Oh great, my neighbors got a firepit. Now instead of the boring get-togethers where they sit around the table in the backyard saying pretentious things that end in question marks, they’ll do more of that while also burning lots of resinous sticks that smell like piney grease. These are the next-door-basement neighbors, who I didn’t really notice before except when they a) didn’t clean up the dog poop, b) didn’t – still don’t, okay, maybe twice in the last year – take the trash cans to the curb, or c) smoked weed right outside of my living room window. But then one of them got a boyfriend and he might be living there now, and they’re outside almost all of the time, and when they’re not, the dog is for hours because she’s being neglected.

So I go out there to pet her and sometimes throw her ball for her, and then one of them comes out and tells her to come inside. Because it’s bad to get along with someone’s dog?

It’s not that we’re on unfriendly terms, I just don’t know how to talk to them without feeling awkward. This isn’t helped by the fact that one of them once had a seemingly full conversation with me standing right in front of her, and it was only like three minutes in that I realized she was talking to people on her iPad. Which might speak to her talents more than my social dumbfuckery, because everything was so seamless and I honestly had no idea what was going on until I did, at which point I just kind of slunk away in disgrace.

The next-door-upstairs neighbor is still cool, although I don’t see her as much anymore now that my schedule’s changed to whenever I see her outside, she’s talking on her phone. Usually on speaker, and usually about some people from her hometown. I don’t know anyone from her hometown (except the gay dude who stayed with her for a couple of weeks, who, when I didn’t see her or her dog for several days but he was still there, I kind of suspected that he’d murdered them both), so I just wave and go in the house, and wonder if I should go back outside again when she’s off the phone so I can, I dunno, make friends. Or try to make friends. Or figure out if I can even remember what that’s like.

Speaking of learning how to make new friends and things you should avoid when doing so, I recently learned that readers of this blog could see ads on it from time to time, and this is WordPress’s reason why.

Which is total BULLSHIT, by the way, as I’m already paying WordPress for the custom domain, and up until now, that’s been enough to operate the site. Also, it’s worth noting that I don’t get any share of the revenue generated by those ads that WordPress wants me to pay $30 a year to remove. Which means that if I don’t pay to keep them off this blog, WordPress gets the total share of click dollars from each one. If I do pay to keep ads off this blog, then they get that money, too.

And that’s fucking crazy. It’s also unfortunate, because no way I am paying WordPress $30 when it’s clearly a racket. I mean, I know the ads suck and I’m sorry they’re there, but I do have faith in my readers, and I’d like to think that none of you are the kinds of people who would even click on those ads in the first place, thus allowing WordPress make money off of a dick move like this.

So for those of you who read all the way to the end of the entries, please don’t click on those ads. They’re not mine. I didn’t want them. But I’m also not paying to remove them, because the whole thing is a scam and I don’t want to play.

WordPress isn’t my friend. At least one of my neighbors will never be my friend. But I would like to be friends with whomever Googled the title of this entry and was led to my blog, because they seem pretty down with a lot of absurd stuff.