#and the landlord can probably charge a SHIT TON for rent

[windslar]

big, spacious apartments = big, stuffed wallet for our friendly neighbourhood rent collector

[prorevenge]

Bad renting situation.

Set the scene for you guys: The place we were renting is a duplex that is split down the middle here in Upstate NY. My little 2 bedroom side of the house was next to the garages and driveway. It had a small side of the yard which was 15 ft x 5 ft. We have a Chocolate Lab named Benny that uses that back yard for his bathroom etc. The shitty neighbor in my duplex who I’ll call Rick had the bigger side of the yard and a staircase that lead up to the back field where there was a nice walking path and horse farm. The back of our duplex was kind of built right into the side of the hill leading up to the horse farm/corn farm. Rick was subletting one of his rooms to a Russian chain smoker that we’ll call Olga and she was the same age as him (60 ish). Rick is an asshole 90% of the time and demands we never use his staircase to go up to the walking trail. His Russian friend and he also chain smoke in front of our living room window making our house smell like an 80’s era bowling alley. Over the course of our renting this place we got in numerous fights with these asshats over where they could smoke so that our side of the house didn’t stink. The landlord lives in FL and uses the property as his retirement cash cow. The LL we’ll call Dwayne and he’s about 70 years old. The house itself was built in 1940 or earlier and we lived on an old farm road with a pumpkin farm across the street. Just want you to have an image of the location because it’ll come into play.

The first week we’re in the house unpacking and my wife asked me to plug in the vacuum and run it around the downstairs to get up the Styrofoam from the packing materials. I notice that the plug sparks when you plug it in or unplug anything. I call Dwayne and tell him and he says “Ok…..call around and get a price from an electrician and let me know what it’ll cost.” This was a red flag for me. I’m paying $1300 a month for this duplex and now this guy wants me to do all his leg work since he is out of state. I figure whatever and find an electrician that’ll charge $200 for the house call plus the outlets he’ll end up replacing. I call Dwayne and he says “no, that’s too much, I’ll send one of my guys over to do it.” This pissed me off because I just spent 20 minutes calling around getting ballpark quotes but I figure fine as long as the work gets done. Fast forward 1 month and his electrician finally shows up one day to do the work. He replaces 12 of the 14 outlets because he didn’t think he’d find so many bad ones. I figure that’s fine since the ones he didn’t replace are up in the room we never use.

2 months goes by and its early spring and raining a ton. One night we get a HUGE downpour that lasts for about 35 minutes. My wife says she hears water in the basement. I run down in the basement and we have 2 waterfalls coming through the windows that look into the backyard and 4 inches of water on the floor and rising. I call Dwayne the next morning and tell him about the windows in the basement and the flooding and he says I need to find a cleaning service to clean up the mess. I tell him I can’t because I’m going to work. He says “ok, do it after work then.” I say “listen, I don’t own this house, you do, so find someone today that can clean this up and repair the windows or I’m going to do it myself and take it out of the rent (which is NY state law.)” He gets pissed and hangs up. Later in the evening he calls and says a cleaning service will be there in two days to clean the basement from all the mud and water. I tell him that’s fine but he might want to repair the windows since it’s still raining pretty regularly. He says no that won’t be necessary since he’s still getting quotes about a French drain for the back of the house. The cleaning crew shows up and they clean the whole basement out. It takes them 6 hrs with power washers and scrubbing machines etc. They leave at 5pm that day and we’re thinking ok great now we have the basement cleaned up, but the windows aren’t holding anything out since they are so old and have no sealant around the outside edges. 2 days goes by and it downpours again and fills the basement back up with water and mud. I call Dwayne and he sounds defeated. He tells me that he’ll send the cleaning crew back out the same day the contractors are going to show up with the backhoe for digging the French drain around the backside of the house. Fast forward 2 weeks and everybody shows up. The work is completed and we’re happy to have a normal basement again even though I’m pissed that we have had a swamp down there for so long.

