Francescas Style in Canto V of Dantes Inferno Essay

Francescas Style in Canto V of Dantes Inferno Canto V of Dantes Inferno begins and ends with confession. The frightening image of Minos who  «confesses » the damned sinners and then hurls them down to their eternal punishment contrasts with the almost familial image of Francesca and Dante, who confess to one another. In a real sense confession seems to be defective or inadequate in Hell. The huddled masses who declare their sins to Minos do so because they are compelled to declare or make manifest in speech the character of their offenses and although they confess everything (each soul  «tutta si confessa », v. 8) it is not an admission of guilt prompted by true contrition or the timely desire to reform their lives. In Hell†¦show more content†¦Dante structures the Commedia in such a way as to enable the pilgrim to function as a progressively more sophisticated reader of confessional texts throughout his journey, and as such he becomes a reflection of our own possibilities as interpreters of these canti. Our ini tial attempts at interpreting the equivocal texts provided by the sinners are fitful, inadequate, and constantly in need of later correction and reassessment, thus reflecting the pilgrims own progress. In the reading and re-reading, these confessional passages and canti define themselves as exercises in humility: as understanding becomes the product of a series of misreadings and revisions of the text. In the case of Francesca we have a confession that is more a literary rationale for her offense than an admission of individual culpability, for Francesca seeks to use the language of dolce stil novo poetry as a kind of cloaking device to hide herself as the historical agent or subject who bears responsibility for her

AHSC 20Assignment Essay - 5025 Words

Recreation and Leisure in Canada Assignment AHSC 242 Table of Contents Introduction..................................................................................................................................................3 Part 1: Understanding/Recognizing how free time is spent.........................................................................4 Trends and Patterns........................................................................................................................4 Work and Leisure Occurring Simultaneously.................................................................................4 Motivation of†¦show more content†¦This starts through determining how life altering events have affected our current leisure behaviour. The benefits we hope to gain from our leisure and our work become evident when we think about how we would fill the time if they were suddenly taken away. Family traditions are a good example of a way to find the routes of our feelings toward leisure (Hopp). Thinking about why we do not pursue leisure activities we have always wanted to reveals the personal attitudes, relationships and external factors that shape our leisure choices. Understanding leisure in your community starts by uncovering all leisure opportunities in a particular area. Looking closely at these leisure opportunities reveals an endless list of possible leisure spending whether directly from a leisure provider or indirectly facilitated (Hopp). Thinking about how having a disability, limited financial resources or being in a new place with a different language and climate would limit leisure opportunities shows the importance of providing leisure opportunities for people with such limitations. Part 1: Understanding/Recognizing how Free Time is spent This portion of the report is largely based on data I collected in a time diary (see appended materials). This diary contains all of my activity in half hour intervals over three days. In addition to a description of my activity, I recorded my mood during the time period and whether or not I

Human Capital and Incidence of Unemployment

Queston: Discuss about the Human Capital and Incidence of Unemployment. Answer: Introduction Many people accept as true the fact that IT offshore outsourcing is dangerous to the Australian economy because of the many high paying jobs subcontracted in other foreign countries. In addition, a good number believes that offshoring will increase because employees in other countries are able and willing to work for lesser. On the other hand, others believe that offshoring helps companies lessen labour costs and overall business operations as well as allowing businesses to concentrate on their core objectives while external workers are delegated the non-major business operations. Many business have considered outsourcing as a way to reduce production and operations costs and see it as a way of increasing their competitive advantage across the globe. A study by Garner (2004) predicted that about 345,000 jobs in America would be offshored annually between year 2010 and 2015. About 3.5 million jobs were also predicted to be offshored by 2015 (Ogloblin 2004). An article published by BPO Connect (2015) states that Australian corporations do outsourcing in order to get top talents from across the globe and to achieve business operational effectiveness and efficiency while at the same time maintaining and increasing quality. The purpose of this paper therefore is to investigate both sides of the argument offshore outsourcing, analyze facts and determine if really offshore outsourcing is dangerous to the profession and the economy and whether it should be severely restricted. Outsourcing is the process of obtaining business services outside an organization (Amiti Wei 2005). Outsourcing first started when Britain traded cotton from the United States of America early in the 1900s (Lauren 2011). Thereafter Britain decided to cultivate the cotton in other countries including China and India in order to save on costs and shipment expenses (Lauren 2011). Radical developments in the area of outsourcing occurred during industrial revolution with service areas including engineering, insurance, and architecture being among the few of the many industries that began to outsource (Lauren 2011). With time, outsourcing continued developing and brought cost effective measures of maintaining business operations as the low income generating countries got opportunity to improve on their skills and got more technical experience. Eventually, many companies globally including Australia believed that outsourcing presented a decent way of reducing business expenses. As time wen t by, offshore assistance took place. Offshore Outsourcing Offshore outsourcing refers to the process of contracting organizations or workforces to accomplish company jobs in a foreign country (Wise Geek 2017). The Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) classification comprises outsourcing a firm's information technology (IT) out of the country. The Internet has played a major part in subcontracting to other countries and also made it possible to lease freelance workforces from around the globe world, who accomplish tasks for pointedly low payments (Parliament of Australia 2007). Offshore outsourcing consequently delivers effective and cheap ways to acquire jobs completed. Australia reports of offshoring jobs to other countries to be increasingly progressing every other day (Parliament of Australia 2007). This reports are such as car parts manufacturing, engineering and information technology (IT), telecommunications and banking (Bamber 2012). A current estimate predicted that about 7100 banking jobs could be replaced by outsourcing in Aus tralia in a span of about two years. Some businesses are reported to be actually considering outsourcing their processes to countries including India, Malaysia and the Philippines. (Parliament of Australia 2007). Information Technology Offshore outsourcing is detrimental to the profession as employees fail to get a chance to technically grow and develop while the economy in question continues to fall. Opposition to information technology (IT) offshore outsourcing One of the many alarms with information technology (IT) offshore outsourcing is the loss of jobs. According to Buck (2015), there have been innumerable cases of high profile Australian businesses being disapproved publically for offshoring jobs such as the Iconic and Bonds. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a number of mass layoffs that has occurred in the United States corporations can be linked to offshore outsourcing (Drezner 2005). The other big risk for a business is failure to cultivate knowledge and understanding within an organization (Weerdt 2006). When a business outsources core IT business operations, the business employees will lack a platform to gain valuable experience on their implementation (Ding 2014). Nowadays almost all business operations are being integrated with emerging and disruptive information technology (IT) technologies which robs the employees the full experience of working and maintain such knowledge even though only non-major operations are outsourced. This means that only a little percent of knowledge and skills is retained in a business. IT offshoring affects a contracting company economy as it cannot not grow steadily. One of the consequences of outsourcing is that it results in loss of revenues by local and central governments. This results to low tax receipts and reduced donations to Social Security and Medicare. Feil (2002) in an article published by ABC news states that, The big issue is the cost to the Australian economy of supporting our displaced workers. They have to live and our community has to help them. Those still working will pay more taxes for the Centre link payments to the unemployed, while the offshoring companies increase their profitability . It is extensively established that offshoring of low level causes interruption for distinct workers. This results in skills mismatch among workers services and businesses demands. Supplementary training for evacuated workers will be required to preserve new technologies. Another factor of offshoring IT is that it erodes leading in technical skills. Information technology (IT) is a field that largely deals with technical skills. Offshoring them therefore means that the domestic country loses to the delegated country on mastering them. According to a research done by New York State Department of Labor (2010), as offshoring becomes increasingly common, external corporations and employees are also becoming more technical oriented. This results to loss of home IT technical competences and the dependence on overseas sources poses a safety risk for the home country. Offshoring IT operations is sometimes uncertain states New York State Department of Labor research of (2010). Choosing good and capable foreign workers and partners is complicated because of unfamiliarity. In case a domestic chooses a wrong partner or worker to do their services, the firm will end up going through a loss which will off course affect even their finances through loss. Other times, contracted workers fail to deliver work on time which costs the business even more (Computer Aid Inc. 2004). This may mean that the business will have to start on scratch and may have to start the outsourcing procedure again with other workers and who knows, on maybe other expensive propositions. Support for information technology (IT) offshore outsourcing Firstly, proponents of IT offshore outsourcing claim that it enables businesses to save on overhead cost. Major companies offshore information technology (IT) in order to tap top IT talents from around the globe (BPO Connect 2017). The goal is to achieve operational efficiency while maintaining or increasing quality. According to William Buck a leading network of business advisors outsourcing allows access to new talent, a broader skill base, new technology and the added benefit of allowing your business to focus on its core business. But on the other hand, this robs home workers the opportunity to learn and grow as the business also develops. Secondly IT offshore outsourcing supporters claim that it provides flexibility.Through outsourcing, businesses are capable of enabling flexibility in performing to build a major business operations (Weerdt 2006). This is for the reason that, they are no longer tied up to front and backend office errands and are able to concentrate on key operations by outsourcing support functions outside the business. As a result, they are now able to find much more time for working on their core capabilities states BPO connect( 2017) . However on the other hand, home employees lack the opportunity to gain technical experience that is brought about by the IT technologies integrated with business operations. Another reason for offshoring information technology (IT)support is the low entry and running costs. Administering and maintaining outsourced business operations lowers business expenses (Park 2009). It also gives new business startups a better chance of surviving since they can outsource operations they are otherwise unable to perform in-house such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. In Addition, because the entry cost is low, so will be the risks involved, comparatively low. Nevertheless, companies may never know whether the outsourced operations will be successful or not. Sometimes they are conned by fake contractors and they lose the very amounts of money they are trying to save. Fourthly, IT offshore supporters say it provides access to technology. For medium and small Australian companies, outsourcing allows them to access information technology (IT) emerging technologies which they otherwise could not meet the expense of for themselves. Nevertheless, outsourcing can turn out to be expensive for business that realize later into the practice that they may need to add more money for their service to be completed (Overby 2003). Lastly, offshore outsourcing allows businesses to get nearer to potential customers and marketing prospects (Overby 2003).Several businesses discover that offshore outsourcing to offshore locations allows them to get closer to customers and be able to market their services and products overseas especially if they have branches in those countries. It also allows them to open up the firm to new business new business opportunities. Conclusion Offshore outsourcing of IT is dangerous to the profession and the economy and should be severely restricted. First, as stated in the paper it leads to loss of jobs for home IT graduates. It erodes information technology (IT) technical skills for home workers because they dont get to utilize them when they are otherwise being conducted in a foreign country. IT Offshore outsourcing robs the home workers the chance to develop IT experience which weakens the very industry they have trained for. When almost all business outsource IT operations, only a small percentage is left for home workers to acquire experience from. If companies continue offshoring IT skills, home economies will continue to lag while foreign economies will keep growing. IT courses may decline drastically in the universities since outsourcing outside the country will reduce available IT jobs. If countries that contracted foreign IT skills sourced them from within the country, then the information technology profession would grow tremendously and economies would keep growing thereby improving ensuring national productivity. IT workers would get to apply learned schools and get to develop technical skills in the IT industry. References Amiti, B, Wei, S, 2005, Service Offshoring, Productivity and Employment: Evidence from the United States, Working Paper, and International Monetary Fund Bamber, G, J, 2012, Business Spectator: Pros and cons in offshoring jobs, [Online], Available: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator/pros-and-cons-in-offshoring-jobs/news-story/6b739876d1f500cf00e161aecc1c41da BPO Connect, 2015, Outsourcing in Australia: How Huge Has the BPO Industry Grown? [Online], Available: https://bpoconnect.com.au/outsourcing-australia-huge-bpo-industry-grown/ [Accessed April 23 2017]. Computer Aid Inc., 2004, The Challenges of Offshore Outsourcing: Understanding risks and hidden costs, [Online], Available: https://www.compaid.com/caiinternet/ezine/offshorerisks.pdf [Accessed April 22 2017]. Drezner, D, 2005, Essay: Offshore Outsourcing: Perceptions and Misperceptions, [Online], Available: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/1-800-india/essay-offshore-outsourcing-perceptions-and-misperceptions/?p=71 [Accessed April 20 2017]. Ding, P, 2014, Offshore Outsourcing: Its Merits, Its Drawbacks, and Its Future, Business Administration, Colby-Sawyer College, [Online], Available: https://colby-sawyer.edu/assets/pdf/Offshore-Outsourcing.pdf [Accessed April 23 2017]. Feil, M, 2012, Offshoring is a threat to our jobs and livelihoods, [Online], Available: https://www.abc.net.au/news/martin-feil/33326 [Accessed April 22 2017]. Garner, A, 2004, Offshoring in the Service Sector: Economic Impact and Policy Issues Lauren, B, 2011, Argumentative Essay, [Online], Available: https://aillobre.blogspot.co.ke/p/argumentative-essay-final-copy.html [Accessed April 20 2017]. Overby, S, 2003, The Hidden Costs of Offshore Outsourcing: Moving IT work overseas can be a much more expensive proposition than you may think.[Online ], Available : https://www.cio.com/article/2442089/offshoring/the-hidden-costs-of-offshore-outsourcing.html [ Accessed April 22 2017]. Ogloblin, C, 2004, Global outsourcing of Human Capital and the incidence of unemployment in the United States Park, Y, 2009, Three essays on offshore outsourcing and labor markets, [Online], Available: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/64792/ejpark_1.pdf?sequence=1 [Accessed April 22 2017. Parliament of Australia, 2007, The statistical evidence for offshore outsourcing and its impact on the Australian labour force, [online], Available: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP0708/08rp03 [Accessed April 22 2017]. New York State Department of Labor, 2010, The offshore outsourcing of information technology jobs in New York State, [Online], Available: https://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/PDFs/Offshore_Outsourcing_ITJobs_NYS.pdf [Accessed April 22 2017]. William, B, 2015, Will outsourcing be the big business trend of 2016? [Online], Available: https://therealcfo.com/outsourcing-big-business-trend-2016/ [Accessed April 20 2017]. Wise Geek, 2017, What is Offshore Outsourcing? [Online], Available: https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-offshore-outsourcing.htm [Accessed April 22 2017]. Weerdt, G, 2006, Analyzing the Debate over Offshore Outsourcing in the Service Industry: Is there a Reason for Concern? [Online], Available: https://business.uni.edu/economics/Themes/vanderweerdt.pdf [Accessed April 23 2017].

