Roommates

A new solution to my rental issues has presented itself: The Dreaded Roommate.

Faithful readers (or people who can scroll down about 50 lines to read yesterdays post) know that I’m being forced to move due to a ridiculous non-smoking policy and on top of that they are going to be raising my rent. Bastards.

So my options are A: take it in the keyster, B: find a new place to live that’s cheaper and isn’t run by Nazis, or C: find myself a roommate.

Now, Option C is something that I’ve been considering for a while. I mean, I make ok money, but I’m certainly not lighting Cuban Cigars with $100 bills. And while I suppose I could find a place that saves me $100-$200 a month and it would help, it doesn’t seem to be the kind of long term financial solution that I need. But, if I could add a roommate to split costs, that could potentially be $500-$700 a month that I could save. That’s a lot of money. Just one month buys me that IKEA dresser so I don’t have to have piles of clothing on the floor. Two months and I’ve got that new computer I’ve been dreaming about.

However, with a roommate comes the very real “douche bag” risk factor. I mean, I have no idea how to even find a roommate.

I can’t live with friends. Not only do I not have any friends who need places to live, but moreover, in my experience, living with friends leads to them not being friends any more. It’s not that I hate them or they hate me, but we already know everything about each other. We already have little things that annoy each other and living together only acerbates them.

So what do you do? Can you trust the people you find on www.roommates.com ? I suppose you have to. Besides, there’s no reason that they necessarily have to be psychopaths just because they posted on a website. Maybe all they need is an effective screening process. I think I have a place that would be in demand – great building, lots of space, 60” TV, etc. – so finding someone that wants to live with me shouldn’t be a problem. But finding someone that I want to live with? There’s the rub.

Maybe if I required that they meet me for drinks at a bar before we made any sort of commitment. I have to imagine that one night with cocktails would tell me pretty accurately if I’d be able to stand someone for 12 months. I mean, there’s the chance that they do an excellent job of hiding their crazy that first night. And there’s always the chance that even if things start out well, they end up badly after a year – but there’s also the other possibility, right? That this weird process would end up with me finding a new best friend? Who knows? Maybe he will have a hot, smart, funny, single sister.

I think it’s worth the adventure. How bad could it be? Don’t answer that. At least if I end up chopped up in to tiny little bits in the closet of my now shared apartment, I’d do it with a new dresser and a kick-ass computer.

Bah! Inflation!

Damn it Damn it Damn it.

I told myself when I found this apartment that that was it – I was never moving again. I HATE moving. Hate it. I’d rather continue to live in hell than go through the hassle of moving out.

But my apartment building isn’t making it easy. First, they designated my building as a “non-smoking building,” which would be fine by me if they were being rational about it. But of course they aren’t. “Non-smoking” doesn’t just mean inside apartments or common areas. Nope. It also means on balconies. What the fuck? You can’t smoke on your own balcony? Outside? Are you serious? How will they prove that I’ve been out there?

I understand that smoking is a disgusting habit, and I genuinely don’t want my habit to detract from someone else’s existence in any way, but fuck me if people don’t have a serious entitlement disorder when it comes to shit like this. I mean, in the very worst case scenario I would be out on my balcony smoking when the neighbor who lived directly next to me on the downwind side had their window open and was in their living room on a day where the pressure outside was greater than the pressure inside. In that once a month scenario, that neighbor COULD potentially notice a wisp of smoke coming in to their apartment. Now, for that neighbor I can see how this could be mildly unpleasant. But when you compare every instance of that mild discomfort to the one time HUGE, GAPING, PAINFUL HOLE IN THE CHEST type of discomfort that I will have to go through to move, it’s the equivalent of a paper cut.

But I was going to deal with that. I could see myself moving across the parking lot. It would just require a few cases of beer for my friends. But on top of that they are going to raise my monthly rent. Sigh. So it’s painful admission time – I thought I could afford $1,100 a month by myself. I can’t. Every other part of my existence has to suffer because of it – most notably my credit score as I tend to scrimp on making those payments on time when I simply have no money.

But now they want me to move across the parking lot AND expect me to pay an extra $100 a month…oh hell no.

Thank god for www.rentometer.com

The Trouble With Women

It's not like I have "trouble" with women. It's just that I don't know what to do with them.

I mean, I think I'm an attractive enough guy. Sure the hair is thinning a little bit as I get closer to 30 than 20 (or 29 for that matter), and I could afford to lose 20 or 30 (or 50) pounds, but somehow or another I still pretty regularly get compliments on my looks.

Also, I think people generally find me fun to be around. People laugh at my jokes, listen to my stories, use me for a sympathetic ear, and I think I've got a pretty good sense of how to put people at ease.

So what could the problem be?

Maybe it's that though I can say all those things, I still think that I need to pretend to be someone else when I'm "hitting on" a girl. It's like somehow I've been convinced that I need to put on some sort of a show in order to get women to like me - and I'm miserable at that show. Cutesy little games, being "suave," being the one that every woman instantly wants - yeah, none of that works for me. I try. I do. It's just that when I'm trying to be that guy, I can never think of anything interesting that he would say. Truth be told, I kinda think that that guy is a douche bag.

So why do I still think that I need to be that guy to meet girls? I can accept that there's a certain amount of crazy that needs to be hidden in the opening stages of any relationship. I mean, I'm not going to open a conversation with my WoW stats. "Hey baby, I have 5 level 70 characters." Nope. But should I be similarly ashamed of the rest of me? Clearly the answer is no. You can only hide so much of yourself successfully.

Maybe the George Costanza is the best plan - just go against every instinct I have. "Hi, my name is George. I'm unemployed and live with my parents." What would my version of that be? "Hi, my name is Geoff. I've failed at every job I've ever had because I can't bring myself to do things that are even mildly unpleasant, and I masturbate to video game characters." (That last part isn't true. Odd, I wonder what it means that even here, amidst a conversation about being honest, I still have to make shit up to seem witty?)

It doesn't help that I'm a smart man, and am genuinely arrogant about it. I just can't stand being around stupid people. I'm not sure where the line is - but it definitely exists. Below a certain IQ, I just can't hold a conversation with you. I have a great friend who can just have sex with cute, dumb girls. That would drive me crazy. There's the guy that meets a cute, dumb girl at a party and takes her in to a back bedroom and just have some fun, but I'm not that guy. Maybe it's that guy that I'm trying to be. To say that I wouldn't like to be that guy would be a lie, I guess. At the very least, it would make for some funny stories (Tucker Max, anyone?), but at this point I'm pretty sure that I lack that instinct.

So this is my declaration; my Thursday March 13th resolution: from now on I'm just going to be me. No more trying to be cool around women. No more trying to be cutesy with little cryptic text messages and games. No more trying to be impressive when I meet them. Just be me, and be confident in that me.

I'll tell you how it works out.

The WoW Dilemma

I wonder if I have something in common with heroin addicts. You have to think that some, if not many, of the worlds heroin users really enjoy their heroin. When confronted about it, they probably say things like “you know, in its pure form heroin isn’t addictive at all” or “it was originally created as a medicine!”, which is all a bunch of crap to non-heroin users who all probably share the same condescending attitude toward the justifications of an addict.

But, my opinion of the product itself aside, I think it’s safe to assume that at some point, some where in the world, a heroin addict has looked at a good friend (and non-heroin user) and said “you really should try this – it’s awesome.”

So, today at lunch I’m taking a friend from work to pick up a copy of World of Warcraft, and I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t parallels that can be drawn.

Now don’t get me wrong. I LOVE my Warcraft. When asked, I will regurgitate a litany of reasons why it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I have saved thousands of dollars by having an alternative to spending my leisure time at the bar. I have met hundreds of interesting people from all over the world, made some good friends, learned things about myself, and experienced real joy and feelings of accomplishment. I have something to do and a place to go at almost all times of every day, meaning I never want for entertainment. And, much like my experiences with marijuana in high school, my WoW addiction has broken down interpersonal barriers with all sorts of people who I normally wouldn’t have had anything in common with. When I first started my current job, for instance, there was a pretty well defined clique of veteran employees that I, as a rookie member of the team, naturally wanted to be a part of. When I learned that one of these veteran members was also a WoWer, I had an immediate in.

