This week Jack Allison of Struggle Session (@strugglesesh) helps us cover the worst website in existence, The LPA, an organization designed to help landlords suppress any modicum of human compassion they may have once had. Also, the STRIKEingly bad takes generated by the Uber/Lyft labor action. Subscribe at www.patreon.com/miniondeathcult or retweet this episode from www.twitter.com/miniondeathcult for a chance to win an official North Korea Summit commemorative coin featuring the two leaders of the natural world: Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump. Music: Show Me The Body - Camp Orchestra
The liberals are destroying California, and conservative humor gone awry... Conservative humor gone awry is going to fascistphonia today, so stay tuned.
We're going to take a few pictures of the desert and how their policies are actually messing it up.
It's not beautiful when you go across that border.
Stay tuned guys, we'll show you exactly what it looks like when the storm gets us.
All there in Bartholston.
Stay tuned.
Alright, I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
And we are Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
Your uncle's racist Facebook feed is responsible.
We're documenting it.
So, we have a just jam-packed show for everyone today, so we're gonna try and get to it as quickly as possible.
But first, I just wanted to plug the Patreon episode from last week.
Very fun stuff.
It was a bonus segment.
It's about an hour-long episode, mostly about a petition to get social justice warrior Brie Larson To step down from the role of Captain America so that it can be played by, quote, a gay black woman.
This petition has had 12,000 signatures by the time that we released it.
And it's obviously just a fake thing.
It's obviously just a really transparent 4chan prank to own Brie Larson for caring about minorities or whatever.
But a ton of excellent reactions, a ton of excellent bad takes in that episode.
Like people who don't get that it's a right-wing prank and get mad at it.
People who don't get that it's a joke and then try to make fun of it using the exact same joke.
That's one of my favorites.
And then people who do get that it's a prank but are terrible at keeping up that illusion.
Go ahead.
What I will say is that none of the takes that we go over are as bad as Alex's canceling ass take where he calls Captain Marvel Captain America because apparently that mega woman wasn't enough for him.
But anyways, moving on, you have to listen to the bonus episode for the rest of that stuff.
Yeah, I don't know.
I like to think of it as the Virgin doesn't see race and the Chad doesn't see sex.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, Patreon.com slash MinionDeathCult for that episode.
Tony also shares a story about getting owned by the cops recently.
Yeah, it was brutal.
It was pretty funny.
We also talk about what, like, pickle politics, I believe?
The intersection between pickles and anti-Semitism?
And we are debuting this episode a... what do you call it?
What do you call it, Tony?
Like a campaign?
A real chance to change your life.
A real... we're gonna help the people out.
We're gonna give them a chance to help themselves out.
So anybody who subscribes to the Patreon, including people who are already subscribed to the Patreon, before June will enter into a chance to win a Korean Peace Talks Summit coin.
This is from last year when Trump went to North Korea, and we have two memorial coins here.
These are just beautiful, beautiful tricolor coins featuring Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un facing off with the American flag and North Korean flag in the background.
These were, as we know, the immensely successful peace talks.
Historic in nature that ended with the full nuclear disarmament of North Korea, and I don't believe they're making these anymore.
It already happened.
So, if you subscribe to the Patreon, or if you are already subscribed to the Patreon before June, we will randomly select a patron to receive this coin.
Plus, you'll get all the content we talk about every week.
There's hours of bonus content there for you.
If you do not want to join the Patreon, For some reason, or if you want to double your chances of getting this coin, there's another way to do it.
We got two of these coins.
What you're going to do is you're going to go to Twitter, and I will have posted the link to this episode in the Twitter feed by tomorrow morning, 8 a.m.
Pacific Standard Time.
If you retweet that, you will be entered into a chance to win the second coin.
And you don't need to do a hashtag or anything because I think that's too complicated.
That's pretty amazing.
We're basically giving away two pieces of our generation's Berlin Wall.
So MinionDeathCult on Twitter.
Retweet that specific tweet.
There'll be cover artwork and all that.
And also Patreon.com slash MinionDeathCult for hours of bonus content and a chance to win the other coin.
All right, so let's get to the episode.
We have a very special guest here who has been patient while I've been rambling on.
We have Jack Allison.
How you doing, Jack?
Hi there, thanks for having me, guys.
Yeah, thanks so much for joining us.
We know you're probably pretty bored in between all the other stuff you're doing, so we're happy to fill that slot.
I truly am very bored all the time.
That is actually, I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but I am sincerely bored so often.
You know, I will probably retweet the episode as I would have done, you know, with or without, but am I eligible for the coin or is there a, like, no, you know, are you guys eligible for the coin even?
Well, I don't know, see, Tony and I have relinquished our eligibility.
Okay.
Yeah, but you, I don't know, it presents an interesting... You know what?
I'm going to relinquish my, you know, my entry into it as well.
You know, at great personal loss, I guess, and I just want everybody to respect what a kind thing I've done for all the listeners of this show.
Yeah, I was gonna say, because if you're in the competition, it sort of creates a perverse incentive for you not to promote the show.
Get less retweets, you know?
That's true.
That is true.
To, like, retweet it and then be like, you know, the retweet below, I don't stand by.
Please don't retweet the tweet that I just retweeted.
Yeah, yeah.
Ignore this.
This is really none of your business.
Yeah, please ignore the previous tweet because that's a personal matter.
In fact, please mute that account.
This is a private matter.
Please do not engage.
Yeah, so Jack Allison is of course co-host of the Struggle Session podcast and also co-host of Jack AM on Twitch.
Yeah.
So, like I said, probably pretty bored doing a daily Monday through Friday show on Twitch, which is at, what, 7 a.m.
Pacific Standard Time?
That's at 7 a.m.
Pacific, yeah.
You know, I found out we're in Pacific Daylight Time right now.
We're in the PDT cycle at the moment, so it's actually not in Pacific Standard Time.
I have to correct you there.
Just wishful thinking on my part.
I know, it's one of my most animating issues is, you know, getting rid of this Daylight Savings Time.
Yeah, it's a bunch of bullshit.
Yeah, really bad, really bad.
I'm sort of like, first and foremost about Daylight Savings Time, and my second big thing is Medicare for All.
Yeah.
In that order.
In that order.
You will die on the one hill before we can get to the next.
Yeah, I can't support any candidate who doesn't support getting rid of daylight savings time even if they fully support Medicare for All.
That's your litmus test.
That's my litmus test.
Yeah, mine is I'll support any doctor who supports Medicare for All unless they also perform circumcisions.
Yeah, see I think that's fair.
That's fair.
You know take it's a big tent.
It's a big tent Okay, we ready to get into this first topic here.
Yeah Okay, so we're gonna cover the the uber strike.
That's a great introduction to the topic Some uber drivers A relatively small amount, I'll just say, compared to how many Uber and Lyft drivers there are, because this was a strike for both companies.
Turned off their apps on Wednesday, the 8th, last week.
Something that I personally wholeheartedly endorse.
For those of you who don't know, I'm a UPS driver.
We do have a union, and I feel nothing but solidarity with any working people who are trying to unionize for more control of their workplace, agitate for better benefits and pay, but especially, you know, so-called independent contractors who are just given the shortest shrift of all Mm-hmm.
These are people who don't even have, like, the scant workplace protections that your average employee does.
They're exempt from minimum wage laws.
