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(Coming to you live via Juno 56k)
I moved recently. Into a steaming pile of shit. Let me explain this travesty to you in mild to moderate detail.
Driving towards the house, you pass the lovely "Village Tower" (read: a gas station with a paper mache 15 foot lighthouse) and pull into our driveway. You gaze in wonder at the building which has not been painted since JFK was assassinated. As you move through the peeling blue/white/brown/black/tan doorway which is shaped like a parallelogram, you encounter the awe inspiring sinking floor. What is it, you ask? Basically, one piece of plywood spread across beams which are about 3 feet apart. If you jump on one side of the room, you can launch babies out the window from the other. As a matter of fact, that's probably the main reason why one out of every 10 windows in this place is broken. As you make your way through what I think is supposed to be the kitchen (it has a fridge), you can take a left into the "laundry room", or a right into a basement which smells oddly like dead animals. Or babies. Going straight, you reach the main room, which connects to the upstairs, living room, and front door(s). Now this is where it really gets interesting. Outside the front door(s) is the "porch." At least, it was. At some point. Now, this strangely unidentifyable structure is sagging, and the ceiling (I use that term loosely) above it is about to collapse, being approximately four feet from the ground on the far sides. Also, there is an unexplainable piano located on the left. This ancient and decrepit instrument is home to a thriving ant colony under the key cover. I've spent a considerable amount of time monitoring their progress, here's a sample of the log:
Day 2: 5:43 P.M. The ants I have designated Charlie, Ralph and Tyrannicide appear to be moving the eggs from the 67th to 43rd key.
Day 2: 5:44 P.M. The ants have reached their checkpoint. They are returning back to key 67.
Day 2: 5:45 P.M. I have killed Tyrannicide with a gentle nudge from my thumb.
Day 2: 5:46 P.M. This place sucks. Help me.
The door on the right side goes back to the living room. One of the windows in it I broke on my elbow the day before last trying to close it. The living room itself has no light, but besides that is rather complacent. Heading upstairs.
The upstairs is slanted at about a 5 degree angle. I could roll a ball from the right to left side easily. Or a slinky. Most of the walls are warped either inwards or outwards. Or leftwards. The windows, for some inexplicable reason, are placed at random heights in each room. One window may be 10 inches off the floor, while another is about three feet. On the far right is an "office," which basically means an unpainted room which contains a shitload pile of boxes filled with styrofome peanuts and (empty) beer cans left by the last tenant. Moving onto what is quite possibly the most interesting room in the house, the bathroom. There is one dim light, and no electrical outlets. It houses one sink, one toilet, and one cast iron clawfoot bathtub with some kind of shower device bolted to it. More on that later. The toilet, interestingly enough, has no secondary hole to shoot water back in like most toilets do. Instead, the water is shot back from the same pipe it flushes into, which has the nice effect of returning about 10% of what you tried to dispose of in the first place. There is also some heating vent in the corner by the tub, which serves no purpose but to catch water that gets through the shower curtains and leak it into the kitchen. Now, as to the tub and shower. The tub is angled so that water goes towards the back of the tub, rather than the drain. The shower head is so full of lime that it feels like taking a shower under a water fountain. At best. It takes about two minutes to fully wet my hair. And to make it more fun, the hot water knob slowly goes up, making the water uncomfortably hot every 30 seconds or so. During my last shower about two hours ago, the shower head shot off and hit me in the head. I can't make this shit up. Surprisingly, it made the shower much more enjoyable, as I went from water fountain to kitchen faucet.
So I'm moving again within a week or two, I hope. We've got a place lined up. And it has paint on it. Joy. Here's a lesson to you: don't move into an apartment you've only seen late at night.
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