(no subject)

[rusty_halo]

It's crazy hot. Our tiny window air conditioner is working overtime to keep the office... not very cool at all. But still a hell of a lot better than the heat outside, which kind of feels like the earth is trying to sear us right off the face of the planet.

I'm worried about the power. My apartment is on the top floor and traps heat like you wouldn't believe. I can go outside, but the cats are kind of stuck. *prays to the Con Edison gods*

The new roommate was supposed to move in today, but the lunatic old roommate claims her plans to move out yesterday "fell through" and she can't move out until 8pm tonight. *stabs* So new guy is pissed and has to wait an extra day, but hopefully he realizes that this isn't *my* fault.

The current roommate only paid half her rent for July, and I just found remnants of a shattered bowl that she clearly broke and didn't tell me about, and she still has to pay utilities for July, and she didn't move out on time, and she violated her six month agreement. I'm pretty sure this is more than enough justification for me not to return the remaining part of her deposit that I still have, after taking out the rent that she didn't pay. I just worry, because if she's really pissed, she could have her keys copied, sneak back in after moving out, and steal stuff, or hurt my cats, or wreak other kind of havoc. So maybe I should just return the money that she doesn't deserve, in order to keep the peace? Either that or have the lock changed, yet again, but that costs ridiculous money. Grrr.

The wank over at writercon makes me sad. I know there's lots of bigotry in the world, but I hate seeing it hit so close to home, in a place that's otherwise a safe harbor. I'm glad that people are responding, because letting bigotry stand without a response seems like condoning it. And I'm glad that people are (for the most part) being reasonable and genuinely trying to engage in dialog with the guy. I know intellectually that you're more likely to change people's minds with politeness and dialogue than with angry confrontation, but I'm having a hard time coming up with much beyond "Fuck off!" so I applaud those who are more articulate and restrained than me.

In other news...

I went to the Black Sun Festival in New Haven with 10zlaine this weekend. New Haven is a nice little pedestrian-friendly town with tons of vegan food, so we ate very well. The only band I really wanted to see was Chemlab, who were amazing, despite a fairly short set. I took nearly 400 photos; they're such a fun band to photograph. Lots of action, and very photogenic band members. ;)

I enjoyed some of the other bands as well. Das Ich was very good, a German band with very charismatic members who looked like they'd just stepped out of a fantasy novel. I didn't see all of Null Device's set, but they had some really interesting and diverse influences. The popularity of Combichrist continues to boggle my mind, though; I don't think they could be more boring.

Aside from seeing the bands in the evenings, I'd talked 10zlaine into going (after she'd talked me into going and then threatened to cancel!) on the promise that we'd hang out all day watching videos. She brought her DVD player and we each brought a ton of DVDs, but when we arrived we discovered that the hotel television had no inputs except for the coaxial cable that the cable TV was coming in through. Who ever heard of a television with no inputs? And it wasn't terribly old or anything. So after much struggle and me calling my dad trying to figure out what to do, we ended up driving to Best Buy and picking up an RF modulator, which was basically a converter allowing us to hook up the DVD player via the coaxial input. It took us until 3pm Saturday to work all this out, but we still managed to watch a lot: Sharpe 7, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Gun Shy, and the remake of The Thomas Crowne Affair (though we watched that one after the concert Saturday night, so I slept through most of it).

It ended up being quite a fun weekend; I'm glad we went.

Comments

[elfgirl.livejournal.com]

Gaaaaaaaah. I'd keep her whole damn deposit, if only to get enough money to change the locks on the place and then toss her shit on the street. I know you're trying to be civil, though, for good reason.

I'm convinced that the guy who started the wank did it on purpose, and that's why he posted his con report directly to the comm, instead of just a link like everyone else has done. It's spurred a lot of interesting discussion and that's kind of cool.

I'm glad you guys had fun. I've got a couple of Das Ich tracks on my computer. If you're interested, I can send them to you.

[jerrymcl89.livejournal.com]

That guy obviously went to the con, since his report is so detailed, but posting something like that and not responding to any of the comments seems rather trollish to me.

I can sympathize with how if you have no interest in reading slash, a fair amount of the con is probably not for you. But I can't see how anyone who didn't know that would be there would have ever even heard of the con.

[10zlaine.livejournal.com]

I know who he is; he's very quiet and sort of hangs out on the periphery.

WC1 also had a large degree of slash interest, reflected in programming, etc. He was at the first one and frankly, I'm not sure why it's a big surprise to him. It certainly is an exhibition of trollish behavior...

[10zlaine.livejournal.com]

I agree with Laura...keep the money. Perhaps the new roomie can help you add a new lock? Just don't tell her until after she returns her keys. She's such a fucking loser. She stayed the entire month, she owes you the entire month. THAT is something she can't possibly argue out of.

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

I agree with the lock-changing ideas. You should be able to keep the money -- that's what deposits are for.