I'm With Stupid

I was woken up this morning by my radio alarm, as usual, but what erupted from the little harmless thing was scary as hell. A guy was reading excerps from the bible, and some "angelic" choral music was playing in the background. I tried shutting him up with a snooze, but 10 minutes later he was still there. I finally managed to move and close the alarm 30 minutes later than projected, and this half hour of mid-sleep spent listening to this crap left a very bad taste in my mouth.



I spent the rest of the morning feeling doomed, laying low.

*

My building is like LE MOULIN DES SUPPLICES. Not litterally, of course - what do I know about it, I haven't even seen the movie yet. But it's a mill in the sense that lots of people come and go all day, while it only has 6 appartments. People can come in without a hassle, as the door is more often than not wide open. And then again it is sometimes "too" locked. At the end of winter we had a junkie setting fire repeatedly in our gantry, probably to heat himself up in his heroin stupor. After a note I posted to encourage him to respect our right not to burn alive during the night, he kept on doing it. The landlord installed a lock on the main door. He gave everybody a key. The buzzers for our doors are located INSIDE the gantry, so now, when you're coming to see me, you gotta have a cellphone because if the door is locked, you won't be able to buzz me.

Which has lead to numerous troubles, including a "gang" on the upper floor living together - I don't know how many they are but they have an impressive collection of stinky sneakers lined up in front of their appartment door - and having only ONE key for the bunch. I guess they didn't hear about locksmiths and key reproductions.

So this morning, some chick was trying to open the door without first unlocking it, and it produced a very unpleasant banging sound around 8 AM. The most irritating part is that she insisted, as if the door would unlock itself magically.

Half the appartments are empty, so the landlord is constantly making "visits", trying to fill the void. Yesterday, some persons were MOVING IN at 10 PM. They had their truck parked on the grass in front of my living room window while I was trying to watch a Seinfeld episode. My upper neighbor is an idiotic ponytailed moron who listens to cheap and cheesy dance music from 1 to 2:30 AM EVERY DAY of the week. He locks his bike to our staircase when we have a magnificent municipal bike rack just in front of the building.

People park their cars in front of my garage door. Junkies ask me for change as if it was the first time they see me, and when I tell them to fuck off, they go shoot up in my yard while I wash my dishes. My garage door stopped opening late in April and I immediately notified my landlord. He "fixed" the problem on August 2nd. For three months I didn't have access to my garage, couldn't park my bike there, so it had to stay in the middle of my office with Miss Bijoux'.

Persons of all sorts come in at all hours of the day and night and press any button on the resident's list to get in the faster they can. I can't honestly think of what their business is, but nothing surprises me anymore.

*

I went to the Municipal Court this morning, in the Old Montreal, to make an "arrangement" in order to be able to pay up my debt to them, a debt that was probably accumulated to their disadvantage.

Last summer, my car's starter had some problems, and the engine would sometimes refuse to start. There was a bad contact somewhere and it took me four different garages before they could identify the trouble, something that cost me lots of hard earned cash and that I am not ready to recount here. On a morning after which such a detail occured, I got a parking ticket for being "on the wrong side of the street". 42$ for the city ! A couple of weeks later, I went to visit a friend and parked in front of her place, in the rain. When it rains, folks, do you really take the time to peek at the signs through a water-soaked windshield ? Do you actually stand there in the rain to see if you can park or not ? It was late, I wasn't staying long, and when I came back, there was a ticket snuck under a wiper. The car behind me, already there when I arrived and as faulty as mine, didn't have any. I guess that's what driving a Porsche gets you.

Anyway, the total for these tickets, last time I heard about them, was 82$. I moved. I didn't have my address changed with the SAAQ because they were on strike at the time and, well, I forgot about it afterwards. My car's transmission died, I stopped using it, and time passed.



Last Tuesday, I woke up with a usher's notice that had been slipped under my door. Being the type of guy who liked to keep his stuff to himself, I went to the usher's offices to settle this, and learned that the amount I owed the city was now 519$. That's what I call an "escalating increase" ! It basically is divided like that : 144$ for the usher's services (sending letters pays a lot, it seems), 315$ in administration fees (pushing buttons pays a lot these days, it would seem) and 60$ for the actual "law-breaking" I indulged into.

Lesson learned. Pay your tickets or these bastards will get you !