2004 is finally over. Along with myriad bits of suck. I think.
At least, in general application. Elements of suck remain, in a vestigial capacity. But that's a little more tolerable.
CircuitPity still haven't shown any good reason to exist. Last I heard from them, they were calling me to ascertain whether I'd been pleased to have had them fail to fix a laptop seven times out of two, while breaking and/or losing other parts of the doomed little machine; since I wasn't, in fact, thrilled to have had them suck like that, they promised to have someone in power call me to sort all that out. That was several weeks ago. I still wait in patience.
More interestingly, there's WorstPacific. And that's a nice, long story to start the year with.
For those who haven't yet heard about this suction, first hit WorstPacific.com to catch up to today. Then you'll understand why this next bit is so fucking funny.
So. Back in August or so, once it was well beyond evident that the only reason I was still at 12249 East Ford Avenue in the Meadowlark Compound in Aurora, Colorado was that my lawyers recommended against breaking my lease if I still wanted to sue WorstPacific into extinction, Hunter and I were wandering through Aurora Mall, buying coffee and videogames and films and things; wandering upstairs, for whatever reason, we happened across an abandoned kiosk promoting some form of realty. Since no one was there trying to sell us anything [in my case, that's the best way to guarantee that I'll keep my money and hate you for ever], we were left to look through their various flyers, whose copy had more to tell us than the realtors would have had, had they been there to try to tell us things while we were walking away, keeping my money and hating them for ever. So, we now get that buying a house makes somewhat more sense than renting a flat--especially from WorstPacific.
This is good news.
Back downstairs, I spot another realty kiosk--this one staffed by realtors. So I stop to talk to them, figuring they're probably the same company running the unmanned kiosk upstairs. Which they weren't. But that's okay: it all works out in the end.
They confirm my suspicions that spending roughly the same money per month to buy a house in which I'm allowed to fix something when it breaks is a better deal than renting something from WorstPacific and watching their clockwork suction destroy a percentage of my stuff every month. Ironically, that's usually the objection phase in realty: that, by owning a house, you don't get to expect a landlord to fix these things for free. Having rented a flat from WorstPacific, I wasn't seriously expecting the frauds to fix things at all.
So, ultimately, we bought a house. Which is to say that Hunter fronted the money, and I fixed the contracts to make things fair. The end result was stealing a place in Cherry Creek for zero down and having enough equity, based on the appraisal, one minute later to buy a decent sportscar with an equity loan. Which is not to say that I've yet replaced the Formula; it's just fun to realise that I could.
So. As of about two weeks ago, we possess this house. Yay us.
My lease with WorstPacific, being violated daily by the enemy anyway, dies out at midnight MST tonight--31st December 2004. I'm currently calling this 1st January 2005 based on ZuluTime; local issues still have some time on the clock.
Fortunately [not really: I actually planned it this way] we've had the house for two weeks, during which we could lazily pack and move everything here from the flat. Which was a good idea in general, execpt for the part where, according to neighbouring witnesses, WorstPacific kept breaking and entering and stealing things from the place. Nothing important, really: just trashbags and ducttape and things we were counting on for the move.
Last night--on the thirtieth--we went back to the flat for the final phase of the exodus. This time, the criminals at WorstPacific had taken the last of the trashbags and tape and PineSol, which irked me, since the only reason we went there last night was to clean things up. I'm not sure why I bothered cleaning things up. I guess because it hurts my case against WorstPacific slightly if I leave the place in a worse condition than I'd found it. Which wasn't exactly possible to do, given that my little checklist from moving in back in 2002 includes references to spots of mould and carpet damage; it's just that, now, two and a half years later, we understand how those damages might have occurred before these morons failed to lease me a place worth renting in the first place.
So that was the job last night: generally carting empty packs of cigarettes and sodacans and things out to the trashskip and trying to clean things up despite the theft of brooms and mops and so on. Which, again, irked me. So I called the office to ask when, since we had witnesses claiming that it had been they who had stolen this shit, I could expect to get it back.
WorstPacific claimed not to have stolen anything, or to ever have entered the flat--even on 24th December when we know they walked through to the backyard to shut off the boiler while the ceilings were raining yet again. Instead, WorstPacific told me, it must have been this raging gang of transients which WorstPacific already know are breaking into flats to steal things.
The innuendo that transients have keys and/or the skills required to pick locks was secondary; more importantly, WorstPacific seem to be unaware that, being slumlords, their knowledge of recurring crimes like that legally equates them to accessories. So it's good to have got their confession on that point.
While I'm on the phone, I remind them that I'm not renewing the lease. And I do mean remind, since I've belaboured that little ultimatum all fucking year. I first mentioned it in May, when the ceiling started raining fifty gallons of boiling water per day on me and my stuff; I mentioned it again in June, when Kristen Taylor started throwing biohazard into my backyard from upstairs. And so on. Fix these problems if you want me to renew my lease. It was pretty evident all along.
So. I'm on the phone, essentially fucking with WorstPacific. My lease runs out in about thirty-two hours. You've got that long to rebuild this place without the black mould, et cetera, if you'd still like me to renew the lease.
Which was an assumption on my part, since, while WorstPacific hadn't been dumb enough to evict me for anything, they had failed to offer me a new lease at the end of November. So it's probably a cinch that the lease is now over.
Let's talk deposits.
I'm basically cleaning up any mess I've made. There are things I can't make go away with PineSol, of course. Like the damages caused by various burglaries, which are on file with the Aurora Police; also, there's a lot of black mould in the carpets and on the walls, which, really, I shouldn't want to get within a kilometre of--black mould is evil enough shit that you're not even allowed to tear down a building containing it; you've got to find a way to remove it manually, along with the rest of whatever surface it's contaiminated; granting that the keystone beams in the ceilings are infected by this shit, the building is coming down either way; it'll just cost ten times as much to demolish it as it would if they were simply to hit it with wreckingballs and be done with it.
So: I'm clear. No one's going to hold the black mould against me. The carpets and walls and supportbeams and the building in general are fucked. Everyone gets that. It's not my fault.
Although....
WorstPacific, being on the phone and looking through their records, can't find any evidence that I've given them notice of anything. Of course, that might be because they replaced their entire staff in October, nullifying my ultimatums from the rest of the year. But that's okay: I don't care. At all. It's not about the money: I've made more from the advertising at WorstPacific.com than I've given to WorstPacific in history. I'm adding the deposit issue to my forthcoming suit against them, if there's room for it after I own their corporation just for May 2004 alone.
Granting that these idiots have known about WorstPacific.com and its contents since I registered it, I can't wait to watch them try to claim that I never gave them any sort of hint that I might not wish to renew my lease. Although, amusingly enough, while they had been pushing up the monthly rental by a few hundred bucks every time someone new moved in, the sign out in front of the office now suggests that they're renting out places like mine for less than half of what I paid them at the beginning of December 2004. Ironically, if they tried to keep my deposit to cover a month of rent, it would be overkill: my deposit was more than rent is now. Someone must be slamming them in a website, or something.
I did, of course, bring my DigiCam with me last night....

So, it's over. 2004 is over. Maybe the suck is over too.
Yeah. Sure it is....
More later....
--Gremlin

Forgot to add tags for this stupid entry.