Huzzah for memes! Invest your money in
propagating the new-and-improved paradigm! Hail the end of the century of
irony and
doublethink, and the beginning of the millenium of
obfuscation, obscurity-fellation.
I try to go to sleep, sometime after midnight, after the computer is off, and the girlfriend and the good buddy have gone away. A roommate walks in, wakes up the roommate asleep on the floor of the living room, and informs him that Dude, you can't just leave your bike out there like that, it's gonna get stolen. He follows up this suggestion with an offer of half the remainder of a bottle of Jack Daniels. I eavesdrop momentarily before becoming disgusted.
I wake up early. It sounds as though the roommates are finally going to sleep. I congratulate myself for fixing the time on my alarm clock last night. Nothing like a significant other to inspire you to act on positive impulses. The more sinister digit reads 5. My drowsy ears make out tooth-brushing sounds, TV sounds.
Wake up at normal time. 8. Roommate's who pays rent and has his own room and has a job's alarm clock is in rhythm with the slightly less annoying tick-tick-tick of my 80-degree rotated clock. *BAEP*--*BAEP*-tick-*BAEP*--*BAEP*-tick. I envision him drowning in a puddle of his own vomit. Times like these, I wish I'd stayed up in Portland, let the Tucson cards fall where they may, but only for a fraction of a second. Nothing like a significant other to remind you that everything has probably worked out for the best.
And the television's on. I listen to the voices talking about different modes of transportation. The most common method is cars, I'm informed. Long ago, they didn't have cars, so they used horses. And before that, we walked, I want to tell the little boy, and before that, our bike got stolen. Boats and ships only work on water. A little girl is surprised to wake up and be fed breakfast on an airplane. I'm equally surprised, having travelled on airplanes in the real world. Mommy and daddy must have lots of money. I chuckle. Mommy and Daddy up in Scottsdale will buy him a new one next week, roommate-who-stole-a-bike rationalized and informed me the other night, after I threatened to call the cops if he didn't return it. Before I revised the threat into a statement that I'd move out the following weekend. Before he claimed that he was going to get in trouble with bill collectors, and I mathematically proved to him, based on his own figures, that he'd have to be spending upwards of $150 a month on alcohol before he was short the first penny on his bills. Before he mumbled something about not having mulitplied it all out. Before he took it back, then returned to pat me on the back, say something stupid and drunken about God working in mysterious ways, and maybe he would've tried to sell the bike to a narc.
Yesterday, the landlord, when I lied that roommate-who-doesn't-pay-rent might be moving to this city from Texas, and that I had a friend who needed a roommate, and so could I possibly sign over my half of the lease?, suggested no less than five times that roommate-who-pays-rent should move out and find a place with his RWDPR when he arrived, and that I should stay with my friend right where I am.
I turn off the TV on my way to making some oatmeal. Roommate who was actually doing the dishes (perhaps to make up for not paying rent), in accordance with my proposal some days or weeks ago, has decided once again that my 10 seconds are less valuable than his 10 seconds. The stove top smokes, with the residue of 10000 conidments, each one a unique and subtle variation on the combination of ketchup, honey, tabasco, olive oil and mustard. But usually mostly honey. My fucking honey, the only sweetener I use after reading one particular batch of lies. But the anthropologist buried deep within my instincts cannot deny any request from anyone for any element of food, since that is what food is for, to be eaten, to keep people alive.
Idly stirring the oatmeal, the large Zong which has taken up permanent residence on the kitchen table elicits a few chuckles, as I remember my dear old mother's shock and tears upon seeing it while dropping me off after Thanksgiving. The roommates usually take measures to ensure that all tell-tale signs are gone when I return, but their memories are not what they used to be, for some reason. Roommate-with-$$ was passed out in his room at 1400, smelling like 3 days of unwashed shit. The other had taken off, leaving his blanket and pillows on the floor. I managed to talk her down, exaggerating slightly about how long ago I'd stopped smoking. Nothing like a significant other to inspire you to act on promises you've been making to yourself for weeks, months.
I toss some raisins in the oatmeal, carry the pot and a fork to my room, stopping at RWPR's door along with way to shout his name at him a few times. RWDPR, from the couch laughs at the failure I share with the alarm clock. I give up minutes before the alarm clock does the same, it's 60 minutes apparently up. Turn on the computer. Connect to AOL, reflecting that I'll soon be starting the second free month, granted to me by the AOL Cancellation Representative when I called at the end of my initial Trial Month, on the grounds of some bullshit rationalization. I say No Thanks to some ads for useless technology and AOL-Time Warner earns 2.5 cents. I write down a few quotes by famous dead people for future inspiration. History is the version of past events that others have decided to agree upon. All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the parte of every organism to live beyond its income. {Oscar Wilde|Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live]. I just love it when, like, stuff people say, like, works on, like, more than one level.
Careful inspection should inform the reader of exactly what came to pass during the following hour. Nothing like the absence of one's significant other to make one espouse recent annoyances to some scores of anonymous witnesses. Future events include re-writing my final Portugese paper, and putting my hands to the task of practicing assorted forms of art which are less likely to result in RSI, and which are free of the morbidity the reader might currently (slightly) mistakenly feel my life is filled with. We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.