Technically, Mike in Boston only has two roommates, but roomie #2′s ever-present girlfriend has become the apartment’s de facto fourth resident…the non-rent-or-utilities-paying kind.

Explains Mike: “We only have one thermostat for the whole apartment, but our rooms are so tiny that we can typically keep the heat off and the place stays at 68-70 degrees.” Once winter came, however, the girlfriend wasn’t too pleased with this arrangement…and took to surreptitiously cranking up the heat into the mid-80s.

After one too many nights of waking up in a sauna, Mike and his allied roommate decided to fight back —in true passive-aggressive style — by removing the (detachable) thermostat from the wall. Drama, of course, ensued.

Mike’s roomie then posted a counter-attack:

Grammar aside, that one pretty much did the trick.

related: kill hamster too?

Most drivers could easily identify these duct-tape wrapped shapes as the universal sign for “Caution: Crazy Person Ahead,” but our submitter in Boston actually pulled over and parked in order to get a better look. Up close, “the signs were even crazier than we thought,” she reports. “Seriously, what happened to this guy?”

related: Movin’ out (Anthony’s song)

Like this phrase, there are a few irritating little pieces of clip art that keep popping up in submissions over and over again. Hovering somewhere near the top of most-wanted list is this pouty little white-gloved dandy.

From the factories of Pittsburgh…

…to the cube-farms of Virginia, this perspiring misanthrope has been spreading his message of intolerance with impunity.

But, once again, it’s a note from a church bathroom (this one spotted by Jess in Boston) that really pushes things to a whole new level of divine didacticism.

Can I get a witness?!

related: clip art crimes

Laura in Boston says one of the restrooms at her school is a real note bonanza. The inside of the stall features no fewer than four individual notes about proper flushing etiquette, and immediately outside the restroom are two (slightly contradictory notes) about proper door opening/closing procedure.

But what’s most interesting? How a couple of those notes look awfully familiar...

related: Passive perfectionism; Et tu, Dora?

Which clip art extravaganza is the most gratuitous? You be the judge!

Is it this sign, from the Virginia office of — of course — a major mobile carrier?

Is it this little tea party of a sign from Cambridge, Mass.?

Or is it this one, from, yes, a church restroom?

related: Cubicle etiquette

“Apparently I needed to help pay for the growing Internet bill,” says our anonymous submitter from Boston. “This was the only way I was notified: no connection and a wireless LAN reprogrammed with a new password.”

But password-protecting your network is actually a relatively direct (and dare I say, more effective) approach compared to this…

While Jessica was a college student in Boston, she lived in a five-person apartment with one friend and three strangers. Jess says apartment issues were rarely (if ever talked about directly (there was but one “meeting), but were instead handled through a series of “love notes” from Anne, like this one.

Most of the points in this letter, Jessica adds, were directed at one person in particular — her friend, with whom Anne shared a room. And when Anne was told to “remind people to clean” at the meeting, Jess says she and her roommates were simply referring to when and if it began to bother her. Oh, and the building’s rodent problem was a pre-existing condition.

Says Tyler in Boston: “My roommate stopped talking to me after the first month of living together and only communicated via whiteboard.” Or, has his roommate might say, via “whiteboard thing.”