Safe in Seattle, Part 132 of 19

Oh look, it's Zack's boyfriend, they're going to the ice cream social together!

Greetings Something Awful readers! Today I, Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka, will continue with Zack "Head Exciter" Parsons' hourly articles detailing his mental masturbation over every single vehicle ever potentially touched by a Nazi! In this update I will cover the Straussenhagan GBS402 Heavy Pants-Shitting Laser Beam, the Fritzstchtrubluben Mobile Infantry Baby Carriage, and the highly wacky Heinfaustunguntutzifanzenwurst Lumber Mill which gave the Nazis the ability to upgrade the damage of their spears and thrown weapons. Ha ha, I am of course kidding, Zack "WWII Obsessor" Parsons would undoubtedly tear my throat out, pay to give me a throat transplant, and then force feed me my own throat if I attempted to encroach on his precious World War II monopoly. Besides, there are much more exciting and evil things happening in the world today, many of which involve America possibly being blown up by irate foreign people who despise us simply because we fly spy planes over their homes every other hour.

While the war on terror seems like it's so far from home, mainly because it is in fact so far from home, each of us has to face our own personal war on terror in our backyards, kitchens, and haunted barns. We live every day as if it could be our last, and in my case, it very well could be. I arrived at my apartment last night to see a ominous piece of paper neatly folded in half and taped to my door. This stormy petrel (dictionary.com's word of the day for March 3rd) was in fact a message from the management of my apartment complex, the people who are in charge of ignoring me when I ask them to fix various things. This letter hit me with a horrible sense of dread and raw terror, much like the time I found out "Galaxy High School" was canceled. Check this shit out, yo:

Did you read that? People in my apartment complex are getting knocked unconscious UNTIL THEY ARE DEAD! I'm living in some kind of bizarre suburban battlefield where each step is fraught with danger and the possibility that I may become unconscious and ultimately un-living if I somehow locate and walk into the "pool area" which I did not even know existed until this letter. I can imagine this mystical "pool area" as being a veritable paradise full of wine and roses, but like in any Dean Koontz or John Saul novel, it holds a terrible secret in its heart; some bad street brawler is secretly slipping people mickeys and suckering them into games of chance, leading to their untimely demise! To live in this apartment complex through the current firestorm of danger and menace is truly a testament to my personal character, as it proves I am not somebody afraid to "walk on the wild side" or "dive face-first into danger" or "become less lazy and actually move." I become a bit more tough each day I inhabit this deceitful deathtrap, and I can literally feel the skin on my arms (and most notably my palms for some reason) thicken as I grow into a grizzled war veteran whose entire life has been surrounded by heated conflict. Now I may not have any official credentials proclaiming my knowledge of guerrilla warfare, particularly in the field of pool areas, but let me assure you that I know a hell of a lot more about safety than my laughingstock apartment complex. For example, look at this ridiculous list of half-assed "safety guidelines" they included with the complimentary "oops, somebody done fucked up and died in the apartment complex" notice:

How do these two SIMPLETONS so foolishly pussyfoot around the pool area without fearing for their very lives? Simple: they pray for death.

"Periodically check your smoke detectors for dead batteries or malfunctions." At the risk of exposing my ignorance, I cannot remember a single time in history when the failure of dead batteries led directly to somebody being knocked unconscious to death in an outdoor pool area. I took the additional step of calling the apartment complex and I asked them about this, just to make sure (I place my journalistic integrity as the highest priority in my life):

ME: "Can you tell me anything about the guy who was killed in the pool?"
APARTMENT JERK: "No."
ME: "Were dead batteries in a smoke detector somehow involved?"
APARTMENT JERK: "No."
ME: "Would you like to make any additional comments regarding this investigation?"
APARTMENT JERK: "Who are you?"

As you can see, the halfwits in my apartment complex are clearly trying to skate around the truth like some kind of ballerina who entered a roller-skating contest despite the fact that she's never roller-skated before in her life, but she assumed she would be a natural in it because she has incredible balance and form, or at least that's what her instructors tell her because they receive monthly checks from her parents who struck it rich in the lucrative textiles industry. Luckily I am able to think on my feet and keep my concentration razor-sharp, thereby allowing me to bypass their twisted little dog and pony mind games. I've got enough crap in my life to worry about, so unless I find myself surrounded by voracious smoke detectors who have somehow escaped the pool area and are lusting for my blood as compensation for their fallen brethren I previously drained and murdered with my wireless mouse, I'll disregard this.

"Leave a radio playing very softly while you are gone." This is simply ridiculous. First of all, my neighbors have been leaving their stereo system playing very, very, very softly nonstop for the past nine months or so. In fact, they have been playing it so very softly that you people on the east coast could probably hear it if you stuck your head out the window and listened for thumping bass beats belted from "The Best of Gangsta Rap: Volume 28." I'm convinced they inhabit a two bedroom apartment with one room solely dedicated to housing a subwoofer the size of a pregnant SUV. Despite the fact that they routinely provide enough "softly playing music" for at least half of this hemisphere, that still didn't prevent The Great Pool Area Knockout Massacre from taking place. Honestly, what kind of dunce criminal would decide to not burglarize some place just because the radio is on and playing some light jazz?

