What Evil Lurks in the Basement?

In dreams, the basement is the repository of the deep, dark unconscious, the shadow of the soul, filled with the things best hidden from the light, from ourselves. The basement of the lovely blue house is a little bit like the locked room in Bluebeard's castle, a place full of horrors that is off limits to the Lovely Lady, despite the fact that she owns it. At least that is how the Ogres would have it.

Though the Lovely Lady has stuff in said basement that she's not so worried will get mouldy and dank, like old love letters, wedding dresses, and the tiny stove that belonged to her once lovely mother, access is restricted by the evil alarm system that the Ogres have installed to protect their mounds of junk. Granted, all those plastic santas and decapitated snowmen might be worth something in the Ogre Kingdom, and the mouldy basement might even be where they keep their cache of illegal cigarettes, with which they further poison the world (tobacco must stay moist, I imagine). Lady Ogre, in days of yore before the Flag Incident, once said that they used to have parties in the low-ceilinged, dank, cat-urine aromatic basement (I know I mentioned the 4 cats and 1 caged rabbit before, who through no fault of their own have been imprisoned by the Ogres and have thus picked up their bad habits). She remembered the party days fondly. The Lovely Lady just smiled and nodded and added nothing, for what does she know of Ogre ways?

When she first moved in, she was immediately given restrictions in the basement--where she could put her few things, and what she could indeed put down there since the Ogres were not willing to move their crap out of the way, but were more than happy to move hers around if they didn't like where she put it. She was also informed that the alarm would be tripped should she go into the basement when they were not home. In addition, in the winter, the door to the basement was completely covered by the opaque plastic that the Ogres hammered into the new wooden deck, making it impossible to get into the basement unless she walked through their pack-ratty apartment.

The Lovely Lady didn't like this, but they came to a compromise (in hindsight she should have swung the ax right away, and off with their stupid ogre heads, but this is not the way of Lovely Ladies). The Alarm Code for Dummies was handed to the Lovely Lady, and when she needed the basement and they were not home, she plugged her nostrils, unlocked the door to their apartment, and keyed in the 4 digits that might as well have been 1111.

Since the Flag Incident, the code has been changed, and the Lovely Lady has been threatened with prosecution should she enter the premises of the Ogres without just cause. Because they are Ogres, thus apparently not ruled by human laws, they do not care that this whole alarm change and the prohibiting of the Lovely Landlady's entry into the basement is illegal. Mind you, they don't care that selling reservation cigarettes is illegal, as well as other things best left unsaid for the time being (remember the silver bullet?).

The other day she managed to slip into the basement, and was in for a great shock. The Ogres have cleaned out the basement. Even the cat urine no longer makes the eyes water. They are clearly up to something. But they are up to the wrong thing, and the Lovely Lady is happy that the remnants of their stinking souls have been scraped out of there. It will be easier on everyone when it is time for them to move.

They have, in other words, done something nice for me--improved the state of the basement--in hopes of using it as a defense against me when the letter arrives asking them to leave. But the rub is that I am not going to even mention the stink of the basement, their obstinate territorialness, obtuse pettiness, their cluttered souls.

That is not my plan at all.

Take Down that F#$%!&g Flag!! or The Out with the Ogres Campaign

Ah, another fine morning in the blue--I mean yellow--house. In Italian, detective fiction is referred to as yellow (giallo), and yellow was coincidentally chosen as a disguise for the house so I wouldn't be detected, since this fight will most likely end up in front of a tribunal friendlier to Ogres (go figure) than to Lovely Homeowning Ladies, especially if they are not towing spouse and offspring with them. Can anyone say sexist (which I believe is the same in Italian)? Now that this is a private blog, however, I can say whatever the hell I want, post whatever photos I have, without fear of reprisal: You are now an official member of the Out with the Ogres Campaign.

Now, back to The Flag Incident, which started this whole sorry mess. Let me begin by stating that I have nothing against our country's fine red and white, and have even felt a tinge of nationalistic pride when it is raised over the winners podium at the Olympics, which doesn't happen that often, except for synchronized swimming and male floor routine, which doesn't count. The ogres have an altogether different relationship with the flag, draping the house with it for July 1st, leaving said sheet sized flags up for weeks afterwards, making the house a prime target for disgruntled separatists, who surprisingly are not yet entirely extinct. One might enjoy the irony that the ogres are Quebecois, but do not drape the house in the Fleur de Lys on June 24th (thank the gods for small mercies). Last year, when I was not yet their arch enemy, because I'd only lived here a week, I commented:

Me: You must really like Canada day
Mr.Ogre: Yeah
Me: How come?
Mrs. Ogre: Because he supports his country

And his country, or at least his province, supports him (we'll call this the silver bullet, and save it for a future installment, if and when it is shot).