2 more months goes by and my wife one night screams while in the kitchen. She swears she saw a mouse in the kitchen run from under the sink to the under the oven. I ask her what it looked like and she says big, grey, and had pink ears. I know right away this isn’t a field mouse but a full grown rat. I open the drawer below the oven and all our cupcake pans are full of little rat turds and its fucking nasty. Thankfully we never bake so they weren’t a big loss. I call Dwayne and he says he has an exterminator friend that lives nearby and he’ll call him and get back to me. Dwayne calls back the next morning and says “I spoke to my friend and he claims that your dog going to the bathroom in the backyard is probably attracting the rats.” I tell him “rats don’t eat shit, so that makes no sense. We’ll need to have an exterminator sent out to deal with this.” Dwayne goes on a tirade about how we’re the worst renters and that we constantly complain about little things. I tell him “for $1300 a month I expect a rat free, spark free, living space that doesn’t flood or smell like a bowling alley.” At this point Dwayne says he’ll look into it and hangs up. I’m super pissed at this point. We’ve had nothing but problems with this place from the first week and now we’ve got rats in our kitchen. I do a little digging online and find out that you can have health department investigate rat infestations and if they see that the landlord isn’t doing anything about it, they’ll put a lien on the house until the work is complete. So obviously I decided to go that route. I call the health inspector and he tells me that he’ll come out in a few days and do an inspection and get back to me. Dwayne calls me back and says the rat problem is my fault because I have a dog and that I need to deal with the problem myself. I told him no problem I just set up an appointment with the health inspector. Dwayne get really upset and cusses me out. I call my lawyer and tell him to call Dwayne and arrange for us to break the lease since I don’t want to deal with him anymore.

Fast forward two months. The health inspector had found a bunch of rats and holes in the foundation and evidence that the colony had been living in the house for “years and years from the looks of it.” He contacts Dwayne and tells him about the lien if he doesn’t address it. Dwayne calls me and says he’s sending an exterminator. Now at this point I had put the place up on Craigslist to find new renters since Dwayne had decided to sublet our lease instead of let us out of it. I found some college kids that were desperate for a place and they seemed like typical, rich college kids. I tell them that the place doesn’t have A/C and they’ll need window units etc. But I also tell them that the next door neighbor is pot friendly and loves smoking. I tell them that he is super chill and that they can totally use the staircase in the backyard to use the hiking trails. One of the kids brought his mom that showed up in a new Jag and so I knew that Dwayne wasn’t going to be able to shit all over these people since I knew they’d lawyer up. I never mentioned the rat infestation or that this place was a nightmare because I knew that these kids’ rich parents would go nuclear with a lawyer if they had to deal with this stuff.

Dwayne accepted the new tenants and let us out of the lease. All it took was a few threats from my lawyer before I got my security deposit back.

Fast forward 3 months. I drive by the old place to see what’s happening. It looks like the college kids and Rick are off to a rough start. There is a plastic divider down the driveway to separate who gets what. There are beer cans all over the front yard and Rick’s truck is parked on the side lawn. He never did that when we lived there, so I’m sure these kids were driving him crazy with parking. Olga is nowhere to be seen since she probably jumped ship when the parties started. I don’t know what became of the rats but 2 months later I did another drive by and there was no furniture on our side of the house which tells me everybody had left and Dwayne wasn’t making any money….which made me happy since he was a fucking prick.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that after we moved out, the cleaning service called me to see about payment for the basement cleaning. Apparently, Dwayne never paid them and they couldn't reach him. I gave them his cell number and his FL address. That felt really good to do as well.

TLDR: rented a duplex that needed tons of repairs and ended up leaving the asshole neighbors and landlord with college bro’s that loved 4/20 and parties.

(source) (story by LedZeppelinRiff)

[emochristopherrobin]

Finding a place to live sucks

So I'm reading through this lease on a place and fucking it says “We cant be sure this property has never been used as a meth lab” BITCH THE FUCK. Like what the hell are county codes and health and safety about? Like you wanna charge me a $2,000 down payment and $1,350 a month for you to let me know you’ve rented to tweakers probably for a lot cheaper than you are charging me and your ass can’t even get a health inspection. Why pay a fucking safety deposit if they cant even assure me of my safety? Like what a safer more healthy place to live: a meth lab or a house with asbestos? Well, how about both. Cuz the house was built in the 60′s and in this area, you can guarantee that it used asbestos, and the county I can afford to live in doesn't require the landlord to do shit about it until it becomes a problem basically.  Also, they are trying to say I can’t change the locks when I move in. Bitch yeah fucking right. I’ll change them back to the ones you had on when I move out but I ain't letting no fucking tweaker landlord have the ability to come in my house when the fuck ever. Also, this is Colorado and if you enter my home regardless of who you think you are, I can shoot your ass if I really think you are a threat. There are tons of videos and stories in the news in Colorado about landlords fucking in their renter's beds and shit, and just straight fucking them over. And Fuck off with that lock shit, that pisses me off so fucking much like you can't even believe. Like I pay to be in a home and if you wanna micromanage people as a landlord then charge me fucking less so it’s worth it. If you charge me $100 a month in rent, I will let you pick out my fucking breakfast every day if you fucking want, but for $1,350 you can fucking eat my ass and leave me the fuck alone. Anyways fuck people who use landlord as the main income and just fuck people over, like get a real job. Provide a service actually do something. Fucking waste of space. 

