Dispatches from the Political Warzone

Being the educated readers that you are (a recent survey found that the average education level of RoSA readers was a dual MD/PhD -- so if you haven't educated yourself to that level, my sarcastic "thanks" for dragging down the average) you probably know something about the political struggles taking place in our nation's capital. It turns out that our sleepy little neighborhood in suburban northern Virginia is in the midst of a similar upheaval. Political machinations are afoot at The Compound. See exhibit A, a two-sided letter slipped under my door sometime in the middle of the night:

 

Basically, what I can discern from this is that a new, power-hungry "Coalition" of owners is trying to seize power from the incumbent Board Members of the Compound, and the incumbents (the people who left this note under my door) are trying to rally support to their cause with a mostly pointless letter with fear-mongering phrases like "checkmate," "smug with power," and "hidden agendas." (To their credit, the math lesson of 459 minus 40 equaling 419 was educational and enlightening. Thank you, Letter Writers, for the crash course in advanced subtraction)

Yes, my friends, the Compound -- which I half-jokingly view as the homeowners' association equivalent of something between a debtors' prison and Fascist Italy -- is apparently in the midst of a legitimate coup d'état and possible revolution: think Napolean in 1799, Iran in 1953/1979, or Chile in 1973. Although, admittedly, you wouldn't know it by looking outside. Just a bunch of nice-looking old folks out walking and enjoying the spring weather.

This felt like a Taliban night letter had been delivered to my door while I was sleeping. I admit that the letter contains no explicitly-stated threats, but were there implied ones if I don't do what the letter-writers want me to? Are my kneecaps going to get broken? Am I going to get beat up and thrown down our garbage chute (which is totally fine with the Compund rules so long as it doesn't happen between 10PM and 7AM) if I don't comply?

I enjoy watching the chess game of political maneuvering take place between countries, but having it so close to home is kind of exhilarating. I can only hope that this feud culminates into some sort of Machiavellian bloodbath and Mrs. RoSA and I get to spectate as these idiots tear each other apart a la the battle at the OK Corral. Viva la Revolucion, everyone (maybe)??

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Photo of the Week -- The "Rising Tide" 24 Jan 2011

Management here at the Compound likes flyers. A lot. Here is the latest one that I couldn't help but notice (Click to enlargin'):

This is a typical flyer that gets posted around here: ClipArt; lots of highlighting and underlining and bolding so we know what's important; and, of course, the forced metaphor ("Our pet problems are like the tide...they rise and fall"). Yes, yes, Management, that is spot on... the ocean tides -- which have been used in poetry and literature for centuries to symbolize universal human themes like the constancy of nature, the ebbs and flows of prosperity and famine, as well as the futility of man's struggle against the relentlessness of nature -- are the perfect symbol to convey to tenants that when their pet has "an accident" in the common areas, they should clean up after them.

Poorly attempted metaphor aside, I think my real issue with the flyer is the sheer volume of them. I found four of the exact same flyer within a 2-foot radius in our stairwell. I kid you not, and I took a video as proof.

They are all THE EXACT SAME.

I want to buy a pet now, just to break some more rules. Something simple, really -- like a grizzly bear.

Happy Monday to you. Another work week commences...

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Goodbye, Christmas Tree

Well, the BAR Tally sits at 8, as Mrs. RoSA and I moved our Christmas tree out of the apartment at about 11PM the other night, leaving a trail of pine needles and snapped branches in our wake (Mrs RoSA: "A trail of tears"). It wouldn't be hard for security to track down the culprits -- the trail is easily traceable back to our place, much like Hansel & Gretel's bread crumbs.

It was almost sad, taking the tree away. We got him when he was all young and vibrant, but at the end he was all frail and brittle; throwing him away was almost like taking an elderly person you care about to a nursing home, or an old dog to the vet to be put under -- we knew he wasn't going to "a better place" ("They have nice gardens where you can go on walks" "They have sewing classes there!", etc etc), but we wanted to tell him he was, just to make him feel better.

Too bad the reality is that he is probably headed for a wood-chipper somewhere, if he hasn't been run through one already.

Wait, am I on the verge of giving a eulogy for a Christmas tree? Snap out of it, man!

Perhaps the key to avoiding emotional attachment is to go artificial next year (yes, I believe this one is made of beer bottles)

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Photo(s) of the Week -- The Sticker & The Ashtray 3 Jan 2011

For all of its rules, this is one of the Compound's that I can actually get behind:

This is the sticker outside of the sloth-like elevator in our building that measures a paltry 3'x4', which you have to have a special key to use, and which you MUST use to move in all of your furniture (moving in, of course, is made exceedingly difficult if you happen to have any furniture that is larger than the aforementioned 3' and 4' dimensions). These are Ridiculous Rules #36 and 72, respectively.

