Day 7579 | Day 7619 | Day 7675
A Poorly Written Descriptive Interlude
I recently moved into a house with six other guys for what I'm certain will be the last year of my formal 'education'. For a person like me, this is not without its downsides, not the least of which is in the realm of personal hygiene. If any budding teenage communists need a case study in why their pet philosophy doesn't work in the real world, they need only look at a college house.
The Fashionable One has an odd sort of energy to him, going everywhere with a impractically hurried shuffle. He likes everything loud: his TV, his music, and his friends. Obnoxious laughter and blaring classical music at literally all hours do not engender goodwill. Don't get me wrong, I love Copland as much as the next guy, just not at 3am.
The Pedant knows the best way to do everything and won't fail to 'correct' you if you're doing something the 'wrong way'. Cooking, cleaning, reading, typing, driving, drinking, studying, speaking—nothing lies outside his realm of expertise. The Cook is agreeable enough, just don't dare to suggest that any food he makes is any better or worse than he thinks it is. He claims it's because he has a 'sensitive palate'. The Gamer is the coolest of the bunch and is pretty chill; at least until he starts playing Black Ops. Then the epithet spewing monster inside him comes out and destroys anything fragile within arm's reach.
Then there are the Slobs. One thinks the dishwasher does all the work for him, overfilling it to the point that he has to run it three times to get things clean, breaking several glasses in the process. The other likes to leave frozen meat in a sunny spot on the counter all day because he's 'letting it thaw in the sun.' One is cheerful enough when you ask him to clean up after himself but never follows through on his promises, the other gets surly and defensive at the slightest expectation of personal responsibility.
Because of them, our kitchen is developing its own ecosystem. Forgotten fruit rots in plastic shopping bags on the counter while fat carpenter ants swarm around the sticky droplets of fermenting sugars. The sink is stacked with dishes, the drain clogged with an unholy combination of cheerios, ramen noodles, half-cooked meat, and soy sauce. Milk sours and curdles in cereal bowls while salmonella infested cutlery threatens anyone who draws near. The fridge is full of condiments and jelly and spongy vegetables. One jar dropped to the floor and cracked, sticky red strawberry preserves oozing from the bottom and fusing it to the shelf for the foreseeable future.
Silverware continues to disappear as the box of broken glass in the corner begins to become heaped with different shades of green and brown. Flies hang in the air over the trash—small fruit flies silently hovering and fat house flies buzzing in lazy circles like orbiting cargo planes. With each step the linoleum underfoot emits a hollow scraping sound as the detritus of crushed cereal, brownie mix, and ant exoskeletons grinds against it.
Mildewed furniture on the porch is broken on the weekend, then is fixed by myself the proceeding Wednesday only to be broken again. Beer bottles with an inch of liquid left in them are strewn around the house, occasionally toppling over, the smell of stale hops immediately absorbed by wood and carpet and upholstery while bent bottle cap caltrops menace the shoeless. Hours of my day are spent battling the forces of entropy around me.
I'll try not to murder anyone.