I might drop a few bucks and get a desktop interface for weblogging. Because, by god, this shit I write needs back-end bells and whistles.
Here’s a picture, because it does that.
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We came home to a brown envelope from the local courts.
On the case where fucking Nick was suing us, the plaintiff, Nicky, got a fucking goose egg. Nada. Vacated. Done.
On the case where we did the paperwork correctly, and which ended up on top, we, the plaintiffs, M. and me, we are OWED BY Nick. The net result from our entire security deposit after living at his place for two years — He gets to keep 9 American dollar bills. Yup, less than $10 dollar from what he claimed was our trashing the place beyond $2 grand.
HAHAHAHA.
We’ll be sending collection agents to his house if need be for our whole little bonus.
I’m proud to be an American.
The other day I got a social network invite from someone I know through the comedy scene. Innocuous and common enough, right?
No. Fucking asshole, shithead, stupid, poopy brain computers. The site asked to crosscheck my address book for other members, and then proceeded to SPAM the entire list with invitations. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK.
I should have Googled the company name BEFORE joining. Always a good thing to check it out before clicking on the invite to the party. But, the spammers WANT you to trust your friends and acquaintances and NOT question an invite.
Had I searched Quetchup or Quechup, I would have seen a bunch of other victims. I would have found this site, or this blog, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one. AAAAARRRGGGGHHH.
In short — DON’T JOIN QUECHUP. And, if you got the time and inclination, write some dirty words in an email and send to the fuckers at: legals@quechup.com and spam@quechup.com.
If I spammed you and you joined, I’m wicked sorry.
Fucking Nick, the smallest of petty, small people. We got to see him today. Fucking yay.
Here’s the timeline. Exactly 21 days from moving from his shithole (OK, it was livable, but a spiritual shithole), we got the ridiculous letter. The one where not only was he keeping our security deposit, but he wanted $800 or so more bucks for his shitty, old carpet. We waited a week or so, just to be chill and all, and sent him our own letter stating directly and with legal references, “You got to be shitting us,” and asking for our security deposit back.
Again, for the chillness of it all, we gave him a couple of weeks to reply and send a goddamn check. Then, we filed our court paperwork and got a June date lined up for the hearing.
Alrighty, then, up until about then I was thinking I knew what was what and how this whole thing might roll. Win, lose or draw, we were just doing our paperwork and not lying down on Nick’s ridiculous cash grab.
We hadn’t heard anything, nary a peep, other than from the nice process servers, who said Nicky boy had been served.
Of course, though, Nick, my man, did not want to cough up some reasonable cash or otherwise make it easy, chill and non-litigious. Nope, instead he changed the court date from June (which I had picked) to early September because of an alleged summer sojourn in the ancient lands of his Grecian roots.
So, we knew two things — He got our papers, and he had the court date (and the hearing ID number from the paperwork we submitted).
What we didn’t know is he had his own dealio going on the whole time. Turns out Nick had wanted to sue our asses all along. Only thing is he’s so monumentally fucktarded, we never got notified until last week.
A couple of certified letters showed up whilst I was vacationing in Scotland. M. picked them up when I got back. Nick was, I thought, countersuing. But, he was just suing suing with his own case number, his own paperwork, his own set of dates, only he ain’t never told us.
So, we showed up in court today, a day earlier than the changed date we had been sent after Nick headed to Greece. Nope, that day, our date, was set for tomorrow. We showed up today, a day early, following the date on last week’s new letters.
The mandatory chat in the hallway to try to settle the stupidity was an exercise in futility. Not only was Nick’s idea of settling demanding we write a check for the full amount, he was just oozing to show us his pictures.
Apparently, Nick’s an Arlo Guthrie fan, because he came to court with a pile of “colored glossy pictures with circles and arrows on the back of each one to use as evidence against us.” Our judge was sighted, though. And, his photos were fucking crazy with notes like “urine” next to an arrow pointing to an obvious rust stain on the bolt holding the toilet together.
So we went back in and had a hearing.
A fair amount of our hearing was taken up by the commissioner just trying to get that procedural stuff straight and figure out the paper trail. She had combined the two cases and was especially hung up on the reality that M. and I got no where near the 10 days at least the court said we should get from notice to hearing. Better yet, I never actually signed that I got the paperwork (Nick didn’t bother putting an apartment number on my address and the PO let M. get my letter). Ergo, I was never officially served, and M.’s certified letter wasn’t dated, and she implied he was served half-assedly.
She asked if we wanted to “waive service” and go on with the deal or get more time. We went a long and waived. Who the fuck wants to keep going back over so stupid a situation?
We pretty much stuck to the game plan — Shut up, answer questions and stay calm and chill and hope for Nick to live as he assuredly, inevitably must. And, he stayed true to form. He harangued and lied and didn’t answer questions and made no sense. I think the judge noticed.
My bloodboilingest moments were when my feminist ire was baited. Part of his story was how he couldn’t complete the walk through when we left the apartment, because I was getting upset. The other moment of misogyny was while explaining the allegedly ruined carpet (what with it’s 18 spots of varying sizes and hues), professional shampooers told him the two, small, red ones would never come out. He didn’t know, but he thought the red ones were “a woman’s makeup or something, your honor.”
Not to mention that in the aforementioned hallway, ostensibly to discuss settling, he said that M. should decide what we should do, and he was waiting to hear.
