Lincoln Square

America

after eight months

i'm getting out. shortly after our first rat encounter, we experienced yet another.

this time it was bleeding and angry. this was the absolute final straw.

so i guess that life on logan is technically coming to an end for me. but at least ill be moving to humboldt park where i can write about a whole new set of maniacs.

i know that this blog does not reach a very wide audience

but goddamn. do everything in your power to tell your friends who live in the city to never deal with jay goldenberg.

he is a liar and a lazy, lowlife crook.

this morning hunter discovered a rat under the refrigerator. and no, i am not exaggerating the size of a piddly mouse. this was a genuine city of chicago rat. needless to say, i have been beside myself all day. that must have been the cause of the terrifying noise we heard the other night but never investigated. this means that IT WAS THERE THE WHOLE GODDAMN TIME! STRUGGLING! STUCK IN NOT ONE...BUT TWO GLUE TRAPS. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

i am done with this apartment. i am done with my deadbeat landlord. keep the security deposit, buddy. its not worth trying to fight for it and its a small price to pay for me to get out here and to never have to deal with this bullshit ever again. this has been a total nightmare from beginning to end.

now i just need to find a place to go...

it's getting colder

its been a minute and a half, huh?

so here's the rundown. the roof is still closed for "repair" and despite the fact that i've seen some people up there "working" i get the feeling that this is my landlord's childish and passive-aggressive way of closing it up for good. orginially we were told three to four weeks. it has been six and the lock on the door leading to the roof is still changed and i am still without a key.

i've been thinking a lot lately about how much i hate professional landlords. for example, mine. what kind of loser sits around and plays online poker all day and then refuses fix a lightswitch cover because he "cant fix shit." what a fucking cop-out. bring me a new light switch cover and ill fucking do it myself. in the time it took you to explain to me that you "cant fix shit" you could have found a screwdriver and done it. lazy fuck.

i guess the positive side is that we havent havent had any sort of mouse/roach problem recently. maybe the fact that they're FINALLY "fixing" the basement has something to do with it. i say "fixing" this way because if you go down there, all they've done so far is hang a bunch of lights in the dark part of the room and moved some trash around. i cant wait until they try to open up that restaurant and it gets shut down immediately because the building is a dilapidated piece of shit that i dont even want to cook in, let alone "dine out" in. what a joke.

but doesnt it just make sense?

the end

it's been a minute since ive updated here. ive really been meaning to but everytime i sit down to do it, i lose my inspiration and feel like what i have to say isnt worth reading. but something so downright idiotic happened this weekend that i feel like i have to write about it.

sunday morning:

i wake up to hunter banging on my bedroom door. i tell him to come in and he explains that our landlord(jay) called him at 8 in the morning accusing him of trashing our roof. this is simply not possible because he was not even in the building on saturday night, thus eliminating him from the list of possible suspects. so he tells me to call jay to explain to him that i had nothing do with the destruction either. here is how that conversation went:

jay- hello, this is jay (this is ALWAYS how he answers the phone. like im going to forget his name...come on, guy)

me- jay, i heard about what happened. whats going on?

jay- YOU HAD A FUCKING PARTY LAST NIGHT THATS WHATS GOING ON

me- huh?

jay- you had a party on the roof and trashed it!

me- no. i was in a hot tub by myself in north riverside until 1 am. then i came home and went straight to bed.

jay- well then who did it?

me- good question, jay. but i love it up there. so why would i go and ruin it like that?

jay- well, im out of town(cool, man) but im gonna figure this out.

me- okay, man

so after that short but intense exchange, i went upstairs to check out what happened. i was pretty shocked and disgusted. broken table and chairs, glass everywhere, cigarette butts in huge piles. it looked like a homeless guy set up shop for a week up there and just left his mess. but in reality it was a bunch of fake homeless "punks" who thought it would be funny to trash something that doesnt belong to them. they even took loose bricks out of the wall and threw them off of the logan side of the building. they could have fucking killed someone. the point is, the only people that could have let this happen are my idiot neighbors who have zero respect for anything that doesnt belong to them. theyre the reason that my landlord thinks im an irresponsible drunk. theyre the ones who ruined my favorite part about living in that building. i cant wait to see them again so i can punch the shit out of their stupid bike punk faces.

