The sticky note from the landlord on their apartment doors said, in effect, ‘like’ me on Facebook or get evicted.
Said one of the tenants, complaining to the news outlet, “I don’t want to be forced to be someone’s friend and be threatened to break my lease because of that. It’s outrageous as far as I’m concerned. It’s a violation of my privacy.”
Enter Lakewood’s leaders to make sure landlords locally don’t likewise leverage likeableness for leases.
In the spirit of Dr. Seuss, whose nonsensical writing – “it wakes up the brain cells” – and consequent outrageous and fantastical creatures which typically reflected “looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope,” here’s to the Lakewood City Council and its Rental Inspection Program (RIP): a telescope reversal and an outrageous violation of privacy for sure.
‘Sticky notes’ – Lakewood’s wrong-ended announcement of an educational program now that Ordinance No. 644 has been passed (August 1) – are now being printed for posting on landlord’s doors beginning next year.
While initially considering an upfront informational campaign that likely would have made unnecessary this new law with all manner of yet-to-be-drawn-up details, RIP “If I Ran the Zoo” architects recommended instead creating a sixth program to deal with property issues.
Gerald McGrew, a kid who would one day most certainly have become a prominent politician were he not the fictitious creation of Dr. Seuss’ imagination, upon visiting a zoo, finds that the exotic animals are “not good enough”.
When five programs are not good enough, why not create a sixth?
Why have a lion with four feet when you can introduce to the zoo one with ten?
And that was just the beginning, as it always is.
Like an ever-expanding government, the creatures of McGrew’s zoo escalated to the ever more bizarre and exotic including the “Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill, the world’s biggest bird from the island of Gwark, who eats only pine trees, and spits out the bark.”
Such is RIP, the six-toed Snip,
Snooping in rentals for clues,
Did the landlord do his job?
Otherwise he’s a slob,
In which case there will be fines to ensue.
RIP is the “new Zoo, the McGrew Zoo”,
coming to a city near you.
I’d understand this a little better if it wasn’t gibberish. If it’s a real issue, doesn’t it involve real rhetoric?
LOL…Bill W….you have no sense of humor what so ever….I thought David’s homage to Dr Suess and his poetic cynicism was hilarious!….Since Lakewood’s RIP program is a joke anyway, this seemed appropriate to me!
The title perfectly describes the writers of these letters.