This is brutal.

My DVR/life partner never, ever tapes the Survivor season finales. It’s probably because they’re always on Sunday nights instead of the regular Thursdays. (WHY?) But shouldn’t such an advanced piece of technology — and the gadget I consider to be my soulmate — have slightly more intuition than this? It’s happened like five times now.

I am furious. I watch the entire season of a show I know is worthless, a show I don’t even like that much but remain devoted to simply because it was the first American competitive reality show based on a somewhat interesting idea. Also, my parents watch it, so it’s fun to discuss plot points with them. Sometimes, between all of our conversations about current events, snacking, and me, I hardly know what to talk about. Thanks Survivor!

Anyway, every season I invest hours of my precious little life into these people, and don’t even get to see how it all ends. Ugh! Thing is, I’m sure the finale was lame as usual, I know I would have ended up making fun of everyone’s outfit and how they all look fat now, I know I would have wanted to throw things at the screen whenever Jeff Probst tried to act like he wasn’t reading from cue cards. But for some reason, I relish this crap. So I’m pissed.

The only reason I care enough to write about this right now (I’d gotten over it about two hours ago) is that my next-door neighbor is currently watching his or her recording of the finale. I can hear the drawn-out-too-long flute music. It’s time yet again for tribal council. And I’ll never get to see it.

I’ve never seen my neighbor(s?), and I definitely never hear their TV, so this just seems like an even crueler implementation by God (or Probst) to mess with me tonight.

Or, and this is actually more likely, this is karma biting me in the ass for being such a horrific neighbor to him/her/them for almost two years now. Whoever lives there absolutely hates me and would kill me on the spot if we ever met, which we won’t. I play music — loudly and at 3 a.m. I watch TV — loudly and at 5 a.m. I actually don’t think my various forms of entertainment are ever that loud, but since the walls are about three inches thick, I’m confident that the neighbors think they are that loud.

Quite recently, at 3 a.m. on a Friday night when I was playing music quietly and chatting animatedly wwith one other person in the apartment, we were treated to five loud pounds on the shared wall. FIVE. With spaces in between. So it wasn’t like a casual knock-knock-knock, “Hey could you turn that down” request (which, yes, they’ve done before). This was a calculated, determined, “I’ve hated you for years and if you don’t obey me right now I’m shooting my gun at the wall” plea. There was desperation in the pounding, but it was so forceful it felt like a death threat. We now refer to it as the Knock Heard ‘Round the World.

Update: they just finished their recording, and I heard the sound a TiVo makes as they probably deleted the episode. So if I had a TiVo, this wouldn’t have happened. Noooooo!

Shout-out to my new friend Alison in Park Slope. I didn’t think you were weird, if you were worried. Quite the opposite!