My house gets an unwanted county makeover, cultural inappropriation at the football game and a teacup Corgie sings "I Shot The Sheriff"

 

Last thing I remember, I was running for the door. Except, unlike the Hotel California, Golding Ranch was being gutted by a small battalion of county workers, its siding and wallboard unscrupulously  stripped of its decrepit antiquity, so where the door should have been, there was a full length opening, with only a few studs left in place between the living room and the outside world. 

The inside of the house was similarly in shambles, missing drywall exposing its brittle Romex wiring and seeping, green-tinged plumbing and making a public display of all the substandard construction. 

"Will someone please tell me what's going on here?" I asked one of the workers.

The tight lipped county drone carried on with his deconstruction orders, ignoring my inquiries. A few more attempts of this nature all proved unfruitful, so I decided to seek out the foreman, or someone in charge, to get answers. I quickly discerned that this person must be the man in the grey pinstripe business suit, an imposing, dough faced, rosy cheeked man, reminiscent of the shady mayor of Amity, only taller, with hints of Tim Robbins.

Much like the evasively unethical politician in Jaws, I wasn't getting any answers from this guy, but not for lack of words coming out of his mouth. I wanted to know who, what and why, but what issued forth from his speech hole was an endless stream of sound bites and jargony red tape that I found completely unintelligible. He was speaking a dialect of Building Inspectorese, designed to sound like English, but conveying no actual information. He was a Sim, just jabbering away, meme-like, with his nonsense.

Outside the house, the property was being leveled by bulldozers and excavators, and all traces of rock, grass and vegetation were being tidily removed from the premises. What was left was a perfectly graded surface, slick as chocolate cake frosting, glistening in the morning air.

I went back into the house where I found my brother, played in this dream by Georgie from Young Sheldon. He was the only one who was willing to talk to me about the unauthorized renovations. 

"I think someone dropped a dime on you," he said. "Code violations. You're probably going to have to pay for all this."

"I don't understand," I said. "When I bought this place, everything was disclosed. It was understood that these things were grandfathered in. But if I have to pay for...all this...well, I'm going to sue Century 21!"

The inside of the house was coming back together in rapid fashion. The living room walls had been replaced with a fresh set of drywall panels, taped and texture coated, with a cheap, low-gloss enamel finish. The decorative wood of the vaulted, high ceiling was similarly covered over and its height lowered, presumably to make room for insulation. The whole place was starting to look like a characterless apartment in the city.

----

Later on, I was at a football game. It was halftime, and there was a Native American contingent doing a tribal dance, marching around in a semi-circle. I decided to join them, but my style of dance, and the fact that I was a white man, was not much appreciated. From mild scorn to outrage, words of disapproval came my way as I sort of slam-danced my way through the line backwards.

I did receive a bit of solace, though, from a comical talking Corgie, who was lip singing a perfect version of "I Shot The Sheriff" directly to me. I laughed, and it eased the sting of embarrassment I felt from the crowd's reaction to my culturally inappropriate dancing.