[dcuglybooks]

A short story collection featuring stories that are either mean and ugly like that turd that thudded you in school, or sweet and cuddly as a little gloomy kitten; or puppy if you’re more of a dog person.

Stories Christians don't have to read backwards. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LGB4HGN/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_fabc_UIpaGb2VC4BBX

Here’s a free short.

WAP: WEIRD ASS PHANTOM

“There’s a ghost in this house. There’s a ghost in this house.”

Linda was getting tired of the shit. Every day at exactly noon her alarm would play this shitty overdubbed version of a Cardi B song. The original song wasn’t her cup of tea to begin with, this new version that sounded like drunk karaoke was even worse. Most times she would be sitting there and the sound of a drunk sorority girl would make her jump out of her skin. She couldn’t even find the song or alarm in her phone to do anything about it.

Linda and her girlfriend, Melissa, moved into this old house last month, the rent was so damn cheap; landlord said it was because it used to be a party house so he never charged much. The logic didn’t make any sense but at $300 a month and a mile outside of town, how were they not going to sign that lease?

“I think,” spoke Melissa one night while watching her phone float around taking pictures in the air, “the reason rent is so cheap is because it’s haunted.”

“You think?” Replies Linda while snatching the phone out of the air. “I just wish this damn ghost would stop posting pictures of our bedroom to our Instagram accounts. Did you see the caption last night?”

“Oh you mean ‘Pumpkin spice is almost here. Basic bitches, rejoice!’ The comma is what set me off. Why did she put a comma in that? Why bother? It wasn’t even used correctly I don’t believe.”

“We’re being haunted by a basic bitch.”

“I think that may be offensive.”

“I hear it all the time, it just...... yeah ok maybe. I guess I shouldn’t assume this ghost is a bad stereotype, I won’t say it again.”

“True, this girl may have more going for her than just these annoying social media posts from our accounts”

“Remember the mirror though?”

Last week as the couple were eating dinner they heard a clatter and crash from the upstairs bathroom. Running full speed ahead up the stairs and around the corner Linda saw all their makeup in a pile in the empty sink. She could see a pair of red lipsticked lips floating in the air while eyeliner was seemingly drawn onto the air in a cat eye shape. She sighed and said “What now?” These types of things had been going on since the first night so at this point it was old hat.

The lipstick went to the mirror and wrote “I am finally going to kill you.” Linda took a step back prepared to flee until the lipstick wrote below it “JK LOL YOUR FACE” and then the face floated off into the wall leaving behind the makeup like some sort of painting.

The first time anything strange had happened, a pizza showed up at the front door; delivery for an Amanda Perkins. The girl who moved out recently, they took the pizza because it was already paid for and assumed the girl had made a mistake. They were sure of this as they sat and watched old re-runs of home improvement and munched away; then they noticed the slice floating over in the air above the recliner and the chewed up pile on the seat. They screamed and ran outside, Melissa forgot her phone inside and Linda’s made a ding from inside her pocket.

“Hey I know this is really weird, it’s weird AF for me too. We can make it work though, ladies. I swear I won’t bother you, I already cleaned up my mess.”

They inched inside looking around like scared toddlers and sure enough the mess was cleaned up. After that they just rolled with the weirdness.

“Are you sure Amanda left, Mr. Morris?” Linda was on the phone with the landlord.

“Yes. Positive. Why would you think she still lived there?”

“There’s been..... some things.”

“Drunk college girl, she probably stumbled home one night and forgot she went home for the summer. Its no deal. Not big or small.”

“Are you absolutely positive there is no deal? Big, small, medium, or slightly larger than medium but not quite large?”

“What do you think? I know her ex and he killed her and then buried her body in the basement so now her ghost is haunting you. This is why I charge so cheap rent! No. I don’t believe what you think. I will be going.”

He hung up without ever realizing Linda never once mentioned any of that other stuff. Linda thought, Why does he talk like that?

Turned out that’s exactly what had happened. After doing a quick google of the ghosts name they found out she never came home. After a quick Facebook search they found her ex boyfriends page. After some scrolling they found a post that said “Amanda and I broke up again and I am going to kill her.” The post had six likes and four comments.

“Get her bro!”

“Bitch ain’t appreciate you anyhow bet!”

