Sarah in Somerville, Mass. wasn’t fazed when she left her apartment one Saturday to find this otherwise “run-of-the-mill your-mother-doesn’t-live-here note”…until she rounded the corner and was greeted by photocopies of the same note taped to every available surface in the hallway.

Then, the next day, another note appeared near the elevator…

…which had apparently been written on the back of yet another (more targeted) note:

“In fairness,” Sarah says, “this whole thing really is gross, and now the lobby and the hallway — in addition to the elevator — smell of vomit. I’m just not sure why the first notewriter thought that spending $10 on copies was going to help.”

And lastly, Sarah adds:  “My mommy didn’t clean up my dorm, either.”

related: Going up?

Omar says he found this tucked underneath the windshield his car in Noe Valley, a neighborhood of San Francisco “inhabited by self-centered jackasses — myself included, if you believe this note.”

Adds Omar: “I should clarify: The author of this masterpiece is talking about residential street parking, not a private/public lot with clearly designated lines or, for that matter, even metered street parking. I like to think of myself as a fairly considerate person; clearly I’m nowhere near considerate enough.” (Not by Northern Californian standards, at least.)

related: The parking class

An anonymous submitter in Ann Arbor, Michigan received this e-mail from a guy who just moved into her co-op (“basically a co-ed frat house”) for the rest of the summer. “We’ve tried to reason with him,” she says, to no avail. “When asked why he has to get up so early, he says, ‘I have important things to do in the morning,’ and that’s it.”

The even bigger mystery? Wonders our submitter: “Why, if he needs complete silence at night, did he move in with 16 other college kids on summer break?”

related: there will come soft pains

This note from a “friendly neighbor” was put through the mailslot of Dan’s apartment in the heart of South Philly. Says Dan: “I wanted to put ‘thanks for the advice!’ on the door in response, but thought better of it.”

As infuriating as the note was, “I do love how they phoned in the underlining on ‘of’ and ‘the,’ then went to town with ‘curb,’” Dan says. “Thank you, friendly neighbor, for the best piece of bulletin board material I’ve ever gotten.”

related: Two birds with one snowman

In terms of the appropriate sympathetic nervous system response, an e-mail subject line like “big favor” is kinda the modern cubicle-dweller’s equivalent of “Saber-tooth tiger outside cave!”

(Note: this e-mail, our Seattle-area submitter says, is from the very same person who brought us this.)

related: Perhaps it’s time for a little group therapy?

If you’ve ever tut-tutted over the consequences of big-box stores and online retailers overtaking small businesses, you’ll be heartened to hear that some folks have figured out how to bring those old-fashioned mom-n-pop ideas about customer service into the digital age…with the help of a big ol’ corporation called eBay!

While browsing the auction site for some new shades, my pal Josh stumbled across one such example — a listing from a Florida-based eBayer who goes by the name of whiteblizzard70.

This goes on for several more paragraphs (see for yourself), but I’ll skip to my favorite part — the postscript.

(Josh decided not to bid.)

related: Top five musical crimes perpetrated by record store customers
extra credit: How do you get out of an ebay auction? [consumerist.com]

P.S. This post reminded me of another note my friend Josh told me about a few months back — a piece of reader mail he’d received as an editor at the music mag Blender. Granted, most readers who take the time to write in to magazines like Blender are at least a little bit…off, to say the least. But the last part of this letter — a response to an “Ask Blender” column about the urban legend that Debbie Harry of Blondie was once abducted by Ted Bundy — is genuinely spine-chilling. (Passive-aggressive? Not so much. Creepy? Um, yes.)

When Sheena in Austin spotted this note on her neighbor’s front door, she couldn’t help but wonder: “If your doormat has sentimental value, maybe it should be hanging on your wall instead of sitting on the ground?”

related: Wrath mat

extra credit: Sentimental value: clothing stories from eBay

Given the highly intellectual discussions this site’s commenters have become known for, it seems safe to assume that the question, “How are we to judge poetry?”  is one that you, dear reader, have no doubt pondered on many an occasion, along with other more academic concerns such as the proper resting state of the toilet lid.

Well, as the late Philip Larkin once said, “I think a poet should be judged by what he does with his subjects, not by what his subjects are.” With that in mind, which of these poets would you judge “less likely to make you totally vom”?

Is it this one, from a university campus in Toronto?

…or is it this one, spotted by Kacey at the YMCA in the college town of Champaign, Illinois?

related:  A limerick

extra credit: The Poet of Dirty Words: Reconsidering Philip Larkin [slate.com]