bad metaphor

In a college town replete with students needing somewhere to crash, the landlords have a slight advantage. If you object to your landlord’s practices, what does he care? Pfft. There’ll always be an endless supply of Johnson County brats, ready with their parents’ credit cards, to sign leases without a second glance. It’s changing slightly now, especially this year, as there is a surplus of apartment units compared to the amount of interested renters. Still, though, the court system and city greatly favor the landlords over the tenants. Meaning that us students, already busy with school and work and drama, are more likely than not to get screwed.

The place I’m living now is pretty crummy. I’ve heard of worse, so I suppose I lucked out as far as apartment horror stories, but it’s no dreamboat. There’s giant stains on the carpet, roaches (which I’m convinced come up the vents from the neighbors downstairs, but I’ll get to them in a minute), and maintenance gets taken care of oh, maybe twice a millenium. Somebody told me that my landlord, David Gage, is a lawyer, but maybe they were actually saying “liar” – Lionel Hutz is more scrupulous than he.

Here’s one example. In our lease, it mentions that if the previous tenants do not get the carpet professionally cleaned, the complex will take care of it. When we moved in, it didn’t even appear as though the carpet had been vacuumed. Giant irremovable stains notwithstanding, the carpet was filthy. I went to the complex office and complained to both the secretary and Gage. Both insisted that it had been cleaned (“bullshit” was the word that came to my mind). Gage went into the back room while the secretary leafed through some papers, looking for evidence of a receipt of professional cleaning. Just as the secretary was pulling out a copy of the receipt, Gage comes back out. With another receipt. Written on a receipt pad that was in his hand, a pen in his other hand. The ink on the “receipt” looked suspiciously bright, as if it had just been written, and it wasn’t signed. Hmm!

In addition to the dishonest landlord, we also have the pleasure of dealing with our white trash/ghetto neighbors downstairs. There are two apartments below ours that, between the two, house: a young mother, probably a year older than me; four grubby street children; two cats; two dogs (recently acquired); various boyfriends of single mother; various friends of the boyfriends of the single mother; an old, large woman; a young large woman; two large kids; random old men; random ghetto gangsta-type people that attempted to steal a license plate off of a friend’s car in the parking lot. Said friend gets the misfortune of living in the third apartment on the lower level. My roommates and I know who lives in his apartment. We haven’t figured out the others yet. Now keep in mind that these are all three-bedroom apartments. I don’t quite understand how all of these people fit in those two apartments. I guess they work like clown cars.

So with the new place that we’re looking at for August, I’ve taken advantage of Legal Services (hey, free lawyer), looked at like fifty billion of the Kansas Statutes, and consulted the advice of friends. I’m dotting every t and crossing every i, and basically being a giant pain in the ass, and if you are a student looking to rent an apartment, you should too. 99% of landlords are there to take your money (according to a super-duper unbiased survey, taken by yours truly). Do NOT just sign a lease after skimming it. DO take advantage of free legal service (if your campus has it). If you don’t, then when shit happens, don’t blame the thieving landlord; blame yourself.

When I was little, my mom took me to this Vietnamese beauty salon to get my hair cut. She took me there, even though the lady wasn’t terribly great about cutting straight lines or anything, because she could speak Vietnamese and because she was cheap. So for a long time, I had bad haircuts and didn’t think anything of it. Hair has never been that big of a deal to me, I suppose – I use Suave, alternating between ‘Passion flower’ or ‘Milk and honey’ (depending upon when I want people to pick my hair or eat it). What the hell. It’s dead protein.

Thus it was quite a culture shock for me when I entered Beauty Brands today for a haircut. It’s not like I’ve never been in a beauty salon before, don’t get me wrong; I’m not a complete boor! But today was the first day that I decided to actually purchase salon hair care products, in part because of peer pressure. No, it doesn’t stop in high school, folks. My roommates litter the bathroom with chique hair cream/gel/pomade (I can’t tell the difference). I overheard a girl during my alternative spring break trip, yelling at a guy that was teasing her about the sheer amount of beauty products she could not stand to live without. She said something to the effect of, “I don’t use any of that cheap Suave crap. I actually have hair that doesn’t look like utter shit!” Yeah, ouch.

This is why I found myself surrounded by rows and rows of bottles: fancy flute-like vases, colorful wacky tubes, things that looked like minimalist sculptures, etc. ad infinitum – all basically containing the same substance, give or take a few chemicals here and there. Shimmery things to put on your face, buff your nails, trim your brows, clip to your hair…I spend about 5 minutes a day on my appearance in the morning, maybe 15 if I haven’t taken a shower the night before. So yeah. I was completely out of my element. It took me fifteen minutes to find ‘normal’ shampoo, for chrissakes.

