Stuck in the Middle With . . . Me

I had great ambitions for this evening. Not pinned-down ambitions, but great nonetheless. One of them involved a vague plan to tear down the boxes in the basement, and then to somehow dissasemble the dead (RIP) futon frame in my bedroom and transport it, piece by piece, to said (and now cleared) basement. Alas, this plan went awry when I could not find an Allen wrench.

[Funny thing about Allen wrenches. They come with practically every "assembly required" item you purchase. I swear, I once bought a remote control that came with a tiny Allen wrench. On a normal day, you can't avoid encountering one in some junk drawer somewhere. But then when you need one . . . ]

The failure to find an Allen wrench kind of took the wind out of the sails of my ambition. Apparently, no such mishap befell Hippie Neighbors, who are particularly active this evening. Hippie Wife/Mother is out tending the garden. Hippie Husband/Father is hosing down his jeep. Hot Hippie Brother is shirtless and Building Fire to Cook Meat. (And smoking again, I see. This is a guy who, a couple of months ago, quit smoking, and after two weeks or so started lecturing me about smoking.) For those of you keeping track, here is what Hippie Neighbors have managed to build/erect/grow in our communal yards over the past few months: a full-blown garden with corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beans, lettuce, and about a dozen herbs; a covered two-person wooden swing; a fire pit; two grills; a hammock; laundry lines; assorted chairs; assortive decorative plants; and various windchimes. Coming home never fails to confound me--it's half private suburban yard, half trailer park. It's annoying and intriguing all at the same time. Also, their seemingly endless industriousness guilts me out a little. Of course, I did spend an hour outside earlier on the porch, reading a novel. I haven't noticed any of them trying to slog their way through Middlesex.

Anyway, I guess their habits are preferable to those of the neighbors on the other side of me, They Who Are Never Seen. This is an older couple (but not that old--mid-50s, probably) who, literally, never make a peep and almost never come out of their apartment. I've seen each of them maybe three times in the six months I've lived here, and never together. And I have never seen them use their front door. In fact, they still have their winter-sealant plastic up on that door, some of which is poking out through the bottom and has been doing so, in the same exact position, since I moved in. And now, they've got these vines growing on their porch that are threatening to take over the building. These vines have already devoured two plastic chairs on TWANS's porch. (I'll try to post a picture soon--it's unbelievable.) These people also have a big pile of crap on their back porch--boards, old panes of glass, an old table, etc.)--and a broken-down car in our communal parking area. None of this stuff has moved an inch since I moved in.

So, to recap, I've got one set of neighbors who won't come out and clean up their shit, and one set who won't go in and won't stop adding more shit. And I'm just hanging out in the middle.

Cowtown's #1 Ambulance Chaser

If you live in Central Ohio and watch any T.V. at all, you have no doubt seen the commercials of one Kevin Kurgis, personal-injury attorney extraordinaire. For those of you who live elsewhere (you lucky bastards), I'll provide a brief synopsis of one of his typical pitches:

Open with a scene of a perfect, upscale, attractive, Aryan-looking family--consisting of a father, mother, one son, and one daughter, of course--driving down a country road in their current-model SUV. The father, who is driving, naturally, has his hands precisely at 10-2 on the steering wheel. Everyone is buckled in and behaving wonderfully, although the mother occasionally turns her head to gaze adoringly at her children in the back seat and chat with them a bit.

Cutaway to another vehicle somewhere down the road, heading toward our Perfect Family. This vehicle is an older-model pickup, carrying two white trashy teenagers who are obviously supposed to be under the influence of one or more substances. They are carrying on, messing with each other, screwing with the radio, and of course swerving all over the road.

You can guess what happens next. We don't actually see the inevitable accident, but White Trash Wasted Kids come close to hitting Perfect Family head-on. Perfect Dad swerves at the last minute, and then . . . fade.

Fade back in to a darkly lit courtroom. A tall, beefy, imposing man starts walking directly toward the camera, talking fast.

"I'm Kevin Kurgis, and I'm a lawyer. If you've been injured in an accident, your job is to get well, and my job is to fight the insurance company. In fact, I'll do whatever I can to squeeze as much cash as possible out of them so that I can take a third of it, or maybe even half, depending on how stupid you are and how much I can pull over on you."

O.K., he doesn't actually say that last part, but somehow, that's what I hear every time.

Even if you don't live in the Heartland, you no doubt have your own local version of the prominent PI-attorney commercial hawker. They all make the same kinds of ads--you know, the kind that looks like it was shot by an out-of-work porn director.* Bad production quality, really bad "acting," and a sales pitch aimed at an intelligence level just slightly below that of your average Jerry Springer viewer. Such commercials are a natural outgrowth of our legal system, and they no doubt bring in big bucks for the ambitious PI attorney who can afford them.

But apparently, they're not enough for our own Kevin Kurgis.

For those of you who don't know, I had a little incident with my car a few weeks ago. Not my fault--some asshole did a hit and run while my car was parked on the street. They got my driver's side fender pretty good, enough so that I had difficulty opening the door. No note, of course. Asshole.

Anyway, I filed a police report, because I thought that's what you had to do before filing an insurance claim. (I don't think that's actually true, but never mind.) And then I filed an insurance claim, fully expecting and prepared to deal with an evil corporate empire and its demon-from-hell representatives.

As it turns out, the whole experience was completely free of stress or evilness. The insurance company sent an adjuster out to look at my car. Said adjuster was a perfectly nice guy who took about 15 minutes to write up an estimate. Four days later, a check arrived from the insurance company. As I write this, my car is being fixed up good as new. Sure, I'm out the $250 deductible, but all things considered, the whole experience could have been a lot worse.

The funny part is, a few days after I filed the police report, I got a letter in the mail from . . . can you guess? Kevin Kurgis himself! The letter was very reassuring, full of promises about how he would go to battle for me with the insurance company over my "injuries." The injuries he and his crack staff apparently figure I sustained while my car was parked as I was several blocks away at a music festival, thoroughly enjoying myself.

So, there's a lesson learned--apparently, ambulance chasers don't need for an actual ambulance to be involved before pimping themselves out for a claim. And in fact, they don't even need for any injuries to be sustained. And in fact, they don't even need for an actual accident to have occurred.

All I can say is, if you live in central Ohio, be careful of filing a police report--KEVIN KURGIS WILL FIND YOU!! And the letter he sends you will be full of grammatical errors! And it will infuriate you that a man who doesn't even understand subject-verb agreement is a millionairre, while you are not.

*Said out-of-work porn directors are getting plenty of work these days, apparently, because all of the online poker site commercials are done in exactly the same way.

Do Something 2Day!!!

This was from the "Found" website. I no longer have to worry about homework, but the last admonishment kind of hit home.