The Vampire Rants, Part IV
IV
I’m lucky to be out of that shithole apartment anyway. They actually had the balls to call it, ampoule | “Autumn Oaks Bluff on the Lake” — you know, adiposity so it sounds serene and natural. “Graffiti-strewn stretch of cinderblock and broken glass abutting the sewage treatment plant” would have been just as accurate. And under that, buy on the brochure, in smaller letters they could add, “where illegal immigrants sit on the steps, get drunk and blast their horrible oom-pah oom-pah music at all hours when I’m trying to watch TV, because they don’t actually all fit in the tiny rooms they can barely afford.”
I guess all I really need is a place to put my casket and a little bit of dirt from my homeland, but I’m used to living in castles and communing with the wolves, not to cramming my treasures into an efficiency and saying, “nice doggie,” to Ray-Ray’s pit bull.
Once, I didn’t move my car for a month because I drive so infrequently. I hadn’t even noticed when someone broke out the window and stole an ancient tin of mints I left in the passenger seat. I guess they thought there were drugs in it. So, because my car hadn’t been moved or repaired, the management had it towed, because they thought it made the place look “trashy.”
Yeah, my Cavalier was the problem.
The thing that sent me over the edge, though, was when they started locking the laundry room at midnight.
Ridiculous.
It was a Wednesday. I started a load in the washer about 11, like I always did. At 11:45, I went back and switched the load over to the dryer and went back to my room to watch TV. At 12:30 I went back — locked. A sign on the door read: “For the convenience and safety of all our residents, the laundry room will be locked at midnight effective immediately. Thanks for making Autumn Oaks Bluff on the Lake the best. — The Management.”
Convenience? Are they kidding? Whose convenience is met by making the laundry room available less hours?
And safety? I hadn’t drained anyone in there. Were they having problems with people being raped? I doubt it because I’m the only one I’ve ever seen in there past midnight and I’ve never been raped.
I considered busting the door to splinters, but decided I could wait until the next evening to pick up my clothes and file a letter of complaint. So, at 11:30 the next night I went to get my clothes and they were stolen!
Who steals a load of laundry? Especially my laundry, with its faded colors and graying whites because I never bother to separate them.
The response to my incredibly polite-given-the-circumstances complaint was so typical of this ridiculous era.
“We cannot be held responsible for items left overnight in the laundry room.”
So fuck that place. I’m glad they kicked me out.
For the time being, I’m staying at a motel of meager accommodation. It’s suitable for now, as long as the maids abide the “do not disturb” sign on the door handle. But I know my time here is limited. As when you leave one of those signs on the door for too long, people start to talk.
My only problem with the room itself is that one entire wall is a mirror. I suppose it’s to make the room look bigger and allow mortal men to see themselves scratching their balls while they watch television. If I am to stay here for long I shall have to remove it.
On the bright side, I get free HBO and WiFi.
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October 27th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
those bastards taking a hard working vamps clothes whats the world coming too?
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October 28th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Yeah. We (my wife and I) had the same sort of problem at my old apertment. Broke down vehicles, parties all night, drunken shouting matches. We hated the neighbors, but being the nice people we are left polite notes and spoke kindly to them as we bumped into eath other in the hall. We vacuumed the floor at 8:30 one night and went to get the finished laundry at about 9:15 the same night. We stayed up late and watched a movie (at a reasonable volume) and the next morning we woke up to the landlords pounding on the door. We handed us a stern warning letter stating that we were making too much noise and and disturbed the downstairs neighbors by vacuuming at a late hour, slamming doors and having our TV turned up too loud. Uh, oh… I feel a story coming on…
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October 28th, 2008 at 5:08 am
I had gross old lesbians that lived in the apartment below my boyfriend. I could hear them banging cupboards in the middle of the night while I was trying to sleep, they yelled constantly at each other. It could be because they had matching vehicles with matching bumper and window stickers, and one of them found another womans panties… I don’t really know. I wouldn’t have even minded it if they were HOT lesbians, but alas, they were gross.
They came up and knocked on our door because we had the radio playing too lound and they were trying to sleep. At 3 in the afternoon! It was no louder than a reasonable volume TV (that we didn’t have) and it was to pass the time while we were cleaning to move out. Ugh.
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SpaZzy reply on October 28th, 2008 10:31 am:
Sounds like a neighbor I had who lived across the street. I’d play my music one decible too loud and I’d hear a banging on the front door. My neighbor would be there going “THE HELL YOU DOIN’ PLAYIN’ YOUR CRAZY ASS ROCK N’ ROLL MOOZACK WHEN I’M TRYIN TO SLEEP?!”
“It’s.. *checks watch* Four in the afterno–”
“DON’T YOU TRY TO BACK TALK ME!!”
He would leave. One occasion, this little exchange had happend for the umpteenth millionth time. Then I hear the oh-so-fabulous-I’m-screwed-what’d-I-do-now? Police Sirens. I get a knock and I answer. They ask me if my neighbor has been troubling me. Not wanting to get him into trouble I do the Noble thing.
“He’s been pissing me off for weeks.”
Haven’t seen him since. Paradise.
-SpaZzy-
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Speed reply on October 28th, 2008 11:48 am:
I had the psycho neighbors living downstairs from me – Dean and Deana, no lie. The apartment owner FINALLY got a handyman to fix the broken walls in our apartment in the middle of the day only to have Dean start banging on his ceiling for making too much noise. I guess it was interfering with his yelling at Deana. The good part was that a couple of times a week Dean and Deana would fight out in the parking lot and I mean FIGHT! Even when she was nine months pregnant Deana gave as good as she got. What a scrapper!
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SpaZzy reply on October 28th, 2008 11:55 am:
Either the noise was interrupting his Happy-Yelling-Time, or the fact that the handy man was able to fix the walls better than Dean could make a turkey sammich.
Deana reminds me of my cat. Except Deana isn’t a coward. But my cat could put up a fight no problem.. if what she was fighting was already dead, anyways.
-SpaZzy-
October 28th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I used to have this woman and her 16 year old daughter next door. I was getting home from work around 1 AM and EVERY morning at 6AM she would start screaming at her daughter to get up and get ready for school. Then she would yell at me at 9 AM if I had the stereo on. Finally, after getting no reaction from her or the landlord about my complaints, I turned my stereo speakers toward her wall, turned the bass and the volume all the way up and started playing Hell’s Bell’s every time they started screaming at each other. After about the fifth time, they finally figured it out.
Captcha – End Sommer It certainly is, it was 30 degrees in Alabama this morning.
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October 29th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
I once had an apartment on the 2nd floor. with about 20 people living in the 2 bedroom apartment beneath me. They would come and go at all hours of the day & night. There was always this horrible stench coming from the apartment.
Eventually, I moved out and my friend Elaine took over my lease. I was visiting her one afternoon and the people downstairs became so loud that we could barely watch the movie we had rented.
To solve the problem, Elaine got up, grabbed one of her pornos, and laid the 3 foot tall speakers that she had on the floor of the apartment. Then, she popped in the porno and turned up the volume as loud as the speakers could handle. Needless to say, after about 15 minutes we didn’t have any problems with noise from downstairs.
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