BURGLAR #1: "Rumor has it this apartment is full of Joseph Stalin's lost treasure of gold."
BURGLAR #2: "Great, I can't wait to get my hands on some of that Ruskie gold!" (Hears soft music playing through the door) "Wait- do you hear that?"
BURGLAR #1: "Yeah, it sounds like... oh no, it can't possibly be...?"
BURGLAR #2: "Oh sweet Lord no, it's, it's - SOFT MUSIC!"
BURGLAR #1: "Let's get out of here, post haste! Feets don't fail me now!"

Perhaps the soft music would deter criminals if it's playing something along the lines of Kenny G. or John Tesh, two artists who have the uncanny, superhuman ability to render entire cities unconscious by making everybody think they're trapped in a very large elevator with a speaker that refuses to die under any circumstances. If I suspected Mr. Tesh lived in the area, I would be on the lookout for him dragging bodies and disposing of them in the sacred pool area, wherever that may be.

Please do not put keys anywhere. Ever. "Do not leave your keys in the car." I would honestly love to meet the person whose life was dramatically improved after reading this suggestion. First off, I doubt anybody who employs a serious habit of leaving keys inside their car on a regular occasion possesses the ability to not only read, but to successfully unfold a sheet of paper taped to their door. I guess I really can't blame people who enjoy storing their apartment keys in their vehicle, as that makes it a hell of a lot easier to remember where your keys are located at any given point in the day, assuming somebody doesn't abuse this ingenious system and directly cause your vehicle to move to another location by their own will. However, the apartment complex doesn't stop there when it comes to dictating where I can and cannot place my keys during a fit of stupidity, as shown in the following key-obsessed rule: "Do not hide a key under the doormat or nearby flowerpot." Is there anywhere sacred left for me to place my keys? Judging by all these harsh and cult-like rules, it seems as if the only safe place left for me to keep my keys is behind a locked door... one locked with my own keys! If this is a reflection of our current society, I'll be one of the first people to express my desire to return to the glorious 1950s, a time when America was a much more peaceful, wonderful, ideal country that had nothing to worry about except minor issues such as racism, atomic warfare, and those black and white images of buildings collapsing which seemed to occur all the time back then. "Remember to check the back seat before getting into your car." Once again, the connection between these safety tips and finding yourself unconscious and ultimately dead in the pool area escapes me. By cramming the pieces of this puzzle together, this is what I imagined happened on the fateful night of February 1st, 2003: 1) Victim returns home from an irresponsible, rule-breaking party which probably involved known Communists and their plans to copy their own apartment keys a million times and distribute them across the known world. Soft music was not played at this party. 2) Victim realizes he cannot get into his apartment, as the door is locked. Victim attempts to pick up key that they had previously hidden beneath their floor mat, but is unable to because they are standing on top of the doormat while attempting to lift it up. 3) Victim goes to their vehicle, as they previously placed a spare set of keys in the vehicle's ignition, just in case they lost their primary and secondary set of keys. Victim fails to look in the back of their vehicle, as they are too preoccupied thinking about their connections in the al Queda. 4) Victim enters their vehicle and fails to turn the radio on to "soft music." As a direct result, a jaded criminal leaps from the back seat and slips a mickey into their beer while distracting them with a riveting game of chance. 5) Victim consumes beer and, due to malfunctioning batteries in their smoke detector, fails to realize they have become unconscious. 6) Victim is dragged to the dreaded pool area, where they remain in a highly unconscious state until they are so incredibly unconscious that they become dead. 7) Paramedics attempt to resuscitate unconscious man by using one of those Tesla Coils that are always shown in the laboratory of Dr. Frankenstein. All attempts fail. 8) Victim is pronounced "dead." Pool area is pronounced "haunted." With all this information in mind, is it any wonder that I'm the tight-knit, mentally scarred individual I am? I live in a suburban war zone, where danger lurks around every corner, apartment keys lie in wait under each doormat, and unconsciousness is hiding under the stairs and right beside the water heater. I'm always on the lookout for evil as I brazenly stride from the computer room to the place where I deposit my urine into the large porcelain bowl, knowing that unsavory characters are preying on my weak smoke detector batteries and inability to trigger soft music while relieving myself. I don't really want to oversell myself here, but I honestly feel I'm one of the last few American heroes left in our nonstop culture of fast food, drive through movies, and flamboyant beetle larvae. I am confident that years from now, after my corpse has been found decaying in the bottom of some industrial waste-filled swampland, webmasters will be writing about my groundbreaking and spellbinding apartment-living adventures. Well, unless webmasters of the future are still retards obsessed with Nazis and their goofy tanks. If that happens, I'll be glad I'm spending my retirement time in the great pool area up in heaven. The SA Comedy Goldmine Presents: CATS! That's right, you read the title correctly! Today's Comedy Goldmine is dedicated to mankind's most enigmatic pet, the cat. Although this may sound like a complex and challenging subject to tackle, I was somehow able to work with the concept of "people posting images of their cats" into an article, mostly by employing the use of copying and pasting things. Things such as this: If you'd like to see more images of cats, well, I think you know where to go!

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)