Middle Range Nursing Theories free essay sample

Health care provider need to be flexible in the design of programs, policies, and services to meet the needs and concerns of the culturally diverse population, groups that are likely to be encountered. 7. Most cases of lay illness have multiple causalities and may require several different approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and cure including folk and Western medical interventions. 8. The use of traditional or alternate models of health care delivery is widely varied and may come into conflict with Western models of health care practice. 9. Culture guides behavior into acceptable ways for the people in a specific group as such culture originates and develops within the social structure through inter personal interactions. 10. For a nurse to successfully provide care for a client of a different cultural or ethnic to background, effective intercultural communication must take place. 11. Every human culture has folk remedies, professional knowledge, and professional care practices that vary. The nurse must identify and address these factors consciously with each client in order to provide holistic and culturally congruent care. We will write a custom essay sample on Middle Range Nursing Theories or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page 2. Cultural care values, beliefs, and practices are influenced by worldview and language, as well as religious, spiritual, social, political, educational, economic, technological, ethnohistorical, and environmental factors. 13. Beneficial, healthy, satisfying culturally based nursing care enhances the well-being of clients. 14. Culturally beneficial nursing care can only occur when cultural care values, expressions, or patterns are known and used appropriately and knowingly by the nurse providing care. 5. Clients who experience nursing care that fails to be reasonably congruent with the client’s cultural beliefs and values will show signs of stress, cultural conflict, noncompliance, and ethical moral concerns. Usefulness Leininger’s transcultural theory aims to foster understanding, respect and appreciation for the individuality and diversity of patient’s beliefs, values, spirituality and culture regarding illness, its meaning, cause, treatment, and outcome. Nurses are now gradually realizing the importance of cultural nursing and the need to understand cultures, especially Filipino nurses who are working overseas that are ever increasing in number. Nursing is in a new phase of health emphasis where there is an increased display of cultural identity, accompanied by increased demands for culture specific care and general health services. I believe that Filipino nurses are in demand abroad for being culturally open and caring regardless of their clients’ cultural orientation. The world is strongly multicultural and that e, as health personnel are anticipated to respond to our clients’ diverse cultural needs. Parsimony Theories should be relatively simple yet generalizable. Leininger’s theory is essentially parsimonious in that the necessary concepts are incorporated in such a manner that the theory and its model can be applied in many different settings (Basavanthappa, 2007). The theory and model are not simple in term s of being easily understood upon the first contact. However, Leininger’s presentations of her theory and model support the need for each of the concepts and demonstrate how the concepts are interrelated. Once the interrelationships are grasped, simplicity is more appartent (Basavanthappa, 2007). The theory is generalizable in such a way that the concepts presented are at a level of abstraction which allows them to be applied in many different situations. Value in extending nursing science Theories can be the bases for hypotheses that can be tested or for the theory to be expanded. During the development of the Culture Care Diversity and Universality theory, many studies have been conducted to demonstrate that the theory can be the basis for research. A number of these studies were presented for national transcultural conferences held from 1975 to 1978 (Basavanthappa, 2007). It is important to note that the theory is based upon, and calls for qualitative rather than quantitative research. B. Write/develop a term paper showing the integration of concepts you have learned in this course using your own middle range theory and definition of nursing. * *Please refer to the term paper submitted as hard copy sent by mail to the address indicated. Thank you and God bless! References: Transcultural Nursing, http://currentnursing. com, retrieved, April 25, 2012 Nursing Theory, Madeleine Leininger, http://nursing-theory. org, retrieved April 25, 2012 Leininger’s Theory of Culture Care, http://leiningertheory. blogspot. com, retrieved April 25, 2012 B. T. Basavanthappa (2007), Nursing Theories, JP Brothers Medical Publishers, New Delhi, India, p. 257-260 Leininger M. (2002), Culture Care Theory: A Major Contribution to Advance Transcultural Nursing Knowledge and Practices, Journal of Transcultural Nursing, Vol. 13 No. 3, 189-192.a

Beginners Guide 2 Quick Methods to Create a WordPress Mega Menu

Looking for a way to create a WordPress mega menu at your site?By default, WordPress makes it easy to create a simple drop-down menu using core functionality, but unfortunately, theres no core support for mega menus.Alls not lost, though! Its still plenty easy to create a WordPress mega menu for your site. And in this post, Im going to:Share the options you have for creating a WordPress mega menuGive you a step-by-step tutorial for how to create a mega menu using a free plugin If you want to create a mega menu for your WordPress site, you have two general approachesOption 1: See if your theme supports mega menusSome themes offer built-in mega menu support. For example, the Hestia theme includes built-in functionality to create a mega menu.Unfortunately, I cant tell you whether or not your theme supports a WordPress mega menu, nor can I give you a tutorial for how to set up your themes mega menu because each theme is different.But, its always a good first step to check your themes doc umentation to see if it already has a way for you to create a mega menu.Option 2: Use a WordPress mega menu pluginIf your theme doesnt have mega menu functionality (or maybe even it does!), you can also use a WordPress mega menu plugin to add mega menu functionality to any WordPress theme.Is it better to use your theme or a WordPress mega menu plugin?Now, you might be wondering, if my theme already supports mega menus, is there any reason I still might want to use a mega menu plugin?Well, there might be. Here are the pros and cons of each approachThe benefit of using your themes mega menu functionality is that it will instantly match the rest of your themes styling as soon as you add it. Basically, its convenient.The downside, though, is that if you ever switch themes, youll lose your mega menu functionality.On the other hand, the benefits of using a WordPress mega menu plugin are that:Your mega menu will continue to work even if you switch themes.Youll probably get access to more f unctionality.But the downside is that you might need to play around with the plugins styling options to make it match your theme.How to create a WordPress mega menu with a free pluginThere are several plugins that can add mega menu functionality to your site, but the most popular and highest-rated by far is Max Mega Menu: Max Mega Menu Author(s): megamenu.comCurrent Version: 2.7.2Last Updated: September 9, 2019megamenu.2.7.2.zip 96%Ratings 3,422,149Downloads WP 4.9+Requires This free plugin lets you build your mega menu using regular WordPress widgets, which makes it very beginner-friendly.To get started, make sure to install and activate the Max Mega Menu plugin (learn how to install a WordPress plugin). Then, youre ready to follow along with the guide.Step 1: Enable the mega menu functionalityTo enable mega menu functionality, go to Appearance → Menus in your WordPress dashboard.Now, select the menu location for your header. Usually, this is the default menu (i.e. i ts already selected) and it has a Display Location area like Primary Menu, Top Menu, Top etc.If you dont have any menus yet, you can follow this guide to create your first menu.Once youve selected the menu location where you want to place your mega menu:Find the new Max Mega Menu Settings box on the leftCheck the Enable boxClick SaveStep 2: Build your mega menu layoutOnce youve enabled mega menu functionality:Hover over the menu item that you want to use to open the mega menuClick the blue Mega Menu button.In the example below, the mega menu will appear when a user hovers over the Shop menu item:Clicking the blue button should open the mega menu builder interface.First, choose the type of display mode you want to use. Ill use Mega Menu Grid Layout for this tutorial as its pretty flexible. Then, use the drop-down menu on the right to add a widget to your mega menu:You can use any of the standard WordPress widgets in your mega menu, which gives you a lot of flexibility. And you can a lso use the + Column and + Row buttons to organize the layout for your mega menu.Continue adding widgets for all the content you want to display in your mega menu.To edit widgets and add content, click the Wrench icon. And to move them around, you can use simple drag and drop:Make sure to Save each individual widget after you make any edits.Once you finish building your layout, you should have something that looks roughly like this:If you want, you can also dig into the Settings and Icon areas. But you arent required to configure any settings there.And at this point, you now have a working mega menu:As you can see, though, the menu styling isnt quite right yet the black background on the menu items doesnt really fit with the rest of the theme*.If youre experiencing a similar issue, youll need to dig into the plugins settings to change some colors to make everything fit together.