donut.nu

One thing that drives me absolutely batshit when combing through housing ads is the discrepancy between actual useful information prospective renters actually want and what actually ends up in the ads. It annoyed me so much that I made an angry list about it.

That will show ‘em.

What I’m looking for when I read housing ads

1) Information about the current residents and their partying and/or drug-consuming habits.

Look, I want some warning if I’m going to come home to the cops raiding my house or find an exceptionally drunk college freshman pawing through my closet. You need to be upfront about that shit.

Also, if you’re habitual gaybashers or spend a lot of time having your mom bail you out of jail, I’d like to know that as well.

2) General location of the house/apartment.

First of all: Seattle is a big place with many different neighborhoods. Living in certain neighborhoods can make your public transportation life living hell.

I know this because I spent years having to catch the bus at 6:30 AM to get to my 8:30 AM class even though my college was less than seven miles away from my house. In other words, I spent four hours on the bus or waiting for buses to spend three hours in class every day. Given my tendency to attract epic creepers and crazy women that like to spend forty-five minutes sharing with me the names they have for each individual dreadlock attached to their skull. I’ll never forget you, Testimony. You were my favorite.

It’s also awesome emailing about a listing only to find that someone decided it was relevant to post room openings for Hong Kong in the Seattle section. Yeah, you’re really reaching your target audience there.

3) Information about the living space.

When you said “room available” did you actually mean “You’ll be sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs”? Will I be sharing a room with a crack fiend or just a bathroom?

4) How much are utilities and other monthly expenses?

I love when the cheap rent sounds great and then you find out that they spend 250 dollars every month so they can have 1800 channels–many captionless in languages no one in the house actually speaks.

5) When is the room available? When does the lease end? Do you require a deposit and if so, how much?

You know. Minor details such as…how long before my ass needs to find another place to schlep all my shit to?

What’s actually in housing ads

1) Information about the “rad dumpsters nearby” for prime dumpster-diving opportunities.

What I find moderately disturbing is the sheer amount of Craigslist ads that actually list this.

2) Information about their plots of world domination politics.

From a recent Craigslist ad:

[L]ooking to start infoshop in basement and work with the community to find ways to topple oppressive systems.

Look. I like plotting to overthrow the oppressive power structures in my spare time as much as the next girl, but I just want a place to store my shit, cook, and sleep. I’m not looking for a revolution in Craigslist housing ads, okay. Particularly not when you’re only advertising a one-month sublet.

3) Endless paragraphs about their cats.

Information I want about your kitties:

A) Can I cuddle it?

B) Can it eat a tiny ice cream cone while wearing a tiny hat?

My neighborhood looks like Narnia. This would be awesome if snow hadn’t completely cockblocked me from seeing Deathly Hallows for the past 4+ days.

Due to a lack of a winter coat and like. warm clothing of any sort beyond a pair of cotton rainbow gloves, I have not played in the snow. Instead I’ve been staring at it wistfully through my window, praying my power doesn’t go out (again!), and trying to devise a good hot chocolate recipe that doesn’t require me to go get random funny ingredients I don’t keep in my house. (Let me know if you have a good recipe that’s simple. >.> I’m still working on mine!)

The part where the snow is impeding some of my job hunt is probably more important than preventing me from seeing Harry Potter, but it does not feel like it.

My priorities are obviously awesome.

I feel like I should sleep to prepare for the amount of yams I plan on consuming tomorrow, but my terrible sleeping habits persist. I fully expect to fall asleep somewhere around 6:30 AM. I’m just not going to lie to myself. I can always take advantage of the holiday and take a tryptophan-induced nap tomorrow, right?

Again, my priorities. Don’t worry, I’ll judge myself for you.

Oh, Tumblr. How I’ve learned to love you again.

I’m working on getting back into the Twitter swing as well (I tweeted several times today! I’m getting there!), with my return to my online communities, but I’ve definitely gotten back into regularly posting to Tumblr more easily thanks to the glorious the queue feature¹. Formerly I just posted random things. Some hilarious, some adorable, some gorgeous–but now and for the foreseeable future, I’m largely using my Tumblr to showcase photos I find that remind me how beautiful the world is.

I admit, I do have a soft spot for hilarious Tumblrs such as lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber², garfiendminusgarfield, and reasoningwithvampires. However, I also really love ones that post beautiful photos or found pictures. For example, I really enjoy both iloveoldmagazines and robot-heart, among others.

Do you have a Tumblr account? What do you primarily post? And do you have any favorite ones that I should definitely follow?

You can find me at donnasaurus (formerly pumpkincarriage) on Tumblr or @nerdfighter on Twitter.

1. Which also prevents me from spamming my Tumblr too hard when I’m on a binge of staring at awesome photos! ↩
2. This Tumblr makes me thankful that, thanks to how crazy-curly my hair is, even if I did cut my hair really short, I still couldn’t end up on this site! ↩