Locked Doors, Part I

Thursday, the 12th of July will probably go down in the history books. I don’t know if whether I am excited to watch the fireworks or if I will regret getting in the middle of everything. 

It will be time for our usual monthly resident meeting where I live, and the tension is already building. And so far for some it is not a pretty sight.

The long struggle between residents and what they perceive is their enemy, staff members of this apartment complex.

If you have kept up with me for any length of time, you know already that there’s been this battle about keeping the doors open to the community room on the weekends. This hasn’t been allowed to happen in AT LEAST five years. The community room was remodeled and since that point, its been closed on weekends.

My own feelings about the situation is that if it is closed, then it is closed. I’ve learned to deal with it throughout the years. Granted that sometimes my weekends can get extremely boring, but I have just dealt with it and found something else to do to fill my time.

But others are crying foul. They want the community room open for their own reasons. They keep hounding the fact that we are responsible enough to take  care of things on our own. For the very, very few times that it has been open on Saturdays (i.e. private parties) the ones that want it open for all time take advantage of it. But then the Board of Directors who take care of things have insisted that at least one member of staff be present if the community room is open.

Residents get totally psycho about it too. They cry out that we are all adults and that we don’t need a babysitter. But I’ve come to learn that the reasons for having one staff member present is for insurance reasons.

So about a month ago, we had learned that a member from the Board of Directors was going to come to our resident meeting and personally explain their decision to keep the community room closed. However, that doesn’t really work well. That would mean that someone from the Board would have to leave their job in the middle of the day and come talk to us. Some of them cannot afford that type of luxury.

To the Board of Directors, this entire idea has made them sick and tired. They said “NO” and they are frustrated to the max with the residents as to why they seem that they cannot understand that answer. For years and years they’ve repeated themselves to exhaustion.

And since none of the Board members are able to come in personally to the resident meeting, and they are no longer willing to discuss this issue with the residents, it has been put upon the shoulders of the apartment manager to squash the matter once and for all.

I remember making the suggestion that since nobody can come to the meeting, that they put something in writing such as an e-mail or an official letter stating that it came from the Board of Directors. But again, they are tired of dealing with it. Their answer is their answer and they will not bend.

I also learned this morning that the apartment manager got totally reemed by his boss about the matter. And he doesn’t like having that happen. So, I think (for him) that this is now a personal matter and he’s not going to mess with it any more. He is going to make his statements for himself and for the Board of Directors. And once he has finished that, he will no longer talk about it with anyone.

I expect there to be some kind of a reaction. I honestly do! It won’t change things, but it’s about to get VERY interesting around here. My feeling is that some are still not going to accept the Board’s answer and will keep fighting this until their last breath. It sounds as if staff members are going to stand firm, and once this “announcement” is made, they are going to walk away because the matter will then be closed. Will the residents finally “get it”? Or will staff members crumble?

So when I return from the meeting, I’ll be sure to post a follow-up blog.

Hang on to your hats people!! The storm is here!!!

 

 

There’s Nothing On

“Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.”~ Ann Landers

 

I probably have my television set turned off more than I have it on. It used to be white noise but then again, that got dull and boring. There’s nothing ever on any more.

 

I do have my favorite shows that I like to watch each week, but now with it being summer and all they are doing is showing repeats, the television stays off most of the time, unless I am using my DVD player as a stereo to listen to my music or watching movies from my very meager DVD collection.

 

All of that aside, there’s still nothing on television that captures my full attention day after day, night after night.

 

Television has really hit bottom. Especially now since anything that is new, is all “reality shows”. It is terrible.

 

We watch these ordinary people who dare to sign a contact saying that they give up their privacy rights to be filmed and then broadcast to millions of people around the world. And we do it, because it makes us feel better about our own lives when we see these people acting like complete and total morons before our very eyes. There’s never any plot, there’s no story, there’s no direction. Just mindless, feculent filth that goes on and on.

 

Gone are the days of sitcoms it seems. Some networks will attempt to make new shows but in the end they get cancelled. It seems as if we are more interested in the fact that strange people who we don’t know, are becoming more and more of a fixture in our homes. All because of two things that are still hand in hand. Which actually is an extension of my previous blog post.

 

#1- Television networks do NOT want to pay the absorbment & greedy amount of money to actors in order to make a decent television program.

 

#2- Actors/actresses do NOT want to do any work for less than millions and millions and millions of dollars for EACH episode.

 

So then televison networks tried their hand on these so-called “reality shows” where they specifically state in their contracts… “We ain’t paying you a single dime!”. And people are dumb enough to sign them, just because they wanna be on television.

 

When I was growing up, my parents loathed the television set. As maturing children, we were only allowed to watch a certain amount of ‘the idiot box’ on any given night. Those were the rules of the house. Naturally, that was something that I thought was bogus. So when I was out on my own for the first time, I watched as much of it as I could. Totally wasting life away, because the amount of television that I was consuming was far too much.

 

As an adult now, I can pick and choose whatever I want to watch, whenever I want to watch it. I just choose NOT to because there’s nothing there that interests me. So to my own father I say, “Yeah. You were right.”

 

I really could care less about some woman from New Jersey who has more tits than brains. And I could not care any more about any socialite who wants to sit at home and whine that life isn’t fair, all the while having sex with someone and recording it and selling it.

 

I think that television networks AND the list of actors/actresses need to pull their greedy heads out from their secure-locked butts and come up for air. Find that middle ground and make good quality entertainment. Then television wouldn’t have this stigmata over it. It is in fact, plenty ridiculous.

 

I find it totally laughable at what is considered to be popular any more. Some of these people come out of nowhere and they show themselves on televison and then become so extremely popular that they don’t know what to do with themselves. But then, the next “reality show” gets created and they’ve been bumped out of the spotlight because the next person has acted even more ridiculous and stupid on the air than they had.

 

I speak for myself when I say that every time I go NEAR my television set, I cringe. Because as soon as I turn it on, I know that within minutes I will turn it back off again. The only reason why I have one in the first place (other than the reasons listed above) is because I bought it for $100 to help a woman who we all had thought was trying to get back on her feet and live a life of the straightened path because she had previously had been a stripper. It was a television combo with DVD & VCR. And of course, there was no remote control with it and the DVD & VCR parts to it, don’t even work.

 

And now I find that she fell back into her ways, got married, had a baby, and then divorced. Now she’s back to where she started. And that is probably the REAL reason why I hate my own television set.

 

Honestly though, there’s nothing on!

 

Time to start looking for some hobbies.