When you guys have visited potential apartments, what kind of questions did you ask besides the basics like what rent and utilities include?
Here are questions I didn’t ask but should have: what does the basement look like?
What measures are taken to secure the building ?
Are the walls thin? Brief info of who lives in the building. Are they college kids? People that work through the day? Elderly? Is it a mix? Where does the garbage go?
Can I pay rent bi-weekly? What kind of fuses does the apartment use? (My fuse box is in the basement. If I blow a fuse I have to replace it myself. They screw until the box. All of which I didn’t know until it happend and I was sitting in the dark suddenly)
Who do I call for repairs? (If it’s a private rental) Am I allowed to paint the walls? Is there any additional storage? Do you do regular pest control?
count the outlets, ask about recycling policies, ask if there’s a noise restriction (nothing loud after midnight, everything goes on the weekend, etc)
LAUNDRY FACILITIES Definitely ask about security Whether subletting is allowed (esp if you’re in college and might want to sublet for the summer) If you have a car, whether there’s parking/how much it costs What kind of heating/AC there is Procedure/response time for any maintenance How mail/packages are received/protected from theft (seriously people stealing your packages can be a huge problem) What kind of verification of your salary will they want, and in what circumstances will they accept a guarantor instead? Whether the apartment is furnished
Assuming you are in the middle of looking at/choosing between places: When does the lease start? Are you going to give preference to people based on when they can move in? Whether groups of a certain number of people get preference Really anything about who they prioritize for applications, it can save you a lot of trouble in trying to apply to places you’ll never get into
not something for asking the realtors, necessarily, but important rights you should be aware of as a tenant:
when and for what reasons are your landlords allowed to enter your home? how much of a notice should they give you before entering?
can the landlord make modifications to your home or apartment without your approval? to what extent?
what are the options and conditions for breaking your lease early if there’s an emergency? (this is ESPECIALLY important for anyone moving to a new state/considerable distance where you are not able to visit the apartment/home before you rent – students get taken advantage of ALL THE TIME with this shit)
if your first or last month at the property is a partial stay (i.e. you move in on july 15th, and rent is typically due on the first) make sure you don’t pay the full first month’s rent before you know the area laws! in many states, you are only legally required to pay for the time you are occupying the property
is renter’s insurance necessary? many apartments want at least 30k coverage, which can run a couple hundred dollars extra per year
are the landlords/property management liable for crimes on the property? for example, if your car was broken into. if not GET RENTER’S INSURANCE
-ask if there’s any property upkeep you can do to get a bit off the rent (aka, can they take 100$ off the monthly rent if you maintain the lawns/garden, etc.)
-ask if there’s been any consistent/frequent trouble with electricity/internet connectivity/cable if you have it
-what KIND of electricity?
-what kind of heating (hot water/electric)
-how secure is the neighborhood (if you don’t know)
-ANY PLUMBING ISSUES? check ALL the fucking taps, the showers, EVERYTHING WITH WATER to make sure it all works right.
-ANY PLUMBING ISSUES? check ALL the fucking taps, the showers, EVERYTHING WITH WATER to make sure it all works right.
I CANNOT SECOND THIS ENOUGH.
ALSO
- who last lived here? why did they leave?
- Do they charge an “amenities fee” (Around here you can’t avoid them at all now, but some places you might still be able to)
- Do they have a policy on rent increases? (Also check if there’s a legal limit to rent increases in the area).
- Are utilities paid in a separate check or with the rent?
- Are utilities metered or pro-rated (in older buildings it’s common to be charged by square footage and/or number of occupants, which can leave you subsidizing the people who turn the a/c down to 60 in the summer or the heat up to 80 in the winter - you may not be able to avoid this but it’s worth trying).
- Are there any switched circuits in the apartment. Buildings built in the late sixties through the early eighties often have switched circuits. If they do, then with the number of devices used these days you will probably have to have something important on the switched circuit - tape the switch in the on position! (Trust me).
- What are the rules on hanging pictures?
- Who is responsible for paying for and replacing bulbs in permanent fixtures? If it’s you and there’s a fixture with weird/unusual bulbs (globe style, chandelier style, etc) ask where you can buy the bulbs.
- What are the rules about pets? Do they have breed specific restrictions on dogs? Size restrictions on fish tanks? (Believe it or not that’s not uncommon).
This will be so useful once my lease is up thanks tumblr ☺️🙏🏾
Maintenance responsibilities - tenant vs landlord. Also see what scheduling there is for this! This includes everything from fumigation to replacing faucets. If you get discounts for your responsibilities on your rent, that’s awesome, but there’s an equal amount of times where it’s not.
Was the apartment cleaned after the last tenant left? If there’s carpeting, it usually has to be steam-cleaned, if not replaced entirely (this ought to be done every few years, it varies by place). If you plan on living there long enough for the carpeting to be replaced, check to see if they’ll do that even though you’re living there - some won’t.
What state the apartment needs to be in upon leaving. This is where it’s important to take photos of literally every square inch of the apartment! I lived in one place where they would withhold the security deposit if the top of the fridge wasn’t cleaned.
Speaking of security deposits, check to see how much they require, and what restrictions there are on that. Google them - if the apartment has a reported habit of withholding the deposit for petty things, that’s a good indicator that they generally don’t treat their tenants well.
Do they require a certain number of months pre-paid? A lot of places require first and last month on top of the security deposit, some may go up to six months.
Are there minimum lease times? Some apartments will let you lease monthly, some require a minimum of six months to a year, some require 3-5 years. Be aware that these policies often reflect their tenant demographics - monthly leasing may indicate Section 8 housing, and 3-5 years is roughly when they’re supposed to do major maintenance such as replacing carpeting. The average is a one-year lease.
