"Respect the space. It's a DIY venue and it's a privilege to have shows here". No it's not. I fucking live here and if you mess shit up, I'll kick you out, whether there's a show or not.
Speaking of which, a kid tried to crowd surf during a Count Us Out show in my living room. As soon as his foot stopped the ceiling fan, I grabbed him and threw him on the floor
If you've ever been to this house, I'm sorry. This is the very definition of a shithole. Since we moved into it, it became a little better, but to an extent. Better, as in "a little less shitty, but not any place to live". But Thom, Nathan, and I made it work. A little. I realized a week or two in that our house was poorly insulated. My room was really cold, but all the walls were hot. And thin. The top of my closet had a big open space between the wall and the ceiling where hot air was coming in, like it was opening to the outside with nothing blocking it. I'm pretty sure there was NO insulation in any walls. Under the sink, there was foaming insulation. Around everything. But it was black, like it was sprayed there when that house was new, and hasn't been updated or cleaned out since then. I also had to caulk the sink in the bathroom. It drained though one piece of PVC pipe, to another piece of PVC pipe, and neither of them fit together. Every time the water was turned on, it shot out onto the floor. COLD WATER ON MY FEET. Also the toilet was really small. My weeny touched it when i sat down to poo. It was fucking gross, but it was a small price to pay for doing my business if you know what I mean.
Also, our landlords are mexican. Like, "don't speak english" mexican. The kind of mexican that people make jokes about. I'm pretty sure they were here illegally. I mean, the rented out a house to some little white kids, but didn't know how to talk to them. Dafuq?
When we first rented the house, it was this guy Marcos, and his girlfriend Maria. Marcos was the shit, and spoke perfect english. He fixed our AC 4 times within 2 hours that we called him. He also gave us a few days if we were late with the rent. Eventually, Marcos and Maria broke up, and we were left to deal with Maria, the fat mexican girl that spoke LITERALLY no english. She always had some girl that spoke very broken english to translate for her when she picked up rent, or dealt with the AC or pest problems. They tried to run a "business" by renting out a house that they own, but they don't speak english. At all. I don't see how the hell they expected to make that work.
Living next to Ryan Talty was awesome. Him and Kerri are some of the nicest people I know. I'm not totally into the DIY scene as everyone else, but I definitely support what Ryan does. I mean, he's getting his masters in education. Thats fucking impressive and I'm really proud of him. When I met him, he was just "a 4th grade teacher who lived in an old hangar and had shows." Now him and Kerri are starting a Greenville DIY community group, and actually getting shit done. I like those guys, and I wish them the best.
It was fun living next to them, and having joint house shows, even though no one "respected the space". I think during a show, someone stole a pair of my sunglasses (even though I stole them from walmart) and my old holographic base set blastoise, gyarados, and jolteon. Fucking pricks. I've had those since I was a kid. Fuck you.
Eventually, the house grew on us, and we liked it. We had parties where bad stuff happened, and we had good parties where our power bill reached $230. It was pretty fun, but then it all started to fall apart. First the AC would go out. It went out maybe 6 times between June and August, to which we were left for days (sometimes weeks) with no AC. One day it would be 72 degrees and cold as shit, the next day it would be 90 and we'd have to be out all day to be able to skip out on it. Then we got the roaches.
Everyone complained about the roaches. Thom and I did for about 2 weeks, then realized we never cooked or did anything in the kitchen, so we just never dealt with it. I've learned to ignore the roaches, and cover all my food and use tupperware containers for just about everything. We had a LAN party with Kyle, Lukas, Jesse, Lance, Michael, and Nick where they all complained about the roaches. That was the night that our power bill got jacked up. Then our fridge broke.
As you may or may not know, a refrigerator has dials inside the door of the fridge. These dials control the temperature of the freezer and the fridge. The one for the freezer controls how cold the freezer gets (obviously). However, the fridge dial actually controls a small door between the freezer and the fridge. The higher the dial, the more open this door is. 9 being wide open, and 0 being completely shut. That dial broke. The freezer dial worked just fine. I eventually had to prop open this door with two plastic forks, to constantly let in the air from the freezer. This wasn't a problem until recently when I learned the light inside the fridge never turned off. Ever. It was always on, so the heat from the light, was negating the cold air, warming everything in the fridge. About 2 weeks ago, I flicked the lightbulb, and it burned out. This was good because now our fridge would get cold, but we just couldn't see anything. Then I realized, that was keeping the freezer air from freezing the fridge side. I put a bottle of water, a half gallon of milk, and a carton of eggs on the top shelf. It all froze over night. FUCK. I didn't know how to fix this now, so I left it. This is still a problem.
Throughout the time I've spent at this house, everyone knows about the biggest problem we have with the house. The bedbugs. If you've ever slept in my bed at my house, I'm so sorry. I've made it known that we have bedbugs, so you can't blame me if they hitchhiked with you to your house or anything. I'm sure you've been bitten at least once staying over at my house. Bed bug bites are pretty distinct. It's usually three bites in a one-inch-and-a-half area. It is possible that multiple bed bugs can bite in the same area and spread the bites out. One way I've noticed is that they bite once for every meal - breakfast, lunch, and dinner (that's how the internet describes it).
I've been spending the last 3 weeks at my parents house (only being 19). I spent one night at my house in my own bed, and to hang out with Thom, who has nowhere to stay but our house, so I feel a little bad for him. I spent that night in my bed without a single bite on me. I woke up the next morning with my entire left arm from shoulder to hand, COVERED in bites. My forearm got it the worst. I counted 17 bites JUST on the forearm. My hands get it pretty bad too, particularly the outsides of my pinky and thumb. I sleep on my right side, so it's never really been a problem on that side. I've noticed a few on my neck here and there. None on my throat, thanks to the constant movement from breathing, but the back and sides of my neck get it bad. My legs have never had any issues, mainly because I sleep in pants and a t-shirt. I've noticed that they don't usually go for anything that's covered by clothing, no matter how loosely fitted. I have a tattoo on my calf that had a bite on it. Just knowing that I COULDN'T scratch it was nerve-wrecking.
I've read that sleeping in a VERY cold room with a light on helps, but that would just suck worse than the bugs themselves. I've also read that spraying bedbug killers on bedsheets and furniture makes matters worse, as it kills some bugs, but if any live through it, they eat the decomposing bodies of the recently killed bedbugs and build an immunity to that chemical, which is the same in all bedbug sprays. Bedbugs don't spread diseases, they just suck blood. They don't cause any diseases, but I've read that they cause psychological disorders like paranoia. Personally, I've become a little paranoid just sitting on my bed for a few minutes. I constantly check around me on the bed, the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. And yes, I've found them in each of those spots. I once found one crawl over the screen of this laptop while using it. I grabbed a tissue, caught it, put the tissue in the kitchen sink, and set it on fire. And I promise, I'm not making that up. I felt it would be helpful to hear some first hand stories about bedbugs. Needless to say, I haven't spent more than 2 hours in my house since then.
Hopefully within the next week or two, I'll be moving into a two bedroom apartment with Thom. Nothing is final, much less decided. But it beats living in that shithole. I'd honestly rather be homeless than live in that house. If you liked hanging out there, that's cool and all, but lets be serious. No one "liked" being there. It was just "that place over the summer where there were no parents". Pretty soon, it'll be "that dump next to Ryan and Kerri's house with the giant TV and the couch on the front porch".
kaledo-art
prguitarman
gummygunk
ellievsbear
jacobvanloon
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
