2 plays away from pulling a Paul Rudd

There are countless benefits to living in one of these new, self-proclaimed "luxury" apartment buildings.

You get a 24-hour doorman, a flat-screen-for-every-machine state-of-the-art gym, the chance to win $250 gift certificates to the Ruby Tuesday in the Pentagon City Mall at Monte Carlo night, and the joy of paying a nonsensically expensive, non-refundable $1000 pet-fee.

But that's not all.

Not in my "luxury" complex, anyway. No, in addition to all of the pretty standard aforementioned amenities, the lucky residents of my building also get to enjoy a lobby full of cruel reminders such as When you're dreaming with a broken heart/waking up is the hardest part and It's really over/you made your stand/You got me crying/as was your plan, courtesy of the 10th and 12th tracks, respectively, off of John Mayer's newest album, Continuum, which has been playing on-repeat without the respite of even a single instrumental REO Speedwagon or Bryan Adams track for the last two months.

And I mean every day and every night, weekdays, weekends, holidays, my birthday, last Friday, and this morning.

Some might say, "Wait a minute, editrix, aren't you the masochistic fool who listens to Snow Patrol, Keane, Dido, Kate Rusby, Graham Parker, Amy Winehouse and all those other weepy British exports 1,000+ times on your iPod?" And yes, you're right, I am, however, it's one thing when the individual controls what she listens to and when she listens to it and a distinct other when she's bare-faced, half-asleep taking her pup for 6:30am bathroom relief and without choice, for the fifth time that week, forced to have the line because you're gone, gone, gone, gone...gone serve as the first words she hears that day.

Granted, this musical torture has only been in practice for a relatively short amount of time, and considering the two confrontations I've had in the gym and that other minor fracas when my neighbor received a "surprise" visit from the ASPCA - all of which took place in the past couple of months - I really shouldn't try to pass off my complaint to management as one of communal annoyance when it's very transparently related to my own specific heartache. But I promise you this, if that breathy breakup music is still playing come June 1st, I am SO pulling a Paul Rudd from The 40 Year Old Virgin: