Friday, June 19, 2015

5 Mistakes You'll Make The Next Time You Move

5 Mistakes You'll Make The Next Time You Move

Most people think that moving to a new apartment is a wonderful experience: You pile into a car with all your friends, drive for a few hours, get a hotel, and then spend three days dropping acid while riding roller coasters. But, sadly, that's a common misconception: What I've just described is "taking a trip to Disneyland." In reality, "moving" is when you pack your entire life into boxes, drag those boxes several miles (or several hundred miles) closer to your ultimate goal of being dead, lose half the boxes, spend all your money, stub your toe really bad, and then fall asleep on your box springs because you locked your mattress and your keys inside the U-Haul.
But, don't worry -- moving is balls, and I've done it enough (the longest I've ever lived in one city is 2.5 years; I did it from 2011-2014 in Seattle, and I moved six times during that period, and I'm moving again right now) to where I've figured out what the big pitfalls are. The big mistakes. The big "Life Un-Hacks," if you will. Oh, you won't? "Mistakes" is fine, then.

#5. Trying To Get Back At Your Old Landlord

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Listen, I've sung several verses in the "Song of Slumlord Sorrow" before, so, when you share your stories, I sympathize. We've all had landlords who refused to fix broken ovens, didn't care when sewage erupted from our kitchen sink at 2 a.m., refused to replace the window that a meth addict broke in November, and kept "forgetting" to turn the heat on or, ya know, have it installed. I've battled ant colonies big and advanced enough to have their own rudimentary currencies, and I've had fistfights with rats the size of rottweilers for dominion over the bathroom. And the whole time, I blamed the landlord -- because it's his or her goddamn fault.
Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
I probably should've picked up on some hints.
By the time I was moving out of this particularly crappy basement in Seattle, the concept of cleaning the place up to get my deposit back seemed ridiculous. The place was cleaner than it ever had been because the simple act of living there had kept most of the invasive species out. "So, now I'm supposed to clean it up more, just so this asshole can have an easier time renting it when I'm out and not give me my deposit back, anyway?" I said. "To hell with that."
This is a trap, and it's exactly what landlords want. The thing most people don't realize is that the owner in a lease agreement can't just return or keep a deposit on a whim -- there are laws in placeto protect renters (more on that in a moment) -- and even though those laws don't usually get followed, they do end up mattering because, just like you, landlords are trying to avoid a big hassle. They want to keep your deposit, but they also don't want to end up in small-claims court. And they know that the more effort you put into cleaning up your home, the more likely you are to go that extra mile. Sure, scrubbing down your entire home with bleach and a toothbrush until you're bleeding out the tips of your fingernails isn't fun, and it's also not a guarantee you'll get your whole deposit back -- because some states are less protective than others and some landlords are the walking malignant butt-hole tumors who weird dark lawyer magic to ruin the lives of everyone they come into contact with. But, if you really need that cash -- and the more likely you are to have a shitty landlord, the more likely you are to need that extra check -- it's totally worth the effort.
So, mix some toothpaste, water, and vinegar together in a bowl to make homemade Spackle, and smooth it over all the holes left from the tacks holding up your Jem And The Holograms posters (I'm not here to judge!). Or, even splurge by going down to the hardware store and buying some real Spackle, as well as a Spackle-applier-thingy. You know the tool I'm talking about. It costs like $3.
thodonal/iStock/Getty Images
My point is, you can be shitty at tools and still clean up some drywall.
Even if you don't get your full amount back, then at least you fucking went for it, man. At least you gave them hell.