*Note if you are actually using the Hestia theme, Max Mega Menu already includes a pre-built design them e to fix this issue. All you need to do is go to Appearance → Menus and choose the Hestia option from the Theme drop-down in the Max Mega Menu Settings no need to edit any other settings!Click to see Hestia theme fixStep 3: Configure mega menu styling (if needed)To configure your mega menus style, go to Mega Menu → Menu Themes in your dashboard. Then, select the Menu Bar tab.There, youll need to edit some colors to match your theme. Normally, the most relevant options to edit are:Menu BackgroundMenu Background HoverYou might also need to change the font color as well:Once you do that, your mega menu should fit more closely with your themes styling:Other settings and premium featuresYou now have all the tools that you need to create a basic WordPress mega menu. But Max Mega Menu has a deep feature list, so if you want to customize some small aspect of how your mega menu functions, I encourage you to further explore the plugins settings to see what all there is to offer .Additionally, theres also a premium version that gives you:More types of mega menusDedicated WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads supportMore control over stylesFinal thoughtsRemember if you need to create a WordPress mega menu, you have two good options.If your theme offers mega menu support, thats always a great first option. Just remember that youll lose your mega menu if you switch themes and you might not have as much flexibility.And if your theme doesnt have a mega menu feature, or if you want a little bit more portability and flexibility, the free Max Mega Menu plugin can help you add a mega menu to any WordPress theme.Have any other questions about creating a mega menu for your WordPress site? Leave a comment and well try to help out! Here's how to create a mega menu for your #WordPress site. #tutorial

The Feces King Essay Example

The Feces King Essay Example The Feces King Essay The Feces King Essay The Tale of the Mad Feces King What follows is the highly disturbing tale of a roommate that more or less slowly descended into total madness, up to the point where he was storing dead animals in the oven, and taking dumps in various places around the house that were not the toilet bowl. Originally found on the SomethingAwful Forums, posted by Martin Random, I have mirrored this tale here purely for the reasons that I made me laugh to no end while reading the original thread. Note that these forums require a payment to access, so this link will probably not work for you if you dont have an account there. Whether this actually happened or not, I cant tell. Regardless, its funny as hell, and considering the realistic way in which it was brought, its crazy enough to actually have taken place. Also note that this was originally a series of forum posts, not a written story the style may be somewhat haphazard now and then. Yes, its quite a lengthy read, but its worth it. Illustrations are by Shii and easyjo. Fuck the Bible, this is the greatest story ever told. ArousingWedgie Well, Im never eating lasagna again. Thanks! Curufin This is one of the best stories, Ive ever read, in my entire life. NerdyMcNerdNerd I think DOOM 3 is, in fact, based on this very story. Fry This story is just enthralling. I read it in the other thread, but its worth mentioning again how fucking insane your room mate is/was. I mean, I have this absolutely hilarious, yet frightening image of him bouncing around the common room shitting into random objects letting out blood curdling screams of rage. It just defies rational explanation. He took my stereo! RAAAARGH! Ill shit into household appliances! ARGH! Zandragal Without further ado There recently was a thread about awful room-mates, along with pictures. I have my own experience. Housing complex. The units are basically small cottages, made for two room-mates, with a common area and attached kitchen, a small storage closet in the common area containing water pipes leading to Suite As bathroom. The two private areas of the suite contained a private bedroom, a sliding glass patio door, and a private bathroom. Sounds idyllic. My roomie, Jed, liked to throw parties. He liked tarantulas, too, and kept six. For the sake of saving my effort in recounting this story, here is a basic rundown of the chaos. This run-through of incidents is going to be kind of terse, because Im working off of a check list I made a while ago. During our stay together, my roomie: * He brought his motorcycle into our common room because he was afraid it would be stolen. This was fine, but then he started it and let it idle for 15 minutes without opening any windows, causing all of our stuff to smell like motor exhaust. * After his girlfriend left him, he went berserk in his private bathroom with a sledgehammer or a geologists hammer and smashed all of his bathroom fixtures. Im not sure of this but I believe that just before she left him she fucked some guy with pubic lice in my bed during a party. His toilet was inoperative at this point, so he used mine for a time, until I refused him access. Later I would find out that he shat in garbage bags and kept them in the common room closet for weeks. More on this later. * He set fire to our carpet with alcohol during a party. He pissed in the fridge. He shat in the fridge. He shat in the crisper drawer. He shat on the oven top, and instead of cleaning it up, turned on the burner , reasoning that carbon is easier to clean than feces. * He left a dead cat he found somewhere in our oven for a week and forgot about it. I discovered it later. He owned 6 tarantulas, and would let one run around free-range. He assured me he had tamed it. I assured him he was a stupid fuckhead. * He never showered. * He sold drugs from his room. He smoked pot with his friends in the common area. He spilled bong water on two of my text books. He and his friends did cocaine off of the television set in the common area. * He had a party to which he invited too many people, and they spilled into my room. Strangers had sex in my room at that party. In my bed. One of them had pubic lice. Someone took a dump in my closet. Someone left a used condom in my slipper. I discovered all of these things after it was too late. * Morning after said party, my mother knocked on the front door, and a stranger from that party answered and immediately threw up on her legs. * Crackheads would regularly come by our apartment at all hours of the night trying to buy drugs because of his illicit activities. Whenever I answered the door and indicated that there was no crack to be had, they would sometimes get, desperate, belligerent and violent, and refuse to leave. * He put food products containing milk, meat and cheese on the heating unit and turned it on for three hours to see what would happen. I couldve told him what would happen if he asked me. * He got angry at some video game he and his friends were playing in the common area, so he busted into my room while I was sleeping, and punched me in the face and stomach. * A few days later he put a tarantula in my bedsheets while I was sleeping. Thankfully I wasnt bitten, but I was freaked out and still sometimes jump out of bed in the middle of the night for no reason and attack my sheets. * He shat in a lot of our fixtures. He would put his shit in baggies and leave them in strange places. I was thankful for when he used a baggie. A few words of advice for potential room-mates: A light fixture is not a toilet. A heating vent is not a toilet. The sink is not a toilet. The oven is not a toilet. That is all. I was pissed at this point. He refused to clean or take care of all of the messes listed above, so I ended up cleaning them, but keeping an hourly log and catalogue of what work I did and worked out a bill, which I sent to him. I was tired of cleaning feces out of our refridgerator, finding turds in our crisper drawer, shit on the stovetop, vomit on the carpet, vomit in our potted plants, vomit on the grille of our television set, urine on the arpet, urine on the kitchen floor seeping behind the refridgerator, dead animals in our oven and freezer units, and bags of feces hidden in our light fixtures. Have you ever had to move your refridgerator out of its little nook to get behind it to clean urine mixed with whatever the fuck lurks behind a refridgerator in the first place? After sending him the cleaning bil l and getting a refusal of payment, I took some of his stuff, dumped it in a storage unit across town, and held it until he paid me back. He stole some of my stuff in retaliation, but I called the cops and repossessed my belongings. He was unable to articulate to the cops that I had some of his shit in this exchange, so I ended up basically getting my shit back while he had to be put in their car to cool off. Upon retrospect, I think maybe he became mentally ill after losing his girlfriend, and not being able to part with his feces was part of his illness. This is purely speculative. He wasnt poor. He was from a wealthy family. They dont come into the picture, though. This is where the sealing begins. Put