Bad weather in DC cancelled my flight, and all seats were booked on subsequent flights until Thursday, negating the usefulness of me traveling this week. So I'm working via remote this week. The air is cool, the birds are chirping outside, the hussshhhhhh of the surf in the distance wafts through the open window. I'm really disappointed that I couldn't be in the Great White North this week.
Really.
My apartment in the Great White North does not get a real news channel, so I tried watching CNN the other morning as I exercised, and I quickly remembered why I normally don't. Anderson Cooper, CNN's resident histrionic wingnut, was hawking some guy's book, "The Edge of Disaster," for an hour. With detailed maps and computer graphics, Cooper described the best way to attack an oil supertanker in Boston harbor.
Ever since it came to light in 2003 that CNN had colluded with Saddam Hussein to give him favorable news coverage in exchange for being allowed to report inside Iraq, CNN's coverage has been suspect. These days, CNN often shows propaganda video supplied by terrorists. They usually don't tell you where it came from, of course. But the result is the same - CNN is shilling for terrorists (CNN's word for them is "insurgents"). So when CNN broadcasts detailed instructions on how to commit terrorist acts, it's pretty obvious where CNN's allegiance lies... and unfortunately, it's not with America.
Thankfully our deadbeat tenant moved out sometime over the weekend, and left quite a bit of stuff... his bed (which he bought from us but never paid for), his stereo, a bunch of clothes, parts of his espresso machine, a couple of sofas, a PlayStation, a dead moped, a nice patio furniture set, a big-screen TV, and a bunch of Bob Marley CDs (worthless, of course). My wonderful wife spent the entire day cleaning up the place, especially vacuuming, vacuuming, and vacuuming some more on her hands and knees, trying to get a massive quantity of glitter confetti out of the carpet (left over from the big party he threw over the weekend before abandoning the place). He had never, ever vacuumed or cleaned anything in the house since he moved in at the beginning of December, as far as we could tell, and the place was horrifically filthy. (I will spare you a description of the bathrooms, much less the toilets.) Sigh. My wife is a trooper, and has earned herself a nice dinner out and a shopping spree. We're going to have a nice big garage sale with all the stuff our deadbeat tenant left behind, in a week or two.
My wife found a bank statement, even. It showed that he could barely afford the rent on his salary, and then there was no money left over for anything else. He had no clue how to budget his money. Though it appears that he was also selling drugs, so perhaps he was factoring in his drug income to pay for his rent. Hmph. However, this taught us a valuable lesson that, even though we knew him for a year before he rented from us, and he had been a good neighbor across the street, never EVER rent to anyone without doing a background and credit check. We didn't - we thought we were being nice to help him. Look what it got us. No good deed goes unpunished. We won't make that mistake again.
The locksmith told my wife horror stories about professional deadbeats, who move into high-class places (nice houses and condos), never pay a dime on the rent, and use the system to fight off attempts to evict them. Recently, he was called to a big house in a ritzy neighborhood near us to change the locks. When he arrived, the police were there, the house's rental management company had a team of people there, and they were hauling everything out of the house and dumping it on the curb, including a garage full of crap. The deadbeat woman claimed that she was in the shower and couldn't answer the door, so the police went in and hauled her out too. She had been claiming hardship in the county court for six months, and that's why she couldn't pay her rent. (Nudge nudge, wink wink.) The locksmith changed the locks, and everyone went on their way, leaving the woman locked out of the house with all her crap on the curb. As it should be.
In a better world, they would have flogged her in the street, on camera, and posted the video on YouTube along with all the Muslim terrorist videos there, as an example of what happens to professional deadbeats. You've probably heard about the rampant crime in Singapore, which metes out such punishments as flogging and executions. You can earn yourself a flogging just by spitting your gum out on the sidewalk there. What? You haven't heard about Singapore's crime wave? That's because there ISN'T one. Punishment WORKS. Singapore's crime rate is one-tenth that of Philadelphia's. Such antisocial behavior as professional deadbeatism would be much less prevalent if it were met by brutal punishment, instead of accommodation and tolerance. There's no reason for productive law-abiding citizens to suffer the presence of a deadbeat in their rental property. My deadbeat avoided us making things difficult for him by wisely leaving. And we get to sell his stuff. Ah, capitalism.