But there have been excesses. In fact, to say that “there have been excesses” indicates that those excesses were isolated incidents punctuated by long periods of responsible usage. That’s really not the case, I’m afraid. Truth be told, it’s probably more accurate to describe my entire WoW career as one long, never ending excess. More than once have their been back to back to back 18 hour a day sessions. Then there was the day that four guild mates and I spent the 10 straight hours between 10:00pm and 8:00am in Stratholme trying to get me a new chest-piece (and before you newbies laugh, remember that I’ve been playing this game A LOT longer than you – back in the day Stratholme was a 40 man raid instance, but in order to complete the quests in there you needed to 5 man it. Hide your snickers behind the idea that what we did was the equivalent of 5 manning the Black Temple).

For most people, those numbers may not mean anything. Maybe this will help you to understand what I mean when I say that I may play the game a bit too much: since I purchased the game on January 5^th of 2005, I have logged just over 7000 hours of game play. That’s more than 291 full days. From January 5^th of 2005 until the time of this writing, exactly 1,165 days have passed (for those who plan on doing the math along with me, that’s 27960 hours). That means of every 4 minutes that have existed since I bought this game, 1 of them has been spent playing WoW. If you assume 8 hours a day for sleep and another 8 for work, that means of the 9320 hours that I had to myself, only 2320 weren’t spent playing WoW.

Now, that isn’t totally accurate, because I don’t work on weekends and I did spend a short portion of that time unemployed, but you get the point. I play a lot of goddamned WoW.

I can be argued that the time I’ve enjoyed in Azeroth could have been more productively used in finding a girlfriend, writing the screenplay I’ve had in my head, going to school to get a degree in something that matters, or, you know, just not playing WoW.

So now I have to wonder, is encouraging my friend to pick up this game really an ethical move? Or am I the heroin addict saying “dude, you should really get in to this!” I know that she’ll love this game. From one perspective, I’m giving her hours and hours of joy. But I guess what I don’t know is: at what cost? Somewhere in the future, an event probably exists where she could be at a bar and meet the man she’s destined to fall in love with. She could be on her way to or from a concert and stop for gas and decide “oh what the hell” and buy the winning lottery ticket. Hell, she may even, presumably, plan on seeing the sun sometime in the next 3 years. All that is now gone. Those futures no longer exist. They have been taken from her by this short car ride up to Target.

So what do I do? Do I ignore these doubts and toss her the needle?

I think we all know the answer.

Mind Numbing Schlock

I feel bad. A girl who I barely know sits near to me and watches “Rock of Love” every day on VH1. Today I decided to make fun of it because, well, I’m a jerk.

It didn’t go well.

She seemed genuinely upset that someone could find her program to be so…how do I put this delicately?….filled with the kind of mind numbing drivel that is ruining America.

Really, though…it’s a terrible show.

At what point did we decide that TV has two functions: to tell us how much we suck for not being millionaires; and to show us that we shouldn’t be upset because we suck for not being millionaires because millionaires are miserable too.

I feel as though far too many Americans use television to validate their existences by showing us examples of people who have it worse than us. It started with Jerry Springer and the day-time talk show syndicate, where they would take the dregs of society and parade them for us to ridicule. When they ran out of the genuinely miserable, they started to fabricate that misery. I have a good friend who still tells a story about the time her and her friend were slated to appear on an episode of Jenny Jones under the heading “My Boyfriend Cheated on me with my Best Friend.” Unfortunately, the guy that was supposed to be the boyfriend of one of the other couples couldn’t make it, so one of the producers asked them if they could do “Lesbian Love Triangles” instead. They happily complied.

However, our obsession with the misfortune of others has evolved in to a wholly different and (if possible) scarier entity with the onset of shows like “Flavor of Love” and the like, in which we get to witness people so corrupted by greed, false standards of beauty, and celebrity worship that they will debase themselves almost limitlessly.

The scary part is that greed, false standards of beauty, and celebrity worship have, for so long, been the very ideals that TV has set as the pinnacle of American existence. “Get skinny, get rich, meet an actor, live happily ever after.” My co-worker accused me of thinking like an old man and maybe she’s right. Maybe I just remember all too well being encouraged to pursue those ideals, and thinking at the time “man, this is not going to end well.” So maybe my problem with shows like “Rock of Love” is that they prove me right: these are the sad results of the kinds of people who followed those shallow dreams.