I mean, that was what the, like, that's what Uber, that's how, that's how Uber disrupted the whole system.
They decided to, like, pay everybody less.
Yeah, imagine that.
What a wild business plan.
Mm-hmm.
It's really weird because It made us kind of lean on the importance of a place to clock in and like really like kind of tip our caps to capitalism.
Oh yeah I guess it's kind of good that I go to a workplace where I can make eye contact with other people that I can maybe link up with and you know burn this mother down.
Well, you know, but capitalism at its core, Uber is a better, you know, more pure form of capitalism.
They're now getting rid of the idea that you can possibly organize with other people because you know who they are and see them.
Totally.
Talk about fucking atomization.
Jesus Christ.
Each one, like your car is your workplace, you know, and you don't even, you don't know any other employee unless you were already friends with them when they started working.
Right.
I actually, I go to a couple, um, Uber meetups.
I don't, I don't drive for Uber, but I just like to go to the meetups.
It's really like, cause I can't afford to actually use the app, but I really treasure those conversations I have when I'm driving with them.
Yeah.
So I go to the meetups to try to like meet interesting people.
Right.
Yeah.
Since I don't, since I have a shitty car, I can't drive Uber.
So I, that's how I, so you know, I can start maybe agitating there.
Well, you know what Uber would say to do, and what they do in fact say to do, is if you do have too shitty of a car, you should go and lease a car.
Incredible.
To be able to drive for Uber.
And in fact, they actually have some partnerships, you know, with car dealerships that they might even be able to send you over to.
And then you'd be able to earn, like, you know, $200 a week or whatever when you, you know, lease a Mercedes-Benz or something like that.
Man, yeah, and I would stick with, like, you know, a Kia, some sort of Kia, like a Kia Soul.
I think that's the ultimate Uber vehicle.
A Kia Soul, I mean, that's like, yeah, that's, uh, that's your ultimate Uber X vehicle.
That's your ultimate Uber X. Not black, of course, or, uh... No.
God, no.
I don't know what the other two are.
I would never drive black.
I would never drive black.
Um, so, not everybody was happy with this, uh, labor action, um, I do have issues with it, and I don't mean like these are unique issues to me.
It's just that it's such a nascent group of workers that there isn't much infrastructure, there isn't much communication, there aren't...
Right.
You know, the apparati that you would normally use to get the word out to, you know, people you want to strike.
I saw it a lot on, you know, left Twitter and left Facebook, but I saw plenty of Uber drivers who had no idea.
Right.
You know, while I was getting in, I was like, hey, why aren't you on strike?
And they were like, no, I'm just kidding.
I saw them online and no idea that there was a strike.
But that's, of course, to kind of be expected in this step of their development.
But I saw some UPS guys getting like laughing at twitter or laughing at uber rather you know like oh these guys undercut the taxi cab industry uh and now they want work benefits lol god it's not them who undercut the taxi industry it is not the uh the uber drivers who undercut the taxi industry they're not the
Do we think that the Uber drivers are the taxi drivers who are making way less money because Uber came into town?
It is not the drivers who, with no other option, have to drive for Uber.
As far as it being an effective strike, I don't know that it was.
You know, the delete Uber movement or whatever that happened on Twitter, you know, all that time ago, like, I don't think that actually, you know, got people to, I don't think it affected Uber in any tangible way.
It just, like, created news about Uber that was negative.
And I'm like, I like this strike action because it is just like, you know, Uber just went public.
And so I think it is just, like, a good time to remind everybody, you know, who might be searching Uber on Twitter or on just Google that, like, Uber is not good to people.
And the people who work for Uber are not happy.
And maybe factor that into, you know, when you're, like, buying, when we're all trading the stock with each other.
Absolutely.
Which is not that I own the stock or anything like that.
I just think like anything that can kind of like piss on Uber when it's just going public is net positive.
Well the the delete Uber thing was it wasn't even over like workers conditions as much it was over like the conditions of their corporate office which is I mean that's an entirely different you know that's a different Yes.
section of it entirely, that's a different income bracket.
Those people, it's a totally different thing.
Getting mad at Uber drivers for undercutting taxi drivers is like getting mad at recycling centers for giving garbage men less trash.
It's like people aren't going to the recycling bin because they feel like it.
That's rare.
People don't take cans because they feel like it.
Or like getting mad at homeless or poor people for taking cans out of recycling bins.
Something like that.
Um, yeah, and I was just like, dude, I was trying to talk to this person on Facebook, I was like, dude, I don't think FedEx or Amazon drivers are scabs, even though they're literally taking, quote, our business or whatever, you know, UPS is still the largest, but...
Those are the closest, like, corollaries we have to what we do.
And we should be seeing them as a comrade.
We should be seeing them as a fellow worker.
Not as a scab for having a job that was never a union to begin with.
And frankly, also, like, I don't think that the, uh, it would be a different thing altogether if this was all kind of raised when, you know, ride shares were beginning.
If there was some kind of, like, union action at the beginning of all this that was like, don't sign up with Uber, but it's just like, it has happened at this point.
Uber's taken over and it's like, they, you know, it's, we just have to, you know, we have to deal with Uber, the company, not with the fact that, like, people have to drive for a living.
They're so powerful, it's weird.
They won the Band-Aid Kleenex battle.
Like, you don't get a rideshare, you get an Uber.
Yeah, that's true.
They're Coke.
They're Coke.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like that's, I mean, that's kind of, and I remember that was my, like, activism.
It was like, nope, nope, let's get a Lyft.
We're saying Lyft out loud, folks.
Yeah, Uber is so bad that I ended up having to order the ones that come with like a big mustache on them, like a big cartoon mustache.
I mean, Lyft is like, obviously not so good either, but it's all no good.
It's like, you know, it's all these sort of independent contractor companies.
And, you know, if we let Silicon Valley have their way, then this is all we have to expect for the rest of human existence.
Well, it's all we have to expect until full automization.
Yes, true.
And that's, you know, I see these brain geniuses out there who say, like, oh, go on strike, ask for more wages.
You're just automating your job faster.
It's like, no, you're not.
That's not possible.
Like, they're already automating it as fast as they can.
They're doing it as fast, yeah.
That's exactly what the Longshoremen in Long Beach are going through right now.
they have like two fully automated ports and so they're trying to like get together and fight fight that because i mean like they're saying that what's funny though in order the only argument we have as humans here is the most capitalist argument which is you can't tell a machine to hustle Well, I mean, you can upgrade the parts, I guess.
You can upgrade the parts and get a firmware upgrade and everything like that.
This is why, you know, there's two directions where this thing can go.
Either, like, we're getting automation either way.
The question is whether it's going to be only to benefit, like, Rich people who own the machines that are automated or whether like all of us get to get the benefits of automation.
And that's why we have to elect Andrew Yang.
Yes, this is why we need the Freedom Dividend.
Everyone needs to get $1,000 so they can spend that on their automated Ubers every month.
They are automating everything, and that's where I say, eat Chick-fil-A, because you can't automate a smile.
I mean, that's true.
I mean, if we can get automated CEOs, then maybe they just won't make any political donations at all.
And then it'll be perfectly moral to eat at any fast food restaurant.
Yeah, right?
They can't fuck up.
That happens right away.
The horizon, as we see it, we're talking about full automation, but there's a horizon beyond that horizon, which is when they start electrifying the automation so that you can no longer dismantle it with a wrench or a hammer.
So you can't touch it?
Yeah, that's the real event horizon.
Until we get to that point, we've still got a chance.
We still have a chance, yeah.
Well, with evolution, it's only a matter of time before they defend themselves, so we might not have to electrify them.
Yeah, they'll be, like, killing us so they can keep working their slave jobs.
Yeah.
Yeah, and this, uh, another take I saw was, like, If you don't like your job, if you don't like your wages, why don't you take your life into your own hands and get a new job or, you know, go get an education or something.
And I'd just like to point out, like, striking is literally taking your own job into your own hands.
It's literally doing something about it.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, there is.
It is so tough with Uber because it's like everyone on Uber could strike and Uber wouldn't even like notice because it is this thing where you just turn the app on and turn the app off.
But yeah, there's like very little you can do to show you're dissatisfied with work in the society that we live in today.
And striking is one of the very few things.
Yeah.
Strikes do win tangible benefits.
I mean, we look at the waves of teachers' strikes, so we shouldn't... The sex strike, obviously.
I haven't had sex since.
I haven't had sex in over two days, and I think we're going to get those abortion laws changed pretty soon as a result.
I refuse to come until the abortion laws are changed.
Well, I mean, that's just for our, you know, everyone's safety.
Yes.
You know, I watched a video of a guy giving up his guns recently.
He signed away his guns.
The cops came.
So I'm actually doing a video later on tonight.
A cop's gonna come over and he's gonna put my penis in a shackle.
That's a very powerful statement.
I'm doing it for the safety of every uterus around me.
Wow, that's a very powerful statement.
You know, hopefully... I pray that that cop will get to come someday very soon and release your penis from bondage.
Let's get into this tweet here, okay?
We all know the tweet, right?
This is from Westchester Witch, although it's an interesting font that makes it look like a different word.
Yeah, that's what they know this person knows how to do the cool Twitter fonts that I will never ever learn how to do Yeah, you got to be cool to know how to program your Twitter.
Yeah I thought this person was definitely like a blood but like a like a Wiccan blood so like it was kind of a double It was both like blood sacrifices and like bibbing back.
Oh All right, so she said, friendly reminder that literally no person with a family to feed and a roof to maintain over their heads has the luxury and or privilege of going on strike and losing an entire day's worth of income.
It's actually quite classist.
It actually reveals a lot of your own privilege that you're able to strike.
Almost everyone who's ever gone on strike has been a very privileged person.
And also a white guy.
Yeah, poor people don't have the luxury of demanding higher wages, okay?
Yeah, poor people, actually, the truth about this tweet is a lot of people don't have the luxury to not strike, is the actual real truth.
Conditions have to be so bad to cause a strike that it usually is because there is no other option that people decide that they need to strike.
Well, see, the thing about, like, I understand where she's coming from because everyone's thinking on just one level.
Like, that day I could not just do ride shares.
But, honestly, I think a good 63% of my annual oil sales are when I'm picking people up.
You know, I do Lyft, I do Uber, I do doTERRA.
Like, that's my hustle.
So, like, they were fucking me twice, you know?
Wow.
Yeah.
Don't fuck with my money.
Don't fuck with my money.
What a major privilege.
You know what I mean?
Like not only are they saying I can't go to my job as an Uber driver, but also as a Lyft driver?
What the fuck?
Don't ask me not to hustle.
No, this is kind of like a weird success hustle porn thing.
Yes.
You know, like, oh, you didn't see me on the picket line?
Well, I didn't see you on the job site.
I'm over here scabbing my ass off and what are you doing?
You're standing around with a sign.
Yeah, I was too busy on my grind to be out there.
You guys like to be out there chanting?
I was on my grind.
It does get back to the infrastructure thing and the movement building part of this, which is when you are in a union, Or when you're preparing long-term for a strike, there's a thing called a strike fund.
It's meant in order to keep you afloat.
Well, A, if you have a union job already, hopefully you're making enough money to where you can put some aside.
Float.
Yeah, for a strike, a rainy day.
But...
In general, there's also a strike fund.
And that's something that, like, I put 10 cents every hour toward to a general strike fund in our union.
And that's something that could sort of, like, nip this whole weird-ass privilege conversation in the bud.
Yeah.
I mean, also, again, I just feel like...
The idea that it's because of a lack of privilege that people are forced to strike.
Do they know who the strikes are against?
Is my question.
Do they realize who people strike against?
I don't know.
It's frustrating.
I did see some takes where I felt like the people thought that they were striking against Lyft riders.
It was like dudes who puked in the back of Ubers who were like, oh fuck dude, that's your job though.
Yeah.
Um yeah it's also I just I love that it's written in this like shitty BuzzFeed slate concern troll style.
Yeah you know?
Friendly reminder it's like this is not actually common knowledge like it's written in this in this way that is like of course as we all know but some need to be reminded.
It's also That's just completely incorrect.
Like, I mean, if I want to get pedantic about this, literally no person with a family to feed and roof to maintain over their heads has the luxury, yada yada.
I think there are plenty of people doing fine in this country.
They are a minority, but the fact that they're a minority is bad.
That's bad.
Yes, it's very bad.
Anyway, you gotta stay on your grind.
You gotta get out there and grind.
Hustle.
I also like the reference of, like, with a family to feed.
Like, also in this, like, Slate Buzzfeed article, like, the alternative title could be, can I go on strike and still be a good father?
Well, you have to think the Westchester witch has all of her, you know, witch coven to feed.
Yeah, she's got a lot of bats and tarantulas, depending on her.
She also says here, if you want to make a difference today and hurt the pockets of Uber slash Lyft, cancel the ride when your driver arrives and pay them in cash.
Uh-huh.
So I just want to say, wow.
I don't know if she knows how classist and sort of condescending that is to assume that everybody just has $5 to pay for a cancellation fee.
Right?
Seems a little privileged thinking to me.
So the question about this, which is so funny to me, is like, again, this is like she's saying it like this is something that is like common knowledge when I'm like, there's not a chance ever that you've ever done this.
Yeah, totally.
You have never, ever done this.
Yeah.
You're just making up a scenario for like the right woke way to do it.
It's not possible.
If you called an Uber and you were like, hey, I'm going to cancel it right now.
Turn off your app right now and I'll give you $5.
It's like, I just don't think, I think the Uber driver would be like, don't do that.
Like, I could get in trouble for that.
Yeah, absolutely.
The strike understander has logged on.
Yeah.
This person thinks that, like, both Amazon has an algorithm to fire people without any human interaction, but Uber doesn't have GPS.
Yeah, again, I would like Westchester Witch to give this theory a shot.
Get out there and see if you can do it.
Just see if you can get this done.
It's also, like, fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of a strike.
Like, the purpose of the strike is not to, quote, like, hurt the pockets of Uber and Lyft in general.
The reason for the strike, the whole... The strike is the mechanism to show an agitated labor force.
To show a labor force that understands its own value and has, you know, organized To the extent that they could perform an action like this, and that is what scares Uber.
Uber's not scared by missing, you know, $100,000 on a given day or whatever.
They're scared of an organized workforce.
Yeah.
I mean, another funny thing about this, and I don't want to actually call the Uber drivers who drove on the strike day scabs because they mostly didn't know, like you were saying before, the vast majority of Uber drivers had no idea that there was a strike happening, but basically what she's suggesting in this tweet is, if you want to make a difference on this strike day, tip the scabs.
Like, get the scabs to come and give them a cash tip for scabbing.
Totally.
I posted, don't be a scab, don't cross the picket line, don't use Uber, etc.
But at the same time, like we said at the top of the show, I acknowledged that this was not an industry-wide or a company-wide strike.
It wasn't organized to full effect.
There is no strike fund in place or communal support mechanism.
Yeah.
So it's understandable if people didn't know or if people heard about it that day and were like, what the fuck?
I'm already working or whatever.
You know what I mean?
I get that.
Yeah.
So when people... The way I see it is I'm just like, if you knew about it, don't break the strike line.
If you didn't know about it, it's no big fucking deal, you know?
It's our job as the left to convince the people who would dismiss a strike, you know, the workers who would dismiss a strike, that a strike could actually be effective and a strike is actually in their best interest in the long term.
And it's probably not going to help them understand that if you say something like, uh, if you drive for Uber today, you're lower than fucking dirt and you're a piece of shit or whatever.
That's kind of not how you do it.
I was actually ordering Ubers so that when the guy came, I would get in the door and spit at him.
It's like, you can't blame them.
It's like any type of, you know, ideology.
You know, you can retweet things, but unless you're educated, unless you've read the literature, you know, like, if you don't know Lenin, I don't want to talk to you.
Which is why we need to get all the Uber drivers together and have them watch Ready Player One.
And then once they understand what this is all about, you know, we can really change things.
Yeah, I agree.
They could do with the class solidarity that I think is totally central to Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One.
Knowledge is power and change comes from education.
And if you give that power to a single good boy, he will do the right thing with it.
Yeah, that's true.
There's a fundamental difference between somebody who is part of a union, has already reaped the benefits of that union, sees the union in action, whether they agree with everything the union leadership does or bargains for, and then scabbing.
There's a big difference.
There's a big fucking difference.
I would not grant this leeway toward a fellow Teamster who decided to scab if we were to strike.
Right, but also these are people that are aware that they're in a union.
You know what I mean?
Because they're in a union with each other.
The folks at Uber are not in a union with each other, don't even know about this stuff.
This strike just struck me as a kind of way to show solidarity with Uber drivers.
And like I said earlier, I think try to make a little bit of a splash right before their IPO was happening.
Every little bit counts to make the investors in Uber lose money.
Totally.
See You Later on Twitter says they're responding to Ilhan Omar who tweeted in support of the strike.
But I don't remember what the exact tweet was because See You Later seems to agree with the tweet and then offer up this in response.
Exactly!
Across the board in all occupations.
So like, oh, total work strike, right?
OK, yeah, general strike.
Sounds good.
General strike.
That's what they're talking about, right?
Yeah, I'm into it.
Oh, wait, let me just read the next sentence here.
Become your own employer and put corporations out of business.
Shop small and do business in your community.
So open a gem store or something like that.
Open a precious gem store and be your own boss.
Be a small business owner.
Start the Uber of Ubers.
Start a new Uber.
If you don't want to drive for Uber anymore, why don't you make an app and get everybody to use it?
Or you can actually join the $29.99 tier of Patreon and we will tell you the actual keys to creating your own success.
Wow.
Yeah, this tweet is literally just, become your own corporation.
Hey, sick of corporations, why don't you do better?
Don't like how Jeff Bezos is going to privatize the moon?
Why don't you privatize the moon?
Yeah.
This is such an incredible argument, but it's one I encounter in real life and on the internet all the time.
It's start your own business.
Don't like your wages?
Start your own business.
Who the fuck is gonna work for you if we're all starting our own businesses?
Like, no more employees.
Oh, like that, you know, the nothing people.
Like, you know, you should become one of the something people by starting your own business, and then you'll employ all the nothing people, the fucking dodo brains who don't start their own businesses.
Yeah.
Like, no more employees, only employers.
Just like independent employers who have contracts with other companies.
Isn't there a phrase for that?
Oh, independent contractors.
That's what I'm thinking.
Yeah.
So you are your own boss.
Yeah, you are your own boss.
That's cool.
I've been told that.
I've been told, like, oh, you're bummed?
Start a business.
The guy says, start a business.
I started two.
And I'm like, well, that's cool.
And then, like, went on to tell me to code if I really want to open a vegan burrito spot.
I've got to learn how to code if I'm going to open my burrito spot.
Well, you can write the algorithm that creates the new vegan burritos.
To not have employees?
To make the robots not have employees?
And the funniest part about this tweet probably is their avatar, which is multi-colored fists raised into the air with the word resist underneath.
And by multi-colored, you mean... Mostly shades of brown.
And then a rainbow-striped fist.
And a rainbow-striped fist.
Yeah, those are the two genders, brown and rainbow.
Yeah, it's just like, what do you think this fist means?
Like, what do you think all these fists Grouped together, how could you look at that avatar, that picture?
They're all flying upward to punch a floating Donald Trump.
There's a big gigantic mecha Trump that's menacing the Earth from space and all the superheroes are flying up to punch him.
There's just like rockets attached to the other side of these forearms that are out of frame.
Yeah.
They are actually just arms.
They're not attached to people.
They're just arms of various, uh, one rainbow person and other otherwise, uh, mostly black people, uh, sent up to punch Mecca Trump.
And the good thing about this is when Trump tries to retaliate, we won't, we won't even feel it because his hands are so small.
Right, exactly.
The man has an infinitesimally small hands.
That's the funniest thing about it.
At least proportional.
Yeah.
But see, because of the cartoonish looking Rainbow Stripe one and the fact that most of them are brown, I feel like these are actually illustrations of silicone fists on the shelf at a store that's open 24 hours.
And not revolutionary fists.
I mean, they could be revolutionary.
It really changes your life.
But I mean, not for the masses.
Wow.
Yeah, none of them are like, have all the fingers pointed together.
So this is like somebody who's pretty advanced in their resistance of Trump.
What's weird is if you look really hard you can actually see a dragon dick behind it too.
I just like that they saw this image of a bunch of fists tightly packed together, seemingly standing in solidarity with one another, and then they replied to this tweet with, um, hey, go your separate ways.
Never talk to each other or organize together.
Do your own thing each individually, and maybe you employ one of the other ones and force them to work for you.
Yeah.
Make your own app.
I saw this comment in Fox News.
It's kind of unrelated, but it's still about unions.
I loved it.
and it just kind of, I loved it.
So Reagan can serve one.
I guess Reagan can serve zero was already taken. - Says, my father, who was a member of one of the first International Brotherhood of Electric Workers locals in the US, said the same thing, and he died in the early 80s.
He said unions outlived their usefulness.
Which is, yeah, there's so many fucking funny things about this, but the first one, just immediately, is dude was in a union, retired, collected his pension, voted for Reagan, and then fucking died.
Like, immediately.
Which is like the equivalent of going on Twitter and saying, oh, striking is actually privileged behavior.
Logging off now, not reading replies.
I might have mentioned this before, but I had a really, like, really fucked moment when, for some reason growing up, I thought that the Electrician's Union seal and the Deadhead seal was the same thing.
So I was really, I don't know why, just the lightning bolt, that's all it was.
I thought, like, the Deadheads were more badass electricians.
And so I was really put off when I realized that, like, they don't have the same personality traits.
Yeah, I mean, look, it's all well and good.
Yeah.
Reagan just, like, told this guy on the radio that unions weren't good anymore after he had, like, gotten every single thing he could have out of a union.
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing, is that he's not lying when he says they outlived their usefulness.
He just didn't finish the sentence because he died in the middle of it, probably.
But it's, they outlived their usefulness to me.
I'm retired now.
My pension is vested.
Why do I need a union?
Fuck them.
I don't think young people need this.
I needed it.
And that's the thing.
It's literally just like, if a union lasts longer than my career, then they've outlived their usefulness.
Yeah, that's it.
Well, at least we now have ReaganConserve1 out there still spreading the word of what his selfish father had to say back 30 fucking years ago.
How wonderful that some guy said some stupid shit when he was dying and now it has to be all over the internet.
Okay, I'm gonna skip this last comment and move on to the next topic.
We're gonna do a deep dive here on something called the Landlord Protection Agency.
It's like the Pinkertons?
I would argue just as bad if not worse than the Pinkertons.
Wow.
Wait, no, that's their best album.
I don't care what anyone says.
We could do a whole episode on the Landlord Protection Agency.
This could be a deep dive of McBee proportions, but we're going to try to keep it to just a segment.
This was a post that floated across my feed from the Landlord Protection Agency's Facebook page.
And as I read it, you will understand why.
When I was younger, says the Landlord Protection Agency, I was afraid to evict tenants.
I guess it was the whole confrontational thing.
After you have a few evictions under your belt, you begin to enjoy the learning process and the legal process of hashtag landlord protection.
Tenants can sense when you are afraid of them.
It is good to let them know that you, parentheses, or your partners love evictions when tenants break their promise to abide by the lease.
When they break their promise, they break their word, which makes them liars.
We tell them that is how we view it when we sign a lease agreement.
And then the image that has been shared with this post, it's just like an image macro.
It says, I'd rather have an empty house than a rental occupied by a bad tenant any day.
Says John Nozzolisi from the Landlord Protection Agency.
John Nozzolizzi.
So, is what this is, is this like, is this the new the Mafia?
Is this the Mafia?
Are you sure that this isn't an advertisement for the Mafia that you saw here?
This is that new atomized Mafia, kind of like the atomized unions that we talked about in the previous segment.
No, see, this is the problem with the way the world has gone away, America's gone, we've gone to just shame.
This is the Fifty Shades of Grey effect.
Like, I'm not here to kink shame, but like...
Economic doming is not cool.
I am not for that.
Yeah, some people actually get off on licking boots.
There is an element here of, you know what, you have to show your tenants that you fucking love evictions.
That's the shit that gets you hard, is evictions.
It's crazy.
It takes a while.
It takes a while, but then when you realize that the pain you're feeling is only going to make them stronger people, they're not going to treat their other landlords like this after I really, you know, they're going to learn respect.
Right.
So this is, this was my first favorite phrase.
After you have a few evictions under your belt, you begin to enjoy the learning process.
Like this is just absolutely sadistic shit.
Like when I was younger, I didn't enjoy the taste of human flesh.
Yeah.
The confrontation of the knife on muscle tissue.
I think that's what it was.
But just after you get a few kills under your belt, you start to enjoy the learning process of scalping your victims.
I'll say this.
Reading this or hearing you read this post, it does have a positive effect, which is that it does make me realize that landlords probably are on the whole mostly cowards.
And that you probably get all this advice being like, don't be scared of your tenants.
I'm like, hmm.
I guess they probably are scared of us.
Like, I probably, like, if I ran out of money, like, I could probably get a couple months out of here with my landlord being too cowardly to get rid of me.
That's probably true, but I kind of take the opposite tack, or I take the opposite thing away from this post.
This post, to me, shows that they can't possibly be frightened of their tenants or else they would never post something absolutely batshit like this.
Well, I don't think these people are.
This is almost like, this is almost like motivational.
It's like a motivational post for landlords.
I don't think that these people are afraid of tenants.
This is absolutely bad shit, dehumanizing for tenants.
I think this is like a motivational post for landlords, and so that does make me feel like if landlords on the whole need motivation like this, they're probably cowards.
Well, we're all cowards, but the thing is, they can sense fear.
It's like when you're breaking a stallion.
You can't show them that you're scared.
It's like when you get a dog that might be a bit aggressive.
You gotta pin it down and bite its ear.
You know, you gotta like, hey, you know what?
Yeah, guess what?
Rent went up $150 this month for no reason, but you're gonna pay it.
You just buy it in the year.
I already set the bar low.
I gave them $150 discount.
Now they're paying what they should be paying, and they also have the respect.
Yeah, this is totally describing your tenant like an animal.
I mean, tenants can sense when you are afraid of them.
So like you said, Tony... They also see in black and white, and they can't see the TV when it's on either.
The tenant's nostrils flare.
It senses weakness.
Its muscles coil tightly moments before it leaps at you to request a small extension on their rent.
When you are putting someone out on the street, their eyes might give off a kind of liquid.
This shows that they're in fear of your dominance.
If I could spit black goo, then it would definitely be in a landlord's face.
Much like an Amazon frog, a tenant will actually seem to be dead.
Their hearts will stop, and they will fall from the tree, but they'll be alive, so you have to continue.
They are still prey.
Yeah, no, what you said, Jack, is totally on point.
You said that this is like a motivational guide for landlords.
That's exactly what the Landlord Protection Agency exists to do.
I went to their website.
They have a bunch of materials for tenants on how to evict your... I keep saying tenants instead of landlord.
For landlords on how to evict your tenant, how to like harass your tenant in whatever legal way possible.
This organization just basically serves as a guide to make landlords more comfortable with the gnarliest parts of being a landlord.
Raising payments, reporting people to credit bureaus, and of course eviction.
These things that naturally might not feel so good to do to another human being.
And maybe there's a reason why it doesn't feel so good to do to someone.
It's because they're bad.
It's like an inhumane thing to do to another human being.
Yeah.
And so this, this agency just serves as like.
um a place to desensitize you and we'll get in we'll get into that in a minute here but it just serves as like a mechanism to desensitize you to this to to show you that uh tenants are actually like wild animals who are looking to prey on you
And you need to let them know that you're not afraid of them because they can sense fear like that's it's it's insane it's this like um it's it's this I I don't know the name for this phenomenon but we encounter it a lot on the show uh when we're dealing with like uh Sort of, um, nationalism or, uh, any sort of political strife.
It's, it's this having to gin yourself up to do what needs to be done.
It's this sort of like playing on people's insecurities, playing on people's fears and convincing them that they have to be the dominant one.
They have to be the dominator.
They have to premeditatedly strike or take a stand because otherwise they'll become a victim.
But to make everybody into a predator.
The best landlords are also experts on the art of war.
It's entry-level reading for a good landlord.
The free market is war.
Yeah, it's quite a genius level to read the art of war.
Whenever I hear someone's read the art of war, I'm like, are you a brilliant genius?
Also, if it's like one of their favorite books, if they say that... Yeah, then that's a normal person for sure.
Watch out.
Watch the fucking... You're like, oh!
You're like, I sure hope you're a rapper.
I sure hope you, uh... I sure hope you enjoy rapping.
Even rappers, you prefer them to like Machiavelli.
