Saturday, November 04, 2006

Peace At Last?

I use the word "hate" pretty liberally. I'm only aware of this because my mom told me that she doesn't like the word, so I looked through what I've written here, and I can't deny it: I say I hate a lot of things.

In reality I'm fairly free of hate. I dislike a lot of things, and I use the word "hate" to express my displeasure, mostly for emphasis, I think.

That said, I hate our upstairs neighbors. Do not confuse my meaning here. I hate them. I fantasize about owning a machine gun so I could spray my ceiling and kill all of them (yes, it's possible for a pacifist to think about violence--it's the action that sets us apart). If I saw one of them choking on a chicken bone I'd shove a dirty sock in after it. To borrow my favorite vulgar phrase: I wouldn't piss in their faces if their eyebrows were on fire. I hate these people.

Why all this venom, you ask? Because they never stop making noise. When humans sleep, these monkeys are banging on the floor, the walls, the furniture. They scream off the balcony at 3 in the morning. The music starts--well, it started at least six months ago and didn't stop until a few days ago.

We think they moved out.

We may finally find peace here because the cretins upstairs are gone. I did my part. I complained to them. I complained to building management. I complained to the police. I wrote anonymous notes to the building managers with deliberate misspellings and poor grammar so they'd think it was someone other than me (for strength of numbers). Finally, it's quiet upstairs.

I don't mind stupid people, as long as they stay silent. I've noticed an inverse relationship between intelligence and volume, so I know that's a vain hope. I wouldn't mind them so much, though, if they didn't make so much noise. Or breathe. Or exist.

But if my upstairs neighbors have moved out, I'm happy.

Because I hate them. Sorry, Mom.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kim and I used to call our upstairs neighbors (back in the old days when we lived in a apartment) "the elephants". Not because they were particularly large mind you, but because they walked large, or wrestled large, or were "livin' large". Whatever they did, they did it pretty consistently at 3 in the morning (nocturnal perhaps)? Idiotic for sure. And I sure despised the trek up the stairs at the wee hours in the morning to knock on the door and asked them to "keep it down". the bad thing, is that you never knew what idiot was on the other side of the door, but you always knew that person was a hell of a lot more awake than you were. Good riddance to you elephants. Hopefully they will not be replaced by Wooly Mammoths.

Jason said...

We'd been a little irritated by some earlier heavy-footed neighbors, but now that we've experienced real aggravation I think we'll be able to tolerate a lot.

If we wind up with Wooly Mammoths upstairs it may be time to move. Into a sound-proof underground bunker. Or a missile silo. Or Nebraska.

Anonymous said...

I think abandoned WWII bomb shelter would do the trick. would make the neighbors irrelevant, plus if you add a few rolls of Duct tape you have a great place to hide out from the slew of "dirty bomb" attacks that is coming when the terrorists bring the war to America after we cut and run in Iraq ;-)

That and all of the really good 50 year old C-rations that must be piled up in it, would make for a rollicking good time