vomit watch: day 2*

well, yesterday's little whodunit has been solved. roommate 1 left an apologetic note and cleaned the remainder of the vomit from the sink. the culprit?!

... roommate 1's friend!

the note went on to say that roommate 1's friend had apparently gotten sick in our sink and then said he cleaned it up. but did not.

i guess it's possible, but i don't really buy it. that doesn't really make a lot of sense considering the vomit was in our only bathroom for more than a full day and i would think she'd have to see it and i know she was home yesterday morning before i left for work. also i didn't hear or see anyone come in and you can easily hear doors open in our place.

more importantly, i don't want to believe her. this is because i can't imagine how much more cynical and world-weary it would make me to learn there's a strata of society in which "vomiting in a sink and leaving it for an extended period" is an acceptable social norm.

given that i recently witnessed my roommate perform that very feat, that would mean one of her friends also thinks it's ok to puke in a public place and leave it there. which means their other friends might also think thusly... and their friends... and so on. hence, i prefer to think she's just a repeat offender who's embarrassed now that she's been caught.

anyway, i didn't really give a shit anymore. the sink is clean, so i thought this whole situation was resolved to a degree with which i was comfortable. i really didn't want to talk about it anymore because i did not wan to reopen the subject of what i hope is the last time i have to deal with someone throwing up in my sink and not cleaning it up.

(though realistically, given the stupid, stupid route i've chosen to take on this winding road of life, this was probably like the third- or fourth-to-last-time.)

BUT! as i was shaving this evening, i noticed the sink was not draining. i stopped and watched for a second and realized it was draining, but extremely slowly. it is clogged with, what i can only imagine, are the bilious and partially digested remains of a digiorno pepperoni pizza, expelled from the esophagus of an indeterminate individual.

at this point i have no idea what's going on anymore. things stopped making sense the first time there was puke in one of my sinks.

by the way, i'm sorry these last few entries have been so centered around grossness. i just seem to be in a gross phase. or rather a phase in which grossness is being unwillingly inflicted on me.

*alternate title: "the glamour and level of sophistication in my post-college life never ceases to amaze me."

an opportunity for growth*

for the past several months, i've been living with two people i met over the internet because i didn't know anyone who wanted to live in this area. one of the greatest joys of living with people who i had never met before is the exciting opportunities for personal growth that come hand-in-hand with embarking on these new interpersonal relationships.

we should savor those flickers of surprise when initially confronted with someone's quirks... then the richness of the journey of attempting to make sense of these oddities and idiosyncrasies... and finally the moment of transcendent enlightenment in which one learns to appreciate, rather than judge, the patchwork of intangible qualities that form our utterly unique, beautifully flawed and indelibly human souls.

i myself experienced one such quirk when i went downstairs to get ready for work this morning and noticed our bathroom sink was filled with vomit. i stood quietly for a moment and took in the situation, the sour stench of bile emanating from where i usually shave and brush my teeth.

what a charming eccentricity! someone with whom i have signed a lease evidently thinks leaving vomit in the sink of our house's only bathroom is acceptable behavior!

once again employing my goren-esque deductive skills, i almost immediately determined it was roommate 1.

1. the vomit was dry, so it must have happened several hours ago, which doesn't fit roommate 2's schedule.

2. its color and consistency (i'll spare you the details) appear to match roommate 1's dinner last night, which was a frozen pizza. i know this because the box, cardboard cutting surface, plastic wrapping and dirty pizza cutter were still on the counter.

3. the vomiter chose to use the sink instead of the toilet (which is less than six inches to the right and is far easier to clean), and roommate 1 is exactly the kind of stupid fucking shit-for-brains who would do something like that.

4. and, most tellingly, i was standing in our kitchen a few months ago and personally witnessed roommate 1 vomit into our kitchen sink and leave for work without cleaning it up... so there's some precedent involved, but that's a story for another day.

BUT! i decided not to jump to conclusions and fly into a rage as i once might have done. as i drove to work, my fetid morning breath fogging my windows because i was too grossed out to brush my teeth, i reflected on what i had seen.

roommate 1 may have been gravely ill and had to be rushed to the hospital. but then she wouldn't have been sleeping on the living room couch with the cartoon network blaring at her unhearing ears.

maybe roommate 1 is an avant-garde provocateur, who last night delivered a biting commentary on society's notions of hygiene and challenged me to confront the ludicrousness of humanity's attempts to sterilize the world. take that, establishment!

perhaps roommate 1 had been reading up on natural cleaning agents. is it such a stretch to think she attempted to use her powerful stomach acid to scour our sink clean of the accumulation of dried toothpaste scum and weeks-old purple hair dye that she herself left there?

but when all is said and done, i suppose i'm just thankful roommate 1 was thoughtful enough to share this part of herself with me. i can't wait to talk about this with her in person. that's another funny quirk of hers; she never answers her phone whenever she does something a less enlightened person would characterize as "mind-numbingly stupid and disgustingly inconsiderate."