the lack of responsibility and the complete lack of respect theyve shown blows my mind. and it turns out that the nice table and chairs up there that sort of showed up out of nowhere one day belong to my other neighbors who were kind enough to let the rest of us use them. they were up on the roof as well when i went up there to check out the damage and they were fucking furious. for some reason they thought hunter and i were responsible as well and it took a few minutes of talking to them before we convinced them that not only were we not even in the building but also that WERE NOT A COUPLE OF FUCKING SHITTY COLLEGE KIDS WHO LIVE OFF OF THEIR PARENTS. unlike the fucking idiots who were responsible for the mess.

the world is truly full of idiots.

life has been quiet on logan since the great summer vermin heist. i have been spying on the old man who sits across the street at the bus stop on milwaukee. well...not really spying since hes a derelict and is sitting on public property. the point is, he yells at cars. daily. all day long. he yells at cars. bikes. people on bikes. but never people who are just walking. he seems to have an affinity for moving vehicles.

ive been trying to figure out what kind of crazy he is. there are really only two kinds when you think about it:

1. violent crazy - youve seen them. these are the guys that totally scare you off from twenty feet away. the ones who mumble to themselves. things like "mothafucka i told that mothafucka....mothafucka! shit! MOTHAFUCKA!" etc. like the guy that threatened me on the blue line once and told me i had twenty-four hours to get out of town before he stabbed me with a screwdriver. those guys are the scary ones.

2. just plain crazy - youve seen them everywhere. they mumble. but its about stuff like tuna salad and missing their families, being depressed. you know....nonsense.

anyway, this guy seems to fit into category #2 so im going to do my best to interview this guy without him knowing that im just going to write about it on the internet. hopefully i dont catch the crazies from him.

other than that, its been a disturbingly quiet week. the sounds and creaks i hear at night are minimal but i just keep assuming that its the sound of animals trying to kill me while im sleeping. that is a paranoid delusion that will not go away for quite some time im sure. i think the mice have learned their lesson, though. i should have mounted the dead ones on a plaque in the living room just to show them that im a real killing machine. maybe next time.

i was up until four in the morning battling with the mouse that has made a home in my quiet apartment. i had a feeling that the battle would be coming to an end soon since i have had the glue traps set out for almost a week now with no success. it was only a matter of time before curiosity got the best of the little guy and he met his end at the hands of a skinny white kid and a cheap paper glue trap.

so let me set the scene. im sitting on the couch watching tv because i refused to sleep in my room until i caught the mouse because that is the last place i saw it. so i have been sleeping on the couch for the past few nights just because its elevated off the ground and it gives me a little peace of mind. whatever. i know im an idiot. but its fine. so anyway, i had a trap set up behind one of hunter's enormous speakers because i had seen it running back and forth behind it a few days prior.

all of a sudden i hear what sounds like a pack of cigarettes falling to the floor and some very high pitched squeaking. knowing that i do not own any gerbils, i assumed that it was the mouse i had been trying so hard to kill. so i got up and walked over to the kitchen where i saw the little guy trying to drag the trap with him under the refrigerator. im pretty sure i said "nuh uh" out loud to him as i pulled him back...which doesnt make ANY sense because no one was around and im pretty sure the mouse had no idea what i was saying to it.

hes in mouse heaven now. or in a trash bag outside my apartment. good riddance. now i just have to sit and wait patiently for the next one. apparently my neighbors have been seeing mice as well...but theyre a bunch of "actors" so who knows whats really going on with that. theyre too busy talking about being in commercials and thinking about moving to "LA" to "get some exposure." AKA blowing the guy who runs the boom mic in exchange for being on camera. anyway, one of them told me about the time a roach fell out of his air conditioning vent onto his desk while he was just sitting there. this has now become my worst nightmare and i will be putting screens over ever vent in my apartment. call me neurotic but that shit is disgusting. if/when that happens, i will move and then fight my landlord who apparently uses our rent money to gamble on online poker. look him up. apparently hes pretty "good" at it. jay goldenberg. real comforting, jay. thanks.