See, I, um... Oh, hold on.
You kind of just said Tupac over Wu-Tang, and that's kind of an interesting take.
Oh, interesting.
Well, um... You know, I actually am more familiar, I would say, with Tupac than Wu-Tang.
I just haven't, like, got into Wu-Tang as much as I probably should, to be honest with you.
And here I was thinking you were just a white guy.
I still am mostly just a white guy.
But you're clearly more than that.
Oh, well, thank you.
That really means a lot, to be honest.
He does have a Wu-Tang tattoo, though.
I've never gotten enough into Wu-Tang, to be totally honest with you.
No, I've never read The Art of War.
I instead chose the better piece of media, which is the movie with Jet Li.
Yeah, it could move.
I'd rather have an empty house than a rental occupied by a bad tenant any day.
It's like Monsters, Inc.
level of evil.
I'd rather let a hundred children die than lose this factory or whatever.
I'd rather let a hundred people go homeless than get one bad tenant.
Yeah.
And it also, you know, I can tell you what, like here in downtown LA, uh, there's a lot of places, uh, where they are letting them go empty as opposed to have a bad tenant.
I mean, they just built all these like big, gigantic, you know, uh, uh, like condos and everything.
If you go to downtown LA, it's all people living on the street and then just empty buildings around them that can't get rented out.
And that the landlords will, you know, not give a, uh, well, I can't find any people for it.
It's just a fucking disaster down there.
Yeah, I mean it seems like there might be a solution.
Staring us right in the face every time you drive down Skid Row.
Unlock the doors.
Unlock the doors.
And open them.
What people don't want to talk about is that in Los Angeles, one of the biggest lobbies is Christian recovery homes.
Is that true or not?
No, but it feels right.
It's like we live in such hell that I was like, that might be an actual statistic.
I mean, it definitely is a thing.
It definitely is a thing.
A good amount of people that are currently on Skid Row have also washed cars and saw none of the money from that car wash.
Yeah, yeah.
That is a great conspiracy theory.
That's like a Chuck Palahniuk conspiracy theory.
Yeah, it's all big Christian recovery homes?
Yeah, just that there's this clandestine operation keeping people in poverty that's run explicitly by Christian outreach programs.
It would really validate my housing situation growing up, so that'd be good.
Um, yeah, I feel like this whole post, just this one Facebook post, talking about tenants like wild animals, talking about how you have to cut your nerves off in order to do what must be done to these people.
Dull yourself.
Yeah, this post should just count as incitement to violence.
Like, you shouldn't be able to post something, this should be like entrapment.
For leftists or renters everywhere.
It's like guillotine bait.
It is.
It really is.
If you post something like this, your neck automatically gets six inches longer.
I mean, they're just so brazen as it gets to the most outlandish and clownish time in American history.
Everything's just gotten so brazen and obvious.
You know, there's a statistic I read that is, you know, homeowners on average have a net worth of something like $250,000 and renters on average have a net worth of like $3,000.
It's like a differential of like 40 times.
At a certain point, That's going to be a problem.
I feel like at a certain point that's going to be a problem.
Well, it's going to be a problem for the homeowners when the fucking bubble craters, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, no, like this post is just like a cartoon of a fucking roast duck doing a seductive fan dance in front of a French chef, you know?
Like, it's just like absurd.
They're begging for it.
They're begging for it at this point.
I like to imagine a To Catch a Predator situation, but the landlord comes over to collect the rent, and then a super left Chris character comes out with a guillotine.
Can I have you put your neck right here?
Oh wait, what?
The choppy boy we were talking about wasn't a boy, it was a guillotine?
Oh no.
Hey, I brought lawyers.
I told you I'd bring lawyers.
Instead of beers.
Yeah.
Kelly Lee Proper comments on this.
I agree.
With an eviction under my belt, I'm ready to evict any tenants who break their words.
Cool.
No more playing the nice guy.
No more listening to sob stories.
And yeah, that was another thing.
That was so cool.
That was another thing.
Like, you're a liar.
If you can't pay your rent, then not only are you broke, you're also a liar.
And not only are you a broke liar, you're also homeless now.
Yeah.
So, and you deserve it because you know, this is the way, this is the, this is the way the meritocracy works.
I bought a house for a reason.
You, you deserve it because when you signed this lease, you told me you would have enough money to survive.
Right.
And a survey said that was a lie.
Yeah.
I knew that I was in trouble when I saw Kelly's TikTok video of her doing, um, good girls like bad boys.
This banner on their Facebook page, I don't know how we could describe it in words, so you'll just have to look at the Facebook and look at the Instagram and the Twitter for this banner image, because what's his name here?
John Nuzolizzi does all his own art.
And I would call it art.
Oh, it shows.
That's the word I would use.
This is like vaporwave, like late 80s, early 90s vaporwave mixed with GeoCities.
Yeah.
It does, like, reach that level where, you know, it is almost, like, cool looking.
Because, like, because like you said, like, this is almost Vaporwave at this point.
Like, you kind of can't, it's like, it's almost like, is this Tim and Eric or is this reality?
And it turns out that it's reality.
Yeah, like, he has, like, other companies' logos just in a loose collage over a sort of 3D grid with chrome spheres behind it.
Like, it's just- Yeah, lots of orbs sort of flying out toward us.
Yeah.
It's very Mead Trapper Book.
Trapper Keeper.
Yeah, it's a cool look.
It's very, like, literally the first things they rendered when they could do 3D looked like this.
They were like, looks like a circle, but it's like a sphere.
What is that?
Shapes.
We can do shapes now.
It's a reflective circles.
So that was like one of the heavier parts of this segment.
Let's get into some goofier stuff here.
Let's take a detour from that horrifying shit for some sillier stuff.
So this page, not only do they post like stuff to shame potential renters and to sort of make their clients into even worse people.
They also post tips for landlords.
This is just like an image macro.
It says, Landlord Tip.
And there's like a MS Paint arrow pointing down to the tip.
There it is!
The tip says, When screening an applicant, ask for a copy of a picture ID or driver's license.
Make sure the person in front of you is the same person on the application and credit report.
Wow.
Thanks, John Nozzolizzi.
Which is just amazing to me.
It reminds me of, I don't know if you remember this Jack, but we did an episode on when Trump signed one of the stopgap spending measures that actually had a clause that said no money could be funneled toward the wall.
And one of the comments we had, one of the takes we had, was a guy in like a Trump-trained Facebook group trying to explain to Donald Trump, helpfully, like not sarcastically, just like genuinely saying like, I love you Donald Trump, but what I like to do when I sign documents is I read the whole thing.
Donald.
Interesting.
Yeah, you know, that is a good, that's good advice for the president.
So many people, so many Trump supporters really do, and I think even like resistance people, I feel like everyone really thinks Trump reads the replies or something.
Yeah.
Which to be honest with you, you know, it is like pretty impressive that, impressive that he doesn't read the replies, but I really think he doesn't read the replies.
There's, there's more of a chance.
I think someone on the payroll does.
There's more of a chance of him reading the replies than any other president.
That's true.
That's absolutely 100% true.
But I don't know that he does.
I don't know that he does read the replies.
I don't know if it's been verified, but I think there's been strong evidence to point to the administration taking memes from the God Emperor Trump Reddit.
Right, yeah, like The Donald, right?
