Young scientist loves birdsong, builds machine outside lab window that will give food when birds sing. Over the course of a lifetime, teaches birds not to hunt, but to sing. Scientist dies. No-one to fill bird feeder. Birds sing themselves to death. Possible alternate ending: People think birds dying are somehow a tribute to their great friend.
This is very Ulysses dog waits in trash heap until his return, dies happy.
So I put the call out on twitter, asking for some blog suggestions. Here’s how it went:
Marinaisgo: About to write a blog. What should I write about? I’ve been thinking about money, punk rock, and sex lately.
Bebe33:@Marinaisgo I like hearing about money.
Moopigpoo: @Marinaisgo I like hearing about sex.
Jaynatopia: @Marinaisgo sounds like the start of a novel
Marinaisgo: @Jaynatopia I only wish I had some sort of narrative
Jaynatopia@Marinaisgo it starts out with a sex symbol punk rocker breaking into the mob’s bank vault; now run with it!
Your wish is my command.
I’m a punk rocker, I’m sure that someone thinks I’m a sex symbol (that poor dumb bastard-thanks though,) and I often think about breaking into bank vaults, but probably only because I know I’m not supposed to. Does the Mob have it’s own bank vault? I can just see that meeting with the executives at CitiBank:
Don Vito: I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse.
Citibank: And what’s that, Don?
Don Vito: Please, call me Vito, all my friends do.
Citibank: Ok Vito, what is your offer?
Don Vito: Citibank, my friend. I’m gonna let you build a whole other vault next to the one you already got just to keep my family money inside of. How’s that sound to you my friend?
Citibank: You’re joking, right?
Don Vito: No. Why?
Citibank: You want me to use bank funds to build another vault next to our existing vault so that we can keep your family’s money in it, which will only make us the most at risk bank in the city, possibly the nation?
Don Vito: I don’t see the problem here.
Citibank: I do. Not only will every rival hood in the…
Don Vito: Woah, who said anything about hoods? We’re a family. That’s a racist misconception of Italian descended individuals.
Citibank: Than why do you need a whole other vault to put your money in?
Don Vito: I’m sorry?
Citibank: Why would you need a whole other vault to keep your families money in, unless for illegal activities Mr. Vito…
Don’t Vito: Call me Don, please.
Citibank: Don, here at Citibank, we’re no strangers to handling large fortunes. Our most famous client, Mr. Stephen Baldwin, of the Hollywood Baldwins, has no qualms about letting his substantial fortune mix with the smaller checking and savings accounts of others.
Don Vito: Where does Alec keep his money?
Citibank: What?
Don Vito: Are you going to build my family a vault or not?
Citibank: I’m sorry. We don’t do that here at Citibank. Besides, it looks like you have a bankruptcy on your account.
Don Vito: I see how it is. I thought you might say that, which is too bad for you. Come on boys, we’re going to Bank of America, where they understand us.
Of course it would never happen like that. Citibank is just dying to get into bed with the mob. They would do anything to drop that fuck Stephen Baldwin. I heard he overdraws every single pay period. You should have stayed in Threesome, Stephen Baldwin. It’s a cruel, hard world out here. Even at Citibank. ALLEGEDLY.
What am I forgetting here. Oh yeah, the sex.
Well, I can tell you that Don Vito is destined to die whilst fucking his mistress, an unpopular girl who went to his daughter’s high school. She spent 3 years after graduation as a low-rent stripper in the ghetto, scrimping and tricking before she could afford to buy herself breast implants, and get hired at the good club, where she met Don Vito, and through a steady habit of refusing to give him a hand-job in the back room (mostly because he was gross), she became his angel and he set her up in a fancy 1 bedroom in a complex with a gym in the basement and a pool on the roof.
One night, while he’s huffing and puffing above her, chin sweat dangerously close to dripping into her grimacing mouth, while she moans “oh donnie, donnie, you’re drivin’ me crazy,” in an almost hypnotic manner, and tries not to remember her step-father who did the same thing every Wednesday night until he died while driving home drunk, Don Vitos’ heart gives out.