As far as the hair cut itself, I was told by my roommate to go to Kayla, but I didn’t bother checking to see if she was a senior stylist or not. I thought after the phone call, “if she is, then no big deal; it’ll just be twenty five to thirty dollars, right?” That’s ten dollars more than I usually pay for a cut at a beauty school back home, but eh. I soon forgot about that, until I sat down in the nice black leather swivel chair (must ALL hairstylists have black leather swivel chairs? why not vinyl, or blue?), and she turned my chair so that I was facing a sign on her counter. The sign read: “Be sure to offer Kayla congratulations for graduating our beauty school program. As of March 15, 2004, the prices below will be effective: haircuts, $38…”

Of course, I noticed that as soon as she took the first snip of my hair. I sat there for a few minutes trying to figure out how to get myself out of this, but, yeah. Neither Kayla, nor Beauty Brands, would have appreciated it had I been like, “Uh yeah, I would never pay close to $40 on hair, when I can buy a hat for less than that. Is that other stylist over there available?” It’s never a good thing to piss off someone standing over you with sharp scissors and red hot curling irons.

My hair ended up looking cute, though, and I walked out with shampoo and conditioner that were 75% off, so I feel a little redeemed. Still. $38 for hair??! That’s like eight hats, two tanks of gas, one third of my chemistry book last semester, three months’ worth of food for a starving African child…

I once heard someone bemoan the fact that basketball players and movie stars get more attention and adulation in today’s society than people that, well, actually do stuff. At the time I thought it was the gospel truth, but the entire city of Lawrence’s reaction to the Clinton lecture made me not too sure about that assessment…

The news that Clinton was coming generated a current of excitement throughout our little town. People took off work, skipped class, shirked other obligations to line up for tickets. Tickets were gone within twenty minutes; the disappointed ones sulked and pouted and complained, and eventually it was moved to Allen Fieldhouse. Now Allen Fieldhouse is no stranger to long lines and rabid fans; usually at this time, though, after basketball season has ended, the place is a ghosthouse.

Not so on this glorious day; it was jam packed from wall to wall with people of every race, age, and category in general. What united these people, besides their desire to witness our former president’s famous public speaking ability for themselves, was the rivers of sweat that people collectively produced. No lie. My skin became tender and salty from having marinated in my own sweat, and that of others beside me, for the duration of the speech. Of course what I felt must have been a fraction of what poor ol’ Bob Dole and Clinton experienced, in their suits and ties. Ugh.

Anyways, the speech. It was good, and I’d been expecting a quality presentation from Clinton, as he is renowned for his charismatic speaking ability. I would like to someday watch a televised debate between Clinton and Dubya, or even Kerry for that matter; I have the feeling that Clinton’s smooth-talking would reduce his opponent into gibbering, stuttering ape-like noises. Yes, Clinton is a good speaker, but the ever-present cynic in me kept wondering throughout the entire thing whether he has the same speech written for all of his college campus visits (with a few sentences specifically targetted towards the particular school, such as his basketball comments), and does not bother to update it for recent events. With all his boast about being able to say whatever he wanted now that he isn’t running for office, he notably did not mention anything about the torture of Iraqi POWs, the rising gas prices, or anything highly specific that has happened in the last few days.

I’m not sure why I really fixated on that; it’s to be expected that he’d skirt controversy by avoiding these highly specific issues. After all, he’s a politician, and there’s his wife’s career still to consider. I think I’m just an idealist at heart, though, and I can’t fathom why people can’t just lighten up, loosen their ties in 90 degree weather, and just say to hell with it – I’ve got opinions, and I’m here to share them, so by golly I will. I could never be a politician.

The biggest thing I don’t understand about today – why in the hell isn’t Allen Fieldhouse air-conditioned, anyways? You’d think with all the sheer amount of money Athletics generates, they’d be able to splurge a little on not making our star players suffer heat strokes while playing. Not that I feel that much sympathy for them, of course, but it just seems a little inconsistent with the university’s general policy of kissing basketball ass…

Create a new blog, of course. Hopefully this new one will be a bit more tended to than its sisters (I have commitment issues).

The dillema lies in juggling time. When shit happens, it pours down in a relentless deluge of squalid splendor, during which I can’t even keep myself from stinking – forget being able to blog about it. Same goes for the more pleasant aspects of life. There is no time to pause, reflect, and write. When I do get time, so much has happened that it is overwhelming to even think about recapturing it all. This is why I have seven defunct diaries and two abandoned blogs. This is blog number three.

On the last blog, I tried to craft well-written, artistic representations of experiences I’ve had – not quite abandoning the truth, but airbrushing it and making it look interesting. I’m setting the bar lower here. Starting with the name. Yeah, so my metaphors aren’t always literary exercises in brilliance. Oh well. It’s like trying to fit a square peg into a pink elephant, or something of the sort…