2003-07-15

Yeah, so, my neighbors. I�ve got some new ones. I know this because they told me. I came home one day to discover two homely, overweight children sitting on the front stoop of my building, looking like K-Mart had thrown up on them. As I edged past, the female specimen helpfully announced, �We�re moving in here!�

�Great.� I said, in what I hoped was a cutting example of verbal irony.

Sadly, these children seem as keenly sensitive to the subtleties of irony as Alanis Morrissette, and possess approximately the same capacity for intense aggravation. They continue to assault me with a quotidian barrage of uninvited conviviality, compounding my general dislike for persons too tender of years to legally purchase alcohol. On top of that, since they live on the ground floor, they seem to have adopted the building�s stoop as their personal porch in true Appalachian style, sprucing it up with an artistic array of broken-down appliances and sundry domestic detritus, over which they preside in plastic lawn chairs, greeting each passing tenant with a disturbing salvo of incoherent queries like a pair of Dorito-sucking Sphinxes. Argh. I�ve taken to using the alarmingly rickety back stairs to avoid the daily ordeal of attempting to convey in as few syllables as possible my violent disinterest in any sort of interaction. Is there some way I can live in a city, and yet not be forced to come in contact with other human beings? A specially-constructed Misanthropy Dome, perhaps?

Now, all of you be good little children and go read Claudia's new entry on Classic My Ass.