“U need any ting lemme no”

“Fuk gr8 ass tho. Mind if I hit her up?”

These people were insane. Did not a single one of these people see the part about wanting to kill her? Actually PLANNING to kill her.

The police found it interesting enough to look into it, they found reason to arrest the guy. After a long court trial Amanda’s ex-boyfriend, Brent, was sentenced to life in prison for murder. The body was exhumed and buried at a family plot. The rent got more expensive because Mr. Morris was in prison for helping cover a murder so his aunt took over.

You win some you lose some.

Amanda did not leave though. The ghost hung out still to this day four months later. The social media posts kept going. The pizzas kept getting ordered, only now from their pockets because Amanda’s parents closed her bank account. Amanda was irritated about that, she was cut off from her parents money and stuck living with two other people.

Linda and Melissa tried to make her feel as comfy as possible, they left a pen and notebook in each room so she could communicate with them. Usually the notes were always about how bored she was being a ghost and how if she tried to leave the house it got all bright and she started floating. Amanda was “for real afraid of flying” as she wrote on a notebook.

Amanda’s behavior got strange at some point. She began doing things like drawing stick figures on the bathroom floor in shampoo, she would wrap herself in toilet paper and roll down the stairs creating the illusion of her body disappearing, the worst of it was when she would lay in bed with Linda and Melissa startling them when she pulled the blanket. It was like living with an invisible insane person. Either her mind was slipping or she was just a strange character. She would turn the TV on and watch the same episode of “King of Queens” for ten hours straight while they were at work. They wondered what would happen if they deleted it from the DVR but didn’t want to face that at all.

The alarm kept going off too; Linda had to hand out awkward smiles and apologies when it happened at work or in public. One time she had to apologize to a middle aged woman when it went off in the cereal aisle while shopping and her son started singing the lyrics to the original version as loud as his voice would allow. The mother gasped at all the words her kid knew and knocked a shelf of maple syrup over. The bottles burst all over the floor, Linda tried to help clean it up but she was shooed away by a guy with a mop bucket and a face that said he wanted her dead as shit.

They asked her multiple times what they could do to get her to move along, to which she would always write “sno-cone” on her notebook with no explanation.

Linda woke up sick on a Tuesday and didn’t go to work, she came into the bathroom and seen a note written in lipstick on the mirror that read “Baby, all my life I will be driving home to you.” She blushed, Melissa had left her a really sweet note on the mirror. When Melissa got home she surprised her with a bout of some of the best sex they had ever had, despite Linda being sick she felt overcome with love for her partner.

“Wow. What did I do to deserve that?” Asked Melissa after.

“The note.”

“Oh yes. The note, got you good with that one. So, if it was so good mind telling me what it said?”

“You know what it said!”

“Of course I do.”

She didn’t know what it said. She had no clue, but she wasn’t going to raise a stink about what just happened. No way, no how. She got up and went to use the restroom, as she sat on the toilet she looked up and saw the words on the mirror.

“LINDA!” She yelled. “I DIDNT LEAVE THAT! THATS THE GODDAMN LYRICS FROM THE THEME SONG FOR ‘THE KING OF QUEENS!’”

Linda didn’t know what to say; she shook her head and internally accepted defeat on this one. The couple didn’t talk about it again, the ends justified the means on this one they silently agreed; thanks Amanda.

The trio had carried on life like this for months, seven to be exact, when they heard a bang and a crash from the front door. Assuming this was yet again Amanda doing some goofy nonsense they ran downstairs to clean up the mess only to find a man standing their pointing a shotgun at them.

“You’re the dykes who got me locked up, aintcha?” Said a freshly broke out of prison Brent. “You know, usually I’m cool with like loving whoever and like rights and like equality and shit but tonight is not your night. Go sit.”

They were tied together on the couch while Brent sat channel flipping on the TV.

“Amanda is still here,” spoke Linda “she’s a ghost, at some point she’s going to help us and you’ll probably get hurt. She’s probably posting pictures on Instagram right now so she’s a little busy, but I promise when she finds out she’ll come running.”

“No she won’t.”

“Ok? So you think her post is going to get a ton of likes then?”

“She’s afraid of me.”

“Ugh are you generic ‘I beat my girlfriend’ guy number seventy or not?”

“Not.”

“Then why is she afraid of you?”

“I’m bigger than her…… I guess?”

“She’s a ghost.”

“I’m still bigger.”

​“How can you be bigger than an incorporeal being with no mass or weight?”

​“See, she doesn’t way anything.”

“You didn’t think any of this through did you?”

“Not one bit.”

“It shows. Why did you kill her?”

“Hey I’ve never been what you’d call a planner. I killed her because she broke up with me for the fiftieth time that year and all my friends were giving me a hard time about how I would just crawl back to her. I said ‘can’t crawl back to her if I kill her!’ They all thought it was funny so I did it.”

“Ah………Makes perfect sense to me.”

“A guy has to watch his reputation, right?”

They sat there watching late night infomercials in silence for another half hour. Linda nudged Melissa as she seen a phone floating around taking pictures of a floating can of soup.

Of all the ghosts in the world, why was theirs like this?

“Brent, there’s some stuff on the DVR” Linda told him.

“Good I hate infomercials. Oh yuck, ‘The King of Queens.’ I hate that show, Amanda loved it. That fat fucking heifer guy gets to make it with that babe every night. Fucking loser ass UPS guy”

They could see the phone slowly lower and start hovering towards Brent. They let him rant.

“And that Deacon guy, what a fucking idiot, he leaves his wife at one point which is silly because she’s so fucking hot.”

The can of soup hovered behind him.

“That guy that dates the ugly chick from the bowling alley, now I can’t tolerate him at all.”

The soup can shook with rage.

“He ends up living with the other guy right? Like what the fuck? Are they like a thing or not a thing? I didn’t pay enough attention. I did pretend to though to get some action every now and again, show fucking sucks though. Here I’ll do you guys a favor.”

As he deleted the episode from the DVR the can came slamming down into his head.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

They heard a voice yell “MY BONES ARE GETTING WEARY! MY BACK IS GETTING TIGHT!” As the can of cream of chicken turned Brent’s head into cream of Brent’s brains.

After the violence stopped the notebook hovered in front of them and said “Sorry, I was on TikTok, I’ll clean this up tho.”

Much like the first night that’s exactly what happened. They were untied and they watched as the mess was cleaned up. Brent’s body floated over to the ground and the can of soup was laid on the table. The phone floated over to Melissa who dialed 911.

After the legal mess was cleaned up they decided that having Amanda around maybe was not such a bad idea. No one could really kill them, it was like having a built in security system. They did eventually add a third line to their cell plan and let her set up social media for herself as a reclusive twenty something who couldn’t leave the house due to a skin condition.

Her pages were ok, they didn’t get much interaction or followers but Amanda was happy. Sometimes people would say they wanted to hang out with her because they lived close, Amanda just said her skin condition was contagious AF. No one ever thought to say “Hey, what exactly IS your medical condition?” People could be so polite sometimes.

Christmas morning as they all opened gifts Linda and Melissa cried as Amanda opened the complete series collection of “The King of Queens.” The three sat on the couch together that evening and watched all of season one.

Baby all my life I will be driving home to you.

The next day they heard a familiar song. Together they both smiled and thought that yes, there was a ghost in this house.

[adifags]

Wat is the housing situation in Scotland like ? I wanna move to an English speaking country because it's impossible to get a decent flat here in France. I live in 20 square meters and I can't stand it anymore. Do u need a ton of paperwork also ? Honestly it's depressing just talking about it. Never come to France, it's shit here

As far as I’m aware depending on letting agency they charge a bigger deposit for non-uk residents but the forms aren’t too complicated and is less complicated than France, going by Damon Dominique’s videos lol. Househunting can be difficult, especially recently, so your best bet would be a flat share. Meadows share is a good Facebook page to look for flatamtes but idk what the Glasgow equivalent is. Edi and Glasgow are the only cities really worth living in, but would recommend Glasgow over Edinburgh tbh bc it’s cheaper to live, rents in Glasgow are Abt £400 pm on average whereas Edinburgh can be £550pm average and is more likely to be more expensive than that. Glasgow is also a lot bigger so there’s more stuff to do/job opportunities. The style of building that is most popular for apartments are called tenements so would recommend googling one to get an impression of size but it really varies depending on what room you manage to get; some are converted living rooms, others can be box rooms converted into bedrooms. As usual landlords are wankers - my old landlord was horrific and I can make a post of all the problems if people want - so it’ll probably be the same in regards to that. One thing to keep in mind is that during winter there are only 6 hours of daylight, with the sun only fully rising by 10AM and beginning to set at 2PM in December/January, so if seasonal depression is a familiar friend then maybe it’s not for you lol. Idk why anyone would want to leave Europe but that’s just me, seeing as it’s my graduation plan lol

[darkcozyforest]

Quotes from my Stagecraft Professor Spring 2017

Okay I am going to preface these quotes by saying that this is a man probably in his late 30′s early 40′s originally from Pennsylvania and now in Missouri. He, along with his wife, has done work in the theatre for his entire professional career. He is the king of dad jokes because he is one. And he has been through hell and back with medical issues that he has gone through or his family has gone through. That said, let us begin:

“White People are like olive oil mayo. We’re not really sure why we’re here. We’re not really good for you. We don’t really taste good.”

“’She’ is a an option. Let’s start breaking those gender barriers. He or she is allowed.”

“Theatre is someone doing something and someone to watch it”

“Hamilton tickets are up to what like 3/4 the GEP of Ghana?”

“You didn’t go to see Spider-man Turn Off the Dark because it was good. You went to see it to see who would get injured that night.”

Yea I mean I guess you could say that Jeffrey Seller has a pretty good track record. Hamilton, In The Heights, Rent, Avenue  Q...”

“Boston took second in the Poker game and said we’re not taking 2nd we’ll take two ones and that is why they are Local 11.Talk about petty”

“To those people who say you must be an actor I say not anymore because I grew accustomed to things like food and shelter.”

“Break down those gender barriers!!”

*When talking about where the Rock and Roll hall of fame was* “IT’S THE NORTH COAST! There’s like a shit ton of water up there!”

“I have never seen someone want to be swallowed by their own asshole so much in their life. He said nothing good ever came out of South Korea and I said ‘oh you mean like my wife?’”

“The Backstage Handbook is the greatest non-religious book known to man.”

“Nails are easy. Put it in, bang it with a rock or a hammer or your friend.”

“I am blue color all the way. Like fuck the man. If you are in administration you are like a turd on my shoe.”

“The president of our university is like our flu shot.”

“If you know anything about opera well... Save that for Monday.”

“Next time someone tells you that women don’t belong in the shop two things. A: BULL FUCKING SHIT! Some of the best carpenters I’ve seen in my life are women. B: Women think things out better than men. Dating back to cavemen when men would just focus on the same thing til it died and women would look at the whole thing.”

“This is the circulur....lar. saw La-la la-la.... Wicked? No nobody?”

“No show tunes playing during shop. You all get distracted and then try to one up each other and then you get hurt acting like idiots.”

“Pi are not squared. Pi are round.” *talking about circle formulas*

“Authority throne? I think that’s what our president uses to tweet out every morning” Other student: “Did you just compare me to--” Professor: “Yupp! Moving on.”

Me: “Then why do we call it a podium?” P: “Because we’re all fucking ignorant. It is a lectern and if any of your professors say it is a podium you walk up to them a slap them across the face and say ‘No that is a fucking lectern”

“Oh...Single clown tear of not caring.”

“And here we have the dead body in the river for a week grey traveler. Look at it. Have you seen CSI Miami? It’s the same color as those dead bodies.”

“You need to know what the Bible, Torah and Qur’an say. And you need to be able to quote Star Wars, Harry Potter and know who fuckin Indiana Jones is.”

“You always wanna be ‘something fucking something’ never “fucking something something. Like if you hear someone say Fucking Billy Bob, you know Billy Bob is an idiot. But if you hear someone say Billy fucking Bob, you know Billy Bob is a badass”

“What the fuck you said it was dry? Yea dry not cured dumbass.”

“For any of you in off campus housing with borderline slumlords for landlords.”

“If I wanted vandyke brown, which is the sexiest brown ever-- Vandyke brown is like being hugged by your favorite coffee and favorite chocolate as it holds you and just whispers it’s gonna be okay. One day I will be able to go steady with vandyke brown but until then it is just a fleeting tryst.”

“Audra McDonald is like vandyke brown in human form. My wife and I were watching the Tony’s one night and for all of you who are in this class because you are actually doing something with theatre you know who Audra McDonald is and you know that she is a gift this world does not deserve. Anyway we were watching the Tony’s and Audra comes out to start singing and I turned to my wife and said ‘I would leave you for Audra McDonald’ and my wife turned back to me and said ‘Good ‘cause I would leave YOU for Audra McDonald.”

“What do I care? I’m tenured. I can do anything short of killing you assholes.”

“My God you read the back of a hotpocket but you can’t read the back of a can of paint? You just wasted $200″

“Very good! Blue’s Clues seems to have paid off”

“We removed Spongebob from his home in pineapple acres, split him in half and now paint with him.”

“Google screaming death sounds of natural sponges”

“The shop hires do immediate death. I am patient. I wait years and years to the perfect time and then get my revenge.”

“Let’s split the tools into tools that can kill you and tools that can’t”

“And here we manipulated spongebob to make a paint cover for a roller. Someone somewhere said hey spongebob bend over and then there ya go”

“Soooo..... ELECTRICITY!”

“You’ve all shuffled your feet across the carpet then touched a friend...or your son because the fucker did it to me first.”

“9/8 time is the holiest of time signatures. It’s a Trinity within a Trinity. Thank you Johnny Bach.”

*Talking about bights in rope* “Think about it, you wouldn’t want a bite in you. Or...well... maybe... you would..... BUT you wouldn’t want your mother knowing you had a bite in you. Well played Mr. Benson (his name)”

“I don’t call you student #12. You a have a name. So do they.”

“Oh my God spell ferrule, it’s in your book.” Me: “What if we spell it with a and u (we had been giving him shit about spelling). Professor: “I will fail you for the course”

“You can make paint brush handles out of anything. Wood, plastic, metal, bones of failed students as I sit at my work bench late at night fashioning them for the next semester.”

*student dabs after giving right answer* *Mr. B gives them look of disappointment* “Hardly dab worthy.”

“The heat is distributed unevenly. Kind of like wealth in a capitalistic society *laughs sarcastically then gives deadpan* Tell me I’m wrong” 

“On today’s episode of how to get away with murder in the theatre.”

“Here we have an athletic director to talk about money and how it should be spent. We’re either going to get funding for the next season of shows or learn how to dispose a body.”

“If you’re gonna murder someone, use a revolver so your casings don’t go flying.”

“Mental illness is a real thing. And it is completely okay to reach out. If you are struggling, let someone know. Because we care. I care. They care. You matter to someone even if you don’t think so.”

“There are two types of performers. Moths and cockroaches. Moths run to the light, cockroaches scurry away. Be the moth.”

“Negligence is you failed to check. Criminal negligence is you were aware and you ignored it. And now for all of you theatre teachers in the class you can be charged with criminal negligence if you get the wrong rigging equipment because I just made you all aware and it says so in your syllabus and will hold up in a court of law ha ha ha.”

“I know that look. That look either means that the cat is in the microwave, the bathroom is flooded, or there’s a mud covered swamp monster. And we don’t have a cat.”

“There are no unimportant parts in the theatre. You don’t have to act either. And now you all have like 8 columns of just some of the jobs in the theatre. How many require acting? One.”

I told you at the beginning of the semester to pick a statement. I can or I can’t. So go ahead and pick one again. Sometimes ‘I can’t’ is chosen for you. The senior who is in a wheelchair will never be able to dunk a basketball in the NBA. But she tries her damndest to do everything else in front of her. ‘I can’ takes effort. I have tried all semester to get you to believe that you can do anything within your power. You have to at least try something first. Can you get ‘I can’t’ out of your vocabulary? You already have so many people telling you that you can’t do something. So don’t tell yourself. Because you sure as hell won’t hear it from me. So you shouldn’t hear it from yourself either.”

[lauren-nabors]

COVID-19 Journal. Day 5

Day 5 of “shit got real” here - it’s Saturday, March 21. to update on a few things that happened this past week, first...

this past Sunday was when we felt the “shift” happen in our area. everything felt fine on Friday and really even on Saturday. Sunday morning almost all area churches (and across the country) had canceled in-person services and everything went online. we realized we could pop into a Redeemer (nyc) livestream service so we did that as we set on our couch and ate eggs. that afternoon we met up with some friends at hotel vandivort for a cocktail. we didn’t know when it would be that we couldn’t grab a drink with someone in person anymore. by Sunday night we had three confirmed cases and the government's “coronavirus task force” as well as the CDC announced that there would be a national press conference the following afternoon with new guidelines. they had already made announcements about canceling gatherings with 50 people or more. on Sunday the CDC also recommended for social distancing purposes that restaurants move their tables in the dining room to 6′ feet apart. 

on Monday morning, clif and i went to both restaurants and we removed a bunch of tables and chairs. everything felt different. we were very slow. we had maybe three or four groups of people in our dining room for breakfast. the day went on and things began to feel more eerie. it was raining incredibly hard all day. at 2pm the press conference was held. I listened to it on NPR in the car as I drove down Fremont from Sunshine to Independence. the president announced that groups of 10 was the max and urged all American’s to stay at home, stay away from bars and restaurants and do their part to “flatten the curve.”

clif and i quickly got our managers together, about an hour after this was announced, to make a decision about how to move forward. we decided to move to carry-out & curbside delivery only. we made this decision before it was mandated, but we felt it was the right one to do our part for social distancing, as well as would allow us to cut our labor significantly in hopes of not losing too much money. turns out we were about 24 hours ahead of the game because by the next evening the city of Springfield mandated that bars and restaurants only be take-out and that all dining rooms needed to close immediately. 

our staff adapted quickly. i am proud of how we stayed flexible, no one got too hung up on any details, and we all just did what we needed to do. we offered curbside delivery as well as let guests come inside to pick up orders or order and take it to go. we felt it was important that customers still be able to see our bread and bakery items. we went down to about 6 employees on the day shift and 3-4 on the night shift. everything felt surreal with the dining room closed. we started playing music loudly and slicing bread in the dining room next to the communal table. we left some of the lights off in the dining room and realized pretty quickly there weren’t all that many dishes to wash but the phones started ringing way more frequently. we kept adjusting as we needed. by the end of the week i think we had it pretty well figured out. 

this hasn’t been easy. clif and i have worked every single day and probably will continue to. in order to keep labor costs low, we need to make up the difference. plus, we’ve had a ton of wholesale bread deliveries. that’s been the silver lining of all of this... because people started hoarding groceries (and there’s a nation-wide toilet paper shortage...don’t get me started) bread was scarce on the shelves in all grocery stores. national vendors like the Sara Lee’s and other commodity bread brands that fill up grocery store shelves couldn’t keep the nation stocked. so grocery stores started reaching out to us. we had two Price Choppers that we baked for, but we picked up 6 more in town. and all the Mama Jean’s (4 locations) that we previously baked just for their cafe’s put us on their shelves too. our bread orders skyrocketed. in the midst of this pandemic when restaurants are struggling and people aren’t going out, we had the biggest bake day to date of 672 loaves. jackie and clif and our bakers have had their hands full. the bakers began complaining toward the end of the week and had bad attitudes. clif and i wanted to kill them -- ungrateful little brats -- but we took a few deep breaths and hopefully over the weekend they’ll get some rest and some perspective. who knows how long they’ll have work and a fully loaded pay-check? i guess hindsight is 20-20, even though all you need to do is turn on the news to see that things are going to get worse before they get better. 

as far as our emotional state, this has been one of those situations where action trumped our thinking/feeling. we sprang into action and adrenaline kept us going all week. plus, we’ve worked everyday and haven’t had a moment to stop and soak this all in. emotions got shoved aside for the last 7 days. it will be interesting to see how this does begin to seep out and affect us in the way we think, feel and act. i read something today from a therapist who said “this is trauma.” trauma is unexpected, it’s unpredictable, it’s scary... all of which the whole country has been experiencing for the last few weeks. 

our friends and community have been super supportive. honestly the best part of this week has been seeing everyone come together. our customers have been so kind and just appreciative that we’re still open and still baking bread. our staff has been in good spirits for the most part. our landlords at our independence st. location sent clif and i a text on Thursday, completely unprompted by us. they said they’ve been thinking about how they can support us because we’re important to them and to the community, and so they decided to waive our rent for april and may and asked us to take that money allocated for rent and pay our employees with it. it brought both of us to tears. God is good and He provides. this wasn’t even something we were expecting and we certainly didn’t think it would happen so soon. we thought eventually, if things got worse, we’d have to go to them and ask for some relief. what a humbling place that would’ve put us, but the Lord allowed this to happen before it even got to that point. praise HIM! our bank confirmed that they will defer all our loans for two months, meaning the payment will just get tacked on to the back end and no extra interest will be charged on that. how awesome! so basically, at least for april and may, we feel confident we can pay our staff, as long as we can continue to operate. obviously if we get mandated to shut down entirely and we have no money coming in we won’t be able to pay anyone. even ourselves. that’s terrifying. i fear the economic repercussions of this will be far beyond what we can imagine right now... 

that’s all for now. i’ll definitely keep updating because this has already proven to be an historical time for our country and world. i want to remember (even if I won’t want to remember for a while) and to document some of the things we experienced and felt during all of this. 

just a few photos below:

saturday morning, march 21st, end of first week of quarantine 

getting take out from our neighbor’s at Craft Sushi and trying to do our part to “support local” while others do so much to support us. see Lenny in the driver’s seat? 

the Sunshine Staff, Thursday, March 19th 

cleaning checklists and timers going off every 15, 30 and hour -- keeping to this religiously to keep a clean and sanitized restaurant 

new record amidst coronavirus insanity! 

beautiful loaves of marbled rye, baked on St. Patrick’s day, which was day 1 of the quarantine