOOPID: Wow! Are you from some other country? Do you like it in Am-er-i-ca?

So, that's out. So's this:

STOOPID: Hey, is that a computer? GREMLIN: Why. STOOPID: Jus' wonderin' GREMLIN: Why. STOOPID: Jus' makin' conversation. GREMLIN: Why, is there a shortage? STOOPID: Well, no; I jus' figgered you'd wanna talk to me.

Which usually leads straight into ‘asking for it'.
So a big factor is that these idiots do this to me while I'm busy. Then again, I wouldn't be sitting there if I had nothing to do. If I had nothing to do, I'd eat something, and then go find something to do. But I'm working on things. Sometimes, I may appear to stop working on things because I'm not actually typing. That might well be because I'm thinking [see m-w.com, under ‘thought'] which is this neat thing I do where I can sorta plan ahead a bit IF by some alarming miracle, no one decides I'm done being busy and decides that now is the time to ask after my ferret.
Look at this from my perspective: if I walked into Amoco, walked into the little bullet-resistant cage, and pushed you out of my way so I could stand there and ask whether that was a cash register, it might be kinda annoying, right? Like, it would interrupt things, and you wouldn't get anything done. Granted, these are two entirely different vocations; you're instantly replaced by a RadioShack model robot, while writing actually takes a modicum of thought. Still, just in terms of getting things accomplished when you're hoping to have that happen, maybe you can see my point.
If not, imagine trying to get onto the freeway, but you can't because some guy in a black Formula is pacing you in the slow lane, and you eventually have to give up and slam into the wall. Would that be intrusive and annoying?
Ah. I know what reflects this perfectly. You're all set to shoot some sort of animal with your goofy semiautomatic rifle, and I show up with a bullhorn. ‘Hey! Hey there! Hi! Is that a Winchester? Is it? Huh? Hello?'
Remember: be nice and reply with a huge lengthy explanation or you'll be ‘asking for it'.
It's really pretty simple. I'm typing on a computer. I'm busy. I don't want to talk. Even if I weren't busy, I wouldn't want to talk. I'm not interested in talking to anyone who's too dumb to figure out on his own whether my ferret is, in actuality, a computer.
I don't want to talk to someone who asks ‘what kinda books'. That's the dumbest possible question I've ever been asked. What kinda books. The round kind. I leave the rectangular ones to all those other guys.
Okay. If you wound up at gremlin.net reading this because you ran into me at a restaurant and asked me something, you probably asked me one of these. This list, of course, might grow longer with time and stoopidity.

• Is that a computer
• What's your shirt say
• Are you a drummer [it involves this thing I unconsciously do with pens]
• Are you on the in-ter-net
• Do you know who you look just like
• Do you know what time it is [which I could almost live with, but for the immense clock on the wall--the nice digital one, just in case you can't work out analogue]
• Hey wow man check this out is she hot or what
• Got any weed
• What's a two-letter word for ‘three-toed sloth' [answer: ‘ai']
• Did you go to school to learn computers [COMPUTERS101: Mastering the OnSwitch]
• Have you got a cigarette

I'm sure there will soon be more of those.
Not that I'm expecting this to do any good. Oh, maybe after the fact a few people will figure it out that I'm not deaf, it's just that they're inexorable dickweeds. But otherwise, it's just going to keep happening.
Unless....
Maybe I could have a pin made reading ‘Ask Me about Amway'. That might get these idiots to leave me the hell alone.
What am I thinking. They'd probably just ask whose downline I'm in.
Of course, that's just my opinion; your fault for asking.

--Gremlin