Wow, was it icy out! Unfortunately, the worst ice we’d have to deal with was in their parking lot.

Have you ever seen one of those science videos explaining black holes, or gravity, by showing you a marble spinning around a drain? That’s exactly what it was like.

Their parking lot is so uneven. Iced over, it is absolute hell on earth. Naturally, there was not one speck of rock salt to be witnessed anywhere. Wet glass, indeed.

When we first pulled in, we started sliding immediately. We slid to a stop after a good 30 feet, narrowly missing other parked cars and the concrete-lined edge of the lot, which could have done a real number on my wheels and undercarriage. Mind you, i had been doing less than10mph!

Spinning my wheels was the only way to get any traction at all. But no sooner than i would start moving, but the car would start descending down the hill, sideways. We very scarcely managed to avoid hitting curbs and suchlike, but i don’t know how.

This lasted for around twenty minutes.

Did the manager come out to offer to help? Nope. Did i feel like risking life and limb to walk uphill in that unholy, slick, uphill mess of solid, wet ice to ask for help, or tell them off for not salting their Mt. Fuji-like parking lot? Well, yes, but i knew that i’d absolutely certainly slip and hit my head and kill myself at the exact moment the next motorist suffered a similar fate and ran over my still-warm corpse.

Helpfully, the drivethrough window offered employees a hilarious view, which they took in turns, laughing and pointing.

So if you ever see me at a Big Boy restaurant, especially a Frisch’s Big Boy restaurant, please shoot me in the face for it, because i declare unequivocally, right here, that my money will never again come into contact with their filthy, greasy (and very likely cockroach-infested) registers.

Then she moved out.

Squatters moved in. And out.

The place was boarded up, the brush and foliage have overgrown, and the place is a headache for all of us over here.

Today, there is a dead thing in the back yard. It looks like a dog from where i can see it.

First, i called Dead Animal Removal. They directed me to Animal Control, as it’s not public property and they don’t have jurisdiction to just wander onto the property and remove random dead things. Animal Control directed me to the police department – i guess the call was transferred to the county Sherriff’s office, because they advised me to contact city police, who advised that i should definitely contact Housing… who suggested that maybe someone (as in one of us neighbors) could just get a bag and a shovel and get it over with. I persuaded her to connect me with the inspector for that address, and left a rather terse message on his voicemail that someone needs to do something about this problem property and that either he needs to contact the owner or let me know how i can do so myself.

Square one.

So i contacted the Mayor’s office. I can’t remember the lady’s name, but she was wonderful and took the information down to pass along to whoever it is that needs to know these sorts of things.

Then i got antsy. I looked up the property info on the county’s web site (see here and here). A simple search on the name and address gave some interesting info, including the fact that the address is the same as that of a previous owner. Oddly enough, that same address in Dublin, Ohio also was the address of a defunct UFO organization called MORA.

So to you, mister Timothy Freidenberger TR (or mister Kurt Novak, whoever owns the goddamn place), i say this:

Come and get your fucking house under control, sir! I would burn the god damned thing down myself but your overgrown branches would no doubt catch our own place of residence, with ourselves inside, aflame to boot, not to mention the nasty legal ramifications of such an terrible but no doubt really goddamn enjoyable act.

UPDATE1: Mister Novak returned my call. I advised him that the property is a nuisance. He shifted blame to the city, which certainly bears some of the burden of responsibility. I advised that the owner is also a source of the problem, as there is brush and trees so overgrown that the bums who appropriated our television panel had no problem hiding in them. He seemed to be under the impression that someone he pays actually comes out to take care of the place. I further advised that it would probably be best to just raze the goddamn thing down and sell the land. He didn’t see that as an option, and the call ended on a note of pretend cordiality not long afterward.

UPDATE2: Someone actually came out, i know not from whence, and removed the dead thing.

photo by Peter Wine/ MediaMoments.com

Brilliant!

Satan (R- Hell)

And here’s Holly as a sexy-ass she-devil:

Antichristine?

Hauntfest is like a micro-Mardis Gras in the hip, urban enclave of Dayton known as the Oregon District. Thousands of bodies, all drunken and becostumed, filling the street, cold swill in hand.

A surprising number of people actually got the joke. Only one didn’t – a McCain supporter, of course, who had to have her drunken Palin-obsessed girlfriend explain it to her.

I made a big deal out of shaking hands with a John McCain lookalike; judging by his nervous chuckle, he was actually a real live McCain supporter. Said i, “i’m a huge fan – let’s end the world together!”

Had photo taken twice by very nice Democrats, including one couple who had just voted earlier in the day.

(By the way, John[ny] Sidney McCain = 666 – not that that means anything.)

Best costume i saw, besides Lara Croft, awesome Batman, and Catwoman… i mean really creative and original… Linda Blair as Regan in the Exorcist, in bed and everything, with a guy in a priest outfit walking beside her. Wish i woulda thought to snap any pics!! *facepalm* Will try and remember to search the local sites for a photo.

Somewhere out there is a scruffy hillbilly prick basking in the warm blue glow of my bad-ass Samsung. I can’t drive around to find them, because without the car here, they’ll just waltz right back in. I know it’s somewhere in this very neighborhood, but i daren’t take my eyes off of those items which they curiously left behind, for they will surely be back for them.

They took nothing else – which actually kind of sucks, because we just know their swift but short-sighted Possession Relocation Services are going to be rendered again. Everything was in plain sight! Guitars, keyboards and recording equipment, media devices, laptops, desktops, a camera, mp3 player, tons of DVDs and CDs and games – all right there. No more. I am putting them all away, since i apparently don’t deserve to have them any more.

Incidentally, this is the second time my life-space has been robbed. Several years ago I had all my CDs and my TV set taken from me. You work your life away – blood, sweat & tears and all that – and then some rotten, moronic asshat thinks they deserve it and you don’t so they just come in and take it. I partly blame this stupid gimme-gimme society we have so proudly built for ourselves.

We need: 

• a fucking big man-eating dog with built-in violent aggression towards intruders, 
• a shotgun (god damn i hate that i need a gun), 
• someplace to stash our remaining valuables, 
• moving-away cash – fast!, and 
• a different, less crappy goddamned city. FUCK YOU, Dayton, Ohio.

I have a real bad feeling about my short-term future.