Tom And Jerry Battle In Bangkok Part 2.

Reply from Gerry on July 6, 2010.

Re: TODAY WAS YOUR LAST LUCKY DAY

Really? That's not what my horoscope said.

I see this little poison pen letter of yours has been sitting in my inbox for a few days, but I just found it today (Monday), as this is a secondary email account and I don't check it regularly these days. Sorry to keep you waiting for a response. Interesting to see that you've felt it necessary to copy in a number of your friends on it, despite it being none of their concern, and despite several of them being virtual strangers to me. Seems you don't feel confident to address me without having your gang standing behind you, and wanted an audience biased in your favor as you carried out your attempted character assassination. Fine. I don't particularly care what your friends think of me or whether they choose to uncritically accept your lopsided version of reality without a large grain of salt, but for the sake of balance, I'll include them as I respond to your self-serving assertions, half-truths and distortions. After all, one good screed deserves another, don't you think? Incidentally, I can't help but wonder how many of them would enjoy living next door to you.

I find it very amusing that you describe yourself in such glowing terms -- "kind, charitable, gracious, considerate." I can't say these are the first adjectives that would spring to mind if I were asked to describe your character. On the other hand, you portray me as a "retarded, jerk off, psychotic, rude, delusional stooge, fucking creep, cretin, fuckhead." Very eloquent. And I'd never have guessed you knew so much about psychology! As it happens, that was one of my main areas of study at university, along with both general and human biology and a smattering of philosophy and literature. What was your area again? I seem to recall something about 'floral delivery truck driver'.

I was very kind to you today.

You've been kind to me on many occasions, Tom. Kind of an asshole.

You attacked my door. That is a direct attack on me.

I can see how you might identify with a mindless slab whose distinguishing feature is its knob.

Your unwarranted barrage of insults was impressive.

Thank you. And next time I'll get a warrant.

You must have been studying me for some time.
You called me a liar and a thief and a bully.

Well, if the shoe fits …

You mentioned that I lie to my girlfriend.

Telling someone you're 39 when in fact you're 54 sure sounds like lying to me. What do you call it? And I've heard other things from you as well that were, shall we say, somewhat lacking in verisimilitude. More on that in a moment.

And anyway, if I'm such a retarded, delusional, psychotic cretin, why should you care what I call you? Sounds to me like I might have hit a nerve.

Then you went on to say how I stay up all night then sleep all morning and wake up at 1pm. You must be monitoring my activities.

I'm afraid you flatter yourself to think I have been "studying" and "monitoring" you. Believe me, I have no interest whatsoever in your crass, shallow, cartoon cut-out of a life, but it's pretty difficult not to be acutely aware of the activities of such an obtrusive individual, especially when he's obsessively acting out his puerile, monomaniacal rock 'n' roll fantasies -- loudly -- only meters away from one's own living space, day in and day out. I'd like nothing better than to be blissfully unaware of your comings and goings, but your habit of banging the door shut behind you, as you almost always do, makes that impossible. And of course I know when you get up; how could anyone not know? It's always very peaceful around here until you start clattering around in the bathroom and begin your early-to-mid-afternoon barrage of noise pollution, as you bellow and shout along to your "music", most of which has about as much subtlety, depth and complexity as you apparently have. (Oh goodie, Jumpin' Jack Flash again, for the 20th time this month.)

Then you accused me of being a bully.

I know a bully when I encounter one, believe me. Being a scrawny little guy has made me an easy target for overbearing pricks like you for as long as I can remember. You willfully inflict your excessive noise on me, even though you know I'm trying to work over here. And despite my protests, you defiantly refuse to moderate your disruptive, in-your-face behavior, evidently taking pleasure in imposing on and provoking me. You know I am powerless to do anything about it and you revel in it. And now you have threatened me with violence for daring to call you on it. And that, sir, despite your blind denial, is bullying. And for your information, bullies are not just "in kid's [sic] school yards." They only get their start there. I guess you didn't see that British ex-PM Gordon Brown was under fire for his bullying behavior only just a few months ago. Maybe if you paid more attention to what's happening on the world stage, instead of the one at Baccara, you might know that.