In our negotiations around lease renewal time, for which they of course gave me grief about their first rent increase in 4 years, I also took the bold step of putting in a new clause limiting the duration of decorations, flags and otherwise. Who needs a month of tacky Halloween, followed immediately by two months of tackier Christmas (Tim Burton notwithstanding), and a month of flag waving to boot. (My QC cab driver was not amused when I directed him to stop in front of the house with all the flags, and neither was I.)

Precisely 2 weeks and 3 days after July 1 this year, the front of the house still looked like the Canada pavilion--come in for maple syrup, beaver pelts and beer!! Just as I was about to call Mrs.Ogre (she is much less offensive than Mr., but that's not saying much) to put forth my request that my house be rid of their nationalistic, stand-on-guard-for-thee glee, I looked out my back window.


To my horror, there stood a flag pole, two storeys high, sporting a gigantic Canadian flag, visible through every window of my house, from every angle--a permanent flag, crowding the tree, bismirching my view, and generally pissing me right the hell off.

I got on the phone and very firmly told Mrs. Ogre that her husband needed to take down the flag in the front, and the new one in the back, because it was filling all my windows and I didn't want to look at it, and if they liked it so much, why not put it right in their window, which made me feel rather Benedict-Arnoldish, but was the truth. I did not want to be reminded of government buildings, school assemblies, soldiers funerals, and synchronized swimming victories whenever I looked out the window, but the Ogres did not give and ogre's toss, which is what ogres are like.

After this our iffy relationship took a turn for the worst, and The Flag Incident, about which more shall be written shortly, triggered The Registered Letter Contest, and The Basement Problem, and The Alarm Fiasco, and the Era of the Silent Treatment Except for the Slamming of Doors, which has engendered the Out with the Ogres Campaign of which I am the chair.

Stayed tuned for Part II of Take Down that F#$%!&g Flag!!, or How Little Brains Shoot Their Own Feet.

Once Upon a Time there was a Lovely Yellow House

And a lovely woman bought the lovely house for herself and her over-excitable yet lovable mutt after she'd been heartlessly tossed out of her last apartment where she'd lived for a decade . A sensitive and not overly-well-paid artist, without husband or children or any family to throw in a couple of bucks, she emptied half her life savings into the coffers of the mortgage company for the luxury of being queen of her domain, and never again being at the mercy of strangers with no love for her.

She and her belongings were moved into the house a few months later by an efficient crew of unemployed musicians, onto the second floor of the lovely yellow house. The first floor was occupied by a pair of unpleasant ogres, who chain-smoked, collected cats and rabbits, and decorated the lovely yellow house with the most god-awful decorations for all holidays--think the Macy's parade as imagined by a drunken clerk at the Dollarama. They also blasted bad eighties techno, though they were in their 50s, and their life dramas involved a crack-whore daughter who used to turn tricks at the end of the street,and a second daughter with bleached hair and 3 children from an equivalent number of mouth-breather boyfriends (if the current pit-bull owning specimen was any thing to go on).

No no, the lovely woman did not buy property smack-dab in the middle of a trailer park, though evidence would indicate otherwise. The lovely yellow house is in a neighbourhood that is referred to as "in transition" or "interesting" or "up and coming." And it is true that other people like the lovely woman were moving into the neighbourhood, but the ogres downstairs were part of the neighbourhood's dark and malodorous past.

For the first year there were only minor skirmishes between the lovely woman and the ogres involving the length of time the tacky decorations were left hanging after whatever holiday had become a distant memory, and the volume of the bad techno music that shook the beautiful hardwood floors of the lovely woman's second floor perch.

Despite the damning evidence, she harboured no prejudice against the ogres. After all, they were helping her pay off her mortgage, they took care of the gardening, and because they were paranoid, they kept one cyclops eye open day and night, wary of intruders who might break in and make off with the piles of junk they had in their abode and the basement. She even understood their annoying territorialness in the back yard, in the cellar, which they had claimed as their own. She had been a tenant all her life, and knew the terrors of the unknown new owner. She tried her best to make nice. But this all changed one day last summer when what we will loosely refer to as The Flag Incident came to pass.

This blog will chronicle the lovely woman's epic battle with the ogres in her attempt to rid her queendom of their menace so she can once again enjoy her beauty sleep in the lovely yellow house, which will also be freed forever from plastic snowmen, flags the size of bed sheets, and reams of fake cobwebs that blind whoever dares to come to the door.

Next time: Take down that F&#$ing Flag!!!