10 Passive-Aggressive Gifts To Get Your Downstairs Neighbor Who Is Attempting To Record A Metal Album In His Apartment

By: Katie Pecho

Many of us have picked up new hobbies this year. Whether it’s baking or knitting or the electric guitar, 2020 has led to the unprecedentedly necessary pursuit of finding new ways to entertain ourselves. 

Take that electric guitar, for example. Imagine you have decided to pick up a new instrument, you being a city dweller in a small studio apartment who thinks himself the building’s arbiter of sound. And despite knowing that innocent, courteous neighbors surround you on all sides, you decide, in this hypothetical scenario, to forgo headphones and learn out loud, cranking that sucker impudently up to 11. You then play the same riff over and over until your neighbor– and this could be anyone, really– combats your guitar-barfing by blasting CeeLo Green’s “F*** You” at full volume until her upstairs neighbor sends her a text that says, “This isn’t better.” 

Imagine that.

Imagine then that you master about 72% of that song and think, “Perfect, bring in the drums.” And then you and some guy with a thin, ratty mustache like a 90’s eyebrow who is probably named Cody or Wes drag in a drum kit. You start cranking out something only primitive aliens from a distant universe would confuse with music, all while your neighbor is trying to Zoom with her adult scrapbooking club. Let’s say she has to stay permanently on mute while you shriek out “lyrics” like a cat giving birth on a subway. Let’s say she doesn’t get to say “Paper? I hardly know her!” because of the aforementioned mute situation, which she knows would have made Cathy spit her virgin screwdriver all over her basket of antique buttons. 

Let’s just say that she hung up early out of frustration and wrote the following list of 10 Totally Justified Gifts Someone Could Get For Their Downstairs Neighbor Instead of Going All Stomp Thing on Him and Smashing the Floor So Hard it Fills His Habitual Mug of Clamato with Dust.

Something like that. 

So here’s what you could get:

1. A tuner
2. An acoustic guitar
3. Printed directions to the nearest music school
4. A framed portrait of a tasteful middle finger
5. A sign that reads “DO NOT DISTURB: THAT’S MY JOB”
6. A black t-shirt that says “Selfish Rotten Toilet-Man”
7. An ACME-brand box that punches him in the face with a boxing-glove when he opens it
8. A jar of broken glass labelled “Confetti”
9. An application for NASA with “MORE REALISTIC FOR YOU” scrawled on top
10. A receipt for tap lessons

Someone’s neighbor is about to feel real stupid. It’s on, bitch.