a datemark right here, because this is where shit gets crazy. Apparently, this is where shit gets crazy I had had enough. I bought a minifridge, a plug-in stovetop, two padlocked footlockers, a wooden bar, duct tape, a remote-control car, and an external padlock. My private area had two entrances Here, I best sum up my little fortress in this post I made in another thread: Actually, upon reflection, I really want to share how I kept my room-mate out of my private area. It was dubbed the Home Alone security system. I had two potential entrances to my private area, a sliding glass patio door and a regular door to the common area. I secured the common door with a padlock on the outside which was really just for show. The inside was barricaded. At the bottom I had a rolled up towel, and I sealed the rest of it with tape to avoid smell or other chemical assaults from the common area. I packed against the door with my king-sized bed, which was in turn secured from being dislodged by a bookshelf full of weights and books. Even if he got through the padlock, he would not have been able to open the door without busting it in two. The top half of the door was unsecured; I was worried he might break the door and gain access, so when I siezed his stuff I had it put in public storage across town. Now the sliding glass door is where the home alone shit comes in. It had a lock, but it was nonfunctional and only accessible from the inside. So in order to secure the door while I was away, I got a remote controlled car, attached it to a string which was secured by a fisheye screw at the top of the door, and tied to a security bar which would drop into the tread of the sliding door, preventing it from being opened. So when I came home, I would whip out my little remote control, make the RC car run off and lift the bar, then gain access to the apartment. To prevent this system from being discovered, I papered the inside of the sliding door with butcher paper, and I ran a wire outside of the door in an obvious manner, so that the roomie would think that this wire somehow, if tugged correctly, would undo the lock. To my knowledge, all of his attempts to get inside my apartment were by messing with this wire, which was attached to the handle of an antique coffee grinder and a paint can. If you tugged it, youd get a wierd uneven resistance as the handle crank turned and the paint can danced, which added to the illusion that this wire was some secret way of ingress. I heard this account from the neighbors, because it occurred while I was away, but apparenty he had lost his front door key, had some kind of intestinal problem, and had to take a shit really bad. All of the neighbors he knew he had already hit up for toilet access and been refused by this point. So hes swearing like crazy and yanking at this wire, and bashing against the door in a frenzied desperation when the neighbors call the cops, reporting a B. When the cops show up hes taking a shit in the bushes just outside my window. I fucking hate him so much. I think he went crazy and lost all his friends at some point, because around the time I barricaded, I stopped hearing parties. In fact, I stopped hearing anything from the common area of the apartment, except for the occasional formless moans and thumping. I dont know precisely what went on in there, because I mentally washed my hands of the whole area. I did, however, start smelling odors. I taped up my door. I know it wasnt smart to do things like this, but I was just fucking sick of dealing with his shit. I didnt call the landlord or anything, despite the fact that I knew he was destroying things over there. After cleaning so much of his shit up, I just wanted the universal god of justice to see what a wreck the place would become without my presence. Forgive me for being a little spotty in my descriptions after this point. What I do know of what transpired over there I can only reconstruct from forensic evidence, what precisely was destroyed, what commmon friends have told me in their accounts, and two forrays over into the waste zone over the next two months. I essentially didnt even see the front door of our apartment during this time. Details explained The feces he left around falls into three categories: 1. Experiments he conducted. The stove top feces thing was an experiment he conducted after his toilet was broken, and I refused him access to mine, and his neighbors got sick of letting him use theirs. I think he was trying to find some new way of getting rid of his shit. Either that or he thought it would be funny to make me clean shit off of his stove top and then got curious about what would happen if he turned on the burner. He really liked playing with heating elements and fire. It was fucking stupid. The dead cat in the oven, I think, falls into this category as well. 2. Feces in the refridgerator, shit in the closet, vomit on the TV, etc. I lump this into the OOPS I SHAT ON YOUR CARPET DURING A PARTY category. 3. Shit inside baggies in various places: After I stopped letting him use my bathroom he got angry and I think this started off as his way of proving to me that I should let him use my bathroom. After a while of this I think it started to take on a life of his own, and he started stashing his feces due to some mental illness. This is purely speculative. Actually, Jed was much smaller than me, and emaciated. In retrospect I could have taken him, easily. Thats just not how I do things. I do not break the law. Ever. I absolutely must have a clean, orderly house, which is why I went around cleaning shit up, regardless of who did it. I am not some cowardly little bitch, in fact, I think Jed was afraid of me, which is why he did passive agressive shit like shitting in light fixtures. I generally dont try to solve disputes by shouting or anything, I just quietly give notice of the unacceptable condition, document it, and clean it up. Somewhere back at my parents house I have a box full of typed, dated, signed letters to Jed stating the date, time, and extent of a mess I had to clean up, and a notice that such behavior is not acceptable, and that unless he stopped, I would move out and make him responsible for rent. Those letters helped me eventually recover back rent from him for the equivalent value of the common area he exclusively occupied during my stay there. I eventually got so pissed off at the condition of the rest of the apartment that I could only deal with it by sealing it off, and ignoring it. Essentially there is a blank period of about a month where I absolutely ignored anything from the common area, which is why it got so bad. I was crazy busy with schoolwork and my job, so I basically just shut the whole situation out of my mind for a while. After some time, I came to the realization that this guy might start a fire and get us both killed, which is really the beginning of the end. The thing that ended the insanity was his discovery that: 1. He had access to the fuse box 2. He could trip the fuse to my room with some metal and a hallway plug 3. He was too stupid to manually flip the fuse switch and just turn off my power, so he had to go the fire hazard route. I think he might have been afraid of touching the fuse box for fear of being electrocuted. But Ill detail the downfall of this shit later. For those of you wondering why I didnt call the landlord. I was kind of in denial. I just figured that whatever happened over there was Jeds business. I think I was on a sublease under him at the time, so I wasnt too worried about damage to the apartment. I withheld rent from him during this time too. His family was paying rent for the whole unit, and I would reimburse him directly. I deducted cleaning costs and other things from the rent I paid him. I think he was too embarassed or crazy to call me on it, or have his lawyer financial guru daddy get me busted. Quick fact: His father was on the cover of Forbes magazine like 8 years ago. Have you ever had something go wrong, and, knowing it was someone elses responsibility, just didnt intervene out of sheer curiousity about how it fucking bad it would get? I didnt turn him in for that reason too. I just wanted to see how bad it would get. I was stupid, mad, curious, and really didnt have any responsibility for damage to the unit, knowing his family would cover the costs. So, basically, I didnt kick his ass for two reasons: A) I am always law abiding to a fault, and B) The setup I made was really very convenient for me, and made it so I never even had any contact with the guy. It was basically rent-free I paid $50 a month in rent after all of the deductions for unsanitary conditions and ouster from the common area I made (and documented and got to keep after the courts got done looking at it , and I was exiting and entering from an opposite end of the house. Basically, I only really knew what Jed was up to during this period from forensic evidence in the apartment and the accounts of friends, neighbors, and the police. The Timeline I kind of messed up the timeline for this stuff, so heres a quick runthrough before I continue the story. * TIME A: Tons of parties, vomit being cleaned up by me, tarantula, punching, etc. I start witholding rent at this point, and am subtracting $200 a month from the rent for cleaning costs. * TIME B: His girlfriend leaves him. His friends stop hanging out with him. He smashes his bathroom. He uses mine for a time, is denied access, uses neighbors for a time, is denied access, and is angry at me for refusing him access to my bathroom. I fixed his faucets so they wouldnt leak