It was 2004...those dark, treacherous days when the mighty empire of Xangaland began to lose some in its army to the upstart fleet known as MySpace.  Later, MySpace itself became a weakened behemoth, forced to alter its empirical strategy with hopes of surviving.  And lo, somehow, it seemed to...even as its own weakened flesh bled, Golgotha in the 21st century.  The blood of its many minions provided suckle for the Twilight of a growing menace beyond the horizon, Facebook.  Our own hero even counted himself among the throngs that fled battered and beaten Xangaland.

As Facebook became stronger and faster, it became stupid, revealing all the secrets it had gained through the blood of former Xanglandians and MySpacians.  Some turned away after these revelations, and began seeking sustenance in other empires.  Posterous, a tiny island fleet, gleamed small in the great sea, as Tumblr positioned itself as a place pretty much for GIFs and Helvetica-fonted photos.  Blogspot, the Switzerland of social blogging, somehow retained its distant seat of power, though nobody really talked about it anymore.  Wordpress shined its castle walls and netted the flotsam and jetsam from its moats, but its citizens rarely spoke to one another. 

As the chrome-plated flags of Google+ began flapping in the breeze, and everyone looked to it as the next Superpower, some displaced citizens responded with cries of "Meh..." and the would-be empire was dubbed by one journalist as "not the next Facebook, so much as the next LiveJournal." 

Your hero, tired of the gluttonous, fatuous parades in Facebook, fled the kingdom one night, leaving only a few small traces of his presence so as not to arouse suspicioun.  He looked toward the dark, overgrown path toward Xangaland.  Camping a few nights, he debated which direction to take.  He peered over the hill toward Google+, but almost just as immediately decided it was too new and lacked basic infrastructure.  He debated returning defeated to Facebook, or burning his hut there down and faking his own demise to all the Facebookers.

Finally, he decided to return to the place he was born, Xangaland...by way of its Hong Kong colony, BlackHK.  He camped there for roughly a month and a half, making merry with many, drinking and partaking in duels and challenges aplenty.  After he was sure he had indeed found his true home, he set sail for the now-smaller, but just as lovely, paths he had tread as a young man in the early-to-mid 2000s.  With maps and magickal spells from Dan and Eugenia, two old Xangaland's Old Court of royalty, he returned to his street - named in his honor - JustJase lane. 

Wow, this place really needs cleaning, he thought, gazing up on the dusty, overgrown place.  Making his way inside, he found a cracked, dirty mirror, and smiled.  "Welcome home."

After restoring the place to its former glory, he invited all his friends from Xangaland over for a welcome home party.

Come, won't you?

A few months ago, a woman moved in next door.  Her voice carries.  She has a dog that really enjoys a good bark.  Our walls are paper thin.  We live in a big concrete box.  Here's what happened next!

Pretty much discovered on the day she moved in that the dog was going to be a problem.  Our previous neighbor had a tiny little dog that barked like mad, but the couple of months between when she moved out and this neighbor moved in were bliss.  The difference was, I could only here the previous neighbor's dog - not her.

This neighbor - well, she obviously has NO idea just how thin the wall dividing the space that makes up our lofts is. 

I've contacted management about the dog, and management first asked her to get a citronella collar for the dog.  When that didn't seem to work (if she ever even did it), management asked her to remove the dog from the property when she's not home.  That doesn't really seem to have worked either.  But, whatever.  It doesn't seem as bad.

However, this morning around 6:30am, we hear her stereo pumping up the jam from the other side of the wall.  Mind you, were happened to already be up - not that she knew that.  Still, it was a little early for some drum & bass for me.  Or whatever it was.  All I could hear was bass.  If it was a Saturday afternoon, I wouldn't care.  It was, in fact, a Tuesday morning before the sun was even fully up.  This, I'm not really down for.

So, my girlfriend and I listen at the wall to make sure it is her, and not the neighbor behind us (whom we've never even seen, and almost never even hear).  My girlfriend bangs on the wall, just as I was about to briskly KNOCK on the wall...lol. 

Get this.

To most people, that would elicit a "Oops!  My music must be too loud!" reaction, and they'd turn it down.  Oh, no, no!  This _____ ... woman BANGED BACK, and yelled. through. the. wall. at us.  Yelled.  At us.  Back.  Through the wall. 

DON'T BANG ON MY %$#*@ WALL!!!!

To which my girlfriend (she has a tendency to be...hot headed...lol) yelled back, "Then turn your fucking music down, you cunt!"  Pretty sure the neighbor didn't hear that, as her music was still going. 

I calmed my girlfriend down, and we thought the problem was solved.  The music was turned down.  I started getting ready for work, and girlfriend was doing whatever she was doing.  Then, the music starts again.  Mind you, it's maybe 7am by now.  I'd already emailed our community manager, and the property owner. 

We threw on a respectable assemblage of clothing and traipsed next door.  The neighbor answered, and we began what can only be described as 3 minutes of "I understand-you-guys-sleep-different-hours-and-I-can-respect-that-but-I-don't-respond-well-to-banging-on-my-wall-I'm-already-having-to-move-my-dog-every-day-for-you-guys-blah-blah-blahhhhh." 

Point is, um...I shouldn't have to tell you to turn your shit down at 6-fekking-thirty in the morning on a weekday.  I mean, really, you look old enough that you've slogged your way through a few leases.  This isn't news.