#4. Not Realizing How Many Rights You Have

Medioimages/Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images
At first glance, the whole "leasing" game seems explicitly designed to screw us renters. All the pressure is on our side, after all: Landlords are the ones doing credit checks and demanding deposits and picking from all our desperately upstretched hands, while we're the ones rushing around town filling out as many rental applications as we can to escape the looming spectre of homelessness. Then, after we've signed that blood-contract, any issues with our new home immediately become our issues: No electricity? No running water? Colony of spider-creatures living in your shower drain? Too bad, sucker: You signed a lease, and they own your soul now.
SKapl/iStock/Getty Images
There's a serious blood-magic problem in the housing industry, but that's for another article.
Except that's not really true. There are all kinds of options available to you, and, actually, tenants have more rights now than they ever have had in human history. In California, for example, if your home becomes "untenantable" and your landlord doesn't fix it when you ask, you can just stop paying rent and leave with no repercussions. Landlords may not have to fix minor issues like peeling paint, but they do have to fix carbon monoxide leaks and an invading army of street-snakes. Sure, your rights are usually written in what appears to be the Language of Mordor, but if you're curious about whether or not your particular problem is worth ditching your apartment, then look into free legal clinics (here's one in my old hometown of Seattle I've heard good things about) that can explain your rights. And if shit gets real bad, you can hit up small-claims court, where you don't even need a lawyer.
The hardest thing to do is to convince yourself it's worth the time and effort to figure this shit out, and that's what the landlords are counting on. They like how everything's written in confusing legal jargon, and you need a lawyer to figure anything out because that always gives the wealthy an advantage over the poor. Their dice just has more sides than yours, and, also, your dice are blank, and you thought you were playing an entirely different edition of Dungeons & Dragons than you really were. Even in the best case scenario, figuring all of this out is an annoying time commitment. But, if you really need your deposit (and again, if you have a slumlord, you probably do), then you have a better shot than you realize, and it's worth taking it.

#3. Forgetting That Every Problem You Have Is Already Solved

XiXinXing/XiXinXing/Getty Images
Did you know that you can get all your mail forwarded from your old place if you ask nicely? Seriously, just go right here. It's like a dollar. And if you're just made of cash and decide to pay $18 a week, you can even have it sent by Priority Mail to you anywhere. It's not perfect, because nothing is, but it gives you some extra time to get all those addresses changed (like, a straight year). Plus, each letter that gets forwarded comes with a helpful yellow sticker saying, "Hey bro, remember to change this address."
Janie Airey/Digital Vision/Getty Images
Hey bro, you forgot your dog.
The thing is, missing bills and payments don't just screw you, they screw everyone: the people you owe money to, the people who need you to do your job, your landlord -- silly bureaucratic nonsense isn't a problem isolated to you. It's an inefficiency in the system. And even though it feels like the system is evil and broken and working against you, it actually does want to maintain itself -- even if that means helping you out. So, yes, there's a good way to fix your address change.
Even when you can't find a form to sign or a government-funded solution, then -- unless you're moving into a shack in the middle of the desert -- you'll still have neighbors, and it's super useful to ask them for help. Trying to figure out which of the two possible Internet providers is better? How to get your bed up that narrow flight of stairs? The best place to score weed? Ask your neighborsbecause they've already done all that, probably multiple times. Regardless if they can't physically help you out, they'll probably be happy to answer the question because a lot of human beings are actually pretty rad folk.

#2. Not Looking At Enough Places

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Look at lots and lots of places. Places slightly too expensive for you, places slightly too cheap, places too far from work, places underneath nuclear power plants -- it doesn't matter, just check them out (if you have the time) because apartment hunting is a different game in every neighborhood and you need to learn the rules.
For example, in LA, apartments don't come with refrigerators. As a functioning human being who has lived in civilized society, that is the dumbest fucking thing I have ever heard, and I blew off a lot of apartments because I thought they were scamming me or trying to rent to robots or something. And between zip codes, rental prices have insane variety: In (one of) my hometown(s) of Helena, Montana, I can get an entire house for like $800, but, in parts of LA, that gets you a cardboard box and a half-empty tube of toothpaste.
MattGush/iStock/Getty Images
And a fine layer of soot over your entire body.
"But, I'm moving within my hometown, so this doesn't apply to me!" Wrong, fool! The vast majority of people move because of a new job or a desire for a better living environment, and, in both those cases, you're entering a whole new world with new rules. Once you set your budget, it might take you four or five apartment visits before you can know for sure if prostitutes knife-fighting in your front lawn is something you'll be able to avoid or a perk. Can you expect unbroken windows, or is the simple fact that windows exist a freaking miracle? Should you be bummed this place makes you pay for electricity, or rejoicing that it actually has electricity? You can't know until you've put in the time.
Remember, new-home hunting is always a race against the clock, and the closer that date gets, the more willing you'll be to settle. Because the alternative is using your belongings to build a crude hut, shoving a knife between your teeth, and spending your nights fighting off overgrown rats and comedy writers.

#1. Forgetting To Be Fucking Cool About Shit

John Howard/Digital Vision/Getty Images
You sign your new lease, and it's rad. Assuming you do everything right with your new apartment and remember to talk to your new neighbors about how loud your new place is and take pictures of every dumb flaw, there's still one very important step: Be Fucking Cool About Shit. I cannot stress enough the importance of Being Fucking Cool About Shit in every possible situation.
For example, you're going to have unexpected problems your first few nights. Maybe meth addicts get spun under your bedroom window, maybe there's a 2:30 a.m. train that runs through your kitchen, or maybe you have ants. Be fucking cool about it. Scare the meth addicts with a flashlight, commit an act of domestic terrorism against the train, and buy TERRO ant traps because those are the best. Just be fucking cool about it.
LWA/Dann Tardif/Blend Images/Getty Images
Like this guy.
Or, maybe your neighbors run a mushrooms-and-noisy-sex cult. If you're like me, your first impulse is going to be to strip naked, press your dick against their window, and stare them all down until they make you their king and agree to be quiet -- but, that's not being cool about shit. Instead, just ask them to be quiet or figure out some kind of trade-off. I've had apartment mates who would give me free beer when they expected to get loud, and I was fiiiiine with that, man. Because I was 22 and didn't need sleep or care about my job, but the point remains: You gotta be fucking cool about it.
Ryan McVay/Digital Vision/Getty Images
Or this guy.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, be fucking cool to your landlord. Yes, I know that they are all a bunch of twattlefucks, and some of the best punk songs ever are about murdering them, but hear me out: You gain nothing by picking a fight or even by making it clear that you aren't to be fucked with. I can't guarantee it'll always work, but I can guarantee that it can work. Which is the most lameass guarantee ever, but, like I said, this game is rigged, and all you can hope to do is not get fucked too bad.
Anyway, I've been writing "Employed by 'The LA Times'" on all my rental applications, so I need to go figure out who their editor-in-chief is and bribe her.

6 Hidden Dangers Of Being Homeless You Didn't Know Existed

6 Hidden Dangers Of Being Homeless You Didn't Know Existed

Most of us assume the dangers faced by homeless people are straightforward: You have to stay warm, stay fed, and avoid the myriad falling anvils that you never realized materialize out of the sky when there's not a roof to protect you. And although all of those dangers are true for people who call the sidewalks their home, there are also a ton of underreported traps and scams that no one ever tells you about.

#6. Psychotic Harassment Can Come From Everywhere (Including The Cops)