They found her three days later, when a neighbor complained about the smell. Doctor’s report that she tried to satiate her initial thirst by licking the sweat from the folds of his fat, where it had pooled as his body cooled and bloated on top of her. But in the end, she had been her own worst enemy, her prized breast implants had ruptured on impact of the old man’s body. Had it not been for the silicone leaking into her blood stream, she could have survived, licking sweat off the corpse of her dead Mafia don boyfriend while she waited for help to arrive.
Of course, if it weren’t for the breast implants she’s still be giving $20 blow jobs in the alley behind ‘Big Jims Booby Barn’ on interstate 58. So there you go.
I asked for blog ideas on twitter today, and this was one of the responses I got.
Moopigpoo:@Marinaisgo Any news on the utility mishap? I may have missed it, but I’m curious and nosy and redundant and bored.
Here’s the deal. When we moved here, our electric bill was a lot higher than it had been in Anaheim. But we had a private electric company in Hawthorne, whereas before we had been on the Anaheim public utilities, and I’d heard nasty things from my friends about our new electric company, so I kind of just assumed that it was the cost of living in LA where everything is better than Anaheim, even the electricity.
I supposed I should tell you that our apartment used to be a 5 bedroom, 2 bath unit, and before we moved in, it was split up into our 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom unit and two smaller 1 bedroom units. So in June, when our neighbor moved in and our electricity usage spiked by 50%, I became suspicious. I had the electric company check the meter, they said it was right. I asked about whether or not they could tell if I was paying for my neighbors electricity. The lady at the electric company told me to turn the breakers off in my house and if the electricity went off in other apartments, I was paying for their shit. I did, it did.
So, we learned that I was indeed paying for someone else’s electricity. In fact, In addition to my apartment, I’ve been paying the electric bill for 2 and 1/2 other apartments. And as a cherry on that Sundae, my playing with the breakers in our apartment broke our fridge and I came home to everything melted and spoiled on the same day I realized that I was 5 days to payday with $10 in my account. I had about $35 in my savings, so I took $15 of that and thanks to pasta, and my habit of buying my lunches all on Monday, we lived through the week just fine. (If you’re wondering why I didn’t just buy food with my credit card: I don’t have one.)
So, I think that I have my apartment complex over a barrel. I’m clearly paying for the electricity of my neighbors, and our awesome and nice maintenance guy told me that the complex used to pay the electric bill for my unit for this very reason. I understand that the complex came into new ownership a little while before we moved in, so maybe they didn’t know about that. If I was trying to dump that dump, I would keep something like that to myself. Especially in this economy.
Anyway, our fridge got replaced with a working one. We may or may not get our old fridge back, which we actually own, unlike this new fridge. On Friday, I was asked to email my electric bill to the property manager, who is stationed in an office in Irvine, about an hour to hour and a half drive away from us. I did this, and emailed her again today to see how she was coming on a solution to the electricity problem. I know that in California, the rights lie heavily on the side of the tenant… if said tenant can afford the legal fees to ensure those rights.
I’ve already stated that we live in kind of a dump. We’re not “sue now, ask questions later” kind of people. We can’t afford to be. So for the time being, I’m being really nice to everybody. I did call the electric company again, and this time I got a much smarter lady on the phone who told me that they could perform something called a ‘load check’ on my electricity in order to find out exactly who is using my electricity.
There are a lot of things that could happen from here. I hope that it’s resolved and that our complex pays for my electric bill, and hopefully that they reimburse me at least partially for what I’ve spent on other people’s electricity so far. They could try to evict me, or try to play dirty. They could just lead me on, making me pay continually for my neighbors electricity, bills I can’t afford, until I’m forced to break lease or miss rent.
Thanks to the dispute with the electric company, I’ve only had to pay one $180 bill so far, the other one is on hold until September, at which point there will not only be August’s $180 bill but also September’s. This morning I saw someone moving into one of the other apartments I pay the electric bill for, so by September it’ll be even higher than that.
Despite the rather slow movement in this issue, I think that we’re coming to a resolution. If nothing else, the electric company coming out will give me some evidence on my side that I do really pay for those other apartments. And maybe if they come out and find that I’m paying for other apartments, there will be some course of action that the company itself will take with my complex.
My hope is that this will be over in a few days, but I’m prepared for it not to be. So far, I’ve stayed really calm through the whole thing, I haven’t gotten mad or mouthy, just insistent and consistent with my questions and my requests.
