Scammer at my Door?

Doorbell rings. I answer because I think it's the neighbor. It's not. It's some young skinny blonde guy, tag hanging around neck, notebook in hand, bag on the ground. "Scammer," I think to myself immediately. Like the fake alarm salesman from a couple months back, later arrested when he refused to leave a woman's house, trying to force her to buy some fake alarm she didn't want with high pressure, vulgarity and refusal to leave, once she let him in.

This guy barely spoke English. He had a heavy German or Austrian accent. He said he's selling books. I said "I don't want any books, please go your way."

He looked sad and lost and out of place. He pointed each direction and said "Maybe you can tell me, which neighbors, would...." I interrupted..."We don't want door to door around here. I'll tell you why. Because there are so many dishonest people trying to scam people without any money out of what little they might have, with no regard for them, or burglarize them....we don't want door to door scammers and thieves and nobody sells books door to door. What are you really after?"

He looked like he was going to cry.

He stumbled off but not before saying "Could you...."

Again I interrupted. "Do you want me to call the police?"

It seemed like something else was going on here, is why I asked that. What was a kid with such a heavy eastern European accent doing here, in Albany, I thought to myself, going door to door, when he can barely speak the language. Was he in trouble, some unscrupulous asshole recruit him and enslave him into a criminal life, I wondered. I only wonder these things because society has turned so evil and because he seemed so sad and like a lost soul.

He got in his little silver car and drove off. It's a problem here, the scammers, because it's an interstate town. This kid, who knows what he's up to and who put him up to it. The ID tag, hanging from a lanyard around his neck, was to make him look legit, just like the fake alarm salesman. Good luck, to you kid. Get out and away from whomever is putting you up to this. Really. It won't end well for you. Get away.

I don't know how to deal with this world anymore. I sent this photo I took of the new renters down the block, how they took over a piece of the cul de sac, parking head in, towards the curved soft slanted curb of the cul de sac, even moving their trash cans out almost to the middle of the cul de sac, behind their cars, like staking out a claim to half the city owned street. It was a very funny photo I thought. I sent it to a neighbor, whom I also thought would think it was funny.

She sent it in a letter to their landlord and I guess told the landlord to "help the neighbors" by asking them to park on their own rental property. Sure, they need to stop parking their apparent massive numbers of vehicles all over everywhere. I don't really know what the letter she says she sent actually said.

Why does this disturb me? Because, for no good reason, I suspect she signed my name instead of hers to the letter. I don't know why I would suspect her doing that, because it would be highly illegal, I just do. I guess because I've come to expect that sort of thing now.

The evicted neighbors told me when they were gone once, the couple who lived in the house on one side of them, removed one of their bushes on their property without their permission. They trespassed and yanked it out, tried to tidy up and smooth over where the bush had been. When they returned and found the bush removed, she said she confronted her neighbor and asked her directly, "Did you come onto my property and yank out my bush?" "Why yes," the woman said, "we were just helping like good neighbors."

OMG!!!! Right now, it is cracking me up to think about someone doing that. That's insane!

I'd already heard the story of her hooking a chain to their pickup and yanking out arborvita, because she didn't like them, at the house on the other side of hers, right after the house sold before the new owners moved in, sparking a screaming match between her and the new owners when they discovered the bushes they bought with the house, got yanked by a neighbor who thought it poor landscaping and must have figured her last chance to "relandscape" the neighbor's house was now, before they moved in.

Do you think that is a good story? Because I think it's one of the best neighborhood yard vigilante stories I've heard. I wish I could have seen it. I admire her doing that, in some ways, but not in other ways. It was gutsy, I'll say, but also illegal and petty. I didn't live here then. Maybe those arborvita were god awful ugly and ill kept. Could have been. They are ugly bushes if not well trimmed.

When the Christian flagpole people last fall, brought out their leaf blower and blew all the leaves on their yard down the sidewalk onto my neighbors lawn and my lawn, I should have taken the lessons learned from the yard vigilante and reacted with some finesse! I should have stealthily, during the night, piled oodles of leaves in their driveway and looked shocked the next morning, with everyone else. Instead, like white trash crass, I just flipped them off. My god.

I learned something about flying a flag in this town: makes you morally untouchable, even if you're a lowdown jerk off who would steal from your own mother. Fly a flag and people nod in approval, even if it's being flown inappropriately, in violation of flag etiquette. So I'm going to get me a flag to fly, to give me vindication when I'm pumping the spay neuter gospel. I haven't been able to find one not made in China. I hate Chinese made goods. It's the cause of America's downfall. Everybody knows it but nobody stops buying cheap crap from China.

Flying a flag is like waving a bible in these parts, gives you hands off cred, morality when you're not moral. Everybody knows that. Even the Catholic church knows it. I mean, they've supported child abuse for ages and done nothing. What do the rank and file Catholics do? They keep filing in, listening to sermons from the Pope railing on reproduction. Ok, sheep. Follow the leader. That one I ain't following anywhere. But, you get my drift. Hold up a Bible and you can do almost anything and people overlook it, even defend it.

Anyhow, as for the people down the street with some sort of car business thing going on, from their rental, I call it the kinetic car lot down the block, they're scary. Sometimes five big Mexican guys stand in the middle of the street staring down this way like a gang and I stare down there and think about it. I probably think about it too much. Can't help it.

Now, before you think I'm judging my neighbors severely, and I am, I want you to know, I have no delusions about my own place here. I am by far the most abnormal person on this block. While there are many single people in the area, I have no family, no social life whatsoever, and I live with way too many cats. My entire rental is designed to house these cats in hopes of finding them homes. I have nothing whatsoever of value.

Should a theif break in, they would be so sorely disappointed by the contents here, they would first break down in sobs, then leave in disgust and maybe even empty their pockets on the counter of change out of sympathy. I have a few pieces of old furniture. I have several dressers I've gotten for free, but the drawers are empty of contents. I have some old dishes, a few books, an older TV and some home made items, a broken bike, a broken patched together exercise bike and some ragged clothing. I do have a newer looking toothebrush.

I have a very old CD player but it doesn't work. It's only for looks. I have one working radio alarm clock and one that doesn't work, just haven't hauled it off to the recycle center. I will, one day soon. However, I have absolutely everything I need. Except funtional vaccines.

My yard doesn't look nice and I don't care. Partly, it's because I have no real tools to care for it. Partly, it's general apathy about yards in general.

I can't afford to water anything but my vegetables.

I am by far, you see, the most abnormal dysfunctional lowlife white trash person on this block. I know that. Nobody has to point it out, even though often they do. I judge my neighbors only to try to prove to myself they too have their quirks and they do. Makes me feel better about myself.