Let's bitch about our stupid, annoying roommates

pretty sure any place built before a certain year has to have a lead paint warning in many places, regardless of whether it's been found

yup. it's just a technicality.

Hah maybe don't write about your non-working roommates right before you go to a stressful job interview. I should really lighten up.

As long as it's not black mold it's probably safe enough to live in.

. my dad was like that, seemed like the sweetest most fun guy in the world, everyone loved him, until he wraps you up with a bindry machine and leaves you trapped in a warehouse overnight because he didn't like you (and he's proud of this story!!!). or my mom, super friendly and kind on the outside, but on the weekends goes out with her friends to drag tree onto the highway to watch cars crash into it (she's proud of this, too! wtf)

Dude, holy shit.

sadly that shit was normal to me as a kid, which is pretty fucked up. unfortunately i don't think i should even have kids to make sure this crap doesn't get passed on, even if it missed me. under no circumstance do i want to bring more people like my parents or my roommate into this world. life can be such a lovely roll of the dice sometimes... but at least i was born in the good ole US of A, so that's something. i always felt like my family made a contract with the devil and now it's starting to make sense why.

It took me a long time to realize that in probably most countries the citizens grow up thinking "At least i was born in the good ole __________". And i had somewhat leftist parents. The power of propaganda is effing strong.

even really shit countries have patriotism

Well, I mean, things really could be a lot worse. There are people suffering even worse fates all over the world ... like the story of that guy born in a North Korean prison camp. Some fucked up shit happens in the world, and there's no reason why someone isn't born to middle class parents in Sweden or kidnapped into a diamond mine slave ring in Africa. It's a salve, but it's also true.

can you move to a nicer part of USA?

"There are people suffering worse fates so my life isn't that bad"

yeah I've thought this before, but it turns out my life could be a lot better with surprisingly little effort, too

I do buy into the narrative where in the US you can go and be what you want,
but your outcomes are really at the mercy of where you happen to be.
Like Al Gore's roommate was Tommy Lee Jones.

I had a really awful roommate once who had stopped drinking and started doing yoga like 2 weeks before I moved in and had the zeal of the converted. Fine, but she was really judgmental about things I chose to do that had no impact on her whatsoever. She would make comments about how I brought too many boys over and stuff. I also had a roommate whose whole family were scientologists and took like 90 different supplements everyday, but she paid for us to have a lot of MTV channels so that was cool.

Best roommate ever was this German astrophysicist named Derek who was always sharing delicious food and fielding science questions. That guy was also down for any and every afterparty, and had some amazing dance moves. Giant hulk of a guy with long hair & receding hairline.

emilys., I like your stories

Yeah last night Manic Psychedelic Dream Genius was entertaining friends before heading out to some show, and spent a good half hour to an hour talking about working and what a drag it always is to have to be 'jerked around' by your boss and deal with so much bullshit, he of course opts not to work. It is beneath him and if you are an actual working person is around when he's going on about this, he makes you feel like a sell-out. Workers are sell-outs, it doesn't matter what job.

I really hope this guy gets bored soon and decides to go back to Brooklyn.

What's interesting to me is the utter banality of that guy's schtick -- does he not realize that generations of psychedelic dream geniuses have preceded him and eventually found themselves working for a living? Does he think he invented this wild bohemian lifestyle? How could he make anyone feel anything? People don't just laugh at him?

maybe he has a secret job he is ashamed to tell everyone about.

he could be a closet insurance actuary

Sounds like Steve Jobs to me

I think he's just on alot more drugs than i realize.

For some reason everyone in the house has decided to stop buying TP (or at least, leaving it in the one toilet the 6 of us share). I bought the last 4-pack a week ago Friday, left it in there, and it was gone by last Sunday. I have a box of tissues in my room. There are two couples living here, and while TP isn't a huge deal, the two S.O. that never work and do nothing but drink/take drugs and linger around the house all day - yeah I'm not buying them TP.

Doug woke me up at 8 am this morning with his signature whisper-whistle. I guess it's his misguided attempt at consideration, but I want to shout JUST WHISTLE FFS!!

Now I am trapped in my room b/c his grandson Little Walter is visiting.

From what I can hear, Little Walter may be joining the military. Or they are sending him to one of those wilderness schools where boys are caned and forced to forage for berries. I can't tell.

As revenge for the whistling, get the grandson a harmonica.

I need to build a tunnel to the bathroom.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RhoiX9HEM_o/TCrQ4D26c3I/AAAAAAAABf0/s_9LKE0VvAM/s1600/tim-robbins.jpg

I'm on my own in a 2BR unit now but God this thread would have been therapeutic six months ago!

