Twitter is A Beautiful Thing

Image via CrunchBase

For quite some time, I've been a fan of Twitter. It's a cool instant messenger, I get Star Wars/The Old Republic news in real time (especially if the TOR forums are down during maintenance), and I find out all sorts of cool things like chocolate recipes, Renaissance art discussions, and breaking news. Note that these are not in any particular order of importance, except for the chocolate part, which always comes first.

Twitter does have its warts--there are the annoying pornbots, and some people have a love affair with posting meaningless tripe, like "I put butter and brown sugar in my Malt-o-Meal" or "What shirt should I wear, fuschia or chartreuse?"  My thoughts on this are a. who the heck cares, and b. 'Chicky, if you have to consult the Twitterverse for clothing color decisions, our country is in seriously bad shape, because your brain clearly missed that left turn at Albuquerque.' 

Even better, though, is the fact that my deadbeat tenant's daughter uses it ALL THE TIME. This means I get real-time updates on what her (allegedly) drug-dealing gangsta brother is up to and what they're destroying on my property this hour.

Most of it is meaningless expletive-filled tripe. In between the mind-numbingly moronic tweets, there are interesting gems, like posts about going to the Philippines twice in the last year and getting ear gauges (but they can't pay rent for May and June), her brother has 'fight club' in the back yard, the fact that she and her brother smoked weed all spring break (with a 2 year old brother in the house), her brother has drug dealing friends living at the house, and a post where the daughter noted "mom said 'I smell pot'."  No, REALLY??? I'm stunned. Truly stunned. I'm sure I'll get over it in time, however. Give me about .000002 seconds.

My favorite was when she tweeted "my brother was snorting some white powder last night with his friends o.O." Since I caught that one about nine hours after she'd posted it, I called the child protective services (to help the 2 year old) and the cops. I figured they'd love to share in the same good news I was experiencing. I also was hoping for a police report so that we could do a 5-day no-cure eviction--the kind that gives the tenant zero legal wiggle room.  Alas, no report, but within two hours of my call to a very nice detective, the cops were raiding my house, complete with drug-sniffing dogs. Not only did I get a call from a neighbor about this, the deadbeat tenant's daughter tweeted 'LOL police are here, my brother is so stupid.' 

I'm not sure about you all, but if the police raided my house while I was in it and arrested my sibling, I'm fairly certain I would not be laughing.

Since I had the real-time feed from Twitter, I was able to call my dad and say "Hey, if you read in the papers tomorrow that there was a police raid at my old house? It's not a misprint. My deadbeat tenant's (allegedly) psycho druggy son is (allegedly) dealing drugs there with gangsters, and the cops went after them all. They apparently got at least one of them. I'm sure the police dogs sniffed so much drugs at that house, they got high. Bet Alix (note: not his actual name) would give you a good deal on pot right now, though." It's always nice to warn your aging parents about things like drug raids at your house to prevent heart attacks.

Tonight, she tweeted that she was going to have a big going-away party in August. I smiled to myself as I thought, "Not in MY house, you're not, chicky."

Two days left for them to pay in full for May and June, and then we can finally get moving on getting the (alleged) druggies out.