The threatening, intimidating tone of your email speaks for itself as just another indication of your bullyboy nature. And I've already noted your tactic of bringing your 'gang' along. Of course, the flip-side of bullying is cowardice; bullies only ever force themselves on those smaller than them. I really doubt you'd be deliberately antagonizing a neighbor who was 6'4" and 220 pounds.

By calling me a thief you are obviously referencing the raincoat that I so graciously agreed to deliver in Canada for you so you could save the postage money. Since the raincoat was never received by the intended receiver you with your mildly retarded intelligence and logic have determined that I stole your raincoat. For your information my room mate who does not know you paid the postage for you at a Shoppers Drug Mart in Kitchener. Your intended receiver had moved and did not provide a forwarding address.

I'm hardly surprised that you've chosen to misrepresent the facts of this situation, given your utterly disgraceful and appallingly irresponsible conduct throughout the entire sorry saga you managed to turn it into. Yes, you "graciously" agreed to deliver it for me, and that's exactly the point. Because you then proceeded to break our agreement and didn't deliver it. That's the crux of the matter, whatever else may or may not be true. And over the course of more than a year, you never really took any responsibility, nor did you ever provide a coherent, let alone credible, account of exactly what happened.

To briefly review:
In October, 2008, I gave you a package and asked you to take it to Canada, put it in the mail, get a receipt, and I'd reimburse you. What could be simpler? In January 2009, you came back to Thailand, and when I informed you it hadn't arrived and asked you what happened to it, I find out that rather than mailing it as per our agreement,  you'd instead handed it off to someone else! Someone who is a complete stranger to me. And then despite spending a full three months there, presumably in the same house with this 'room mate', you never even bothered to follow up with her to ensure she had in fact fulfilled what was your responsibility in the first place. Nope, you stood there with a dumb expression on your face and claimed this was the first you knew about the situation. Duh?

Then you spent three months here and did absolutely nothing about it, followed by another three months back in Canada. Upon your return, you gave me some hopelessly garbled story about how your friend/roommate 'Carly' gave it to her sister, who gave it back to you, who --  incredibly! -- gave it back to Carly again, -- DUH? --  who supposedly then finally put it in the mail. But, wonder of wonders, it somehow nevertheless failed to arrive.

As for your ridiculous red herring that "Your intended receiver had moved and did not provide a forwarding address," … excuse me, bozo, nice try, but she moved SEVEN FUCKING MONTHS after I'd given it to you! I could have had it delivered from Thailand to Canada by Express Tortoise in less time. Probably a lot more reliably, too. Oh, and she did check back with her previous landlord. Repeatedly.

And now you come out with this utter nonsense about how your "room mate who does not know (me)" ever-so-generously "paid the postage for (me)."  What preposterous bullshit! Why on earth would I expect a total stranger, or anyone else for that matter, to pay the postage for me? Obviously, it was my intention from the beginning to cover the expense, and I never intended anyone but YOU to handle the responsibility. Not 'Carly', not her sister, or any other member of your circus. Had you simply mailed the bloody thing and brought me a receipt, as agreed, I'd have reimbursed you and that would have been the end of it.

The most astonishing thing of all in this farcical saga is that you/Carly have not produced a receipt to prove when and where the package was finally (allegedly) mailed and to reclaim the expense. Under the extremely questionable circumstances, what kind of totally negligent, unthinking idiot, upon finally get around to taking care of the matter after the better part of a year had passed, would then not be sure to hang on to the receipt in order to demonstrate that everything was in fact above board, despite things appearing glaringly to the contrary?