David McNew/Getty Images News/Getty Images
For the world's shittiest humans, homeless people are fair game as a source of entertainment. By this point, you've probably heard of Bumfights, those terrible videos made by terrible people using the homeless for human cockfights. And not the kind of human cockfights that show up in the gay section of PornHub -- the kind where filmmakers pay transients cigarettes and booze to Jackasstheir bodies into permanent disability for entertainment purposes.
Calgary's most disgusting citizens took homeless baiting a different route with Creature Sightings, a Facebook page where assholes post pictures of local homeless people ... to make fun of them. Another douchenugget uses a Steve Irwin persona to play pranks on homeless people "in their natural habitat." Someday, his "natural habitat" will be Hell, where he'll be sewn face-first onto Cerberus' taint.
The Bumhunter
"Oh, Here no. I don't want that shit." -- Satan
Sadly, all of that is mild compared to what the homeless population endures from the boys in blue. Rather than protecting a vulnerable population of people, it's not uncommon for officers and authority figures to use their position for some good ol' fashioned bullying. Members of the Sarasota Police Department were caught "bum hunting" when police logs revealed messages like "I'm the Bum Hunter tonight son! UR a nerd and gonna get beat up by a bum when you wake up ..."
Officers from another police department skipped all niceties and went straight to pouring warm cooking oil all over homeless people in their jurisdiction. After all, as one officer admitted, "After time, it starts to get boring just slapping people. You have to devise new methods and new tactics to revitalize the hunt." Revitalize the hunt. Jesus. Is ... is this the new midlife crisis? When your sadistic torture games fill you with ennui?
Scott Olson/Getty Images News/Getty Images
"There has to be more than tear gas and tasers. I need something ... exciting. You know?"
Sometimes, it's not the police force but the goddamn Army taking advantage of the less fortunate. The Arizona Army National Guard came under scrutiny when it was revealed that some of their recruiters were driving around in Humvees and shooting homeless people with paintball guns. These are the same people responsible for visiting high schools and convincing impressionable teens to join their ranks.
The lesson to take away from all this? The Earth's crust should be booby-trapped with giant hilarious mattress springs, so that we can fire entire acres' worth of assholes into the unforgiving vacuum of space at a moment's notice.

#5. Fines For The Homeless Are A Kafkaesque Nightmare

Spencer Platt/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Across the country, officials are instructed to fine the everloving hell out of the homeless, for no other reason than that they're homeless. As we've mentioned before, "Quality Of Life" laws ban sitting or lying on sidewalks, so that the unhomeless don't have to walk around the less fortunate. That's great for pedestrians, but not great for the people who are expected to live their entire lives on a never-ending urban hike. For them, the choices are to keep walking or pay a $50 fine. Not that anyone who found themselves resting their bodies on a sidewalk would be able to raise money to pay the fine -- anti-panhandling laws create restrictions on where and how people who are down on their luck can beg for money. And most of these laws are enforced with, you guessed it, fines.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images
"Sir, loitering is illegal. As is wearing dirty clothes and ... well, frankly, I'm jealous of your beard."
In 2004, San Francisco issued somewhere in the ballpark of 31,000 citations for actions like sleeping in cars and panhandling -- things specifically done by the homeless population due to them having as many options as a hot dog in a hamburger bun shop.

#4. It's Easy To Screw The Homeless Out Of A Paycheck

PhotoAlto/James Hardy/PhotoAlto Agency RF/Getty Images
It turns out that many people living on the streets actually do have jobs, thank you very much. There's just the little issue of nobody wanting to pay them. One homeless advocacy group in Floridarecently came under fire for expecting their beneficiaries to sell concessions, do landscaping, work in construction, and write grants ... for free. According to Tampa's New Beginnings, all of these work opportunities were "therapy" for the workers participating in their program. And by "therapy," we mean cheap-ass bullshit. In exchange for food and shelter, New Beginnings participants worked untold hours doing WHATEVER the charity asked them to do work-wise.
Bernard Gagnon/Wiki Commons
Worst of all, they were forced to watch the Buccaneers.
And they weren't the only ones. A council member in Atlanta hired homeless people to help her campaign, which would be inspiring if they weren't paid in tax dollars and were given more than $5 an hour.
WSB-TV
"We can't offer more -- we've got schools to not fund, you know."
Meanwhile, Japanese gangsters hired a group of homeless men to help clean up the 2011 nuclear spill in Fukushima. Yes, for the equivalent of $100 a day, homeless people were asked to clean up the shit that spawned like 45 percent of Godzilla's rogues gallery. And guess fucking what? The workers who were mopping up radioactive sludge didn't make the money they were promised. Once they were docked for housing, food, and spacesuits, some of them only ended up making $10 a month. Others left the cleanup in debt, probably because they went a little nuts on the Fukushima cafeteria offerings.