life's ill.

i was really hoping to see this guy when i answered the door this morning. a shining beacon in the dark. my savior from all of the gross garbage going on in my building.

sadly, he was more interested in watching the daily show and talking about half baked than actually killing any vermin. don't get me wrong. he was a really nice guy. but nice guys don't usually make good killers. he told me that the real problem is the basement and that in order for everything else to get fixed, the basement has to be renovated. he warned me when i started asking questions and said "there are rooms down there that you don't even want to go into. it's that bad."

bummer.

i'll try to get a hold of a camera so i can post some pictures of the savagery going on down there. but somebody is going to have to come with me. there's no way im going down into the catacombs by myself. we can even go down there on weed if you want. but being on weed probably wouldn't help us.

for now, i will continue to live in fear.

for the most part, this thing is going to be dedicated to all the weird stuff going on in and around my apartment. lately, the sb's of the neighborhood have been quiet. the normal yelling and arguing at the bus stop outside of my window has been at a minimum lately. but it's been replaced by the scurrying and chattering of a fucking mouse in my bedroom. for those of you unfamiliar with the situation, i am an idiot and a sucker and got conned into renting this apartment that should not be as expensive or as sought after as it is. don't let the fresh white walls or the stereo equipment fool you. this place has got problems.

first of all, if you are going to try and make some money by converting the attic of a currency exchange into apartments, there are a few things you have to remember to do:

1. MAKE SURE THERE AREN'T ANY FUCKING VERMIN LIVING IN THE WALLS OR IN THE SHITTY BASEMENT. AND IF THERE ARE, FIX THE PROBLEM IMMEDIATELY

2. SEE #1

i don't know how many more times i can stand going up on the roof and seeing a parade of roaches on the patio. the building is crumbling to the point where bricks and capstones are completely loose and free from the rest of the structure. now i dont know much about architecture...but something tells me that this is not a good sign. when i can just pull bricks out of a chimney, that means there's something wrong. i like playing jenga IN my living room, not WITH my living room. and what bothers me the most is that the landlord is just the nicest guy. he's either a very good actor and can fake sympathy with the best of them or he's really that clueless. i hope he's clueless and not trying to rip me off. i'm still trying to figure him out.

so last night i was lying in bed, trying to go to sleep, when i see a shadow scurry across the ledge under my windows. its the mouse. so i freak the fuck out, jump out of bed and up on to the ledge in hopes of scaring it to death, only to see it scurry away unscathed. needless to say, i went out and slept on the couch because my bed is not elevated off the ground and i didn't want to take any chances. this morning when i woke up i cleaned everything off of the floor of my room and put it up on shelves. clothes, records, everything is raised up off of the ground. hopefully that will give it less places to hide...but i guess we'll find out.

it probably doesn't help much that i sit around and watch verminators everyday when i get home. those poor idiots who are mad infested with gross bugs. makes me feel a little better about my situation but it doesn't help my paranoia of finding bugs where i least expect to see them. so far the bathroom seems to be the only safe haven. i might just start sleeping in the tub instead. we'll see what happens when push comes to shove, but i'm not going to rule it out at this point. i'm living like a prisoner in my own home and my captors are tiny little rodents that are more scared of me than i am of of them. pathetic. let's hope this situation gets fixed sooner rather than later.

the exterminator is coming tomorrow. hopefully i'll have something good to report. i would much rather be writing about all of the derelicts OUTSIDE of my apartment. i might even invite a few in and offer twenty bucks to the guy who catches the mouse. here's how i imagine that situation playing out:

ME: okay, guys. the first derelict that catches the mouse gets 20 bucks. easy enough?
DERELICT: can we keep the mouse?
ME: ok?
DERELICT: he'll be my new friend. can i have your toaster?

then ill turn them loose and they'll just steal everything. probably not a good look.

so take that for what it's worth. this will be more fun once i have something more exciting to write about.



for now you can just look at a picture of an idiot living amongst the trash. san francisco suxxxxx