Vehemently Vitriolic

I spent last Easter weekend doing very traditional Easter things. Such as stuffing pieces of spun-glass fibre in between pieces of wood on a wall, then covering that with plastic. And drywalling. Not traditional you say? Well, historians now believe that Jesus (being a carpenter and all) was actually brought in to install some cabinets and a granite counter top into a residence on a pilot for a show called “Flip This Yurt”. He was helping “resurect” it, and the whole thing about him coming back from the dead was a mis-translation.
It was in my father-in-laws new play-palace. He has a bit of a renewed furvor for Ford Falcons from his teenage years, and has a pair of them now. My mother in-law, not really seeing how parking outside in the snow helped this afflication along while two aging vehicles got to soak in the heat, he built a second garage to hold his toys.

The thing was built in a record-setting snails pace of 6-months. Feeling ever the masochist, he decided to insulate it and put drywall up. And the long weekend for Easter was coming up, so I was recruited. This, despite everyone knowing full-well my entire lifes-knowledge on anything drywall-related was that I don’t mind playing in mud.

Thursday night while I was there for Sunday dinner (long story), off we went to Home Depot to buy the requisite supplies: Some fibreglass, some mud (and let me just point out the irony of people paying several thousand dollars for a re-modeled something or other, spending untold years of their lives picking out colours, buying furniture and accessories to match etc etc, and then willingly PAYING someone to throw mud on their walls.) and the drywall itself. We managed to pack the insulation into his Blazer, but 14-sheets of 10-foot drywall were going to have to be delivered.

So, we trundled off to the desk that does that sort of thing. The lady was soooo helpful. Let me just state, that though I do not have absolute numbers for this, I am guessing based on the number of home improvement and DIY shows (good god theres and entire CHANNEL for that crap) not to mention the zillion flip-something shows, like “Flip That House”, “Flip This House”, “Flip A House”, “House: To Flip”, “Flipping: A House Story”, “Flipping Is Not Just For Gymnasts”, “OMG THERES A HOUSE LETS FLIP IT!” etc etc, that, by far and away, the single most purchased product is drywall. And somehow, for Klyan or Kryion or Kiyrini or however her moronic parents spelled it, this sku number was completely out of her reach. The fancy dancy computers were clearly just for show. She made us WALK to the other side of Home-freaking Depot (this section was in Coquitlam, the drywall department could well have been in Langley) to get this 6-digit number that was so elusive. Clearly, we were the first people on earth to ever buy this product. You know, I would completely understand if we had asked her to pluck the number for a toilet made of sand from the shaded hill region of Jordan, packed by a man with a mole on his left testicle, and forged under the guidance of the Japanese zen-toilet master Canapoo out of her head, but it was DRYWALL!

Once we GET the sku (oh, and by the way, they DO have an entire phone system in there. People are walking around with little rubber-padded chordless phones, so why she could not call one of them is also beyond my comprehension. I’m guessing all the associates were busy filming a segment for “Flipper: The Dolphin House Seller”. And clearly the ENTIRE public-address system and the tried-and-true supermarket callout method was so archaic, Home Depot would not bring themselves to that level.) we go back and tell K-whatever what it is. Magically, we can continue to give her money now that we have the “secret code” to enter this level. Maybe their idea is to make it like a Sierra/Apogee game: Go get the drywall sku and take it to plumbing to unlock the paint-chip wall to get the green-drill key to rescue the flooring princess.

So we continue on. The transaction comes up, and my father in-law gives his Visa card to pay for it. And its declined. Let me just point out that when my wife and I went to buy a brand-new car, he offered to stick the WHOLE thing on his Visa if we didn’t want to get financing through Toyota, so its not a lack of funds. Small third-world countries regularly call him to see if he could pay off a bit of their national debt.

The Visa-machine said Visa wanted to speak to K-whatever. I bet they regretted that decision. After talking to her face-to-face, I can only imagine the brilliant wry wit she would have over an electronic medium where the person talking to her could not pick up the suttle nuances of her “ohmagod I sooooo want you two to go away so I can update my Facebook” look as I had. At any rate, she called. And at the exact same moment as she placed the call, Visa called my father in-laws cellphone, wondering if indeed he made such a purchase.

This brings me to the point of this entire narrative (and ties in with my clever title): it was $700 total. Let me also point out, with no word of embellishment, that my in-laws go on a cruise or other vacation once a month, on average. And its not to Calgary, its cruises to the Bahamas (4-times at last count I believe), Hawaii (too many to count), the Amazon, the Cook islands, a couple around the world shots, over th England, down to Florida, a cruise around the eastern seaboard in fall. My mother in-law routinely books these trips on said Visa, so it is not in any way out of the ordinary for a 5- or even 10-thousand dollar charge to go on that card at a single time. Sometimes, multiple future trips are done in the SAME month! And NEVER a word from Visa. Even when they mysteriously charge a meal at a restaruant in Vancouver, and then 12-hours later charge something in Brazil, Visa does not bat an eye. But $700 at the Home Depot in his home city? Must be theft. He bought a 61″ DLP TV on that card a few years ago, and Visa could care less. Some drywall? You must be an identity thief.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been called a couple times when we were in San Francisco, so I greatly appreciate Visa going that extra mile for my protection, but man, get yourself some better software filters. Is the FIRST place I go when I steal a credit card to Home Depot? Has house flipping replaced electronics? Seriously, I’m not going to go and buy a new Harmon-Kardon AC 7.1 home theatre, but I’m chomping at the bit to re-do my recroom in gypsum? Are you kidding? We didn’t even have copper tubing, or I could at least understand that. Clearly our police departments have failed us here. They have utterly failed to pick up on this new threat to national security. Any day now, I’m sure untold amounts of tax money will be spent on a joint-task-force to battle the problem. And Dick Wolf will have another spin-off on his hands: “Law & Order: House Flipping Junkies”.

The only conclusion I could come to is that all these people trying to make a quick buck flipping houses have eventually figured out that, yes, TV can do it in 30-minutes, but you cannot. You WILL run over budget, and you WILL NOT make a massive huge profit. And that now, people have begun stealing their neighbours money for their addiction. There, I said it. House flipping weirdos are about on par with crackheads.