* alternate title: VomitOnMySink, an homage to my pal jessica.

when it's time to party...

over the weekend, i saw this dude use his library card to crush up a xanax and a ritalin. he then mixed them together and started doing lines.

badass!

a case of the mondays

i was half-assedly watching the SAG awards last night... what a snoozefest. anyway, i happened to see david duchovny and thought about how it's kind of weird that he admitted being a sex addict while he was playing character who's a sex addict on "californication."

then i suddenly remembered this crappy song i heard in high school:



see, the irony is david duchovny probably would have loved bree sharp (physically at least) because he compulsively seeks sex! get it?!

sleazy bar stories, #1

i just want to say before i begin that this story honestly makes me feel extremely... i guess "unclean" is the word. i hate it and wish i could forget it but it grossed me out so much i felt like i had to share it.

last weekend, i went to meet some friends at the bar at which they always hang out. we were having some drinks and it was a pretty good time.

then people started noticing the stench.

i personally didn't notice anything at first, but everyone else had that weird, screwed-up "what's that god-awful smell?" face.

then sam rolled his eyes and pointed to someone who was sitting at the bar behind me and was like "oh, it's grandpa joe." or something, i don't remember his fucking name. the person did indeed look old and grandfatherly, so i was like "whatever, it's some old guy who doesn't care about smelling bad in front of people anymore." i had no idea how right i really was.

so i stopped caring about it and the night progressed. then maybe like 45 minutes later, i finally caught this overpoweringly filthy, wet, heavy odor... like the smell of a nursing home on a hot day.

this was seriously hardcore... like it was so bad i had to walk away for a bit. you probably see where this is going by now but i still didn't really think much of it, aside from "man, those guys weren't kidding."

a little bit after that i was talking to my friends karl and annie. i went to sit down next to them and they were just like "no... no, no no! that's grandpa joe's chair." i assumed they meant because he was coming back and had just gotten up for a second.

i left soon after that and the realization suddenly struck me while i was driving home -- karl and annie were trying to warn me not to sit there because that fucking old man had shit himself!

BLAAARGH!!! the pieces all fit! how fucking revolting! i seriously think i was subconsciously trying to block myself from understanding what was going on because of how grossed out i would have been (and still am almost a week later).

aghast, i told a couple people from the area that i suspected some guy shit himself at the bar after i got home. and they were like "right, grandpa joe. big deal, it happens all the time."

WHAT THE FUCK?! i couldn't believe everyone was so blase about this. i was blown away.

so... employing my goren-esque deductive skills, here's what i make of the situation:

1. no one was surprised the old guy soiled himself (other than myself... and not only was i surprised, i was also horrified and incredibly grossed out). in fact, people knew who i was talking about without needing any specifics beyond "some guy at the bar shit himself."
2. so the old guy spends enough time there that the other patrons know his nickname and behavior.
3. a grown man soiling himself at a bar is a significant deviation from normative behavior. since other regular patrons knew his behavior and were not surprised by it, this is likely a routine occurrence.
4. so this man is shitting himself in a public place, and most likely does not sit in the same chair each time he's there. even if he does attempt to sit in the same general area, people in bars move stuff around all the time so it is unlikely he sits in the same seat.
5. given the general condition of the bar, most notably the men's bathroom, the employees likely do not disinfect the barstools.
6. because the old guy routinely shits himself and sits in different stools, every barstool is potentially contaminated with fecal matter.
7. ipso facto, i'm never sitting down at a stool there again... otherwise, i might inadvertently be sitting in stool! ah-ha ha ha!

blargh, i'm still too grossed out and unhappy to think that was funny. i'm sorry my first sleazy bar story is so unpleasant.

is he still talking about that stupid mall cop movie? jesus.

my only hope is the runaway success of "paul blart: mall cop" will reflect some richly deserved limelight on its obvious source material, "drabble."

last weekend, the american people proved they can hear about a widely panned comedy starring a morbidly obese man in a mall cop costume perched atop a segway, and still think "this is the best thing out there right now."

and this day would never have come without drabble tirelessly and thanklessly toiling in near-anonymity to pave the way for such widescale bemusement/apathy toward fat mall cops on segways.

i'm calling you out, blart. pay your dues and honor your roots!

dumb public transportation moments, #7

i was on the brown line and i was trying to read my book when i saw this guy in a cowboy hat making rounds on the train. i assumed he was asking for money because that's what's involved in probably 95 percent of "interactions with strangers on the train."

sometimes it's other things, like when a couple of uppity, spoiled bitches go around calling people they don't even know "scary" without ever stopping to think that maybe they just happened to catch the person on an off day when he wasn't looking very nice and was really hung over.

but anyway, the cowboy hat guy walked up to me. i glanced up real fast and was like "hey man, i'm sorry but i'm not really interested" before he could say anything.

i've heard tons of bullshit stories about why random guys in the city need money and i never, ever give them any. i figure my method of preemptive striking saves both of us time; i don't have to listen to his stumbling attempt to warm my icy, black heart with his insincere sob story and he can keep his A-game for some sap who might actually fall for it.

but cowboy hat guy totally ignored me and kept smiling and waving his hands and gesturing at some piece of paper on a clipboard. i still didn't really look up but i said again "no, i don't want it."

he kept standing there but now he started looking kind of hurt and continued pointing to the piece of paper. i finally looked up for real and realized the guy he hadn't been just making random hand movements at me, he had been signing.

he had been signing because he was fucking deaf and trying to collect for a charity for deaf children and the piece of paper was a pledge drive sheet.

shameful bar tabs, #1

schuba's + some bar i forgot + alice's = ...

$76.50!

dumb public transportation moments, #6

i saw a guy with the word "dijon" faded into his hair on the brown line. either that's his name or i've finally found someone who likes mustard as much as i do.

dumb public transportation moments, #5

last night at the brown line stop, the CTA employee in the booth was eating a lemon freeze when it was like -12 degrees out. what a world.