I'm sorry, but given a story that convoluted, nonsensical, and full of holes, who's going to buy it? Not me, I'm afraid. The whole thing stinks of deception and underhandedness. I suppose it's possible you're not a thief, but under the circumstances, and given you've demonstrated that you're hardly a man of your word, who could blame me for being suspicious? I tend to go by the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. At the very least, you've proven to be astonishingly irresponsible, and I wouldn't advise anyone to entrust you with anything more important than fetching a newspaper.

All this time I thought you were upset, banging walls, slamming doors and generally being rude about the loud music.

Oh, it's about the loud music all right, not that you have had the decency to show a little courtesy and respond with anything other than childish defiance, despite your laughable self-characterization as Mr Considerate. Your cavalier mishandling of the delivery of my package simply adds to my resentment of your snotty selfish attitude. For very personal, family reasons, it was very important to me that it reach its intended recipient. I can't even begin to relate to the way you just basically shrugged the whole thing off, almost as if it had nothing to do with you. I guess we were just brought up with very different values. 

Moving on to the rest of your crap …

Your reputation for not getting along well with others especially neighbours in adjacent rooms to your room precedes you. You have made problems for others who have had the pleasure of living next or near to you.

But on the other hand, none of your neighbors have ever had any problem with you, have they?

There are a group of tenants at Saithip Grandville whom you have had issues with.

Well, I suppose two sort of loosely constitutes a 'group'. The noise polluter and the air polluter.

Your urine tossing escapade directed at your former neighbour who chose to smoke in his own room against your demands is legendary.

Is that intended to shame and embarrass me? Sorry, but it doesn't. Yeah, so I threw some piss on his balcony to try and make the selfish idiot understand that nobody likes to be on the receiving end of someone else's offensive filth; so fucking what? It did him no harm whatsoever, in contrast to the egregious harm he was doing to me. Actually, I picked up the idea here in Thailand, except that here they throw bags of excrement directly at other people in protest; I just wanted to stink up his balcony a little bit in hopes of making my point. Of course, it was utterly futile. There is no action or logical argument that can override a craven drug addict's all-consuming imperative to get his next fix. Just as there is apparently no appeal to reason or compassion that will penetrate your thick skull.

Are you seriously suggesting that his 'right' to indulge in such a stupid and deleterious habit somehow trumped my right to breathe uncontaminated air, just because he was doing it in his own room? Maybe you don't read much science, but second-hand and third-hand tobacco smoke comprises a deadly cocktail of more than 250 poisonous gases, chemicals, and metals, and it does not recognize boundaries and confine itself to a single room, though smokers and other uncritical-minded fools (or those with self-serving motives) might delude themselves into thinking that is the case. As is obvious to anyone with a nose and a set of lungs not already deadened by the filthy habit itself, it diffuses over a huge area and seeps through wall fixtures, under doors, everywhere. I was being awakened at six o'clock each morning, choking and gasping for breath, with a sore throat and stinging eyes, and within days of his arrival developed a chronic cough and short-windedness. Petty, unreasonable, demanding jerk that I am, I strongly objected to a newcomer turning my room of seven years into a gas chamber.

Naturally, I realize that you're not really trying to defend smokers here at all, but rather, trying to create a smokescreen (ha-ha) to justify your own offensive behavior. You want to make the case, however erroneous, that people's right to choose what they do in their own rooms is somehow sacrosanct, conveniently disregarding how it affects the rights of the people around them. Maybe you gleaned that rather simplistic view from your Ethics class at the Academy of Floral Delivery, but the way I learned it is that one person's rights end where another's begin, and I believe that is the correct view and try to live by it.

Your attitude sort of reminds me of that of the Redshirts, who have the mistaken notion that concepts such as democracy and individual freedom mean they have the right to do whatever they want, whenever and wherever they please, regardless of the consequences for others. Now that I think of it, The Reds might actually have a job for a guy like you, since their two previous high-level farang supporters are currently unavailable due to another engagement. The Reds like loud music day and night, and have lots of big loudspeakers and amplifiers with volume knobs that can be turned way up. And they just love to hear jackasses braying into microphones for hours on end. Sounds like just the thing for a man of your talents.

