When your neighbors are blaring salsa music until 5 am (no bullshit!), perhaps you don't mind. Perhaps you are out having your own carnaval until sunrise and don't even notice. But that is not how I am. After trying in vain to sleep through it (it is literally 7 feet from my bedroom--can't be done), calling the fuzz (can take hours and there's no guarantee of aid) and trying to read through it (HA!), I settled on Dumb Activities. I touched up some paintings, watched some cable, and did some photo excavation.

To make a long story short: I now have my first album cover. Now I just have to acquire some talent, write some songs, and record them.

Also used a larger version of the comic-style image in my placeholder page at the still-forming adairdevil.com.

Emmett, an adorable, fluffy, slightly cross-eyed cat who harbored a great devotion to food and my mom, died today. He was almost 15, which is a good long life for a cat, and to the extent that complete comfort and adoration make for happiness, his was a happy life. But at the end he was suffering so much that it was just terrible to see. So my mom had to take him, probably her favorite cat in a lifetime that has always had at least one cat in it, to be put down.

Rather than dwell on his death, though, I want to celebrate his finest hour: the time he saved my dad's life. It's true! Read on.

The Rashomon of Emmett
My dad's version, via IM the morning of the incident.

Please allow for the confusion of crossing IMs; we kinda talked that way online. Also note that my dad wasn't yelling, he just had a cramped laptop and would hit the caps lock key by accident a lot.

My mom's version, via an email to the family that afternoon:

A friend of mine with whom I am engaged in mutual blogstalking (when you're as shitty a correspondent as I am, that's what things eventually devolve to) noted that she was getting a little worried each time I appeared in her RSS feed; it's been all homeless harassers, suicidal strangers, and dead pets.

To combat the downcast vibe, I present some more pulled sugar art. I won't bother showing the whole cake it ended up on, since it wound up very similar to a previous one. But it was oh so pretty and kinetic before it was placed.

to get my picture taken with Ricky Bobby.

Sadness.

Friday brought bad tidings: our landlords have sold the building and out we go. It sucks out loud. We have until about the end of September to pull off a miracle: find another place in this neighborhood that we can actually afford.

I haven't swung into the hunt full force yet, but I will shortly. For now I'm just lamenting the loss of a home I've really loved for over four years. And beholding the prospect of moving--with its uncertainty, expense, and fatigue--with immense dread.

One thing that is making me feel better about the whole situation is the conduct of our next door neighbors. As mentioned before, they are partial to having incredibly loud parties into the morning hours. In their backyard. Which, measured generously, is approximately seven feet from my window and from my roommate's.

Where their last get-together was more salsa in theme, this weekend's was largely a return to the reggaeton blast that put them on the map. I wondered if my hatred for that genre--with it rapidfire cheap Casio drumming and misogyny--played a part in how annoyed I was to have it blaring. Sure, I'd be annoyed no matter what was keeping me awake past 4 in the morning, but perhaps I'd be less annoyed if it were music I enjoyed?

Then, for a break, they played "Hypnotize", a song of such danceability that no matter how aware I am of how dumb it is, I still like it. And even with a song I liked, I found myself praying for lightning to hit their PA system.

That's not a typo or overstatement, by the way. They have a PA system. Microphones. Loudspeakers. Etc.

They also had an MC for the evening, who punctuated his set with shout-outs to every Latin American country and commonwealth except, notably, Mexico.

"REPUBLICA DOMINICAAAAAAAAAAANAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"BORICUA REPRESEEEEEEEEENT!"

"COLOMBIANOOSSSSS!"

And so forth. I wonder: why do my neighbors hate Mexico?

There were also periodic checks to see if Brooklyn was, in fact, in the house. Or rather, in the stamp-sized yard. It was this combination of screaming into the mic and blasting music that caused me to dub them the Carnaval de Douchebags. And so shall they be forevermore.

At about one in the morning, we went over to ask them to turn the music down and to turn off the floodlight on the side of their house that illuminates our living room and my roommate's bedroom like the sun. A woman of 50-odd years answered the door and told us that it wasn't her party, it was her brother's--as though that somehow made it any less her yard. We persisted, politely, and made our request, and they did turn the light off.

But they turned the music up.

DOUCHEBAGS.

Our upstairs neighbors, as frustrated by this horse shit as we are, are developing a theory based on circumstancial evidence (an "Officer ___ Way" sign in their yard, a shout-out to somebody's boys in the ____ squad) that somebody over there is a cop or connected to one. Again, I don't know for certain. But it would sure as shit explain why calling the fuzz, by 311 or direct to the precinct, doesn't get us so much as a minute's silence.

So, new owners/tenants of our building, who will doubtless rip it up, refurbish it to a full brownstonian glory, and turn it into condos: I hope you like Daddy Yankee, assholes.