(Comedian to the core, I did get my one laugh from the other folks waiting around the courtroom. I told the judge that I don’t wear makeup and “neither does my boyfriend.” In my favor, I think and hope, neither did she.)
At the end, after trying to get the stories straight and trying to figure out what the cash situation was and who might owe who what and for what, the commissioner asked if there wasn’t anything left to be said. Sho fucking ‘nuf, Nick had to get in his last words. He’s a last word getting in kind of OCD guy.
He said something like, “They never so much as touched a broom in two years, and that’s God’s truth.” He definitely ended his bald-faced lie with an invocation of God and truth.
(Of course, he didn’t actually notice that in his story, he complained about the cleaning supplies we used only to wrap up the whole deal by saying we never cleaned once. Um, continuity there Nick, you lying sonofabitch.)
Now we wait. Wait to see what the system of jurisprudence and all that kind of democratic fun stuff will or won’t offer us, and whether our story had that right ring of credibility and non-crazy rambling and Nick’s didn’t.
The good thing about the long weekend and the desire to lie on the couch and mope is that I got caught up on a lot of pictures.
First is the exiting day that M. got his free TV from out of his office. It was a great thing, a momentous ocassion and a thing to behold — A 47-inch technological marvel that was M.’s reward for kicking ass in his place of work and winning a quota contest.
Here’s some hanging out in Alameda beforehand and the ritual getting and uncrating with the help of our friends Bob and Nancy. (A propos nothing, whenever we get together with them I feel so completely Californian. The statistics in Boston just didn’t favor the likelihood of our hanging with another couple of people rocking the Chinese-American hook up.)
(The TV is sadly becoming a bit of a Stephen King third character of evil around our apartment. Fuck Comcast and their shitty signal and shittier cable fixer guys who are meant to fix their suck signal. The TV mocks us and channels an angy demon within M. that I fear and loathe.)
Also, I took a million and a half, approximately, photos whilst in bonnie Scotland. Here they all are, minus the pics of the Naked Comedy Showcase, because believe it or not I have a wee bit of restraint.
Scotland Day 1 (And a long fucking day it was. I got off the plane after a cumulative 15 hours in the air to meet up with my old friends, troll a mall, buy pants, eat a variety of things, catch comedy shows and dazedly perform a set.)
The next day. (Feeling a bit better after some sleep, I got to see the city crazy packed with tourists and perfomers for the fest. And, I saw more comedy, including catching some late night action with Reggie Watts. Somewhere in the same day, I saw The Trachtenburg Family Slide Show Players, alas no pics just memories.)
And then some more days and ancient sites and some more time after that.
Somewhere in among the days spent at the Fringe Festival, I got to see doktor cocacolamcdonalds. Awesome. Especially this picture.
I wanted a fairy tale reunion with M. I think we both missed each other. We got a massive fight, instead. Probably, it will all be cool. I’m counting on it all being cool. But, one thing I can’t do when I’m upset is sleep. So, thank god for all the laborers who are giving me the long weekend to try to relax.
Meanwhile, there have been some notes of high-ness. Some good among the bad. Some fairy tale moments among the real world.
For example, I spent Friday desperately trying not to channel Pat. I went to work in an absolute Pat frame of mind. Nervous, expectant, worried. Why? Because whilst I was out of town, M. had the notion to schedule a cleaning service to come in and, well, clean.
It’s a fair concept and compromise to our both have full-time jobs and full, time-consuming interests like writing (of which I have done little) and running (which I think he has done and I never will) and, well, living things that are far fucking more interesting than cleaning one’s living space. I am eager to have the weight off of my domesticity failures with the simpler act of check writing.
But, wholey moley, talk about flashbacks. Some time in the 70s, when Pat recognized the Supermom phenom was bullshit and even if it wasn’t, it wasn’t for her, in between whipping up meals from Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Cookbook, teaching full-time and raising five children, Pat briefly hired what was then called a “cleaning lady.” An individual, a local woman, probably a personal referral, before the service industries blossomed with a thousand services. (I loves me the service economy.)
The anxiety was huge, though. A stranger coming into your home and cleaning your dark corners and dusting your skeletons. And, the failure, the symbolic, unrealistic, stank of inadequacy, because in days that last only 24 hours and the weeks of a mere 7 units, you, the woman, the mother (in Pat’s case) are neglecting the properness of a home, the fortress of your family’s castle.
Will the stranger judge you and your dingy grays?
For me, though, in a new millenium, I was determined to let my true colors fly and not clean the house for the cleaning staff. The prior to arrival ritual of cleaning before the cleaning stranger came was, somehow, coded into my mother’s DNA. I fought it. I fought it hard. (Although, I did load and run the dishwasher (with M.’s dishes from while I was gone mind you) before fleeing our apartment for a day’s paycheck earning.)
The interesting thing is I work with a mix of people from a mix of places with a mix of values and experiences. The vibe I got there when I admitted my anxious eagerness to see my transformed home that evening was a resounding “Hell ya.” If you can write a check, employ someone, earn some time, limit stress it’s a contribution to society well worth the investment.
Maybe it’s because there’s a fair chunk of folks who work with and who have lived in other countries where your need for service is a job and opportunity for someone else.
But, yeah, hell ya, I’s don’t want to scrub and vaccuum and sanitize. And, the Maid Brigade, the company M. found, left mints on the counter. My mom’s cleaning lady never did that.
