In the past two years, I’ve gone from having a freak religious cult for neighbors to having a chicken waving, chanting, hooting and hollering idiot living next to me. Is it a case of “like attracts like”? Who knows? It just seems that my luck with neighbors in Brooklyn kind of blows hairy donkey balls.

I live on the third floor of my building and outside my bedroom window is a kind of a pit-like opening, made up of several of the surrounding buildings meeting up. It’s one long shaft straight down and all there is to see are the windows of other apartments in the surrounding buildings. The whole space is only about 12×12 feet and this shaft manages to act as a natural amplifier, bringing all kinds of interesting noises into my bedroom and blissful beauty rest at any odd hour of the day or night.

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This morning, having defused my alarm clock without really having awoke, I was forced to eject my ass out the door at a normally undesired rate of speed. I grabbed what I could, made sure I was clothed and nothing that might get me arrested or slapped was hanging out of my pants and charged the subway station to make my daily commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

I have a personal rule of always riding in the very far front or back cars of the trains in New York City. My theory is two-fold. First, the middle of a train is always the most crowded, much like how when entering a subway car, people take two steps in and stop completely, therefore crowding the entrance while leaving the rest of the train quite spacious. This is due in large part by the fact that people in general are fucking brainless sheep and deserve to die. We of the smarter elite should eat them, but that’s another post. My second reason, by virtue of the first, is that if ever there was a bomb or some crazy-ass motherfucker (aside from my innocent self, of course) decided he wanted to kill a bunch of people, all that shit’s going to go down in the middle of the train because that’s where you can cause the most damage. Call me paranoid, but its a habit I picked up in 2001 for what, at the time, I saw as a very good reason and to this day, I don’t really see a need to change.

So, when the train pulled into the station, I hopped into the very last car. Usually, the train is moderately crowded at it’s ends during the morning rush hour, so I was surprised to find an empty seat available. I looked around and saw at least four people standing nearby. If you get on a train during rush hour in NYC and there’s an empty spot with people standing nearby, understand that something is up.

I checked the empty seat. No spilled coffee or sketchy foreign smears of unknown organic nastiness. No half-eaten chicken wings. Nothing wrong there.

I checked the other occupants of the bench. Two middle-aged Asian ladies speaking mandarin and elderly white man in a ratty tweed coat, knit hat and serious case of ear-hair who appeared to be snoozing. I can handle that. I sat down next to the man and after settling my bag and getting out a book, I started reading. About two minutes later, I was startled by a sound to my right.

“Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuungh!”

It was the old man next to me. I looked over, noticing that his eyes were still closed and aside from the outburst, he still seemed to be sleeping. Whatever, I thought. Old people make fucked up noises all the time—it’s part of being old. I fully intend to make a shitload of disturbing exclamations in my sunset years, so who am I to take offense at his? I went back to my book with part of my brain painting rosy pictures of a withered and ancient visage of myself screeching profanity at children and whipping my catheter tube around like a dangerous weapon.

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This morning, I left home in Brooklyn at seven-thirty and started walking to work. My office is right by Madison Square Park, so the distance I needed to cover was about 5.7 miles. I slapped on the hat and gloves, screwed the mp3 player to my ears and started moving.

I hadn’t been to work since the transit strike started, spending two days as a shut-in with my eyeballs stapled to video games, mumbling to my cats. One can only have so much fun, so I decided that I’d best make some effort to get in to work.

I crossed over the Manhattan bridge, walking through Chinatown and Little Italy till I hit Union Square and finally Park Avenue. I’ve never done the walk in before and while it was interesting and fairly picturesque in an ugly, New York way, it sucked fucking donkey ass. It was really cold. I would have taken pictures, but my hands were freezing and I didn’t want to take them out of their gloves.

It took me two and a half hours to get to my office. I froze my ass off and really wanted to stop in Chinatown for Dim Sum, but was running late as it was. Faced with the probability that I will have to walk back the same way at the end of the day, it is completely not worth the trouble to come in.

I’m at a slow point the year for my production schedule, so technically, I’m fine to not come in till Tuesday, but I felt bad missing so much, so I figured I’d do the walk at least once. I sure as hell will not be doing it tomorrow. I’m done.

This transit strike seriously blows. I don’t care what happens or who gets fucked in the ass over it, but those trains need to start running again. It’s ridiculous.

I’m in a mad dash to get out of my old apartment. I haven’t lived there in almost a month and a half. During that time, I’ve been using up my security deposit and half-assedly moving my shit around the block to my new digs. Since it’s so fucking hot, things haven’t progressed that smoothly.

This inside of my apartment is hot. When I say hot I don’t mean uncomfortably sweaty… I’m talking tar and feathering hot. Napalm to the testicles hot. Crack torch to the armpit hot. Searing! What with this insanely humid bullshit I’ve been slogging through, the most I can stand to be in the place is about an hour. After that, I need to sit naked on a block of dry ice and have a little cry because the temperature in that black hole of doom is just not okay. While my recent trip to Vermont was necessary and extremely welcome, it didn’t help the situation, taking one extra weekend of pathetic labor away from me. I now have essentially two days to get the fuck out. Things are tight.

I should be able to pull it off. I really don’t have that much shit left in that god-forsaken crack den. Most everything went to the trash pile, thereby ending up all over the street after the homeless and the junkies picked through it all. Nasty. I just need to get what’s left from point A to point B then I can give up the keys and give a big, fat fuck you to that pestilential shithole from hell.

My landlord aka slumlord called me this afternoon trying to nudge me out sooner. Even though this month is paid in full, he’d like me out now, so the realtor that first got me the place can start showing it and hustle another sucker in. I have no doubt that she and the landlord will neglect to mention that the apartment has been robbed six times in two years, just like they failed to tell me it was four times in one year. I’d really like see that my landlord and that bitch realtor don’t get away with it again, but more than anything, I just want to be done with the place and never have to go back or ever walk down that street again.