My drunk imbecile of a housemate had been watching the football at the house next door, but they had got sick of him and dumped him back in my lap. So I get this pounding at my bedroom door, he's demanding to know the score but my TV isn't set up properly so you can't read the whole of the scoreboard that's permanently in the corner of the screen, he grabs the remote and starts fiddle-arsing about with it, swearing his head off, gets nowhere, pulls back at the absolute last minute before throwing the remote through the screen. We watch for about five minutes, next break in play he goes out to get Jim Beam & coke number 217 for the evening, but something obv distracted him so he doesn't come back to my room thank Christ. When the game's over, all is quiet so I go out to the kitchen, he's practically passed out but asks me who won, I tell him, it's not the result he wanted so he's off again. About five minutes later I escape, by now it's getting on for 11.30 pm so I'm getting ready to turn in and next thing I know he's put New bloody Order on at full volume.

I cop it for maybe 15 or 20 mins, then pack a bag with three days worth of clothes, stick it next to the front door, go back into the living room and tell him to turn that crap off. He tells me to firetruck off, so I grab the bag, bolt straight out the door, jump into my car and do my first burn-out since getting off P plates up the street, all the while this guy is running after me waving his arms around. I slept that night in my car outside a mate's house three suburbs away.

Next morning around 10 I get a text from this guy, I can always tell how sober he is by how good his spelling is and it's OK so I go home later that afternoon. He has only the vaguest memory of what happened, which may have been a deflecting tactic except he aint smart enough to be that devious. It was the second time he'd carried on like that in six months and for two of those months I was overseas. He was also on anti-depressants and God knows what else, drinking half a dozen stubbies a night at least, and he was tangled up with a woman who was stark raving bonkers with an ex-hubby on the warpath and a son in jail.

I decided there and then that I was too old by 20 years for all that Young Ones crap, and shared houses had turned into my concept of Hell. My last house before this one, I had left it because the owner got married, and I'm still very close to that couple eight or nine years later, but for every good friend I made that way I could make a cricket team out of all the utter bloody no-hopers and head cases I've shared a roof with and absolutely nothing else.

By a quite incredible turn of events over the next couple of weeks, I was out of this place in a month.

Eff alcoholics.

http://i.imgur.com/c286Uua.jpg

Putting the heater on 78-80 degrees sounds dumb and like a huge waste of gas/power.

I do not have any hobbies or interest that would affect your life in the apartment

oh I think you do

The "no visitors for more than 30 minutes" and giving a week's notice for presumably overnight guests? is the most mental part of that, to me.

Assuming s/he's as clean as s/he wants a roommate to be, I was ready to live with that weirdo until s/he started talking nonsense about keeping the thermostat at 70-80. That's gross.

feel like even for the rules I could comfortably live within that the slightest noise would summon them out of their room to watch disapprovingly, probably making a note of the times and dates of your almost-line-crossing

like, I never have guests, but if someone offered me a lift and I invited them in it would be nice not to have my housemate standing there with a stopwatch and a decibel meter

my roommate is KILLING ME with his 45minute long bathroom routine during the critical hour from 8-9am

i've been late to work every day this week, just waiting for him to get out so i can brush my teeth and run out the door; haven't had time to chat with him about it since he's been out during the evenings. also don't want to leave a passive aggressive note for him ):

ask very seriously to shower with him

Are you just brushing your teeth? Maybe keep your toothbrush and toothpaste out of the bathroom and brush them in the kitchen. You should still talk to him, but that might keep you from being late until you can.

xp hahahaha I like that idea much better.

i don't know how to talk to roommates. i feel that the second i've made a suggestion i've entered into "passive aggressive" territory.

xp lol

yeah i've thought about brushing in the sink, but i don't really feel comfortable taking a pee in the sink (which is the other critical part of my morning routine). kinda wish chamber pots were still acceptable tbh

xp yeah that's kinda how i feel

If you do use the kitchen sink, make sure you brush your teeth before you pee in it.

i sympathize so much. one of my roommates takes 45 minute showers at the most inopportune times. mostly when the #2 train is arriving at the station

pee in a bottle and leave it in his room

what drives me nuts is that i keep waking up earlier and earlier to try and quickly get in there before he does and somehow he ends up turning on the shower as soon as my alarm goes off!

i hate when they leave the bathroom all steamy :(

he's also an early riser, so he's had more than enough time to take a shower before i even wake up GAH IT DRIVES ME NUTS

xp haha yeah i've definitely been wiping off the mirror every day this week

i'm convinced that one of my roommates had the electrician wire the bathroom light and ventilation fan to the same switch for some reason. wth

anything to stop the humid dregs from someone else's shower from frizzing up your hair imo