Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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Yeah, this song and holiday special don't make Santa out to be the hero that Montgomery Ward and Rankin-Bass thought it did.

 

[dragoner]

For some reason until recently Sweet was completely washed from my memory. No idea why. They had a bunch of hits and "Ballroom Blitz" was a staple.

I bought Desolation Boulevard, probably around 79 or 80, same time buying Blondie, Soft Cell; all of these having big hits on the radio.

 

[Deset Gled]

Yeah, this song and holiday special don't make Santa out to be the hero that Montgomery Ward and Rankin-Bass thought it did.

On the same note, the plot of the Rankin Bass special doesn't happen anywhere near Xmas.

The main story with the reindeer games, running away with Hermie and Cornelius, and the Island of Misfit Toys happens when Rudolph is a child with no antlers. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it time skip afterwards where they fast forward multiple months and Rudolph grows up. Even then, the final confrontation with the Bumble happens a few days before Xmas. Xmas and the guide-the-sleigh bit only arrives in the final minutes of the show after the main narrative is concluded.

 

[trappedslider]

I think i may compartmentalize too much of what i do

 

[pukunui]

Well, this isn't just today, it's been ongoing for a while. Basically, a few weeks ago, some workers were replacing the retaining wall and fence between two properties neighboring ours to the east. In the process, those workers broke the sewer line. Whenever the front house uses water, it leaks foul-smelling water onto the back house's property. Some of it leaks out under our adjoining fence right where our cross-driveway drain is. So the sewage water runs down that and empties into the gulley trap that is right by our front door (don't ask me why the house's original builders decided to put a gulley trap right there).

We get enough bad smells from our swampy creek out back. We don't need actual sewage smells stinking up our house!

Well, I feel like I'm on a treadmill trying to deal with Watercare to get this fixed. The first crew that came out confirmed there was a leak but said it was probably the front house's private water line, not the main one. Another guy came out and used a camera to confirm where exactly the leak was. He spraypainted some markings on our driveway.

I emailed for an update after that. "We're sorry to hear you're still having trouble. Can you confirm it's still happening?" "Yes, it's still happening." "OK, we'll send someone out to take a look."

A third crew showed up. They seemed clueless about what was happening, so I had to fill them in on everything. They had a quick look and then left without doing anything.

Another email. "We're sorry to hear you're still having trouble. Can you confirm it's still happening?" "Yes, it's still happening." "Can you provide us with some photos?" "I sent photos with my initial fault report." "Those attachments have now expired. Can you send more?" sends more

Today I've got some more Watercare workers out there spreading some strong pine-scented disinfectant to cover up the smell while we wait for the engineers to come and do the actual repairs.

Every time I've asked Watercare if they've notified the neighbors in the front house, crickets. I don't know them (the house is rented, and the residents change every so often), so I haven't gone to speak with them myself. I know that our neighbors in the back house are aware of it, because I overheard the guy with the camera talking to them. It's also worse on their side.

It does at least seem like Watercare have decided that it is the public sewer system that's broken, so it is their responsibility to fix. I guess there are just more urgent jobs that need attending to first.

So they've come and dug up part of my driveway. Turns out it's a bigger issue than they first thought. There's a blockage upstream somewhere, but they can't see it with the cameras from this end, so they're going to have to go upstream and look down. Apparently, the leak has been bubbling away under the driveway for years and has only just reached the surface. So the workers doing the retaining wall work next door may not have been responsible after all!

They might have to make the hole bigger, which would make our driveway unusable. The trouble with that is there's no convenient other place to park our car because the main road has bus lanes and you can't park there at certain times of the day (in both the morning and the evening). There's not a lot of space in other people's driveways because they're all narrow, steep, and tight.

Crazy stuff!