The only problem is, you look a little below this sign, and behold the laziness of the Compound:

A golden ashtray, a relic from what I'm assuming is the 1970s. Methinks it would have been a smarter solution to remove the ashtray from the wall than to slap a cheap sticker on it...their current approach  is like telling a bank robber: "don't rob banks... but if you just happen to, I have a Swiss bank account you can store the stolen money in for undetectable safe-keeping." But what do I know about running an apartment complex?

PS: the Broken Association Rules (BAR) Tally sits at 7, thanks to us moving some bookshelves in at 11PM a couple weeks ago. You should have seen us stealthily scrambling between the truck and the elevator like thieves in the night.

Happy Monday! Hope you had a Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year.

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The Compound: Big Brother is Watching

So, Mrs. RoSA and I have a new apartment, which, of course, required moving into. (And more epic battles with the Swedes of IKEA. But more on that at a later time.)

As far as my list of "I like" activities, I think "moving houses" ranks somewhere between "being dragged to the bottom of a pond in the jaws of an alligator"* and "camping out to watch a Twilight movie opening night, surrounded by screaming teenage girls." Yup. It is a long, torturous process that requires manual labor -- something my callous-less, gentrified hands are not used to; and, quite frankly, something I look down upon.

*I watched entirely too much late-night Animal Planet at college.

We now live in a nicely landscaped, overly-secure, and regulation-heavy gated community that is inhabited by what I suspect are mostly old people (I say "I suspect" because I've hardly seen anyone actually wandering the hallways. They're all shut in their apartments watching "Murder She Wrote" reruns. Or possibly dead). I know that these apartments were very nice -- perhaps even elite -- at one point, as their front office has award plaques for "Best Community Association" for Northern Virginia; however, because the last award they received was from the early 90s, it kind of makes it feel like The Compound is the Uncle Rico of apartment complexes: desperately grasping on to past glory and taping itself clumsily throwing footballs. This is all a metaphor.

Anyway, the aged population, combined with the excess of security gates and security guards -- who are nice guys, but who are on constant patrol as if we were at war with the neighboring apartment complex -- make the apartment complex feel like a cross between an assisted living center and secure government facility.** These atmospherics are why I've begun referring to our complex as The Compound.

**Seinfeld standup referring to retirement communities in Florida: "I don't get these minimum security prisons. Are old people trying to escape? Are people stealing old people?"

The Compound adheres to the concept of "the Rule of Law" and order, which I am down with in principle, but they have taken it to an oppressive extreme. When I signed the paperwork to move in, they gave me a handbook of the association's rules, which are so many (the thing is thicker than some of the phone books that Shigeko used to fashion a makeshift booster seat for her car) and encompass every aspect of everyone's life ("No hammering after 5 PM or on weekends or holidays" <-- I kid you not, this is an actual rule) that I am probably unwittingly breaking some association bylaw by charging my iPod in my computer right now.

Sometimes I think to myself: "So this is what it was like to live in East Germany with the stasi..." The difference, of course, being that the stasi weren't waiting to kick down your door because you dropped your garbage in the trash chute between the hours of 10PM and 7AM. I mean, the association officials tell me all these rules are for our own protection, but doesn't that ominously sound like the type of rhetoric that totalitarian regimes use to placate the masses while they slowly take away their freedom?

The dormant iconoclasts in both of us now want to purposefully break as many rules as possible so we can be the rebellious young couple who all the old people wish they could be. Nothing radical, mind you. Just the standard guerilla tactics, e.g. not parking in designated spots, not sorting our recycling, capsizing cars and errantly tossing a molotov cocktail or two, etc. The funny/sad thing is that, no matter how many rules we purposefully break, we will always end up breaking more rules just out of ignorance. Or, as Mrs. RoSA just observed: "We're rebels without a clue." Our Broken Association Rules (BAR) Tally sits at a healthy and subversive 6. (That we are aware of.) Will keep you all updated as we continue to raise our fist and resist against Big Brother.

A Note From the Mrs:

By way of introduction, if any of you are wondering if I married Mr. RoSA just so I could get the chance to be a guest writer on his blog, you are wrong.  I married him to be the beneficiary on his life insurance policy, what else?

I do not think we are cut out for life in the Compound.  Spiky gates at the periphery and speed bumps every twenty feet; floral wallpaper and sickly sweet aerosol air fresheners in the hallway; invisible neighbors who are either too old to move or up to no good; one neighbor (either a bouncer or a chronic clubber) who leaves a potent trail of perfumed stench through the entire stairwell when he descends every night around 10pm; and ever vigilant security guards.