But what do you do? Television remains the true opiate of the masses, providing short-cuts for babysitting, teaching, and moral, ethical, and political guidance. When my co-worker exclaims “it’s entertaining!” she can’t be wrong – this schlock obviously entertains her – but I guess that’s what upsets me the most. Maybe my problem isn’t that TV panders to idiots, it’s that there are so many idiots that need to be pandered to. Maybe I am repulsed by “Rock of Love” not because it’s terrible, but because it’s popular. I mean, no one bothers to rail against the White Power candidate, because no one’s going to vote for him. When he carries South Carolina in the primary, you start to get worried. If he carries Texas and California, you start a blog.

To be fair, it’s not just crappy talk shows and reality TV that’s the problem. The nightly news appeals to the same demographic. I screamed a newswoman off the grounds of the dormitory I lived in in college because her and her carnivorous ilk were all over us about a student who had died there due to an alcohol related incident. “Where were you, you fucking vulture,” I yelled “two weeks ago when one of our students became the first woman in this university’s history to be awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to go study at Oxford? Off trying to find a crying face to stick a camera in, I’ll wager.” They are attracted to suffering like maggots to rotting flesh, and rightfully (?) so, because that’s what their audience demands. So who should I be mad at? The vendor or the consumer that clamors for it?

So maybe she’s right to be offended. Maybe she knew what I did not – that by saying “your show sucks,” what I’m really saying is “it upsets me that you’re such an idiot that you enjoy this crap.”

Speeding Ticket

Speeding tickets are dumb.

I can’t be alone here.

I figure there was a time when a speed limit of 55 mph on the highway made sense. Before the onset of power steering or anti-lock breaks, before the advancements in aero-dynamics or traction control, before aluminum frames, before highway designers got smart and angled curves or improved the quality of the asphalt, I can imagine that 55 was about as fast as people could go while still feeling safe and in control.

But that’s not the case any more. I drive a crappy Mazda hatchback, and I can see speeds upwards of 90 mph before I start feeling like I’m pushing the edge of being unsafe. So a measly 73 mph surely shouldn’t warrant a ticket, right?

But that makes two in as many months for me. I still haven’t even paid the first one ‘cause, well, I’m broke. So now I owe the state $240.00 for driving safely over some made up, antiquated limit that hasn’t been re-examined since the Carter Administration.

So there I was, sitting in my car for eleven precious minutes while the peace officer was, presumably, felling the lumber with which to pulp the paper he would eventually use to write my ticket on. Those eleven minutes gave me ample time to envision what I was going to do after I got fired for coming in late to work one more time and also to entertain some ridiculous fantasies of civil disobedience.

Am I the only one that has these sorts of fantasies? You know the ones where you end up as the savior of all humanity because you were the first person to point out that gas costs too much? Like the guy that drives up to the end of eight miles of stopped traffic and honks his horn – like he was simply the first to remind us that we could all just move forward. I wonder if in his head he sees a newspaper headline in big bold print Alert Driver Saves Many. Underneath there would be testimonials from the other drivers. “Oh thank God for that man. I had been sitting there for hours. I had ice cream melting in the back seat! Luckily, someone had the presence of mind to remind us all that we could simply apply pressure to the gas pedal and remove ourselves from our self-induced automotive prisons.”

So in my mind I was sitting before a federal grand jury with a team of sharply dressed lawyers displaying a mountain of physical evidence that prove that 55 is dumb. The judge would be nodding solemnly because he, too, understands that roads and cars have evolved beyond the need for such restrictive limits. Of course, then it would go in to effect, and people like my ex-girlfriend (who once admitted to me that she never changes lanes to allow traffic to merge in from the onramps because she has “enough trouble paying attention to her own lane” and that she “doesn’t feel comfortable trying to watch the other lanes”) would get out there and kill 18 people in a multi-car pile up. Sigh.

Cris, if you’re reading this by the way STAY OFF THE ROADS. You’re a danger to yourself and others.

But I won’t do any of that. I’ll eventually pay the $240.00 and continue to speed just like everyone else. I think, in the end, speeding tickets really exist as a form of income to our state governments cause it’s easier to sell that than it is increased taxes. I wonder if the nice gentlemen in our Police forces know that, however, that they are just glorified IRS agents?