I was gracious once again when I offered to help you change rooms when we both realized that you do not like living beside me. I am now advising you to move beside someone who shares your ideas and schedule. I don't.

So I've noticed, O Gracious One. Of course if you'd helped me move like you helped me deliver my package, I guess I'd have ended up camping out in the hallway all these months and wondering where all my stuff had disappeared to.

Our building is full of empty rooms. Why is a jerk off like you living beside me?

I've often asked myself the very same question. Except that I normally hyphenate jerk-off when I use it as a noun.

I have been in my room more than 8 years. You just moved next door and are telling me what to do.

And nobody tells YOU what to do, do they. Especially when they've only lived here 2 months less long than you. Brash fucking upstarts!

Since I don't behave according to your rules …

Well, uh, no-o-o, not my rules. I mean, I'd love to be able to take credit and everything, but the idea has actually been around in one form or another for roughly 4000 years. It was contained in the philosophies of all the great ancient civilizations -- Egypt, Greece, China, India, Judea --  and can be found in virtually every world religion. It's known as the ethic of reciprocity, and also serves as a basic tenet of human rights, as well as a tool for conflict resolution in various cultures throughout the world. I'm surprised your mother never mentioned it to you.

In any case, rules is such a restrictive-sounding word. To take a more instructive and self-determining approach, I find the suitability of any behavior can be easily tested by conducting a simple little thought experiment, and asking, "What if everyone did it?" Imagine an entire building full of people as "considerate" as you.

… that must be your logic for calling me a bully. Bullies are in kid's [sic] school yards.

No, I'm afraid not. Please see above.

You're an adult. Behave as one.

You might consider taking your own advice. I'm not the one carrying on like a spoiled 15-year old brat living in his mom's basement and pretending he's the biggest, baddest, rock 'n' rollin'est, super cool dude on the planet. Can you say 'arrested development', boys and girls?

Get in touch with your "not fucked inner self".

Unfortunately, my inner self isn't a virgin either. But thanks for the advice, Doctor Davis.

Take your psychotic nonsense somewhere else.

Ah, but where to take it; that's the question. First I have to figure out where it would be most appreciated.

Saithip Grandville is not yours. The world does not evolve [sic] around your petty expectations and demands.

Gee, thanks for telling me. All this time I've been thinking I owned the place, and now it turns out you do. Silly, petty, demanding, me.

You upset women and their children today with your bad tempered display. They heard you on the 8th floor and all the way down to the lobby.

Yes, it's really not very nice to upset and disturb other people, isn't it? But I don't get the part about why it's okay for you to do it, but not me.

You owe them all an apology.

You're a fine one to be grandly declaring who should apologize to whom, and for what! Maybe YOU should apologize to them as well, since your insistent unruliness is at the root of it all.

Do not apologize to me.

Oh, don't worry. I have no intention of doing any such thing.

I don't need you scratching your guilty itch around me.

How about my eczema? Or my balls? Or my scratch and sniff collection? Would that be okay? Do you like lavender?

Just as I never needed your raincoat.

Yes, I'm sure that whoever tore open the package to help themselves to its contents was very disappointed that a parcel hand-delivered from Bangkok didn't contain any heroin, or gemstones or cash; just a lousy all-weather jacket and a private personal message.

You are a delusional stooge.

Oh really? Moe, Larry, or Curly? I suppose, being delusional, I could even be all three, nyuck-nyuck-nyuck.

It is common knowledge around here that you hate me.

Believe it or not, I don't actually hate you. I just find your behavior very annoying a lot of the time and consider you an inferior man, in the Confucian sense of being rather ordinary and lacking refinement, in contrast to the superior man, who is well developed in social, moral and philosophical terms.

If I had known I would not have been so charitable and considerate of you over the years.

Yes, it's a shame. I certainly could have done without your distinctive brand of charity and consideration. By the way, do you even own a dictionary?

In January you took a knife into a mutual friend's room and said you were going to kill Art with it.

