Another week, another dumb rationalist

A few weeks ago there was a broken water pipe in my apartment. After
various repair crews had come and gone, leaving me wondering how many
of these GD crews were eating out of the same manger that my rent money
seems to be disappearing in, out of nowhere came another crew that
wanted to let a camera down the water pipe in order to check where
it was leaking.

The problem was, these people waved a phone in my face asking me what
I thought they were coming for. This led me to wondering if they
themselves knew what they were doing. Apart from the fact that I had to
explain to each crew separately that I don't have a phone and don't even
want to use a phone, these guys upped the ante by several degrees, by
having not even a clue what the issue with the water pipe had been,
where it was located, what the other crews had done, etc.

So I basically came to the conclusion that these guys were falsely
informed, or maybe even drunk. I did not want to let them into my
apartment. However after a while, in which they kept talking to
themselves I let myself be goaded into yielding access. Upon which
they claimed the pipe they were looking for wasn't there. I might have
become a bit enraged there.

Anyway, a few days later I got some kind of postcard from the housing
corporation that someone had not found me at home and they wanted me to
call back.

As I did not know yet what the matter was related to there wasn't much
else to do than visit their headquarters asking why they still had not
got the message that I don't have a phone, after me mentioning this
many times, and also wondering why they did not mention why the matter
they wanted to talk about wasn't on the card I got, even though on that
card there were clearly visible categories they could have put a check
mark in, including the category 'other' which they also conveniently
left blank.

A guy was called from upstairs who immediately apologized for having to
discuss this stuff in the lobby in public, because he 'did not have a
room'. It  soon became clear that it was him who arranged for the
postcard to be sent, even though another person had put it in my
mailbox, without even checking if I was home.

So, the card was a lie.

Then he started to inform me that the water pipe men did not find my
apartment, to which I had generously allowed them access, after they
came unannounced, not agreeable, because I hadn't cleaned up.

I claimed "they are fucking with me". The answer to that was "look, if
there was nothing to it, you'd immediately have denied it more
strongly". Also, in this day and age, everyone could be expected to own
a phone, and since they were a big organization I could not reasonably
expect for them to especially produce a different postcard for me. I got
no answer about why they did not even check mark the kind of issue on
the card, or why they did not check if I was home.

Anyway, I wanted to clear this issue as soon as possible, and we almost
got to the point where he would take a look at my apartment to ascertain
it was not a dump. Unfortunately this did not go through because some
other person still had to approve of the work on the pipe.

It was agreed that early next week the pipe crew, the headquarter guy
and also a local supervisor would come by to sort things out.

Next week, after I had, to be absolutely sure, put most of my stuff in
boxes, torn up the rest, wiped the floor etc., about six men came to my
apartment, could still not find the pipe that had been repaired, and
instead opted to check another pipe, after which they disappeared.

Matters were still not over then however, because now the head office
guy was starting some kind of Hitler-esque finger in the dust wiping
routine asking me things like, "do you know how much it costs to clean
up here after you're gone" and wanted to offer me some forced help that
would come by every two weeks and tell me what to do, and who could
also double as a mobile phone interface through which they could relay
their orders.

Of course I wanted nothing of that, being used to take care of my own
matters, and was angry that they seemed to poor endless money in that
network of companies providing each other work, for five crews where one
would do, or even totally forgetting about what was agreed they were
going to do and instead start doing something else.

After he left, there was a letter in my mailbox ordering several more
impossible clean up tasks, like "wipe all floors", when the floors that
did not have carpets were already wiped. Did I mention he waved his
phone everywhere in my apartment, and upon asking what he was filming
without my permission mentioning that he was not filming. Meanwhile the 
other guy was separately moving through my apartment making photos, of
which he showed me at least one, it was about some light fixture that
he wanted to have repaired.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is people nowadays do things
differently, seem to have no respect for other people's privacy, which
may very well be phone related, and kind of feel uninhibited to project
their own asthma related cleanliness standards on people, abusing the
laws that were created in order to protect the people that are renting
the houses, so as to invoke terror about legal matters if one does
not comply with them throwing the money one pays for rent into a pit of
vampire companies, and meanwhile complaining how much money they have to
spend on me while it is I who spent ridiculous amounts of money on them
increasing the rent all the time.

