landlord nom i'm trying to avoid telling him i have m_e 070126 ... raze he wants to have a couple come over and look at this house. he's lied to them about the roof that needs fixing, that's needed fixing for a while, telling them he's fixed it when he hasn't done a thing. the leaks where the rain gets through have been eating away at the ceiling in different places for years. it's not something you can hide anymore. they're looking for a house, this couple, but not this house, and he thinks they'll get an indication of what other houses in the neighbourhood are like by looking at one that isn't the one they're interested in, and won't be duplicated elsewhere, and doesn't have a proper living room. but he isn't interested in selling *this* house, and that isn't why he's having them look at it. sometimes i wonder if some people are even living on this planet. 140423 ... raze now the story changes, and it's, "well, they *are* interested in this specific house, but i don't think i want to sell it, because i stand to make more money charging you rent." who knows if that's the whole truth. i hope it's raining when they come tonight, so they can see how the roof leaks on every floor. 140425 ... raze he came to show them the house himself, to make sure he had the right answers to any questions they might have. "take a good look and make sure you see what you want to see," he told them, in the most arrogant way you can imagine, "because i won't show you twice." my guess is he was thinking if they felt rushed they might not notice the ceiling leprosy or the window air conditioner on a floor that's supposed to have central air. they were a young couple with a little girl named helena. this adorable dark-haired person. "we found a secret door," she told me. "you go through the door and it leads right back here to your room. pretty cool, huh?" i hope her parents find a good place for her. but i don't think this place is it. 140425 ... raze add "extortion" to his list of many talents (others include "lying about everything", "failing to maintain the house", and "believing the law doesn't apply to him"). the trouble is, he's trying to bully the wrong people. if he thinks we're just going to roll over and take it, he's got another thing coming, and possible criminal charges to face. he's not half as smart or crafty as he thinks he is. still, something tells me he doesn't want that kind of headache. i guess we'll find out soon enough. 180706 ... raze either his conscience won out in the end, or he decided things were best left alone. still. the man is a buffoon. he got fed up with weeds existing in the grass, so he tore up the entire front lawn. trouble is he was too cheap to hire anyone professional to resod. the guy he got to do the job didn't bother to figure out how much he needed. he's come back here four separate times, and there's still a bald patch at the side of the lawn. here's the best part: he used four different batches of grass. we now have the most schizophrenic-looking lawn i've ever seen. nothing matches. it isn't subtle. landlord mcfuckhead has tried using some archaic rolling device to squash it into submission and make it all look a little more samey. no luck. it gives me great satisfaction to know how livid he is right now. 191029 ... epitome of incomprehensibility So you don't have to move? That must be a relief!!! Well, maybe it both is and isn't - you're the best one to decide that. I'm thinking that it's somewhat of a relief? But the grass thing is ridiculous! I should ship you an oregano pot and then the whole yard would be INSTANTLY oregano (okay, so it takes up a slightly larger patch each year, but allow me a slight hyperbole). 191029 ... e_o_i I mean a pot of oregano, not a hybrid of oregano and marijuana. In case there were any doubts. :) 191029 ... raze i think this house needs a sign out front that says "instantly oregano". people might show up thinking it's a herb store, but still! it would be glorious nomenclature. for the most part, it's a huge relief to not have to move. i mean, he did illegally raise the rent beyond the amount he's allowed to raise it, there are things he'll never fix (though he did have the wiring updated and repair a bit of the roof-related damage), and in general he's not a pleasant person to deal with ... but aside from goofy things like turning the lawn into a grass-based version of the frankenstein monster or trimming a hedge he doesn't like and refusing to clean up whatever mess he makes, he doesn't pop up to make a nuisance of himself too often. there was a part of me that was looking forward to moving, thinking it might be nice to have a fresh start. then i found out just how mediocre the housing market is in this city. everything is overpriced, and finding another place with a room that would work as my "studio" space seems almost impossible. i brought a lot of bad feelings with me into this house twelve years ago. it was a move of necessity, and there were some surprises i could have done without (like not being able to sleep in my own bed at first and having a dead furnace). now it feels like home. so i think it's all worked out for the best. 191030 ... raze (wish i'd caught that "a"/"an" fail before herb. grr.) 191030 ... raze turns out he's secretly trying to sell the house after all, in direct violation of the legally binding three-year rental agreement we signed late last year. there's just one problem. he's such an odious human being, every person he deals with is put off by his arrogance. and that's before they get a chance to see the house and notice all the work it still needs. i'm not sure what makes him think any sale he might manage to broker would stand up once the prospective buyer found out about the rental agreement he neglected to mention to them and learned they wouldn't be able to live in the house anytime soon. you have to hand it to the guy, though. he's never let something as inconvenient as the truth get in his way. 200316 ... e_o_i That sucks. At least it's a relief when jerks are also incompetent (and not backed up by political power or the like). I hope he's forced to be more reasonable. 