#3. The Homeless Are Often Coerced Into False Confessions

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We aren't talking about forcing someone to admit to their all-time favorite guilty pleasure song here; these cases are a lot more serious than losing your cred with the hardcore metal crowd. In 1994, a 19-year-old homeless woman admitted to beating a man to death, despite the fact she was totally innocent. The man who interrogated her, Jim Trainium, has since realized how he led her to that confession, basically coaching it out of her the entire time. Meanwhile, a homeless veteran from Chicago was convicted of rape, and spent 11 years in jail before everyone realized that the incident never actually took place.
Scott Olson/Getty Images News/Getty Images
"That's the Chicago way!"
Mental illness and low mental capacity play a major role in the false confession phenomenon. At least 32 percent of false confessors were found to have one of these issues. Which puts the homeless specifically at risk, seeing as how a fifth of that population suffers from mental illness.
Six different studies have shown that, since the 1980s, at least 250 false confessions were directly caused by interrogation tactics. That isn't 250 false confessions total -- which wouldn't be so bad, given the time span -- that's 250 due only to interrogations gone wrong. Just since 2012, the University of Michigan Law School's National Registry Of Exonerations has recorded 1,599 exonerations of previously convicted suspects due to new science and investigation techniques. Clearly, there's a disconnect between those two sets of statistics -- either someone is really, reallybad at math, or there's another sneaky element at play here.
Which serves as a nice little segue into our next entry ...

#2. People On The Streets Often Get Themselves Arrested Just To Have A Place To Sleep

Darrin Klimek/Digital Vision/Getty Images
A 2010 British survey found that one-fifth of the homeless population admitted they would be willing to commit a crime in order to be taken off the streets. In a two-year span, 920 people were taken into custody by the Harris County Jail five times or more. The Corvallis Police Department arrested 38 people multiple times in a two-week span. Being the smart and attractive young readers we assume you are, we're sure you've guessed by now that mental illness was once again the thread tying all of these statistics together.
Spencer Grant/Photolibrary/Getty Images
Well, that and delicious state gruel.
Another 2013 study determined that between 25 and 50 percent of all homeless individuals had a history of incarceration -- a high amount no matter which number you run with. The explanation is pretty simple: Homelessness equals nowhere to sleep (especially with all those fines up there) and prison equals beds. So we end up with large amounts of people with no options and nowhere to go committing crimes and, dare we say it, falsely confessing to crimes in order to get a place to lay their heads at night. These people are so desperate for a place to sleep that they are willing to settle for a nasty, uncomfortable cot that makes your cousin's smelly old futon look like a high-priced hotel bed.
Tomasz Wyszolmirski/iStock/Getty Images
"Worth it."
Prison isn't the only refuge for these poor unfortunate souls. Many choose to rely on the healthcare system instead, repeatedly visiting emergency rooms in order to sleep in a real bed with a real blanket under a real roof for a night. One California man is said to have racked up a million dollars in healthcare charges over the years because he kept turning up in the hospital. That's just one man. An area hospital was said to have lost $900,000 in one year treating five homeless patients. But hey! Free healthcare at least.
Except that isn't always a good thing ...

#1. Using The Homeless For Fraud Is Common

Darrin Klimek/Digital Vision/Getty Images
In New York, 23 doctors were recently charged with insurance fraud because they thought they had hit on the perfect way to make a bunch of free money. They simply went around asking homeless people to sign up for state-provided healthcare, and then had them participate in unnecessary exams so the doctors could bill the system for beaucoup bucks. All the homeless got in exchange were pairs of sweet-ass kicks.
DAJ/amana images/Getty Images
"Worth it."
But there's no need to get too down on doctors, no matter how wrong they may be about our eating habits. Lots of people are guilty of using the unfortunate to make a quick buck. One group of hooligans paid $50-$100 to homeless victims in order to use their identities to purchase $600 iPhones. The phones were then sold for a profit and the phone bills charged to the bank accounts of the homeless -- who, of course, couldn't pay them off.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images
"No money? Looks like we'll have to charge you a fine ... which you ought to be used to by now."
So for those of you keeping track: We have a population of people whose lives are destroyed because their credit has been trashed and they're in massive debt to the city. On top of which, they each have too many arrests on their records to be able to find a place in a society that has taken to hunting them for sadistic sport. Too bad there isn't any way to prevent the total destruction of a citizen's future and the loss of millions of taxpayers' dollars.
Except maybe paying them for the jobs they hold. There's always that.

5 Amazing Things Accidentally Accomplished Out Of Spite

5 Amazing Things Accidentally Accomplished Out Of Spite

Unintended consequences are almost never a good thing -- you picture a new dam being built and accidentally drowning a village upstream. But it's not just well-intentioned plans that go awry. Bad intentions can backfire too, accidentally striking a blow for the good guys. Like ...

#5. A Racist Congressman Tries To Sabotage The Civil Rights Act, Ends Up Advancing Racial And Gender Equality

The United States of the early 1960s was a racist place, and Virginia was perhaps the racistest. So it's no surprise that, as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barreled down the tracks toward Enactment Station, one Virginia congressman was intent on derailing that son of a bitch by any means necessary. That congressman's name was Howard W. Smith, and we can sum up pretty much everything you need to know about the guy in three words: "apologist for slavery." OK, four: "segregationist."
U.S. Congress
OK, five: "turtley."
Obviously, an act that promised to end discrimination based on "race, color, religion, or national origin" posed a threat to the sensibilities of a man like Smith on like three or four different levels. So how could he throw a big ol' bigot-wrench in its gears? Simple: by adding one more, tiny word to that list: "sex." Not as in "everyone is entitled to equal amounts of it" but as in "women get equal rights too."
Now, as you can probably guess, Smith didn't give two shits and a ham sandwich about women's rights. This wasn't his way of squeezing one desirable outcome out of a bill that he saw as the downfall of his entire belief system -- it was his way of splitting the vote. He knew that there was a large contingent of members who were all for maintaining a dong-advantaged society, and adding women to the act was a way to make it sound so ridiculous that on-the-fence congressmen would Humpty Dumpty right down to the "no" side of the yard.
United States House of Representatives
If he really wanted division he should have just included something about pizza-topping preference.
When he introduced his smart-ass wording change, Smith was met with a wave of laughter from the House floor. But laughter can be misleading -- Smith either vastly underestimated the level of support behind the Civil Rights Act or completely failed to realize that somewhere around half of the population maybe, you know, wanted women to have equal rights too. The bill passed, and not only did Smith possibly help cement its passage, but a man who was vehemently opposed to granting blacks and minorities equal rights also accidentally helped jumpstart the modern feminist movement. Just think of how embarrassed he must have been when he realized that women also come in all colors.

#4. A Racist Supreme Court Ruling Accidentally Integrates The NFL

Way back in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was A-OK according to the highest law of the land, thereby proving that human awfulness goes all the way to the tippy top. That single ruling allowed states to maintain segregated schools and other facilities for over six decades, and this widespread prejudice even trickled into sports leagues such as the NFL. Throughout its early history, the NFL was downright progressive. But in the 1930s, racism hit like a ton of bricks, and in 1933 it became a whites-only league by "unofficially" banning minorities from playing.
NFL
"You've got great hands. Have you considered trying out ... as a ticket usher?"
Fast-forward to 1946. The NFL had been bleachy white for over a decade. Problem was, the best up-and-coming football player (not to mention a better baseball player than Jackie Robinson), Kenny Washington, was a bit too pigmentally gifted for the comfort of the racist institution that pro football had become. When a bid to make Washington the first professional baseball player failed due to Washington's refusal to pretend to be Puerto Rican rather than black (no shit), Washington turned to his second-choice sport.
Bears coach George Halas tried to snap him up by convincing the league to integrate, but it was a no-go. In the end, it would take a decades-old Supreme Court decision to finally integrate the NFL. You may have heard of it: Plessy v. Ferguson, the very case that had made segregation completely legal to begin with.
Pro Football Hall of Fame
Basically the courtroom version of this.
See, that court case came up with the concept of "separate but equal" public facilities, meaning you could build a whites-only school as long as you also built an all-black one. Well, the Cleveland Rams, who were preparing to relocate to Los Angeles, wanted to sign Kenny Washington. Since the L.A. Coliseum was supported by public funds, they merely had to ask when the all-black stadium would be built. The answer of course was never, so the NFL couldn't claim any legal protection for its segregation. That meant when the Rams signed Washington and broke the league's color barrier, there was nothing the other owners could do to stop it. Not unless they could convince the government to fund a "separate but equal" NFL.
So, the Rams happily added Washington to their roster, and he became the NFL equivalent of Jackie Robinson, except with none of the pesky historical recognition.