So, after arriving at work, I followed up on my previous email with another couple back-and-forths with the manager, then I called her.  I said, "Look, I don't want to get anyone in trouble, or certainly not evicted or anything," (she'd mentioned noise clauses in the lease, etc.) "and I understand there's some carryover noise when you live in apartments, but there's a difference in hearing someone and their noise being intrusive when I'm in my own home."  She totally agreed, and said if it came to it - which neither of us wants - she'd rather the neighbor leave than me (my lease is up at the end of October). 

Hopefully we won't have any more run-ins, pre- or post-dawn.

Until then, Noisy-Ass Neighbor...

Ever had a rude, loud, inconsiderate neighbor?  How'd you handle it?  Was the situation resolved on its own, or did you have to take matters into your own hands?

I stumbled across the entry below on one of my old Xangas today.  Sadly, I can't remember my credentials for that blog, so I can't do anything with it.  I'm glad I never deleted it.  Anyway, I know it's a little tl;dr, but I am so glad I found this.  I remember writing it, in 2005.  I really need to remember things like this more often.  I felt this way once, perhaps I can again...

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Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Now hearing Soft Black Stars by Antony & The Johnsons

the phone just rang as i started to post.  the too-loud tone i selected interrupting Antony and that voice.  but i'm being selfish like a Libra again.  it's a friend from Oklahoma City, a rather secondary friend i never really got to know that well to begin with.  and now the conversation is over.  it was brief.  it was nice of him to call, but i'm in the zone.  i'm being selfish like an artist again.

discovering life is a transition, like skin morphing into the meaning hidden since before i knew what it meant.  new patterns of breathing, ways of thinking, shining through the thick black velvet lick of the nights.  i'm playing this song on a loop; it's the only choice i've got.  he's too undiscovered a genius yet to proliferate the cyber realm, committed to the underground by his very being.  as am i, in a way.  i'm too weird to be like the clones populating the city's statistical data, too same to be as beautifully unique as he is.

i'm okay with that.  life is a beautiful, fragile thing.  we've only got a few days, and we're ingrained to make them as difficult as we know how, with little devices, our little hands bleeding in the moonlight.  if you look through to the inside of the soft green gelatin orbs that give me sight, you'd see a cocoon opening.  a change.  things i never could accomplish snuggling in a former life, i'm setting into motion here.  deliver me.  from these dangerous ways of living.  from the unhealthy patterns of eating.  from the sin of body issues.  from the pain of not living up to made up expectations.  life is a gorgeous flawed creature, suffering under the soft wet ground.  gather round children, i'll spin a tale - the tale of my life.  a letter scrawled carelessly on parchment, left trickling like rain, for years i wandered. 

i tried drugs, more than tried them.  i lived with addiction, i struggled under my own laziness and fear.  consumption.  i want them to know when my light comes,

something

happened

here

i happened.  we happened.  we were born differently, populating space and time and planets like this sordid primative rock.  we were hurt, mostly by ourselves.  building prisons for ourselves while we weren't looking, hoping to the heavens complaints would be enough to unlock them.  i want to be beautiful like a dead boy, floating in the deep black river running through their town.  i want them to be shocked, moved, by my face.  by my voice.  by the contents of my head.  my heart.  i want to manifest all the crazy notions locked unmoving in my psyche.  i want to appall them if it will make a difference.  the society our forebears formed is the broken thing.  not me.  not us.  we are soft black stars (thank you Antony), coating the world silently by our very movements.  a languid liquid running through the veins of the universe.  and if they were truly able to look directly down inside our middles, the greater proportion would be less than equipped to translate us still, or handle the flood. 

let them read my silence like a bullet, hear my words and shiver like an ice age.  let them trace my face at night and tremble at what they too might become.  we are trapping ourselves in our own very lives.  let's close our eyes, breathe in tight, and start over here.

i am turning into the artist i was born to be.  i am turning into the creature i was born to be.  a thousand years ago, my place in line was saved, by soft white fingertips of the stars, far too real to be discerned by little mortal man, who would outcast me, castrate a pariah in the name of little agendas and minds. 

deliver me from the Book.  deliver me from the world.  i am born under pink skies into the world i was made to create.  my name erased from the wait list, brushed aside.  for i am fulfilling a destiny here...

i am on the journey

of my life

and it's a stunning and yet rocky road.  i love it.  thanks for taking a peak inside...

if i can leave you with anything tonight, don't ever forget to breathe.  and always, always remember what's really important in your life.  it's a fleeting dance, this flesh, this life, these minutes and hours we're given.  don't forget to live it.  smile at a stranger, it might just make you both feel a bit better, because it had no meaning other than kindness, without pretense or posturing.  tell your friends you love them, and mean it, and do it often.  respect your family's flaws and difference, you are bound to them.  enjoy the silence, for it comes all too infrequently in these modern days.  don't forget now, laughter can heal more than medicine, western or otherwise.  it's not the big things that make you swell with pride, but the trail of little things that take your breath away.  learn to forgive, let the petty things go.  they won't go with you anyway when your light comes around.  many moments will have been wasted in bitterness.  but do not ever forget.  lessons are just that.

remember to love yourself.  take 10 minutes to stare in silence at yourself in a mirror, tell yourself you're a beautiful creature.  hug yourself every chance you get.  hug others just as often.  feel the electric touch and connection with those around you, don't do stupid things to damage it.  keep it fertile and real, don't be afraid to cry in front of them or tell you them you love them in a crowd.  they're your kindred, remember them always.

i love you, all of you.  take my hand, and we'll bathe in the very breath of life.

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