all over the place and sent him a bill. He gets really pouty and angry and does the famous shit on the stovetop. He does experiments with various places to piss and poop, eventually settling on leaving it in baggies around the house. When I tell him this is unacceptable, he responds with a demand to use my bathroom, which I refuse. Around this time, while cleaning the stove top, I find the cat in the oven. It has a collar on it so I put it in a box and return it to the owners, not explaining where I found it, and advising them not to look in the box. I dont know how that turned out, and I didnt give them my name. I hope it got hit by a car and wasnt killed by Jed. * TIME C: Jed starts trying to get at me by playing his subwoofer really loud at odd hours, and demanding to use the bathroom. I get back at him by packing away all of his stuff, (including the audio equiptment) and storing it in a friends storage unit across town. I think that he started to really go truly crazy at this point. I come home finding him taking things out of my room and putting them into his truck. I restrain him and call the police. By this point he is beyond all rationality and is completely flipping out, so he is put in the copcar for a while and the officer helps me unload my things from his truck. For some bizarre reason the officer does not arrest him, but after talking to him lets him go. I think my calm temperment made the officer not realize he was violent and that is why I was restraining him. (My motto in life: So it goes. ) * TIME D: I dub this time the sealing. I really dont mind cleaning up poop and piss, I sed to be assistant manager of an apartment complex, but it is taking too much time to clean. I buy a range-top, and seal things off after writing a surrender letter to Jed, declaring that he has evicted me from the common area. Shortly after I come up with my Home Alone security system, withold rent except for a nominal $50 a month, and go on with life as if I did not have a crazy room-mate sealed away in the other end of the apartment. Time left on lease at this point: 2 months. Time D is when he shits in the bushes and is arrested for the night. * TIME E: The black time. I am not sure what exactly went on in the apartment during these two or three weeks. This is around the time finals are going on, so I really dont care. Water starts leaking from the wall, so I re-enter the common area to see what is up. This description really deserves its own post, and will clog the time-line up, so Ill elaborate later. I fix the water leak, which he had been covering up with newspapers, and promptly exit. Once he finds out I was in his area he flips out and makes a lot of noise over there, but I do not investigate. Remainder: There is one further, final re-entry by myself, with a flashlight. I couldnt get in with my key because the door was messed up, and his sliding door was blocked with a mattress, so I kicked down the door and entered. After a quick walk-through I call the fire department, the landlord, the police, and an ambulance. This is full of drama and will be detailed in its own post. The Black Time Im very preoccupied with work and school at this point. Since my point of entry on the house is opposite from the front door, the only real contact I have with Jed at this point is what I can hear from him through the walls, and whatever odor seeps under the door past my homeland security setup. This is pretty tolerable as a condition, definetely worth the $50 a month I was paying for it, but I was starting to get worried. I was worried about Jeds tarantulas getting into the ventilation system, so I sealed that off with plastic wrap and duct tape. Then I started worrying about fire. Jed liked to play with heating elements and flames, and he was an alcoholic, so I was worried that with the sealed off vent I wouldnt know if the house were on fire. At around 3pm, I was studying, when I noticed that my feet were getting wet. Upon inspection, the carpet next to the wall was wet. I went around to the front of the house and found that the door was ajar. I went back to my apartment and picked up a plumbers wrench and a flashlight to see what was wrong. Im not exactly the best at descriptions, as you can probably tell from the poor quality of writing in this thread, but heres the best I can do. Ill try to portray these things from my perspective at the time, and not reveal what they eventually turned out to be. I unlocked the front door of the apartment and pushed it open, after confirming that Jeds truck was gone. The lights in the place were out and the shades were drawn. The light shone inside and revealed that there were strange particulates hanging in the air. Not quite smoke. I would almost say that the odor was so thick in the apartment that it could be seen with the naked eye. Upon reflection, I imagine that what I was seeing was mold spores. As the arc of light from the bright outside swept across the room, a few things were revealed in sequence: First off, the common area was absolutely covered in free student newspapers. There were obviously things underneath because the newspapers bulged, and I could even identify an easy chair covered in newspapers in the corner. The kitchen was crammed with garbage. I could identify two large bulky garbage bags in the corner of the common room. Investigating them further, I discovered that they were covered in some kind of glistening brown muck. The whole place smelled absolutely rank. I swept my light across the place a few times, just to make sure Jed wasnt there lying in wait with a knife or something, and I proceeded into the apartment, leaving the door open. I took some vics vaporub from my pocket and doubed just under my nose. The garbage bags had been hastily pulled out of the common room closet, the one which contains pipes leading to Jeds bathroom. I shined a light into the closet and a rat or mouse or something ran very quickly under the newspapers in the common room. I looked and saw that there were several dents in a pipe in the common closet, and it was otherwise soaked. Finding no immediate source for the water, I proceeded into the hallway area towards Jeds room. I was a little uneasy, because the whole place was filled with debris. The common furnature that came with the apartment was lodged in the strangest places. Like the hallway to Jeds room had the common couch in it, upturned. I climbed over that after making sure Jed wasnt under it. I was a little more nervous because my egress had been essentially blocked by this couch, and walked past the debris. It looked like he was salvaging equipment and building materials from local construction yards. I could identify in the hallway, piping materials, a toilet lid, cinderblocks, scrap wood, and a box of pilfered nails. Jeds large sledge hammer (or geologists hammer, I dont know which) was lodged in the door of his room. I pushed it open and the damn thing fell out, giving me a fright. Anyway, I proceeded into his room, which was strangely clean. There was nothing in there, but the floor was absolutely soaked. I realized what happened; he realized there was water everywhere and threw all of his shit outside of the room into the hallway, and leaned his mattress against the sliding door (where it remained, to my knowledge, for like two weeks. I have no idea where he was sleeping. ). The leak was coming from his bathroom, so I went in with my wrench ready to clock the shit out of my crazy room mate if he should jump out at me. I saw the familiar smashed bathroom fixtures, and I was very thankful for the vics vaporub, but the stench stung my eyes still. There was a bathtub covered in newspapers. I proded it with my wrench and the newspapers gave way, like they were on top of jello or something soft and organic. I prodded it harder and what I can only describe as fecal fluid seeped from the sides of the newspaper. I think he was taking shits in the bathtub and covering it with newspapers, like some kind of foul lasagna. The leak was coming from under his sink, which he had dislodged through some violence. I could see the remains of a cinderblock on the pipe, so I think he might have been hitting the pipe with a cinderblock. I turned off the water to the sink, stopping the leak, and decided that it would be best if I left before he returned. A computer image of the bathroom On my way out, I climbed into the kitchen area and opened the fridge, just out of curiosity. There was a ball-like, organic mass in the middle, with tendrils of mold growing out of it. It was roughly the size of a human head with a large dent in it. Not desiring to get toxic mold in my nostrils, I closed the fridge and surveyed the common closet again. The walls of the closet were covered in a black shiny material which glistened. Upon closer inspection, it was mold. I didnt know that mold looked like that. I prodded the newspapers a little bit, but remembering the rat, and not wanting to get bitten, I left the apartment, closing the door behind me. I got a towel and did my best to dry out the carpet. I left my sliding glass door open to help air the place out. I printed out a notice to Jed that I had entered and fixed his sink, and placed it under the door. I later heard Jed come home, and he obviously discovered I had been in there, because he started freaking out, swearing, and throwing things around. I heard the couch in the hallway get rammed into my door. He threw a tantrum for another five minutes, and then I heard the front of the apartment door slam. I heard him approach my sliding glass door, swearing, and