Pt. 2: The Landlord vs. the Neighbors

So, current story:

Now that the landlord has officially moved into our building, he has started to take offense to the dogs on our block. I can see his point. He has a front door that leads directly into his apartment from the sidewalk, and there is a chihuahua that lives in one of the apartments next door that just shits on that sidewalk every day. Its owners do not clean up after it, ever. Now, granted, it's a chihuahua, so the shits are pretty small, but when it happens every day it adds up to a pretty steady stream of shit. And on top of that, this is literally the hugest chihuahua I have ever seen in my life. I don't know if it's like, 3/4 chihuahua and 1/4 Great Dane or what, but it's seriously got to be like a 20-pound dog. It's huge. So they're not like gigantic Rottweiler shits, but they are pretty substantial.

So the landlord realizes that this dog is not being picked up after the moment he moves in. For about the first week that he was living downstairs, every morning when Connor and I left for work, he would be standing in his doorway, front door open, blasting bluegrass music (he's way into bluegrass) onto the sidewalk in his grey wife beater and jeans, arms crossed, just waiting for that dog to come out and take a shit. I don't know what he'd have done when it did, but I'm assuming it would either involve threatening the owner with his notorious sledgehammer or nailing the dog itself to the outside of the building. But it never happened. The neighbors must have caught on to what he was up to and just waited till he went inside, then let the dog out to shit all over the sidewalk again.

So one night, Connor and I were out rather late, and when we came in we noticed a sign, hand-written on cardboard, that was posted by our building. It read: "Clean up your dog shit, you dirty, uncivilized low-life."

Yes. Our rich Jewish landlord wrote a sign that said that to our black and hispanic neighbors. I was terrified! I was afraid people would surround the building with pitchforks and shit, and our landlord - if he didn't have time to grab his sledgehammer - would be f-ing lynched in our backyard.

Thankfully, the next day, the sign was taken down. But, when I got home from work, instead of the sign, there was an ear-splitting high pitched noise coming from the window of the first-floor apartment. Dude had up and bought one of those dog-deterrant noise makers that supposedly makes a sound too high in pitch for humans to hear, but which will send dogs running. Well, let me tell you, I can sure as shit hear that noise, and so can everyone else I've asked. It is annoying as all hell and if I open my bedroom window I can hear it, so I have to sleep with the windows closed even on warm spring nights.

But, I figured, if it would keep the neighbor's chihuahua from shitting on the sidewalk and thus keep all-out warfare from my doorstep, I could deal with it.

Not so.

Last Friday on my way home from work, I turned the corner onto my block and saw two guys from the block standing around talking in front of my doorway. I prepared myself to make the requisite overblown show of how annoyed I was by the dog-deterrant to show my solidarity with the neighbors, but when I got closer I just stopped in my tracks and started to laugh.

Sitting there, directly in front of the neighbors, who were mere feet from the dog-deterrant high-pitched squeal, were two dogs. The giant chihuahua and another dog I didn't recognize. Literally laying on the sidewalk, relaxing, and completely and utterly unfazed by the noise.

The neighbors saw me laughing and gave me curious looks. "They don't even care, do they?" I asked, gesturing to the dogs.

The neighbors looked very confused. "You hear that noise, righr?" I asked again, pointing to the speaker in the window. They slowly nodded. "Well it's supposed to keep dogs away," I explained, then started laughing again. "But your dogs just don't give a shit, do they?"

The neighbors looked at their dogs, back at the speakers, and then shrugged. I really don't think they had even considered that the squealing noise had anything to do with them or their dogs, and the dogs really just couldn't care less.

So, I guess that makes it:
My Landlord: about 5 points
The Neighbors: 1.