Letters to the Editor
Allie_
Published Letters: 1389 Editor's Choice: 112
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9th circle of hell
[Read the article: I let my friends stay with me and now they're evicting me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As another poster remarked, Dante's 9th circle of hell was supposed to be reserved for betrayers of benefactors, which explains the passion this letter writer has inspired.
I - along with probably most of the people here - have been making some assumptions about the situation. These are my assumptions:
1) This guy isn't on the lease. In fact, he may not be able to get an apartment on his own, based on his credit history. That's the usual reason people "hang out with someone for a few weeks" and then stay forever.
2) Girlfriend, likewise, is not on the lease.
3) There's no written agreement regarding their part of the rent.
Assuming that these assumptions are correct, my advice is that you read your lease. You sound as if you're living hand-to-mouth about the same way I lived in college. When I was living like that, I had a lease which said that no more than two people could occupy my apartment and any guest staying longer than two weeks had to be on the lease. If your lease is similar, problem solved.
Talk to your friend without his baby mamma around. Tell him that you would have been happy to allow them to stay as long as they wanted, with the baby, but that since they've tried to evict you from your own home, they are no longer welcome guests in your house. Explain that you've contacted the landlord and that they need to leave because they are not on the lease. Explain that if they don't leave peacefully, the police will be involved.
Don't necessarily contact the landlord just yet; just lie and say you have. The reason you don't want to contact the landlord is that here, at least, YOU can be kicked out for having violated your lease.
If this doesn't work, move out, cancel the lease, put their stuff on the street, and get your deposit back.
You don't mention how old all of you are. This type of fooforah went on all the time among my friends when I was college age and a little older. People did get tossed out. Sometimes stuff put on the street got rained on or impounded by the city or wantonly stolen or sold at other people's yard sales. A couple of particularly irresponsible people I know spent a couple of nights sleeping on the beach or under a stairwell. One young man who had knocked up his girlfriend ended up going into the military as a last-ditch measure to support his family, and becoming something resembling a sensible human being. A woman who got knocked up ended up in jail, the child (children by that time) raised by her parents. Eventually, most of these crazy, irresponsible, criminally selfish people grew up and started imitating normal people. People thrown into the cold waters of life will sometimes swim, and sometimes sink. NOT YOUR PROBLEM. It's not even kind to try to protect these people from the consequences of their own actions. Swat them upside the head with the Reality Stick now or risk seeing them on Springer 20 years from now.
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re: DurianJoe
[Read the article: Feminist blog goes to the dogs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can't speak for Fetboy, but I'm Episcopalian. The Christian religious perspective on meat-eating is something I've thought about. Jesus ate meat; he also said that it isn't what goes into a person's mouth that makes a person unclean, but what comes out of it. However, there's abundant support for a cruelty-free-diet in Christianity. Jewish law attempts to make slaughtering animals as humane as possible. People (and animals) in the Garden of Eden before the Fall ate no meat; it's said that in the world to come, lions will lie down with lambs. In other words, meat-eating isn't an ideal, but a compromise with the fallen world. In the meantime, animals don't live forever, they will be eaten by worms and bacteria if they live long enough to die naturally, and there's nothing wrong with people eating meat just like any other omnivore, assuming we make an effort to be both humane and thankful.
There is no Whole Foods here. Nor in all of Tennessee. Nor in Arkansas or Mississippi. The closest Whole Foods is 208 miles away in Birmingham, Alabama. I just checked online out of curiosity. Must be nice to take things like that for granted.
I'd be willing to support cruelty-free meat if it were available, for a number of reasons; current stock practices are bad for us on all kinds of levels. Ever see a fly-over of a big commercial pig farm? Yecccccchhhhh. Not to mention drug-resistant bacteria. Not to mention the centralization of the food supply which makes massive disease outbreaks possible.
Regarding the Humane Society: two days ago we had an article in the local paper about the Humane Society. The newly-opened building is already several times over the intended capacity. They are turning animals away. They want to inform the public that they do not take animals surrendered by their owners in any case, only animals brought to them by police with evidence of abuse.