I can only imagine that after seeing it open, he decided not to come any further. Like I said, the guy was afraid of me. He left in his truck a few minutes later, to return in ten minutes. I heard strange moaning and stumbling around in the apartment after that. I think he was moving furniture or something. I heard breaking glass a few times, but after that, silence. The Kidnapping Lets get this over with. So as I said, I am a pretty easy going person and I could tolerate this situation pretty endlessly. But as I hinted earlier, Jed eventually made this situation unlivable. Heres how it goes down. Ive long been using a cellphone since Jed pretty much has control of our apartment phone, and whenever anyone calls hell answer with crazytalk. To my knowledge, he still has access to the store room in Longs Drugs, from which he has been stealing crates full of random stuff. Anyway, lately, Jed was more active than usual. I hear a lot of heavy stuff getting dragged around, and crashing, and lots of moaning, hollering, and other psychotic outbursts. One evening I hear Jed making a hell of a lot of noise, then silence. Then I hear the front door slam, and his truck goes off. A while later, he comes back, I hear more slamming into things, and a bunch of really high pitched loud vocalizations, kind of like whales mating. I get a call on my cellphone. This is basically how it goes. *ring* *pickup* Jed: SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSATAN! Me: Hi Jed. Youre nuts. Jed: I HAVE SARAH (Jeds ex girlfriend) Me: Really. Jed: LISTEN. I immediately hear a high pitched shrieking from the other end of the apartment, and banging and stumbling around. Sarah is a water polo champ. I think if he somehow got her into the apartment, he would have to hit her in the head with his big geologists hammer, because theres no way he would be able to wrestle her inside conscious. At any rate, I bet at the time that he hadnt grabbed Sarah, and the high pitched screaming was really that crazy motherfucker. Ive been getting all kinds of crazy phone calls from Jed lately, so I call bluff. Me: That sounds like you Jed. Jed: COME AND SEE. Me: I need to study. Bye Jed. *click* This is a very normal response from me, because by this point Jed has been calling me and saying all kinds of crazy shit. Basically, if I can hear him through the wall, I completely disregard anything he might say on the phone. Hes called me once and begged for help because hes stranded on the nascar race track in the middle of a race and I can clearly hear him through the wall. So I have a very trained automated response to Jeds calls: Hi Jed. Youre crazy. Thats nice. I need to study. Bye Jed. At this point, I smell smoke. This is very disconcerting, because as I said arlier, I have been living in fear of the whole place going up in flames. I stand up from my desk, and at that very moment, the power goes out, and I hear Jed laughing like crazy through the wall. I hear what sounds like something banging against the pipes in his bathroom, and some other, deeper noises, which I havent heard before. The noises have a sort of deep bass resonance, like a big drum, as if a bull or some other large creature were banging around over there. Jeds a small guy, and I didnt think him capable of moving shit around heavy enough to make that kind of noise with that degree of frequency. Since I smelled smoke and the power was out, I grab my gigantic wrench, smear some vics on my nose, put on my leather jacket, put on a motorcycle helmet I confiscated from Jed, and prepare myself for battle, maglight in hand. I am really psyched up at this point. I know a lot of you will be saying that I was stupid for operating like this, but I reasoned with myself that I had better go over there just in case he HAD captured some poor girl and was, I dunno, by the noise of it, bludgeoning her to death with a tuba. I headed around to Jeds car and looked inside. I saw he had rope and there was blood inside the cabin. I tried the door, it was locked. I smashed the window with a wrench and went inside the cabin. Behind the seat was some bloody rags. Ohhhh shit. At this point I decide I had better get the fuck in there and stop whatever he was up to. I felt really guilty at this point for letting it get this far. I decided that if I were to go in there and die, I wouldve earned it for letting him get that crazy for that long. I trucked it over to the door, set my wrench on the ground, and fumbled for my keys. I unlocked the door but it wouldnt give. The door was moist. I didnt quite understand that. I pushed and pushed but it hardly moved an inch. So I started stomping at the door as hard as I could. Eventually I heard something slide and shift and collapse on the other side of the door, and I gave it another kick. My foot actually made a hole and went through the door, and I fell over. I started freaking out because I was worried Jed would stab my boot or something, so I struggled and hurt my ankle. I also broke my foot from the kicking. Eventually I calmed and got my foot out of the door, and bodychecked the door. It came flying off the hinges, and came completely to pieces. The Journey In Ok, so I bashed the door in, and I went flying into the apartment, head first into a wall that is right in front of the doorway. The couch had been barricaded against the door, and my kicking caused it to tip over. It was still partially blocking the door. I immediately started struggling wildly once I was on the floor, flailing my wrench and maglight everywhere in case something was about to jump on me. I immediately exited the apartment, grabbed a metal patio chair, and hurled it into the blackened apartment in case anyone was in there. The motorcycle helmet was making it really hard to hear any kind of ambush, and it was covered in grease and filth from the couch, so I ditched it, and proceeded inside. It was night time out so I didnt get the benefit of a good light source from outside, and my maglight had grease on it. I saw a glow coming from the corner. I tried to smell if there was smoke coming from a particular direction, but the Vics vaporub made it difficult. I swung my light around the room and found it full of trash like it was before. There was no way I could ascertain whether Jed was hiding under something. I did note that some of the newspapers were covered in what looked like splotches of blood. From my forensics training I could gather from the splotches that whatever shed them was moving at a high rate of speed through the apartment. I bounded over the couch into the apartment, landing on my broken foot, and falling on my face, in a lot of pain. I remembered the tarantulas and freaked out again, scrambling to my feet and stumbling over towards the source of light. I discovered that Jed had stolen a large floodlight from Longs drugs, which was in the corner, smouldering the carpet. I grabbed that and quickly shone it all over the place. Suddenly I saw that there was a guy about 6 feet tall wearing a beige suit about two feet away from me, so I flipped the fuck out and tackled it. It turned out to be a cardboard standup of Captain Kirk Jed got somehow. I picked up my wrench again and limped onward. MS Paint image of Martin going at Kirk The apartment was completely silent by this point. All I could hear was some kind of dull tubal thumping from inside the place, that same dull bass noise I heard earlier. Remembering my crack training at counterstrike, instead of going further in, I limped over to the kitchen area and flung shit around to make sure that nobody was hiding under the newspapers. I could see that he had gotten a lot more crap since the last time I was here. There were mason jars of urine in the kitchen, along with gallon jugs of the stuff. There were a lot of things he had obviously stolen from longs drugs. There was a crate of sour patch kids all over the place. On one wall was a poster of homer simpson naked drinking beer, and a bunch of knives had been stabbed into it. I was too angered and pumped up to be frightened. I opened the refridgerator and stomped the shelves apart while I was at it, just to be sure he wasnt hiding in there. I had a huge floodlight but it couldnt illuminate everything all the time, especially with the dank murk of mold spores and the smoke, so I ended up trying to shine it everywhere at once as I proceeded. The common closet was closed, so I kicked that in and swung my wrench into the dark area within. I hit something soft so I kept pounding at it, but it wasnt human. It was a trash bag full of something soft and yielding. I gave it a kick and moved on. I ripped the doorway off of the hall closet and swung my wrench inside, but I only hit a few canned goods in there. I could hear high pitched shrieks coming from the interior of his room. His hallway was pretty fucking well blocked with shit, so I started grabbing things and chucking them into the common room. He had a gigantic stuffed pluto doll, about as big as a gorilla, which I chucked. Among the other things I hurled was a futon I recognized as salvaged from the end of our block, some patio furniture, a bag full of mcdonalds playpen balls, and something which was big, black, disgusting, soft, covered in growht, which I cannot, even to this day, identify. I crawled through the remaining debris with the wrench in front of me. This is embarassing, but I forgot to mention. As I was hurling stuff, I had my wrench in my hand still, and so I hit myself in the face with it. It required some stitches, and, since I had hit the trashbag full of feces with the