Let's vary piracee / With a little burglaree!
Wednesday, 21 April 2010 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtI love the internet. I whinge wistfully about my lack of a Castle fix, and have three offers to supply the goods in the space of twenty-four hours - one from a lurker who I didn't even know was reading. (Hi, Andrea!). I also hope the Powers That Be get their arses in gear and produce the Region 2 DVD eftsoons and right speedily, as I'm suffering gnawing guilt from all this piracy. But not, may I add, enough guilt to make me stop watching them. Gosh, no.
The piracy karma is probably what caused yesterday's merry little instalment of the South African Experience, viz. being dragged home at lunchtime by the armed response guy because, yet again, we'd been burgled. This was completely inevitable: we've had renovators in the house potentially casing the joint, and besides they managed to put a chisel through the alarm sensor cables, which means the alarm hasn't worked for a couple of months. Last week we had the sensors rewired, but the damned thing is still not sending an alert to the company even if the alarm goes off, which is Dead Suspicious as it was working fine before the renovations. The Evil Landlord is locked in an epic battle with the alarm company owing to their pathetically transparent attempt to make us buy a new system by dint of refusing to even look at the old one because it's "too old to repair". Pshaw, and likewise phooey. However, my money's on his Germanic Stubbornness quotient, which is ideally suited to these little challenges.
We were thus set up nicely by circumstances, and given the last burglary it was all curiously familiar. The bastards once again levered the burglar bars off the window in the Evil Landlord's bedroom, leaving chunks of wall all over the floor. They seem to have gone through a random selection of the house, including his gym bag and my dressing table, but yet again they don't seem to have taken any of my jewellery, which I kinda take personally since it implies an aesthetic rejection I find hurtful. Nor did they touch the CD or DVD collection, which is always my primary fear. Computers all OK, electronics untouched - in fact, the only thing they seem to have stolen was a pair of the EL's track suit pants, which seems a mite fetishistic to me. I think the slightly dadaist break-in was because they were interrupted, by (a) the alarm going off, (b) the crazy next-door-neighbour hearing it and pushing her panic button on paranoid reflex, and (c) the presence of the other next-door-neighbour's visitor in the road outside, where he was ideally positioned to watch the burglar jump over the wall and pause to put on his trousers before running down the road. (Don't ask. I suspect they may have been the missing EL trousers).
Is it just me, or are we inflicted with particularly odd burglars? Not to mention, of course, burglar bars that are attached entirely inadequately. Future plans (apart from Fix Alarm, which the EL is onto): weld bars to iron bars sunk into wall and themselves welded to iron bars sunk into floor and chained to iron bar which Hobbit is sitting on. Also, follow the XKCD principle and get a laser pointer for the cats. Irritation at future attempted burglaries will be largely assuaged by having to clear up the small piles of ash.
The piracy karma is probably what caused yesterday's merry little instalment of the South African Experience, viz. being dragged home at lunchtime by the armed response guy because, yet again, we'd been burgled. This was completely inevitable: we've had renovators in the house potentially casing the joint, and besides they managed to put a chisel through the alarm sensor cables, which means the alarm hasn't worked for a couple of months. Last week we had the sensors rewired, but the damned thing is still not sending an alert to the company even if the alarm goes off, which is Dead Suspicious as it was working fine before the renovations. The Evil Landlord is locked in an epic battle with the alarm company owing to their pathetically transparent attempt to make us buy a new system by dint of refusing to even look at the old one because it's "too old to repair". Pshaw, and likewise phooey. However, my money's on his Germanic Stubbornness quotient, which is ideally suited to these little challenges.
We were thus set up nicely by circumstances, and given the last burglary it was all curiously familiar. The bastards once again levered the burglar bars off the window in the Evil Landlord's bedroom, leaving chunks of wall all over the floor. They seem to have gone through a random selection of the house, including his gym bag and my dressing table, but yet again they don't seem to have taken any of my jewellery, which I kinda take personally since it implies an aesthetic rejection I find hurtful. Nor did they touch the CD or DVD collection, which is always my primary fear. Computers all OK, electronics untouched - in fact, the only thing they seem to have stolen was a pair of the EL's track suit pants, which seems a mite fetishistic to me. I think the slightly dadaist break-in was because they were interrupted, by (a) the alarm going off, (b) the crazy next-door-neighbour hearing it and pushing her panic button on paranoid reflex, and (c) the presence of the other next-door-neighbour's visitor in the road outside, where he was ideally positioned to watch the burglar jump over the wall and pause to put on his trousers before running down the road. (Don't ask. I suspect they may have been the missing EL trousers).
Is it just me, or are we inflicted with particularly odd burglars? Not to mention, of course, burglar bars that are attached entirely inadequately. Future plans (apart from Fix Alarm, which the EL is onto): weld bars to iron bars sunk into wall and themselves welded to iron bars sunk into floor and chained to iron bar which Hobbit is sitting on. Also, follow the XKCD principle and get a laser pointer for the cats. Irritation at future attempted burglaries will be largely assuaged by having to clear up the small piles of ash.
