What’s he building in there?

What’s he building in there?
What the hell is he building
In there?
He has subscriptions to those
Magazines… He never
Waves when he goes by
He’s hiding something from
The rest of us… He’s all
To himself… I think I know
Why…
    —Tom Waits, What’s He Building in There

My upstairs neighbour came running up to me a while ago, just as I was returning home from my last therapy appointment. He had a letter in his hand from the people who own the building. It stated that there’d been some antisocial behaviour around the flats recently and asked us residents to keep a look out and not run around damaging things. This was in response to the little reinforced windows in three doors being smashed a few days before.

Anyway, my upstairs neigbour seemed somewhat excited about this letter. He wanted to know if I’d received it too. He was quite pushy about this and wasn’t satisfied until I’d looked at my mail. As it happened, I hadn’t got the letter. Why? I have no idea.

I’d have paid this no more thought. Except that there are air vents that carry sound through the building. I can hear stuff from the floor above me while standing in my tiny hallway and bathroom. And for the last couple of weeks, every time I’ve been in my bathroom I’ve been able to hear something odd: A modem dialling a phone number, followed by the voice of the telephone announcer saying “The number you dialled has not been recognised, please hang up and try again.” This repeats until the phone hangs up and the cycle begins anew.

Now I know what to listen for, if I listen carefully I can hear this from my sofa. The really odd thing is that this has been almost continual for the last few weeks. My upstairs neighbour is definitely alive – I’ve heard him moving. Is he running some sort of telephone scam using an autodialler? Is he a wardialling hacker like in Wargames? And is this the reason he was so edgy about the letter regarding antisocial behaviour?

I don’t know. It’s kind of weird, though.

Anyway, today I got high (which is my new hobby) and played around with some music software. Sad though it seems, drinking down 100mg of codeine is one of the few things I really enjoy at the moment. I’m limiting myself to doing it about once a week, which seems reasonable to me and really, I’m the only one whose opinion counts on this. I’m going to continue to report this on my blog, not because doing drugs is cool or especially interesting, but it’s a handy way of remembering when I last did it and keeping the times I do it spaced out enough to avoid habituation.

Sleep has been poor recently. It’s still taking me hours to get to sleep each night and the nights where I don’t get to take temazepam (like tonight) are even worse. But oh well. That’s what the numerous episodes of the X-Files that I have on my computer are for.