Yeah, The Donald, that's it.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Somebody on the speech writing at least is aware of it.
I think Dan Bongino goes on The Donald.
Someone's gotta go.
How good would it feel to be like, hey Trump, you should really tell him to stop being such coastal elites.
And then in the next speech, he's like, hey, you guys should stop being such coastal elites.
You would feel so powerful.
I know.
That would be good.
That would feel pretty good.
It would be like a premonition.
You're like, I'm in his ear.
Can you imagine those Reddit guys, how they feel when their meme gets tweeted by the president?
That probably is a pretty good feeling.
No, I'm not kidding.
I am always tempted to tweet to Barack Obama because he does follow me.
And no one follows me.
But Barack Obama does.
And I'm always tempted to be like, he doesn't follow everybody.
He might see this one.
And then he can finally take the throne back.
Yeah.
If only.
If only.
But I just, I, I love, like, I love this advice.
Like, uh, pro tip, when you're signing a document, make sure you have a pen in your hand.
Cause otherwise your fist will just be slapping against the paper ineffectually.
Yeah.
This advice is like, it's either like how to numb yourself from basic human emotions, or it's like the most basic kindergartner level advice on How to do a business deal.
The second tip, well it's not a tip it's just a quote but it's the same like bright yellow background so you'll have to excuse me.
This is just like a quote from John Nozzolisi from the LPA.com.
I believe that every rental property is your best and most loyal employee ever.
Who else works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year for you?
If you treat them right, they'll treat you right.
This is just like some absolutely brain damaged stuff.
I mean...
Number one, I don't believe John Nozzolisi of the Landlord Protection Agency treats his employees well.
It's like an odd thing to be like, if you treat your employee like, I don't believe that he does treat his employees well.
Do you think he might view his employees as inanimate objects to do with what he pleases?
Yeah, just lines on a spreadsheet, yeah.
No, John is definitely like, he definitely, all of his They look decent from the outside, but when you go into the walls of every single one of his properties, there's definitely something going on there.
He's a mold expert.
He's like, that's not mold.
Wipe it off.
I know it's going to come back.
Just keep wiping it off.
This is your fault.
If you just wipe it off, it won't be there.
Right.
You can't get sick from black mold that you wiped off.
Yeah, it's true.
Treat him good.
If tenants weren't so lazy, they could wipe down the black mold every day.
I believe that your brain is the best creditor you could hope for.
It loans you an idea and only charges whatever interest you can afford to pay.
It's just like dog shit.
Yeah, that was really good.
Yeah, that was good.
Oh man, that might change someone's life.
So now we enter back into the dark territory of this segment.
Because going to the LPA, it has this huge database.
The website is just as bad as the Facebook cover photo would lead you to believe.
This website has apparently been active since 2002.
And by active, I mean he's like writing on it.
He's not updating it in any other meaningful way.
So there's like segments on, you know, how to evict a tenant, how to report them to the credit bureau.
There's also like tips on raising the rent on your tenant, one of which included Raising the rent, printing out a document that says the new rent, which is like at the high point of whatever market value your house is currently at.
And then crossing that out with a pen or a pencil.
You're going to be wanting to hold one of those in your hand when you do it.
And then writing a smaller number above it.
And this way, it lets you know that you, it lets the tenant know that you went to bat for them.
The phrase is literally, the tenant will think, you're the one who saved the day.
And their rent only went up by $25 instead of $50.
Or whatever.
Yeah, that the subtext was like, it's only gaslighting if it's a relationship.
But by far the the worst part of this website is a page on the website called tenant excuse of the day.
Ugh.
This is a database of supposedly user-submitted tenant excuses that these other landlords who, you know, subscribe to the page, subscribe to the ethos of the Landlord Protection Agency, submit to the website.
And like I said, this website goes all the way back to 2002.
There's a lot.
There are so many.
I thought it was one page because I scrolled through about a hundred or a hundred and fifty and then I got to the pages tab at the bottom.
There are nine pages.
Yeah.
So there's like a thousand of these.
Yeah.
It's it's pretty bad.
I don't know.
I'm going to choose to believe the less sad thing that he made up a lot of these because the more sad thing and probably true thing is that they're real.
Like, here are some of, like, the missed rent excuses, or late rent excuses.
Just in general.
And remember, this is like...
The website's slice of rye.
This is like the website's humor section, where all the landlords get together to laugh at people who can't pay their rent.
Right.
This is incredibly awful stuff.
Yeah, truly bad.
Ones that I didn't mark up were somebody legitimately had bipolar disorder and didn't know which month it was.
And that's like something to laugh at.
Like they didn't know that it was the next month.
By the way, they always have an answer like from the landlord and it's always like super shitty and snide.
It's like, well, get paid up then.
Like, it's like, sorry dude, sorry you have bipolar, but like, it's like, you know, it's the first of the month and you're out on your ass.
Yeah.
Pay me, then you can buy your meds.
Yeah.
How about this?
Buy rent and then buy Polar.
I wonder how many landlords were like, you probably could have paid rent if you didn't go on fucking strike from Uber.
Or if you started your own company.
Yeah.
General medical bills was a huge quote excuse that these peons were giving.
One that I really liked was, I can't pay my rent because I have to pay my BMW and iPhone bills instead.
Which is like an interesting synthesis of the welfare queen millennial tropes.
I would love to talk shit about that, but I do in fact have an iPhone and a BMW.
Yes, it's a crack seven screen.
Yes, it's a 1986 that I paid $500 for, but we ballin'.
That is very likely the exact same scenario that this landlord is talking about.
Yeah, exactly.
You're right.
People should make the decision between getting to pay rent or having a cell phone in fucking 2019.
Yeah.
People are like, it's so funny.
Whatever.
It's not that expensive to have an iPhone anymore.
Everyone has one.
No, yeah, totally.
Nobody pays for an iPhone up front.
That's how they can afford to be so expensive, is you pay it on monthly installments.
$30 monthly.
Yeah, $30 for three years or whatever.
I just had to upgrade phones because of my broken phone.
So I went there, I brought in my old phone, turned it in, and I bought a new one.
And the new one down payment was $307.
And then they're like, cool, and then you owe us $150 for this one you bring in.
I was like, why?
And they're like, well, the screen is cracked.
I'm like, yeah, but like, can I just fix it?
And then we can just not charge me that much?
And they were like, yeah, but nah.
No, you can't do that.
We already saw it cracked.
Also, can't you not get a third party to fix the screen on an iPhone like they won't allow it?
So annoying.
A little pro tip.
Every cell phone provider, when you walk in, right when you walk in, Look to your right or left on the door, right next to the door, and it will show the district manager's picture and name.
That is your best friend.
You walk in there and you're like, oh yeah, Gerald said I have no upgrade fee.
You know Gerald?
Yeah, me and Gerald are boys.
Like, Saturdays are for Gerald.
And they'll be like, cool, $30 off your bill.
Wow.
I legit did that.
Good tip.
That's really good advice, yeah.
Yeah.
Don't make it the store manager though, because they might be there.
Always the district manager.
The worst excuse I read in passing was a person couldn't pay.
So the landlord kicked them out.
And then, you know, like you were saying, Jack, there's a place for the excuse.
There's like a field for the excuse where you can sarcastically misconstrue whatever your tenant told you.
And then there's a place for like the landlord explanation or the landlord to laugh at them.