wrench, it got infected. So to tally it up, we have one broken foot, one twisted ankle, one gouged and splintered shin, and one bleedingassed face. So anyway, I am crawling through the hole Ive made in the blockaded hallway. I finally realize why he has been making so much noise. The fucker has made some kind of evil fortress. If my room is the fortress of light, his is the fortress of evil. And feces. I crawl through the hole and pop out in his room. My strategy when playing doom 3, when I knew something bad was about to happen in a room I dropped into, was to run around like crazy in the dark and fling grenades. Well, instead of doing the slick commando thing and dropping into a crouch and assessing the situation, I popped out of that hallway barricade with my wrench and flashlight, and ran like crazy into the pitch black room, swinging around at anything and everything. I connected with some stuff but nothing human. My foot failed me and I fell over and crawled like mad to a corner. I dove for my flashlight, picked it up, and assessed the room. This place was full of fucking hostess products. The guy must have stolen at least two crates worth of the damn things. They were still in their wrapping. Twinkies, hostess cupcakes, all kinds of stuff. There was nobody in the room, but there was blood all over the place. I could hear that strange bass ressonance from inside the bathroom. There was actually a light coming from there, it was rosy red, coming from a crack in the bathroom door. The Final Showdown Im splicing this in because I was a lazy fucker and failed to describe the guys room: the very air in Jeds room was absolutely thick with mold and smoke, which I couldnt smell from the vix, but it still stung my eyes anyway. He had smeared all kinds of crazy gibberish on the walls with what looked like red lipstick, and the walls themselves were absolutely covered in growth. The barricades in the hallway mustve been there for a while, because they essentially kept a lot of moisture in the air in Jeds back section. Also, I forgot to mention this as well, but as I was running like a sissy through Jeds room, I knocked into his mattress which he had leaned against the side door a few weeks prior (my estimate). The mattress was completely soaked and very heavy, and the instant it hit me I thought I had fallen into an insidious trap or something, so I further injured myself by trying to struggle out from underneath it. Jed was making these freaky noises the moment I burst into his room, but the echo chamber effect of the bathroom and ventillation system, and the strange nature of the noises, made it difficult to determine where the hell they were coming from. Also, there were tons of boxes of hostess cupcakes and other similar products. The carpets in his room were really rank. The previous water leak had made them dank with mold, and I can only imagine what the high fecal content of the air did. It was difficult to breathe, and nearly impossible to see, which really added to my panic. It was almost like I had been buried alive. The scrawlings on the wall, though I didnt really get to see them in much detail because I was far more concerned with other things at the time, were just creepy. The vibrations made me think for a second or two that he had tunnelled under the apartment and Id have to go into some kind of underground basement hed made. Edit: Scrawlings on the wall from what I saw consisted of nonsense latin words, tons of triangles within triangles within triangles trailing all over the place, and a few goatsatan faces made of triangles. I got to my feet and regained my composure. I stomped over the hostess cupcakes and other misc crap he had lying on the ground. I would limp every time I remembered I had a hurt foot, but really, by this time, I didnt give a shit about the pain. I heard the shrieking from inside the bathroom, like some kind of high pitched wailing, and the strange bass resonance. I kicked open the bathroom door and screamed at the top of my lungs, YOU FUCKING FUCK SHIT. I wasnt in the right mind to come up with awesome atch phrases, so lets pretend I screamed something bannable like, The juice is loose! I stomped into the bathroom and was immediately PHYSICALLY STRUCK by the most powerful odor I have ever, ever encountered. My nose was pretty vixed up, but somehow, my eyeballs felt like they could smell the odor. I swung my wrench before I really looked to see what was going on and totalled what was left of the sink. In the corner of the bath tub I saw Jed writhing around with a golden metallic obje ct in the shit lasagna. He was freaking out and screaming. The other thing I noticed was the fire. In the remains of the toilet tank was a bunch of flaming papers, right next to a can of paint thinner. I figured that Jeb threw in the thinner thinking it would burst into flames, but he neglected to uncap the thing. So I grabbed the can of paint thinner and in one swift motion clocked Jeb in the head with it. He started freaking out even more, and at this point I could see that the object he was writhing with in the tub was a saxophone. He seemed to be bleeding all over his head but it was hard to tell because of the shit smeared everywhere, coming out onto the floor. The lightbulb was covered in either nail polish or blood. MS Paint image of Martin storming the bathroom I backed out of the room and grabbed a jug of urine, and threw it at the fire. Remembering I should probably uncap the jug before using it to extinguish flames, I grabbed another one and actually poured it out. By this time Jeb was trying to get out of the bath tub, so I stomped at him with my boot, closed the bathroom door, and jammed the fuck out of there after one final check for any hostages in the bedroom. Then I got the fuck out of there, rammed the exterior door with a patio table, and called the cops, the fire department, an ambulance, and, after getting back into my place and looking up the number, the landlord. There. Done. Oh, and aftermath, there was some court action for back rent, but all said and done they couldnt prove I was witholding rent because I paid Jed with cash on the barrel head, and I ended up actually getting paid money to stay there in the long run. I still have Jeds things to this day and to my knowledge he is in a nutbarn or something.

With reference to the issues of International Essay

With reference to the issues of International Justice,Torture,Landmines campaign, Lesbian&Gay Rights examine how the UN Charter - Essay Example 324). IGOs engage in treaty-making; encourage international lawmaking to become democratized by including more states in making treaties, not just the civilized states; instigate and enforce international law; and empowering NGOs and other non-state actors to act in advocating for victims of human rights abuses (Alvarez, 2006, pp. 324-335). States rely on IGOs to fulfill their national goals, and are constrained by these organizations. Moreover, state participation in IGOs often transforms the internal structure of the governments involved, such as when they induce states to establish medical authorities to respond to requests by the World Health Organization, and induce states to give effect to its warnings on global warming (Alvarez, 2006, p. 335). Non-governmental organizations are other actors on the global stage. NGOs are organizations that bring out the facts about human rights abuses, as well as contribute to setting standards regarding the implementation, promotion and enforc ement of human rights norms (Steiner & Alston, 1996, p. 456). Because governmental agencies might be hesitant to call out other governmental agencies, for a range of reasons that concern diplomacy, NGOs are considered to be a necessary part of spreading the word about human rights abuses, and advocating for reform.... Among these organizations are labor unions, consumer unions and industrial associations, which advocate for economic concerns; racial, gender and religious groups; groups that are issue-oriented, such as environmental or educational organizations; groups that advocate for the elderly or the young; public interest groups who may be for universal health care or against corruption; etc. (Steiner & Alston, 1996, p. 457). NGOs have a variety of strategies at their disposal, as far as the reformation of human rights abuse. One strategy would be to use the country’s domestic law. This has the advantage of being politically expedient, as using a country’s own law is seen as carrying more politically clout than using an international standard, as using international standards are often seen as intrusive to a country’s people. However, oftentimes countries might not have very progressive domestic laws when it comes to human rights. In that case, a better strategy would be to use international standards to attempt to make that country reform (Steiner & Alston, 1996, p. 458). NGOs must be impartial to be effective – in other words, they must not be affiliated with a certain political party. In other words, the group cannot be beholden to one particular party, or else that group will not investigate abuses perpetrated by that party. This was a concern in Nicaragua, where there were many groups who claimed to speak for human rights, then actually these groups were a shill of one party or the other, and each party was using these groups as a weapon against the other party (Steiner & Alston, 1996, p. 459). Consider the evolution of the notion of INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE and the creation of the ICC as a case study to assess