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May. 6th, 2003 03:50 amlast night the landlord returned.
to be fair, i was not present for the actual hour-and-a-half long "math & seizures" event taking place in the living room. after the fiasco of the last "house meeting" where my vocalizations of the "we need a metal gate downstairs because people keep tying to break in" variety, as an ad hoc spokesperson for everyone in the building, earned me an eviction threat for my troubles, i have decided that it is better for everybody if the landlord and i communicated as little as possible, at least for some time.
so i was not there. i was not in the "living room" pain zone. instead, i was in my "bedroom" pain zone, two doors away, tiptoeing to the door every 10 minutes to see if he was still there, because i really really had to pee, and i could not, because while normal landlords come by and collect checks and then LEAVE, our landlord stays and stays and does things like sitting down on the empty cardboard boxes in the living room, left over from C&M's packing, and declaring that he is sitting, like Jews do when they are about to die, so maybe he is Jewish. did sitting on cardboard boxes somehow mesh together in his head with sitting shiva? Our landlord has a very interesting cultural imaginary. And inexplicable euphemisms. One time he asked me if my old roommate was gay by asking if "his arm was kinda broken at the elbow" while proceeding to make some fey waving gesture with his wrist and contorting his face/mouth thing into an expression that often graces Dr. Evil's face in "Austin Powers" when he eurekas an evil plan (you know, the one with the pinkie). Anyway, I could not hear much from my recon trips into N's room except the undifferentiated sound of my roommates' exasperated voices, periodically punctired by an aggro "NO!" from the landlord's side of things, because our landlord is a fountain of metanegativity (see the dyslexicon entry some months ago). Apparently in this case the "no"s were prompted by C's detailed arithmetic maneuvers where she would explain to him how we divided the rent for this month, one step at a time, and he would not look at the paper, and would periodically petulantly bark "No!" I saw the sheet. It was covered by numbers on two sides, it looked like a prop from one of those "Beautiful Mind" crazy-mathematician movies. Also the landlord was convinced that we were "screwing over the new girl" for inexplicable reasons, and joyfully tried to foster a bond with us on the basis of this presumed complicity.
but never mind. because he left, at 11.30 pm, and even though he is coming back today because we are supposed to put an ad up for him on the internet to rent out the apartment downstairs, a gesture he interpreted as an altruistic gesture on mine and N.'s parts, which is in fact completely selfish, because we are afraid of who he might find for the place given his proclivity to end up with tenants with 14 cats who piss through the floorboards, tenants on the run from the law, and other potential neighbours that would make for a fine sitcom premise, but N. and I feel that our lives are already sufficiently sitcom-like, and we need no more help in that respect.
and on a different note, oh my god, has anyone seen the new Jewel video? can anyone please explain it to me? i CANNOT PROCESS. there are so many questions. s many. but if someone can just please explain to me why this throroughly confused misguided video combines 9-11 imagery with Jewel strutting around decked out like a globalization ho (multipurpose ethnic make-up for this lily-white girl, making her look like a cross between J. Lo and Mariah, with ho outfits usually found in Christina Aguilera videos, with their cultural refraction aesthetic), and most importantly WHY does it end with 9-11-ish firetrucks HOSING DOWN Jewel, which, in a "wet-T-shirt-aesthetic-is-patriotic" maneuver reveals a bra with the American flag underneath her soking tranparent white top.
to be fair, i was not present for the actual hour-and-a-half long "math & seizures" event taking place in the living room. after the fiasco of the last "house meeting" where my vocalizations of the "we need a metal gate downstairs because people keep tying to break in" variety, as an ad hoc spokesperson for everyone in the building, earned me an eviction threat for my troubles, i have decided that it is better for everybody if the landlord and i communicated as little as possible, at least for some time.
so i was not there. i was not in the "living room" pain zone. instead, i was in my "bedroom" pain zone, two doors away, tiptoeing to the door every 10 minutes to see if he was still there, because i really really had to pee, and i could not, because while normal landlords come by and collect checks and then LEAVE, our landlord stays and stays and does things like sitting down on the empty cardboard boxes in the living room, left over from C&M's packing, and declaring that he is sitting, like Jews do when they are about to die, so maybe he is Jewish. did sitting on cardboard boxes somehow mesh together in his head with sitting shiva? Our landlord has a very interesting cultural imaginary. And inexplicable euphemisms. One time he asked me if my old roommate was gay by asking if "his arm was kinda broken at the elbow" while proceeding to make some fey waving gesture with his wrist and contorting his face/mouth thing into an expression that often graces Dr. Evil's face in "Austin Powers" when he eurekas an evil plan (you know, the one with the pinkie). Anyway, I could not hear much from my recon trips into N's room except the undifferentiated sound of my roommates' exasperated voices, periodically punctired by an aggro "NO!" from the landlord's side of things, because our landlord is a fountain of metanegativity (see the dyslexicon entry some months ago). Apparently in this case the "no"s were prompted by C's detailed arithmetic maneuvers where she would explain to him how we divided the rent for this month, one step at a time, and he would not look at the paper, and would periodically petulantly bark "No!" I saw the sheet. It was covered by numbers on two sides, it looked like a prop from one of those "Beautiful Mind" crazy-mathematician movies. Also the landlord was convinced that we were "screwing over the new girl" for inexplicable reasons, and joyfully tried to foster a bond with us on the basis of this presumed complicity.
but never mind. because he left, at 11.30 pm, and even though he is coming back today because we are supposed to put an ad up for him on the internet to rent out the apartment downstairs, a gesture he interpreted as an altruistic gesture on mine and N.'s parts, which is in fact completely selfish, because we are afraid of who he might find for the place given his proclivity to end up with tenants with 14 cats who piss through the floorboards, tenants on the run from the law, and other potential neighbours that would make for a fine sitcom premise, but N. and I feel that our lives are already sufficiently sitcom-like, and we need no more help in that respect.
and on a different note, oh my god, has anyone seen the new Jewel video? can anyone please explain it to me? i CANNOT PROCESS. there are so many questions. s many. but if someone can just please explain to me why this throroughly confused misguided video combines 9-11 imagery with Jewel strutting around decked out like a globalization ho (multipurpose ethnic make-up for this lily-white girl, making her look like a cross between J. Lo and Mariah, with ho outfits usually found in Christina Aguilera videos, with their cultural refraction aesthetic), and most importantly WHY does it end with 9-11-ish firetrucks HOSING DOWN Jewel, which, in a "wet-T-shirt-aesthetic-is-patriotic" maneuver reveals a bra with the American flag underneath her soking tranparent white top.
