Cate in Columbus went out of town for a night, and sadly, her absence was enough to provoke her betta fish (Pope Shaivo the Third) to jump out of his bowl and end it all. Meanwhile,Cate says her roommates, apparently unwise to the suicidal tendencies of bettas, “thought I had placed it on my desk and just left it there!”

related: Those hamsters were shivering, not dancing

Nothing could have prepared Lauren in Oakland for the passive-aggressive avalanche that awaited her the other day at her new apartment. She calls the experience of finding the notes totally surreal. “It keeps playing back in slow motion in my mind, from the second I saw the first one hanging over the threshold to my absolute horror and delight at finding an eleventh one hours later on the bathroom door.” Here’s the theme park version!

“I’m not sure anything in particular prompted it,” Lauren says, “but I live, apparently, in some kind of alternate dimension where full-grown adults believe in chore-wheels, so it could’ve been anything — but certainly not ELEVEN things to correspond with the number of found notes. Then again, I’m not a timebomb waiting to explode, so how would I know?”

related: recipe for roommate discord

Tina is Los Angeles didn’t have any problem with her roommate‘s friend couchsurfing at their apartment for a month, but both she and her roomie started to get irked when the friend started inviting other friends to stay over — and then kept doing it, even after the roomie expressly asked her not to.

“The first friend we encountered killed one of my fish and put gum in my aquarium,” Tina says. When another friend-of-a-friend started “subtly and sarcastically deriding” their taste in fashion/entertainment/blah blah blah…well, the roommates decided enough was enough.

related: Some suggestions for the comfort of your guest

Based on the online/canine aging scale (one dog year = one youtube day) this video is pretty much on its last legs, but I love it just the same. Consider this post a mercy shot of euthanasia. (And thanks to Maximilian, Jen, Chris, Willa, Nattie, Cat and Dave for passing along!)

related: Oh, shit!

This series comes to us from an anonymous office worker in Sydney, Australia, who explains: “Despite our multi-million dollar profits, some people in our office are really attached to our company’s bottom line.”

UPDATE: the saga continues!

related: Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler

A possibly prescient note from the offices of Yahoo! U.K….

related: just in case you didn’t catch the sarcasm

Writes Jaina in Westport, Conn.: “I dated this asshole last fall, and dumped him because I found out that he was using his Livejournal to try to bang girls on the side. I, of course, still spy on him.” Or at least, she did…until her ip address gave her up.

Adds Jaina: “Please note that the entry was posted at 11:45 p.m. on a Friday. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the state of his love life.”

Meanwhile, when a passive-aggressive blog posting starts to seem like a relatively direct method of communication, you know things aren’t going to end well.

related: Who would’ve thought? It figures

Nicky in Elwood, Indiana (a diehard fan of the Indianapolis Colts) put this sign on her office door last week only to find it defaced by a phantom Pats fan each night after she left. Needless to say, Nicky’s feeling quite vindicated today on behalf of both brothers Manning.

tangential: The partly cloudy patriot [wnyc.org]

Curse as much as you want, dude: you’re still bitching about body wash. (Personally, that’s what I’d call a gamekiller.)

related: I swear this isn’t some sort of stealth viral marketing campaign

“Beware,” indeed: Walking along “West 25th or so” in Manhattan, this “work of art” was enough to make Eric “personally” “shit his pants.”

extra credit: The Zagat history of my last relationship [The New Yorker]