#3. A Homophobic Cop Unwittingly Helps Repeal America's Anti-Sodomy Laws

As late as 2003, 14 U.S. states still considered certain sexing techniques so unthinkably debauched that they were outright illegal. And of all the sodomy statutes on the books, Texas' "homosexual conduct law" was perhaps the most creepily specific -- it stated that anal sex was just dandy between men and women, but not those of the same sex, oddly making the level of freedom enjoyed by a Texan's butthole dependent upon its owner's gender. Though the law wasn't much enforced by 1998, it technically criminalized a significant portion of the state's gay men.
That was the year some Houston cops took an anonymous call about a black man "going crazy with a gun" and sped to the scene to justice the shit out of the situation. When they arrived, they found that the whole gun story was a crock of horse shit stirred up by a jealous former lover -- however, there was some banging of an entirely different variety going down.
Thinkstock Images/Stockbyte/Getty Images
"Was it a gang thing?"
"No, just the two of them."
The official story is that Deputy Joseph Quinn, the lead officer on the scene, waded into the apartment through a fog of incense and '70s funk to catch Tyron Garner and John Lawrence enjoying some vigorous backdoor boning. Even after he pointed his gun and ordered them to stop, Quinn claimed that Garner kept right on a-humping for a full minute, staring him straight in the eye. But two other cops in the apartment didn't see anything of the sort, and another officer said he'd seen oral sex. This suggests that something was amiss with the officers' testimony, because even in the most disturbing of German porn it's pretty goddamn clear which end everything's going into or, Lord help us, coming out of.
Anal shenanigans notwithstanding, Lawrence was still pissed-off enough to find the police in his place that he started drunkenly yelling about Nazis. This didn't sit well with Deputy Quinn, a cop well known for demanding that citizens respect the badge. Or, less charitably, one with a reputation as a hyper-authoritarian, homophobic dickbag. He called the DA, and after getting confirmation that, yes, it was actually a thing he could do, arrested the two men for "deviant sexual acts."
Houston Police Department
Clearly, hardened criminal masterminds.
Lawrence and Garner pleaded not guilty. But given that it took such a rare confluence of stupidities to produce an honest-to-goodness sodomy charge, activists convinced the pair to shut up about their innocence and change their plea to no contest. The case went to the Supreme Court in 2003, where it was decided that red-blooded Americans had the right to insert their tallywhatsits into whichever ballyhoosit they damn well please in the privacy of their own homes. Finally, man-on-man lovin' was officially legal in every state of the Union, and it was thanks in no small part to the police equivalent of that jock in high school whose vocabulary consisted of 98 percent, "Fag!"
Houston Voice
"The other 2 percent was, 'Homo!' Gotta have variety."

#2. An Attempt To Limit Teddy Roosevelt's Power Inadvertently Grants Him All The Power