200318 ... raze that would be nice! unfortunately, he seems to be one of those blessed people who goes through life stomping on everyone and everything in his path while laughing all the way to the bank and avoiding having to face any repercussions, karmic, legal, or otherwise. it does give me some small bit of satisfaction to know he must be having as much difficulty finding toilet paper as anyone else right now. 200319 ... raze he's the kind of guy who has city_workers come and cut down the trees in front of his house at 8:18 in the morning on a saturday (he lives across the street from us and a few houses down). there's nothing wrong with those trees. but if he doesn't kill them so he can plant new things in their place and then kill those things too once he gets bored, he won't have anything to do. he still sometimes gets down on his hands and knees and rips plants he doesn't like the look of out of our front lawn, and then he leaves them there, because he didn't learn the lesson the rest of us did about cleaning up after ourselves when we were three years old. he's a special snowflake. 210904 ... kerry pete is okay, about our age. bought the house from a guy whose 100 year-old grandmother had lived there nearly her entire life. pete and his wife just had a baby and he commutes into the city from the burbs to hang out with his brother and unclog the drains or fix the front rail or do whatever else. i have an instinctual loathing for landlords so his presence grates on my nerves despite how friendly he may be. his presence in my "home," that he owns and that we are paying for, feels like a vague insult to me. i liked our oregon landlords, patrick and alfonso, who lived next door and gave us a $200 break on the rent when we moved in, and another break when i lost my job, agreeing that in exchange we'd water the lawns for them. their front yard was a literal jungle, with giant cages of parakeets and cockatiels on the porch. they had two giant long-haired dogs and a couple of cats that lurked around. i especially liked patrick. he had a couple decades on me but there was a kind of spark. not romantic--he isn't into women--more a sense of mutual recognition. ahh, this is a person kind of like me. this a person i could relate to. both dog people, a little goofy, homebodies, some various health stuff we both alluded to. he used to work at the university bookstore, until health stuff interfered. he and alfonso had daydreams of designing a house and moving to arizona. i came home a couple of times from some long walks and i was crying (god it sounds like i spend half my time crying but i don't) and i ran into him pruning those sunset-colored roses. i opened the front door once or twice with a puffy red face. he didn't make me feel stupid or embarrassed. i don't know why--it's not like he did, or didn't do, or said anything. when we left he and alfonso told us how sad they were to see us go, how much they enjoyed hearing us enjoying the backyard with our friends, hearing the guitar strumming and the laughter and the dogs playing. patrick emailed me after we'd moved to get the new address. he said it wasn't the same without us and he signed his email as always: later, patrick 210904 ... raze last_night we saw a man and a woman inching down the street in a white van. "is that jerry?" my dad said. "i don't think so. i don't think he has enough hair to be our landlord." "maybe there are two jerries: a bad one, and a worse one." 220711 ... nr it seems to me like management shouldn't be ignoring my request to control my baseboard heater like everyone else in the building can, when the intense heat in here means i have to turn on fans and sometimes the AC in the middle of winter, wasting energy and their money. and money is the only thing that drives them. it's a mystery. 221021 ... raze one of his cars is in front of our garage. he's too lazy and arrogant to store the expensive white piece of shit he doesn't really use in his own driveway for the winter. so he parked it here instead. it's as ugly as he is. and now i get to stare at his stupid fucking name on the license plate every time i'm out back feeding my friends. i hope someone with a baseball bat and too much beer in their belly destroys it. 221221 ... raze last_night i had a dream he was in the back yard. he ignored slabs of raw meat resting on a grill he wasn't using, talking to an indifferent neighbour while he tapped golf balls with a nondescript club and sent them hurtling toward nonexistent holes. seemed about right. 230403 ... tender_square "i'd be really scared to be a landlord," amanda said. "because there's so many people on drugs in this city." 230406 ... Soma He used to just come in. "I own the house!" he'd laugh. I expressed my discomfort. "Well it's really only a problem if you have something to hide, are you smoking in here?" On more than one occasion, he came in right after I was done with a shower, alone, just me. I hated it so so much. But I couldn't afford to move. Living there was about $400 cheaper than anyone else in town. I often think about how he probably rented to me for a better price in the hopes he could do these things. I stopped showering at home, and only showered at the gym. I slept with my doors blocked, one eye half open. I don't remember five years of my life. The therapist asks me what I was doing during those years and I shrug. I remember going to work, crying, and finding a kitten. I remember my landlord coming into my house all the time, threatening to kick me out over insane offenses, and telling me his brother was a cop so nothing I did would matter. It's kinda funny the way titles for rulers can often impact someone. He really thought he was a lord, and I, his petty serfdom. 230406 ... raze he was here tonight for all of three minutes, wearing dark shades when there wasn't enough light left to create any need for them, ripping a few more weeds out of the ground and letting them fall where he found them. 230422 what's it to you? who go blather from