Some people may claim as people get older their faculties decay and in
the end they are just not capable of dealing with matters anymore,
however what they are forgetting is that meanwhile these phones they're
using have completely disconnected them from basic decency, what used to
be the standard. In effect it's not so much older people decaying, it's
the new generation of phone empowered but wisdom depleted petty
tyrants that are claiming to be absolutely indispensable authorities
here, while if anything, the very opposite is true.

So how do we deal with these people measuring everything along their
broken yardsticks, who don't realize people do not usually decay, when
it's the world around them that is decaying, making them play under
rules that should not have any right to exist.

Anyway, this was all in the middle of a heatwave so I kind of forgot
about that stuff while I was gasping for some cool air for a few weeks,
until finally, the heat somewhat lessened, albeit in combination with a
bit more humidity that kid of neutralized the drop in temperature.

Still, every year around this time, when the plants have peaked and are
now decaying I suddenly get the need to leave the marked paths and
start exploring whatever fields of shrubs and broken down areas there
are in my neighborhood, of which there are surprisingly many. People
just bulldoze stuff away and put fences around them, waiting for some
capitalist to put some new things there, regardless of the protests of
the people living in that area.

One especially weird thing was I encountered a road that was just
bisected by a water flow. As I was walking along it I could clearly see
the road continuing straight on the other side of the water where the
water made a bend. It was kind of surreal, but at least now I kind of
understood why there were shrubs everywhere where there once had been a
road. In the end I feared I had to turn back but 'luckily' someone had
put a metal phone pole over the water, kind of 'inviting' me to start
some kind of unlikely balancing act, instead of going all the way back,
which seemed kind of 'verboten' to me, at least on a day like this,
once a year.

Noticing I was too much of a coward to try and walk that kind of
tightrope I instead opted to sit on the pole, one leg in the water, for
balance, and the other to help push me on, towards the other side, lying
on my belly on the pole.

To put a long story short, my cowardly maneuver succeeded, and cost me
only very dirty toes while climbing out of the water on the other side,
and about one fifth of the skin on the palm of my hand, because I
hadn't noticed the pole was very hot and sandpaper like.

As nobody seemed to have been that crazy in a long time, the other side
was some deserted private property, with camera warnings, and fenced all
around. However today, going back was no option.

After some time I managed to escape because the thing was so deserted
they hadn't maintained the fences everywhere equally well.

Now some kind of weird mentality took over in which I entered and
crossed various other fenced places, until I was walking in normal
streets again, following some young people towards a shopping center
where I was planning to buy some sun protection, cause my large
cowboy hat and long sleave shirt and trousers might protect against
heat less well than against the sunburn. A parasol maybe, or even an
umbrella, anything to get out of the sun.

It so happened that there was shadow along the side of the building of
the shopping center, and I 'knew' that on weekends the port in the
fence around the parking area should be open. The youth in front of me
however could not open that port, and I was ready to turn back when I
saw that one of them managed to push himself through a gap at the side
of that thing, upon which they all followed. Alas, it was not for me,
as I am bigger older and fatter.

So, after all my explorations, it was here where I had to yield to the
youth, not because of any special faculties on their side, but just
because they had accumulated less substance.

It was OK with me, I had satisfied my instincts long before that and
was already on the way back. And later on it turned out there was not a
single parasol to be bought there either, but just being inside a
climate controlled shopping center for a while was enough to cool me
down a bit.

Is there a moral to this story? I think many people don't realize one
can go back to any point in the past and continue from there and not be
any less than the present, to think that what we have here and now is
superior to what was, or even to what could have been? Pure hubris.