Argh! That crazy French jazz program DJ was on CJBC 90.3 FM tonight again, talking about jazz and making me think that I could understand French! That is the WEIRDEST feeling.
I'm watching "The Gunfight at the OK Corral" (1957) with Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp, and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday. GREAT film. Not terribly accurate, but most films about the OK Corral aren't. It's great to watch Lancaster and Douglas together.
It was a cold and blustery weekend. We built the wooden frame for the garden shed, and staked it into the ground with four-foot rebar. Next weekend, we'll build the shed! Finally!
It was so nasty at the beach, we stayed only three minutes. The sand was blowing eight feet off the ground in great sheets. The breakers were at least five feet high, crashing into the beach.
Tomorrow, if our deadbeat tenant isn't out yet, we'll file the papers with the county to get him thrown out by the sheriff. I will be glad when that's over with. No more playing landlord!
I just realized that the bad guy from the movie "Resident Evil," the scumbag boyfriend/traitor, is the boss on "Ugly Betty" on TV.
It also weirds me out to see Peter Weller hosting documentaries on The History Channel. He has a Master's in Roman and Renaissance Art. He's done History Channel documentaries on Rome, and I just saw him doing one on the Aztec Empire. It's very difficult for me to reconcile that with his roles in "RoboCop" (a classic trilogy, you MUST see it), and "Buckaroo Banzai." Apparently he was also on a couple episodes of "Enterprise" and "24" (neither of which I watch).
This is a big clock in Terminal 1 of Pearson Airport. Little man-figures bend up and down, turning the cogs of the clock.
Soooo tired... helped the wife plant some biiig plants... took down all the wooden beams from the front porch... went fishing by myself but didn't catch anything, which is just as well... told my tenant to pay up or get out, after he lied some more about getting money from a church to pay us... bought a pole saw and a pole hedge trimmer, which we will use tomorrow to hack back some of the jungle in our yard... and I'm now watching "North To Alaska" (1960) with John Wayne and Capucin, a beautiful French actress. She was manic-depressive, and was friends with Audrey Hepburn for a long time after they met while modeling in France in the 1940s. Audrey kept Capucin from killing herself on several occasions. Capucin finally succeeded in killing herself in 1990 by jumping from her 8th-floor apartment in Switzerland. Unfortunate. But I would argue that it's pointless to dissuade someone from killing themselves. If they want to do it, fine. More air for the rest of us.
Speaking of which, I heard that ex-model and gold-digger Anna-Nicole Smith died suddenly in Miami. Hmmm. Suicide? I suppose they'll figure it out eventually. Not important, really. She is just one of billions of people whom I don't know and have never met, and about whom I have no interest. Such people are only flickering phosphors on a television screen, and for all practical purposes, they don't really exist at all. Does it really matter who they are, what their lives are like, how they die? Not really. My wife and I discussed this after seeing "The Queen" with Helen Mirren today. (Fantastic movie, you must see it.) My wife was deeply affected by Princess Diana's death in 1997, as apparently millions of other people were. I remember seeing something about it on the evening news, but in fact I was completely uninterested in it at the time, and I remain so today. Like Anna-Nicole Smith, Diana was only flickering phosphors on the television screen. Diana had no reality to me, but she was VERY real to my wife. We found it amusing that two people could perceive the same event in such radically different ways.
Am I odd for not caring about people I don't know and have never met? Perhaps. Perhaps I am more alien than I would care to think. I care deeply for the people I know and HAVE met. Hopefully that makes up for it a little.
The weekend was cold, blustery and wet. We did not go to the beach at all, or do any work outdoors, or go fishing, because at 60 F, we would have frozen to death. It's the jungle, after all. 60 F is cold, on the coast.
Instead, I worked inside. I:
