Installed and on the grid

I'm in the new house. I've lately been weighed down by a miasma of defeatism, caused by the refusal of the American electorate to care about or even acknowledge things like truth, hypocrisy, or logic. Everything just seems so pointless, knowing that no matter what retarded gaffe McCain does next or how airheaded that pinhead Palin is, they're going to coast to victory on a wave of flag-waving, smears, lies, cover-ups, and Diebold voting machine fraud. I must say, though, that Samurai Frog is inspiringly still fighting the good fight.

Anyway, new house. Open. Clean. Huge yard. About three times bigger than the previous place. Less permeated with bees, certainly. The neighborhood is a bit sketchier, however. Sort of a buffer 'hood between a barrio and a rather fancy area to the northeast. There are fewer police cruising the suburban streets. More break-ins.

New house facts:

The toilet, the shower, the back yard: places I have peed.

The bathroom, the back yard, and everywhere else: places I have gone holding my loaded revolver. No, the literal one. It's a slightly sketchy area, and I'm armed and paranoid.

25: Approximate percentage of house that is totally empty.

25: Very liberally estimated resale value of all my furniture, in dollars, excepting the bed. Seriously, I have a six-year-old papasan draped in a quilt; an old stuffed chair I bought from the Friar five years ago for $10 and which the Dog since chewed large sections off of; a rickety old TV stand I got at a yard sale; a leather office chair about six years old which I bought at a going out of business sale for $50, well-worn with my own special brand of careless use; and two folding dorm-room-style desks, one of which is festooned with scorch marks from the previous owner's cigarettes (the previous owner was my father). Oh, and yeah --- the house has a kitchen bar, so I was gonna hafta buy barstools, but then I scored these cracked old rusted orange vinyl-covered stools that had been left behind by the previous renters in the garden shed! Free crap! Oh, it's okay about the cracked vinyl --- I covered it up with classy duct tape.

Twelve: length in inches of the very deep scratch the bed delivery guys put in the new hardwood floor. I discovered it after I'd tipped them $10, the rats. I think it says a huge amount about my personality that I didn't call the bed store to complain, but am lazily going to ignore it until the end of my lease, when I shall have to pay for it upon its inevitable discovery. Gee, when I type it out like that, it really makes me seem stupid.

Four: number of closets, two of which I use.

The rent is a lot more expensive, but then I'm netting about $600 more a month this year than I was last fiscal year at Prestigious. So I can afford it. Indeed, after I pay for food, petrol, all bills, and rent, I should have... about $600 discretionary money per month! What a coincidence! Maybe I'll buy a recliner.

In another strange coincidence, my garrulous neighbor Dale from the previous neighborhood happens to have moved into the place on the corner, eight houses down from me. He lives next to what is easily the rattiest, most broken-down house on the block. It's falling down and in disrepair. The sidewalk is cracked and broken by tree roots, which isn't the owners' fault, but the beer bottles and broken chairs in the lawn are. The owners are two or possibly three brothers who inherited the place and can't afford to keep it up. And, apparently, can't be assed to pick up their beer bottles. Once they drove into their driveway just as I walked the Dog past, and I was instantly enveloped by a powerful cloud of the doobie in their wake. Dale says he looked them up on public records and that they've done time (for assault and providing liquor to a minor).

Well, more later. I find I sleep earlier here than at the old place.