The obvious answer to my problems is Craigslist.

http://fortlauderdale.craigslist.org/wan/421534943.html

UPDATE: “Flagged and Removed”. See original post here.

 Kevin: dude so i spent the entire second half of the day yesterday pleading with a reporter at the wall street journal not to print my name in the paper as the host of a destruction party

Murder: really?????

DUDE COME ON

YOURE FAMOUS

Kevin: zehra also sent them a solo shot of me standing in this destroyed room

dude, think about it

besides the fact that this is illegal

do i really want that to be the first thing that pops up when you google my name for the rest of my life?

Murder: IS THAT A RHETORICAL QUESTION

BECAUSE THE ANSWER IS OBVIOUSLY YES

Kevin: i mean, i already answered it

right

you are right

i don’t know what i was thinking

Murder: whatevah

Kevin: murray, these internets are cruel mistresses

or kewl mistresses

the management company could totally charge me for all the damage if they saw the article

Murder: …

Kevin: you wouldn’t understand

you don’t have a management company

or a home

you live in a trash can

Murder: i am reciting scenes from a muppet’s christmas carol in my head right now

i have no idea what you are saying

Yesterday after work I was driving home and stopped at Rasheed’s Food Market on the side of the road called Dixie Highway. Rasheed’s isn’t really a food market though, it’s just another one of those shithole convenience stores with a deli that nobody eats from and has like ten dirty disgusting cats running around. Anyway, I was waiting in line to buy beer behind this woman who was fairly non-descript. Older. Short. And, as it turned out, buying the store’s entire supply of ephedrine based cough medicines.

For those of you who don’t know, Florida is one of the few states that still allow you to buy cough medicines with ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in them. The non-backwards states that have outlawed these medicines did so because ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are the main ingreidents in the production of methamphetamine. So here’s the transcript of the conversation this lady had with the clerk:

Lady: How many of these do you have? (pointing to sketchy cough medicine in glass case)

Clerk: What did you just say to me?

Lady: Seriously, how many of these do you have? I want to buy them all.

Clerk: All of them?

Lady: Yes, all of them. (Clerk goes to back of store, comes back with four cases of weird black market cough medicine pills)

Clerk: I don’t even know how many boxes are in here…

Lady: There are 24. 24 times 4 is 96. At 3$ each, that’s 288$.

Clerk: Holy shit lady.

Lady: Take the money clerk.

I may have dramatized that a bit, but you get the idea. Anyway while all this is going on I just stood there with my jaw dropped, going through a whole range of emotions at the implications of what I was witnessing. At first I said “ummm”, and then I said “what?”, and then I said “awesome”, and then I said “no wait”, and then I said “uh oh”, and then I almost said “BRB” because I needed a moment, and then I just felt bad.

This was pretty weird to see at 5:15 on the side of a fairly busy road. But Florida is like that. And by “like that” I mean really fucking weird sometimes. It’s a state full of really stark contrasts. You see bums sitting in wheelchairs in the 95 degree heat at major intersections of four-lane roads, wheeling themselves along the median trying to bum change from the windows of Ferraris and Range Rovers and Mercedes. Resort villas hidden behind thick tropical foliage around the corner from bare-lawned, brick one-story houses with a bunch of shit in the yard and 14 people living in them. It’s hard to know what it means sometimes, but mostly it just leaves you wandering around with this sense of how ridiculous life can be, how poor and rich are so completely blind to one another in a way that only encourages both to stay the way they are and out of each other’s ways, and how people can scuttle around the back streets of this culture that institutes hedonism and ruin their lives by blowing through every fucking stop sign they see.

When the lady left the store I paid as quickly as I could so I could follow her out. I stood directly in front of the front door and watched as she got into her white, beat-up Cutlass Sierra, staring back at me, and started to pull out of the line of cars pulled up in a row in front of the store. I didn’t feel any need to hide that I was looking at her, because the audacity of what she had just done, in broad daylight, was the real shame, but honestly it was a shame we somehow shared. Everyone is complicit down here, that’s just how it is, but maybe you have to live here to get it. I watched as she sped off up Dixie Highway, which is straight and wide and long, like all the other roads down here, headed south.

Then I shook my head and started walking to my car.

On a lighter note, I was able to snap a picture of her with my camera phone while I was standing behind her in line, and here it is. I made an attempt to disguise her slightly, because I guess even she deserves anonymity when some dude who calls himself murder exposes her on these innernets.

Murder: OH HAI

James: dude you promised

Murder: LOL JAMEZ

Sent at 11:04 AM on Thursday

James: dude

i hate you