Is there a minimum amount of covered utilities? Which utilities? Some places only cover electricity and water, and sometimes up to about $50. Anything over that and you have to pay the extra amount.
If there’s supplied appliances, what the rules are on that. If you have a fridge or microwave that you’re moving in with, see if the landlord will allow you to switch them out, and if so, where their appliances may be stored. You may have to keep them in your apartment, because they might or might not have storage on property for odds and ends like that.
Are you given a parking space? Do you have to pay for it separately? Do you have to pay for a parking sticker? Is the parking space covered? If there’s no parking space on the property, there may be fees levied by the county/state because you would have to park on the street and that’s public property, as well as certain restrictions as to parking times.
See if they’ve failed any housing inspections. Depending on the area, these might be public record. I’d generally only recommend this as a last resort, because if the landlord or rental office looks sketchy, they’re probably sketchy.
Were there any books or plays famous for being badly written almost to an archetypal hilarity before My Immortal? Like were there any 19th century memetic gothic romances or?
Even just within SF fandom, The Eye of Argon (1970) is a classic viral example of hilariously bad writing from pre-Internet days; there were contests at cons to see who could get the farthest reading it without cracking up.
William Topaz McGonagall’s poetry was considered hilariously bad in his day (late 19th century); according to Wikipedia, “He found lucrative work performing his poetry at a local circus. He read his poems while the crowd was permitted to pelt him with eggs, flour, herrings, potatoes and stale bread. For this, he received fifteen shillings a night.”
I don’t know much more about the history of memetically bad literature than these two examples, but hopefully people can add more!
Also, “A Tragedy” by Theophile-Jule-Henri “Theo” Marzials, considered by some to be the worst poem ever written in the English language. (Obviously I am in love with it and intend to somehow incorporate it into my wedding vows.) http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/Marzials.Tragedy.html
There’s also Atlanta Nights, collaboratively written by a group of science fiction writers.
The primary purpose of the exercise was to test PublishAmerica’s claims to be a “traditional publisher” that would only accept high-quality manuscripts. Critics have long claimed that PublishAmerica is actually a vanity press that pays no special attention to the sales potential of the books they publish since most of their revenue comes from the authors rather than book buyers. PublishAmerica had previously made some highly derogatory public remarks about science fiction and fantasy writers, because many of their critics came from those communities; those derogatory remarks influenced the decision to make such a public test of PublishAmerica’s claims.
One chapter was written by a predictive text emulator.
I’d like to nominate Julia A. Moore, another awful poet of the late 19th century. A lot of her awful poems are about tragedy and disaster, but described in such a shallow way (and either bluntly matter-of-fact or super maudlin) that it does not exactly bring a tear to the eye.
The literary club J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were members of held competitions to see who could read the farthest into something by Amanda McKittrick Ros without laughing. She’s famous for incoherently purple prose, and Mark Twain called her first book
“one of the greatest unintentionally humorous novels of all time.” Sample:
“Speak! Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood
that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained
passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue!”
I think my favorite is how she reacted to preps nd flamerz people criticizing her work; she called critics stuff like “clay-crab of corruption” and “bastard donkey-headed mite.”
The distinctive flaws of Atlanta Nights include nonidentical chapters written by two different authors from the same segment of outline (13 and 15), a missing chapter (21), two chapters that are word-for-word identical (4 and 17), two different chapters with the same chapter number (12 and 12), and a chapter “written” by a computer program that generated random text based on patterns found in the previous chapters (34). Characters change gender and race; they die and reappear without explanation. Spelling and grammar are nonstandard and the formatting is inconsistent. The initials of characters who were named in the book spelled out the phrase “PublishAmerica is a vanity press.”[7]
Roses are red, that much is true, but violets are purple, not fucking blue.
I have been waiting for this post all my life.
They are indeed purple, But one thing you’ve missed: The concept of “purple” Didn’t always exist.
Some cultures lack names For a color, you see. Hence good old Homer And his “wine-dark sea.”
A usage so quaint, A phrasing so old, For verses of romance Is sheer fucking gold.
So roses are red. Violets once were called blue. I’m hugely pedantic But what else is new?
My friend you’re not wrong
About Homer’s wine-ey sea!
Colours are a matter
Of cultural contingency;
Words are in flux
And meanings they drift
But the word purple
You’ve given short shrift.
The concept of purple,
My friends, is old
And refers to a pigment
once precious as gold.
By crushing up molluscs
From the wine-dark sea
You make a dye:
Imperial decree
Meant that in Rome,
to wear purpura was a privilege reserved
For only the emperor!
The word ‘purple’,
for clothes so fancy,
Entered English
By the ninth century
.
Why then are voilets
Not purple in song?
The dye from this mollusc,
known for so long
Is almost magenta;
More red than blue.
The concept of purple
is old, and yet new.
The dye is red,
So this might be true:
Roses are purple
And violets are blue
.
While this song makes me merry, Tyrian purple dyes many a hue From magenta to berry And a true purple too.
But fun as it is to watch this poetic race The answer is staring you right in the face: Roses are red and violets are blue Because nothing fucking rhymes with purple.
drawnresponses-deactivated20171 asked: !) If you want to watch “Danger & Eggs”, but you can't get it through Amazon Prime, all the current episodes are on Kimcartoon. :)
Already watched it, but thank you! Phillip is my favorite.
drawnresponses-deactivated20171 asked: !) If you want to watch “Danger & Eggs”, but you can't get it through Amazon Prime, all the current episodes are on Kimcartoon. :)