In the late 1890s, no man had a greater grip on the political balls of New York than Republican Senator Thomas Platt, unaffectionately known as Boss Platt. When Platt needed a new lackey to fill the role of governor after his preferred man went and destroyed his hopes of reelection by treating government funds like his own personal piggy bank, he turned to Teddy Roosevelt. Fresh off of his stint with the Rough Riders, Roosevelt would be a convenient puppet to play out Platt's whims since he had not yet fully developed into the unstoppable juggernaut that he was destined to become.
Harvard Library
Young Teddy would like to have a word with that last sentence.
But Governor Goddamn Roosevelt was no man's puppet. He went straight to doing as he damn well pleased (versus doing as Boss Platt damn well pleased), and when it became apparent that the new governor was about to deal a swift kick to the precarious political building blocks that Platt had so carefully stacked into makeshift thrones for him and his Republican pals, they had to get rid of him.
No, we don't mean "get rid of him" as in "kill him." Platt was corrupt, not fucking suicidal.
Pach Brothers
How would you even kill a mustache like that?
Anyway, in what seemed like a stroke of unquestionable luck for Platt, Republican President William McKinley just so happened to be seeking a new running mate for the 1900 election. Since the vice presidency was widely known as the office where political careers crawled off to die a slow, whimpering death, the post seemed like the A-1 perfect spot to dump a certain problematic moose-rider. Roosevelt wanted nothing to do with the nomination, but at the insistence of Platt, his fellow Republican big-shot Mark Hanna, and tens of thousands of chanters at the Republican Nominating Convention in Philadelphia, he relented. Long story short: McKinley won, and Roosevelt settled in for four years of mind-numbing boredom as the new VP.
Wait, did we say four years? We meant six months. That's how long it was before President McKinley decided to check out the 1901 World's Fair in Buffalo, and rather than stuffing his belly full of delectable funnel cake, he ended up getting it stuffed full of lead courtesy of anarchist-cum-assassin Leon Czolgosz. And just like that, Platt and Hanna's ploy to force Roosevelt into the position of least power had instead pushed him right into the most powerful position of all. Hanna, upon hearing the news, shouted, "Now that damned cowboy is president!" -- a reference to Roosevelt's stint "punching cattle" in the 1880s. And then Roosevelt presumably punched him through a wall like motherfucking RoboCop.
Library of Congress
Then the entire planet came together and elected him Ruler Of The World out of fear.

#1. Petty Political Shenanigans Give Women The Right To Vote

Ah, New Zealand. Movie Middle-earth. World rugby powerhouse. Australia's Canada. Global pioneer of women's rights? Yep -- New Zealand granted women full voting rights all the way back in 1893, which, for those keeping score at home, means they out-democracied the USA by a handy 27 years.
After years of campaigning, by the 1890s Kiwi suffragettes were finally winning the public debate. No one was less pleased about this than the liquor industry, the proponents of which worried that women would vote for temperance laws and cast an unprofitable buzzkill across the land. Premier Richard Seddon, whom we'll hereafter refer to by his actual nickname, King Dick (because holy shit, KING DICK), was in cahoots with the booze industry and felt like an utter tool because his Liberal Party was responsible for introducing the latest suffrage bill before his rise to power. The bill had already passed the lower house, but that had happened twice before. King Dick and his cronies had always managed to scare off upper house voters with acts of political dickery, such as last-minute amendments.
Wiki Commons
"All in favor of the 'Stop Acting Like Cocks Act' of ... goddamn it, Dick."
This time, however, the math wasn't working in King Dick's favor: The bill was deadlocked at 19 votes each way. A little too close for comfort -- but it did mean that just one more "no" should be enough to smite that girl-vote foolishness again. So King Dick shot one of his party's new councilors a sneaky telegram ordering him to change his vote. The councilor agreed because, again, KING DICK, and Seddon patted himself on the back, content that a single telegram had secured Kiwi men's right to the drunken bliss that can only be achieved when drinking from cups filled by oppressed womenfolk.
And it might have worked, if word of King Dick's shenanigans hadn't leaked. It pissed off William Reynolds and Edward Stevens, two opposition councilors who had planned to vote against the bill on a technicality. Their objections dropped quicker than a freshman at happy hour, and they jumped sides for the sole purpose of politically embarrassing King Dick as payback for his conniving bastardry. The bill passed and, thanks to a simple act of petty spite, New Zealand became the first modern country to grant equal voting rights to women.
Warner Bros.
"And look where that got us!" -Ghost Dick
Of course, King Dick tried to claim credit for women's suffrage, on the grounds that his party proposed the bill in the first place. Because, in case we haven't mentioned it, KING DICK.
National Library NZ
"He died like he lived. A cunt."