The final

There are lots of things which determine where you end up doing what you end up doing in this life. One of these lives in my building. He has some... issues.

To put this in perspective, let me inform you of my previous places of being. Starting out life on my own (first with one, and then two friends, kind of negating the whole "on my own" bit, but still), I lived in an apartment. Much like you, odds are. It was a fine apartment. 92 square meters , which if you include the attic and the balchony becomes over 1000 square feet! But that is not the point. The point is this: If you're going to live somewhere, you might decide to check out the place ahead of time, see that there are no bullet-holes in the windows, that there is a toilet, that sort of thing. But regardless of the result of this, most people neglect one important aspect.

The neighbors. If the laws of statistics say that you're likely to end up being surrounded by "normal" people, some of them are bound to end up being not-so-normal. This is not by definition a bad thing. There are different kinds of not-so-normal. But then there's what happened to us. First of all, we had a downstairs neighbor who was very... shall we say "noise-sensitive"? Complaints about the volume during parties I can cope with and even understand, but this guy really went above and beyond.

One peaceful Sunday afternoon, at around four o'clock, there was a knock on the door. Needless to say, I answered it. I was always the one who got yelled at, fitting perfectly with the principle of "I'm always the one you should feel sorry for". But what I heard was comical, in a very sad way. We got two major complaints:
1) We vacuumed too much. Think this through. We're three 23 year-old guys sharing an apartment. Vacuum? Really?
2) We laugh too much, and too loudly. The only way to take this attempted criticism is as a compliment. And then feel a little bad for the person who goes around telling other people off for basically being a little too happy most of the time.

And no, this guy was not living in the neighboring building, where they were attempting to "readjust people with psychological problems to a life in normal society". We never had any problem with any of those fine individuals.

Also in our area, there was a kid who came out during finals week. At LiU, this comes but four times a year, but you can bet your ass, or a prized possesion that he'd be there. With a great big whistle, able to distract even the most studious of, well, students. We named him "the whistle kid" and hated him fervently.

So now, living in the far closer-to-school and far filled-with-more-students area of Ryd, you'd think I'd be safe to study for my final final (a-HA!) in peace. Not so. There is no Whistle-kid. There is no Mojk, as laughs-a-lot guy was lovingly called. However, to compensate, I have two new acquaintances. One is "Screaming jackass", the other is "Idiot". Now as most of you know, I am a pretty peaceful person, but I am also prone to dramatic overstatements of fact, so bear with me.

"Screaming jackass" is the new Whistle-kid. Regular as clockwork and twice on Mondays, he opens his window and just screams. Maybe it's anxiety over finals, or whatever. I really don't care.

"Idiot" is the guy goes ape on the ads we have delivered some weekdays. If you don't want them, you can sign your name on a little list right there by the mailboxes, but this guy (I'm assuming it's a guy, I've never actually seen the process in action) avoids that like sin, and instead throws his - and all the other ads he can find - with complete reckless abandon on the floor. Creating lots and lots of work for the people who are nice enough to get paid to clean up, and making me feel bad that I think I'm important enough not to help out and clean it up myself on my way to school in the morning.

So yeah.

Finally (uhm), back by popular demand, is this:

This is due to actual popular demand by the strapping young man in the picture. He is currently as far away from Japan as I am, but the other way around. Sort of. Oh, and remember what I said before: I will not be held responsible for breaking the Internet by laughter. Loud though it may be.