One of what I'm sure will be many experiences with the security guards occurred the day our couch got delivered.  I met Ryan, the slow-talking, gap-toothed, smooth-faced young security guard when I burst into the front stairwell, broom and dustbin in hand, after the deliverymen had managed to get the couch wedged and break the hall light into a million pieces.  There was our monolithic couch, hamstrung over the railing, and there were the small but remarkably agile deliverymen, slithering under the couch on broken glass, trying to extract overstuffed pillows. And there was Ryan--looming, watchful, considering.  He turned his discerning gaze towards me and immediately launched into a phlegmatic recitation of my infractions:

 

"You've already broken three rules.  [1] Their truck is parked out front, and they're blocking in about 4 cars.  Delivery trucks can never be parked in the front of the building. [2] Deliveries can never be made through the front lobby or front stairwell.  [3] All deliveries must be made using the elevator in the downstairs garage."

 

I chose abject humility as the best way to get out of this scrape.  I claimed ignorance, apologized, offered to pay for the light, promised him my firstborn child, etc.  He muttered a bit as he deliberated: "Have to assess the damage . . . write a report . . . she didn't know . . . not really her fault . . ."  

 

Well, Ryan will get cookies this Christmas from two Compound rebels who appreciate his magnanimous, roguish, kindred spirit:  "Just get them out of here really quick.  And don't worry about the light.  We have tons of extras."

 I guess the point of this entire entry, with anecdotal support from Mrs. RoSA, is that we really don't fit in here at The Compound.

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RoSA Returns

Goedemorgen. Ik heb teruggegeven.

WHOA. I return from my extended hiatus.

Let's face it -- in a figurative blogging sense, I'm feeling a bit like our Dutch friend, Mr. Rip Van Winkle: Slightly disoriented as I wipe the Blog Slumber from my bleary eyes; my blogging "muscles" are atrophied from sitting idle and have disintegrated into rolls of useless fat; and, as is evident from my greeting, my Dutch still sucks. So getting back into the blogging may require shaking off some rust.

Also, one actual and non-metaphorical thing that Mr. Van Winkle and I both did during our respective hibernations: We grew beards for a little longer than was prudent. See Exhibit A:

Exhibit A

...and, basically, the similarities end there. See, whereas Rip grew an awesome beard during his 20-year slumber, I grew an asymmetrical abomination. Even homeless men looked at me with pity in their starving eyes, thanking the heavens that, although they were without income, food, or lodging -- and possibly hope -- at least they could grow a decent beard.

AM described that "...it was part wolf, part molester, part santa, part amish", but I'm guessing that's just a kind way of saying "fully revolting." Sigh.

So, anything happen with you guys since June? Me? Oh, not a whole lot, really...

I went overseas for a good three months, where I got stranded twice in remote areas in the middle of nowhere and was able to witness the inner workings and daily living of the US Military (the latter basically means eating bad food three meals/day and living in poor housing conditions). It was an adventure.

The Beard in its nascent stages

Immediately after returning to the US, the beard had outlived its stay (see aforementioned homeless men pitying me as a possible reason), and let me tell you, trimming and shaving the thing was EXHAUSTING. The whole epic saga took at least 45 minutes and required the type of physical stamina and resolve that you only see/read about in classics like The Odyssey or Rocky. I unashamedly admit that midway through shaving I took a short break to rest my fatigued arm, and I may or may not have given myself a pep talk in the mirror sometime along the way ("C'mon, man, FOCUS! Don't let the beard beat you" "Pain is nothing. You're better than this!", etc, etc). I collapsed, completely exhausted, at the end of it all.

The two weeks after returning home were complete chaos, but I suppose it was for a good cause, because at the end of it all, I got married, which was all pretty awesome. It was all a blur of dresses and flowers and having my picture taken (ugh), but most importantly, a day spent with my lovely wife (formerly AM and now Mrs. RoSA, who I'm sure you'll hear from from time-to-time), my family, and all of my closest friends throughout the years.* Honeymoon involved flying to London to hang out for a bit, then catching a Transatlantic Crossing from England back to the US. You know, just like the Pilgrims did in the olden days!

*The whiffleball games played at my bachelor party were some of the funniest moments of my life

So yeah. That's been the last bit of the happenings here. Now it's back to normal life, and normal life involves blogging. Like I said, gotta shake the rust off, so bear with me.

PS Apparently this video going viral was the biggest development back in the States whilst I was away? This is brilliant, and I'm proud that -- despite a still-recessed economy and Sarah Palin actually being taken seriously as a political figure by some -- America was able to come up with this:



So run and tell that, homeboy.

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