Our apartment building was sold to new management, and we started getting new rules from them pretty much immediately. They started out passive-aggressive, and moved rapidly straight into aggressive-aggressive territory. We would get a new rule slipped under our door practically every day. We couldn't lock our bikes to the fence outside, store anything in the formerly communal attic, use the formerly communal outside area, garden in the formerly shared plot, etc. Deeply annoying! Then the owners starting locking the laundry room at random times. I would trudge down 6 flights of stairs with 3 weeks of dirty clothes, only to find that I couldn't wash them. (Some people might take this as a sign that I should just learn to wash my clothing more often, but I refuse to accept such a ridiculous way of life.) After being locked out a few too many times, I decided to take revenge. Deeply, utterly, useless revenge.

I went out and bought three fake surveillance cameras. They were motion-activated: a small red light would glow and they would swivel when they caught movement, but otherwise did nothing at all. Lovesmasher drilled holes high up in the corner of the laundry room, then installed the first of the surveillance cameras. We printed out forms (using a similar header to the usual forms that were slipped under our doors) saying that the laundry room was now under 24-hour surveillance to prevent theft, and tacked them up at the main entrances. Then we went about our merry way.

The next time I saw a neighbor, he was incensed. "I can't believe they don't trust us to do our laundry!" he exploded. When I went down to check the camera, it was gone. So up went the second faux-surveillance camera. A few weeks went by. Once in a while I'd pass a neighbor, and we'd talk about how offensive the whole thing was. The tide of annoyance that started with the no-bikes-on-the-fence rule was swelling. The forms proclaiming the surveillance were defaced. And finally, the management company sent someone to take down the camera, the tacked-up-forms, and slipped yet another form under all of our doors. This one said that they would never dream of performing surveillance, and that it was all a misunderstanding. No one could believe that they expected us to swallow such claptrap--they'd clearly put up cameras! At least one angry phone call was made. And my tiny grinch heart grew two sizes with vengeful glee. So I couldn't grill on the patio, or store an air-conditioner in the attic, or even do my laundry on a reliable basis. But at least I had caused a moment or two of annoyance for my landlord. And that was all that mattered.