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First Rant

Posted on December 31, 2005 | Filed Under The Apartment, Rants

Let’s start off this blog with a nice, good, solid rant. Please forgive any spelling mistakes as i don’t have the spellchecker set up yet. This post has been rated PG for violence and strong language.

I always seem to end up with bad neighbours. Flat-mates have always been good, but for some reason, the people above/beside/below us are, how can I say this nicely, a little “off”. The current apartment building is no exception.

I’ve been living in the same apartment in Vancouver for just over a year now. Laura moved here in July, preceeded by a month by our cat Jules.

The Cast

Crazy Old Lady: a (senile? demented?) woman lives across the hall from our apartment with her yippy miniature poodle-like dog. Talks in what first sounds to be a stream of binary code, but it’s just jumbled-up english — our friend Josh thinks it’s cool sounding. She can’t remember our names and looks to be about 60-75 years old; clearly retired.

Crazy Old Lady’s dog: Barks every time we open the hallway door. It is often left to roam in the hallway and frequently tries to jump up at us, bite us, or run into our apartment. Generally ill-trained. Crazy Old Lady calls it “To-Bi” (which i know because a note in the foyer one day claimed that To-Bi chased away some thieves). To-Bi is walked very frequently, often at times when most people are asleep. “Downtobidowntobistaytobidowntobi” is a common thing heard being said to him.

Angry Guy: a hot-headed, fake-tanned gay guy (Seinfeld: not that there’s anything wrong with that) in his late 20’s or early 30’s. Has lots of partners, which is cool, except it wakes us up every once in a while. Also has late-running parties on weekdays about once a month. Really dislikes Upstairs Guy. Has a small mash-faced dog that might be called “Jacob”.

Upstairs Guy: a mussle-bound, thick-headed, harley-collecting man who lives with his wife (who i know nothing about). A typical jerk in most respects. He’s been aparently been “renovating” his apartments for 2.5 years, mostly during the daytime. He owns two side-by-side apartments and is joining them into a single suite. Doesn’t ever talk to us, but he has hardwood floors (or bare floors?) and likes to wear shoes around the place, especially on the balcony where he goes to smoke.

Upstairs Guy’s apartments are above Angry Guy’s and mine.

Pretty typical people for an apartment building, in my opinion.

Act 1: Cruelty

Back in August, Angry Guy leaves town for a week. He leaves his dog on the deck outside. After a day, the dog starts barking, then howling. The dog howls for 24 hours, prompting the fire department to use a ladder to retrieve it. I get woken up to see if they can get from my deck to his, but there’s some lattice in the way. Crazy Old Lady aparently takes possession of the dog. Angry Guy gets the dog back.

Act 2: About the Dog

About a month ago at 10PM, Laura and I decided to go to sleep early. At 11, the yelling started. Angry Guy was screaming at Crazy Old Lady in the hallway.

From what we could hear, Angry Guy was sick of taking care of Crazy Old Lady and her dog. The phrases “You’re [just/such] a fucking retard” and “I’m going to call the SPCA on your dog [you] can’t take care of it” were yelled about 20 times in rapid succession. Angry Guy repeats himself alot when he’s yelling, which Laura and I find mildly amusing. Furthermore the hypocrisy is hilarious, given Act 1.

We couldn’t understand what Crazy Old Lady was saying. It sounded like maybe Angry Guy took To-Bi into his apartment. There was some scuffling, and she suddenly Crazy Old Lady dropped to the ground on her back and started howling in an excelent rendition of a medium-sized dog. Angry Guy starts to claim that he didn’t touch her. Someone in the building calls the cops.

After a minute or two of this, Angry Guy is still yelling and I decide to go out into the hallway and try to either calm the guy down or get him away from her (preferably both). I managed to get him to go into his apartment with me — away from the hallway — and promptly said the wrong thing.

Me: Semi-Calmly, “You can’t be screaming like this at this hour …” I’m cut off.
Him: “ARE YOU TELLING ME WHAT TO DO?!?”
Me: Calmly, “I’m not telling you what to do; that was just my opinion. What’s the …”
Him: “YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”

Too late, he’s pissed. Some short verbal argument ensues and i’m starting to lose my cool. Before i can really dig in to the (now perceived as) asshole, the local police show up.

The police question Angry Guy and Crazy Old Lady. Crazy Old Lady claims to have been hit by the “badman” and is aparently taken to the hospital for examination. I give my statement to the police, but things don’t calm down until just after midnight.

I’m so wound up I can’t get to sleep for the next 4 hours. I go to work the next day with 3 hours of sleep.

Act 3: Holiday Construction

Upstairs Guy starts taking on this renovation/construction in earnest this week. I can hear circular saws, sanding/sweeping, hammering, pounding, and something that sounds like a chainsaw but is probably a reticulating saw. This starts at 9AM and ends at 8PM, which is fair enough. It does sound like he’s cutting through the floor above into our apartment at times, which is unnerving. It scares the cat a lot, but I guess i’m used to it so it doesn’t bug me.

At 2AM this morning Laura is asleep and I’m reading a book on the couch having had a little too much Mountain Dew: Energy to drink after dinner. The stuff goes well with Rye, by the way.

Angry Guy decides “now is a perfect time for me to be angry” and promptly flys off the handle. I can hear rummaging in his apartment, then his door opening and slamming. I hear him stomping down the hallway then up the stairs. I hear a “knock knock knock”, and expect some yelling to ensue. I instead hear a constant and persistent “thud” like a wall’s being hit or a door being slammed. More stomping and Angry Guy’s door slams.

Angry Guy yells to someone on the phone, but i can’t hear what’s being said. 10 minutes later, the police show up. Angry Guy is handcuffed, read his rights, and told that he’s been charged with “uttering threats”. To be honest, i didn’t know that was a crime.

He pleads to the police: “all I did was go up, sit down by their wall like this,” he sits, “and hammer on their wall saying ‘how do you like this’.” I don’t know about you, but I’d be somewhat afraid if someone was doing that outside of my apartment.

Angry Guy further claims that Upstairs Guy “has ruined his cristmas X years in a row” (X changes each time he says this; remember what i said about him repeating himself) and that his parents had to “catch and early flight home because of him”. That must have been some noise, to cause people to fly home. He also mentions some incident about Upstairs Guy publicly threatening him because he’s gay and asks the police to “look in [Upstairs Guy’s] file”. If true, that i can understand.

I’m peering through the peephole in my door, where i can only bearly see what’s going on. Crazy Old Lady comes into the hallway to add “hesabadman”, “hehitme”, and “takehimtojail”. The police are aparently familiar with the lady (probably the same cops that showed up during Act 2) and get her to go back into her apartment.

A friend of Angry Guy shows up and takes his keys and his dog. Angry Guy is taken away by the police.

I’m a little shaken, but manage to get to sleep by 3. I should be up that late tonight, anyway.

FIN - for now

In conclusion, i’ll quote Seinfeld again: “Who are these people?” Where do they come from? What clearly metaphysical force causes them to be drawn to where I’m living?! The questions are unanswerable.

That is why I want to buy a house.

Merry Hogmanay!

Posted on December 31, 2005 | Filed Under Randomness

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2005/12/31.html

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