Tag Archives: apartments

No comments

Wheelie bins

  By

WHEELIE BINS
mrblo

In my area, the city council empties the rubbish bins once a week. We wheel them out to the road; the City of Monash empties them; we wheel them back to our houses and spend the rest of the week filling them up with hotdog packets. Then we repeat the cycle.

My neighbors paint their apartment numbers on their bins. That way they can make sure that each week they wheel out the same bin that they wheeled out the previous week. They have a history with their rubbish bin. Continue reading

No comments

Crescendo to an error

  By

Crescendo to an errormrblo

A certain private parking area near my brother‘s apartment includes fold-up pedestals that the spaces’ owners can upraise to defend them from other motorists. Each pedestal folds up into the middle of its parking space, where you lock it into place with a key. The distance between pedestals in adjacent spaces then becomes just one pedestal diameter less than the width of the space. Now instead of just blocking your space, the interloping vehicle blocks two spaces.

No comments

Benji

  By

BENJI
mrblo

We spent the month after our after our refrigerator entered Valhalla eating canned goods and Saltines. When they delivered the new refrigerator at last, Ken and Benji helped us shuffle it into the apartment. It looked like the fridge IKEA would sell you: a white, enamelled box with no curves or decoration.

Hilary and I dashed out to the supermarket. We placed Ken in charge of the fridge. When we left, its unrelieved cleanliness made it look like a vector model with the textures turned off. By the time we got back forty minutes later, Benji had written, “Phear My Elite Skillz” across the front of it in indelible marker. We found them trying to scrub it off with methylated spirits.

9 Comments

Flat Inspection

  By

CRAFTING WITH CAT HAIR: CUTE HANDICRAFTS TO MAKE WITH YOUR CATcathair

Kaori Tsutaya (Translated by Amy Hirschman, Quirk Books, 2011, ISBN 9781594745256)

Bendy crept upon the moth. He moved his limbs one at a time, between clock ticks, splitting each step into tiny motions. He had to keep calm; if he yielded to the temptation to dash, the bell would jingle on his flea collar and scare the moth away. Three more inches and he could pounce.

“Bzzzzzzzzzzt!” Continue reading

No comments

Plants

  By

PLANTS
mrblo

I grow plants in pots out front of the apartment. Sonia tells me that the neighbours believe I’ve decided to grow marijuana there; right out there in plain view. According to Sonia, the neighbours identify the third or so of the pots in which nothing has yet germinated as the nascent marijuana plants soon to deliver policemen and dishonour to their neighbourhood.

I look like the sort of guy who might grow marijuana, but should I resent as an insult the implication that I could prove so simpleminded as to grow it in plain view, right out on the porch in front of my apartment?

  • You might also like

    • Close Your Eyes, Pay the Price for Your Paradise

      Margaret Atwood’s latest novel is an incisive critique of our current society.  Neoliberalism and the prison industrial complex, as well as nostalgia for a non-existent, rosy mid-20th century, all cop a wry humoured nudging.  Not a bashing; Atwood would never be so unsubtle. Charmaine and Stan are at their wits’ … Continue reading