Yeah.
So the excuse was just they couldn't afford to pay or whatever.
And then in the afterword by the landlord, the landlord describes kicking him out and then describes the wife and kid leaving the husband.
Nice.
And then the landlord seizing the wife's savings account to pay rent.
Very cool.
Fuck.
Very cool.
Fuck.
How do you type something like that and think that it makes you look good?
Like, the only people who have done that much damage to me in my life were the actual estate.
And, um, like, this is just a person that owns a piece of property.
Yeah.
Like, landlords have done me dirty and my family dirty.
Don't get me wrong.
But, like, yo, you fucked those people's lives up, bro.
Right, right.
That's just person to person, too.
Another excuse was, um...
Somebody said that their bank account was fucked up.
Like, their bank account wasn't working or whatever.
And then the landlord's response was, actually, I have a friend who works at that bank, and they looked at his checking account and told me it was fine.
Oh.
That sounds legal.
That sounds very, very legal and cool.
Yeah.
Like, that's never happened.
No one's ever, like, they had more than enough money.
That's never happened.
Yeah.
Like, that's not it, ever.
It's always, okay, it should be here next week.
That's always the case.
Right.
My tenant told me he was gonna be $30 short on rent, so what I did was, is I waited until about 2 a.m., and then I broke into his house through the window and looked under the sock drawer, and wouldn't you know it, crisp $20 bill right there.
Right there.
You know what I like to do?
I like to just have enough money for rent but just do it a couple days late just to keep my landlord on her toes.
You know what I mean?
It's not like it's a great stress to relieve to get rent paid and up and on time and everything like that.
I just like to keep the money in the bank for a couple extra days just for fun.
Just for fun.
Okay, so here's an actual excuse.
I don't get paid on the 1st.
I get paid on the 8th.
This is from February 11th, 2018.
I don't get paid on the 1st.
I get paid on the 8th and 22nd.
I don't have the money to pay for PET.
My son moved in because of unexpected circumstances.
And the landlord's reply is, rent is due on the 1st, gave three days notice, tenant paid on the 7th, gave it back because it was way too late, and he didn't pay for the dog and still has an unauthorized tenant living on the premises.
Yeah.
This is just to, like, for them to pat each other on the back for, like, actually being monsters.
For ruining lives.
For over four days.
Over four days.
Ruining someone's life.
Gave them the rent back because it was four days late and started eviction.
Wonderful.
Well, hopefully that tenant was able to just take the money that they got back and go straight to the payday advance place and pay some of the money they borrowed because by now it's gone up 15-30%.
Like, fuck you!
They got it a day earlier than they said.
That's amazing.
Exactly.
Someone really like busted their ass to get the rent there on time.
Like as close to on time as was possible.
Uh, excuse of the day for October 20th, 2015.
I think it is time to renegotiate our lease agreement.
We've been here a while, and the rent hasn't gone down, even though the house market has gone down.
So, I don't know, it seems like us.
Seems pretty reasonable.
Been there for a long time, don't want to move, but, you know, it's not commensurate with the area.
Sure.
The response from the landlord is, excuse me?
If you don't like my low rent, leave.
Okay.
Cool.
Oh, man.
I like that they, like, put in... Whatever.
This website is too infuriating.
I think you did find the most, uh... The most annoying website that exists.
This is the worst website.
Yeah.
It's the worst one.
They get better, though.
I got a couple good ones here.
Um... This is excuse of the day for October 19th, 2013.
Uh... I would have paid the rent, but I thought I needed it more than you.
Yep, I love that one.
No one's ever said that.
No one's ever.
I wish they'd never said that.
I wish they would've.
No, you know who said that?
The only time that someone's ever said that was like when they said it to their parents they were renting a room.
Right!
And their parents are like, okay, you're right.
Okay, that's cool.
Hey, the next month though, we're going to make this happen.
Yeah.
What's the response there?
Is there a response?
She just says she's laughing at him.
I actually laughed when I saw she was dead serious.
I don't think this relationship will continue.
LOL.
Okay.
Says Ed Anderson from New York.
Uh, excuse of the day for September 7th, 2013.
Uh, quote, I have terrible intestinal cramping.
Every time I go to pay the rent, I have to run to the bathroom.
I love this.
Again, it's not real.
It's not real.
I fucking hope it's real.
Like, like he's talking to his landlord and he's just like, no, I wanted to pay the rent, but I had a poopoo butt.
Oh, it's coming again!
I have to run!
I do diarrhea.
I did the diarrhea instead.
No, but it probably is exactly that.
This landlord probably has a situation like I've had before where, like, my bank doesn't have physical locations.
Yeah.
So I can't just draw cash out anywhere.
And they don't want me to send them a check or, like, because I don't have checks, they don't want me to, like, Venmo them or, like, do a money order or anything like that.
I have to go to their bank and deposit it.
So I have to go to one bank and then go to another bank to deposit it.
Yeah, that's fucked up.
Yeah, I'm not doing that if I have the bubble guts.
I'm staying home.
Like, that's a real thing.
Like, I don't have that situation anymore.
That's also, by the way, someone being like, I was sick.
You know what I mean?
That's someone being like, I was sick for a day.
I think you should be able to just, like, take your entire rent, put it into coin form, put it in a bag, and hit your landlord across the face with it.
I think that's how you should be able to pay your rent.
Yeah, totally.
Last one here, excuse of the day for July 13th, 2011.
Quote, I can't slash won't pay next month's rent unless I can continue to use your laundry machines anyway and in any way and for anyone I want.
And then the response to this is, I gave this woman an inch and she took a mile.
She was using my washer and dryer for profit by taking in other people's cloths and charging for the service.
I was nice enough to let her and her daughters use my equipment for them and them alone.
This lazy letch even made the daughters do the work while she collected the money to use towards the rental payment.
Their days are numbered.
Can you imagine doing that?
Can you imagine somebody doing that?
What a sad tale.
This is the new saddest short story.
I couldn't imagine having to work all day while somebody else does nothing and then having to give money to them for rent.
It'd be an amazing situation that kind of describes the whole point of what you're doing as a landlord.
The nerve of this person to not work on their own, to earn the money to pay me for not working, for owning the property.
Just an insane lack of reflection.
That short story is, um, rent is 60 loads, but I only have 50 loads of clothes.
I mean, whatever.
It is just a, it seems like someone's in a sad circumstance and like, kind of like started their own business.
Just like the advice, you know, they started their own company.
They had to charge their kids to do laundry.
They're not stoked.
Yeah.
Well, this was a fun, infuriating episode.
Thank you so much to Jack Allison of Struggle Session Podcast and Jack AM on Twitch.
Thanks so much for doing it with us.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I gotta be honest, it was pretty annoying.
Not you guys, but the topics were very annoying.
But I had a good time nonetheless.
Cool, so, uh, yeah, Jack AM, uh, Monday through Friday, 7AM Pacific... What's that again?
Daylight Savings Time.
That's, you know, Pacific Daylight Time.
Go to twitch.tv slash jackam to see that.
Great.
And then the podcast.
Go to patreon.com slash struggle session.
Goodbye, everybody.
Perfect.
Yes.
And tune in later this week where a bonus segment with Jack will be going up on the Patreon all about how dog dog bite Muslim man on penis.
And it's very funny.
It's super silly stuff.
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