Just when I thought it couldn't get any more ghetto, some kind of vermin infestation has descended upon my apartment building. After my neighbor Nancy's old stove sat on our floor for about a year, and my other neighbor found a homeless man in the laundry room, I was starting to wonder if I was hallucinating that I lived in West LA. There's something to be said for paying market-rate rent.

Anyway, my neighbors claim that the vermin fall under the category of "rats" while my rich Acadamy-award winning director of a landlord claims they are "field mice," but even if they were rats, we should look at the negative stigmatization of rats in the media (recently ameliorated by "Ratatoille")...WTF?!

Someone decided that the rats/mice were coming in through the back door and so the building manager put up a sign telling us to keep it closed so "the rats don't come in." Since when do vermin walk in through open doors?! Do they know the security code?!...I can't believe I've lived here for ten years.

Whatever they were, they were having a party in my walls until the traps killed a bunch of them...my landlord called me last week to status me on the rat mortality rate. Doesn't he have more important things to do? Like direct Russell Crowe or Angelina Jolie?

Just for today, it's time to buy a condo.