No, I said I was 'so angry I could kill' you. It's called a figure of speech. I certainly hope you're not quite that literal-minded, given that you threatened no fewer than three times to kill me on Wednesday. I believe your exact words were, "Your life is in danger," twice, and "Your life is over." I hope you'll at least be good enough to let me know if you actually were serious, so that I can make funeral arrangements.

As for the "knife", the little cutting blade was for in case I ran into you and/or your friends, as I was likely to say something fairly unpleasant, given my anger at your totally inconsiderate and disruptive behavior, and, knowing what your brute response to that would likely be, wanted to be sure that I could persuade you to keep your distance.

As you yourself implied a few sentences ago, this is a quiet residential building (except when you're around, of course) with women, children, small families, working people. You rolled in here with your boorish friends and turned the seventh floor into your own little Nana Hotel, which is where they should have been staying in the first place. You disturbed my sleep repeatedly, with your noisy comings and goings at all hours along with your assorted bargirls, and interfered with my work at a very critical time, to the extent that it nearly cost me my job. I had very good reason to be furious, especially as you pulled this stunt after having assured me you understood my situation and would make an effort to be accommodating. Right. Another demonstration of what your word is worth.

You are a fucking creep. I am keeping a close watch on you. Never ever enter the elevator that I am using. You are an unstable time bomb. Your little brain bomb goes off anywhere near me or my apartment again you will have problems the likes of which you will not understand.

Oh, you'd be surprised at what I'm capable of understanding. Certainly a lot more than this tedious, clichéd, B-movie tough guy talk.

I am up working some nights until 3am.

Oh, now you're a workin' man, are you? It must be really nice to be able to work undisturbed by some noisy, inconsiderate jerk. Unfortunately, I don't have the option of working in the middle of the night when it's mercifully peaceful, as I need to deal with my contacts in Europe during the afternoon. I'd really like to be able to hold conference calls without it sounding like I'm calling in from the Men's Room of some low-grade beer bar with incessant trashy, adolescent music blaring from the next room.

I sleep when I want to.

Yes, and I guess you haven't noticed the fact that from the time I get up at 7-8 o' clock until you haul your carcass out of bed sometime in the afternoon, I scarcely make a sound, knowing that it might disturb you. Not that it's to show deference to you personally. It's just the way I was brought up. Anyway, so much for reciprocity.

I don't steal and I don't lie …

I notice you haven't denied bullying. Doesn't really fit with the overall tone here, does it.

… and absolutely nothing about my life or my schedule is any of your business.

Then why do you insist on constantly shoving it in my face?

If you ever make any untoward actions against myself, my loved ones or any of my friends that causes myself or anyone misfortune I will see to it that you deeply, forever regret crashing my door today.

Blah, blah, blah; more hackneyed B-grade tough guy talk. Is that all you've got? What, now I'm stalking your friends and "loved ones"? Give me a break. And as far as I can see, your only loved one is your precious self.

You made your mess. You clean it.

Is anyone else getting bored with this tedious string of clichés?

You insulted my integrity.

You have integrity? Coulda fooled me.

I was very kind to you. I will not be kind next time.

Uh-huh. Are we almost finished here?

I do not wake up any day to tolerate bullshit from a cretin like you.

No, you wake up every day expecting others to tolerate bullshit from a cretin like you.

A police report has been filed.

Yeah? What are the charges? Trespassing Against Assholes Who Trespass Against Us? I'm sure the cops are all over it. Or at least they will be, just as soon as they run out of motorcyclists to shake down.

You have been warned. Stay away from me.

Maybe you haven't noticed; I've shunned you like the plague for the better part of the past year.

Seek professional help.

Yadda yadda yadda.

Until you resolve your issues enjoy the music fuckhead.

Well thanks, Art. I wouldn't expect anything less from a man of your calibre. Or should I say, anything more.

Please don't send me any more emails. I have more important things to deal with, and I would expect your friends have as well.