Keeping it real

I wish my lawn was emo so it would cut itself. Actually, if my entire garden had been emo, clearing all the shit out of it over the Easter break in preparation for selling the place would have been a whole lot less of a monumental shitfight for the ages. As it was, it was three days, multiple trips to the tip (sorry DCC, the 'Resource Recovery Centre'), and ending up with arms that looked like those of an enthusiastic amateur self-harm aficionado - not to mention the gouge out of the forehead from the Tree That Fought Back.

Let's just put that on pause a minute. Resource Recovery Centre. Who the fuck are they kidding? It's a tip. It's a fucking rubbish dump. You take your rubbish there and you fucking dump it. Why does that process need to be dressed up with euphemistic PR bollocks? It's like having a big poo. Calling it something more marketing-friendly ain't gonna make you more or less inclined to do it, it's kinda a requirement of continued function. The new generation of dumps, though, are pretty average, with each type of waste categorised and streamed according to where it goes and what needs to be done with it, and hell hath no fury like a council munter finding out you've put non-branched green waste in with the branched green waste. They charge you money to dump stuff and bleat at you when you dump it even marginally imprecisely. Bollocks to that. We used to have an old-skool council rubbish dump - basically just a hole in the ground where you chucked stuff in - a few kays out of the Broom on an old sand-mining lease and that was awesome, like an adventure playground for mischievous youth. The old man's HT Kingswood 253 V8 ute was retired from duty there, though much of the good gear (like the disc braked front end) found its way into his HG panelvan. Another day which lives in the memory (for other reasons), we found a stack of hastily turfed girlie magazines (someone obviously just got a girlfriend, or at the very least, someone's bedroom just got cleaned out by his mum).

In conclusion: V8s and tits - why rubbish dumps were cool.

The point of all the deforestation in the backyard was, in the immediate term, to make the house more saleable by actually making it possible to walk around the garden without getting touched up like Macaulay Culkin at the Neverland Ranch by random bits of foliage. This, in the real estate game, is termed Adding Value. I would term it Not Being A Complete Fucktard, but it seems that the real estate game is full of complete fucktards who miss even the most obvious plot points ref. how to present a house for sale, judging by some of the rubbish currently being listed. Indeed, some of the aforementioned comprehensive cockbugles are allegedly professional real estate agents. However, anyone who's ever had anything to do with a real estate agent in any professional context, whether as a tenant being alternately ignored and persecuted by their property manager, an investment property owner being fed a line of bullshit by the same property manager, a potential buyer being jacked into a Dutch auction solely against themselves, or a prospective seller having an Industrial Revolution's worth of smoke blown up their arse about the prospects of a quick and profitable sale in a market showing less signs of life than Anna Nicole Smith, the concept that professional real estate industry members by and large may in fact be an all-inclusive farrago of douche-felchers will probably not shock or astound.

That said, our dude seems to go a'ight. We've had peeps through the place already, and the actual Marketing Campaign (other than the website listing) doesn't even kick off until the weekend. The photos of the place on the interdweeb look fucking choice - hell I'd buy the place again if we were able to fit us plus our forthcoming newbie into it somewhere - and they've been good personages to deal with. OK it's barely three days into proceedings but it's promising. The agency we eventually went for goes all-in on the flashy shiny marketing - doesn't cost more than Their Competitors but looks a hell of a lot better - and our realo (himself very flashy and shiny, that's his black Audi A6 in the street at right) is very big on taking lots of photos with his suitably exxy digital SLR. Though a glance at his CV indicates point-and-shoot was his thing in a previous career - ex NZ Army, then ex NZ Police Armed Offenders Squad - leading to two conclusions: (1) Lerm may have long-lost rellos over here and (2) tyrekickers and timewasters will likely be dealt to with extreeeeeeeme prejudice. Which we like here at the World of Bollocks. Though when he says he's a 'professionally trained negotiator' one does wonder whether this is in the field of closing real estate deals or talking heavily armed munters out of heavily barricaded remote farmhouses and into the nice clear open field so the AOS boys can take him down.

Either way I'm not expecting arguments.

The Doctor is OUT. As you'd expect from a 'motivated vendor on the move'. Sounds like I'm on a diet of prunes and Metamucil for Christ's sake.