let the games begin
Apr. 10th, 2003 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistso in several weeks nicole and i are going to have to look for a new third roommate. naturally, the prospect fills me with dread. my previous roommates have included:
a) someone who played the Theramin (or was *learning* how to play the Theramin). Theramin, for those of you not in the know, is a creepy musical instrument, the one that you hear in Psycho-like films SCREECHING as the dumb blonde runs up the stairs with a knife-wielding serial killer tracking her. It was invented by the guy of the same name (Theramin) who was from Russia and fled to the US and then got kidnapped back to the USSR by Stalin. you think i am kidding, but i am not. She also left notes lying around the house that said things like: "Ha! I am such a hypocrite! I thought my lightbulb burned out, BUT IT DIDN'T."
b) a strange fellow who turned out to be the nephew of the boss of the guy i was lapsing into bed with at the time, which led to all sorts of annoying male bonding between the two of them; the boy was also dating a Britney Spears look-alike 8 years his junior. He was 27. They had started dating five years before that. You do the math. He constantly propositioned me for threesomes with his newly post-jail-bait girlfriend, who was also about a foot talled than him.
c) a girl who had a pet rat, bred the pet rat with someone else's pet rat, and subsequently had her pet rat and 16 little rats. one time she put them all in the same bucket in the middle of the kitchen while cleaning the cage, and went out, leaving them there for the whole day without any food. By 8 p.m. they had all cannibalized each other; one rat survived, with the collateral damage of one eye.
d) Kaety M. Anyone who knows me or knows Kaety M. knows the problem therein.
anyway, so I decided that I will have to treat this whole roommate-search extravaganza as an exciting project otherwise it will drive me crazy. I envision and interviewing process--kind of a cross between an 80s getting-it-done montage and that scene in "Shallow Grave." Nicole and I were brainstorming today about what we should put in our ad. There are so many things to consider. Do we put "420-friendly" and risk sounding like retards, or, worse, HIPPIES? do we ask for people's astrological sign? despite Charlie's atheism on the matter, I SWEAR I can identify people's signs and I do think that a statistically significant number of people are "typical" of their horoscopes. I am not saying there is some necessarily metaphysical shit at work here--I am agnostic on the subject--it is entirely possible that this effect is overdetermined by people being bombarded by how they are "supposed" to be by horoscopes from a young age, and unconsciously being influenced by that. Maybe it's a built-in category of belonging that people on some level fit themselves into, highlighting in themselves the features that are reflected as the "typical" ones in a rare instance of a totalizing, yet fun and harmless discourse. Whatever. I have NEVER met a messy Virgo. I KNOW what happens when I date Geminis. But if we ask people what their sign is, again, we risk sounding like retards, or worse--NEW AGE HIPPIES. so we ask people if they have an iPOD and a livejournal? Cuz if they do, they probably already live with us. Should we try to replace the departing Nuncstans with another Child of Mark?
So many possibilities.
a) someone who played the Theramin (or was *learning* how to play the Theramin). Theramin, for those of you not in the know, is a creepy musical instrument, the one that you hear in Psycho-like films SCREECHING as the dumb blonde runs up the stairs with a knife-wielding serial killer tracking her. It was invented by the guy of the same name (Theramin) who was from Russia and fled to the US and then got kidnapped back to the USSR by Stalin. you think i am kidding, but i am not. She also left notes lying around the house that said things like: "Ha! I am such a hypocrite! I thought my lightbulb burned out, BUT IT DIDN'T."
b) a strange fellow who turned out to be the nephew of the boss of the guy i was lapsing into bed with at the time, which led to all sorts of annoying male bonding between the two of them; the boy was also dating a Britney Spears look-alike 8 years his junior. He was 27. They had started dating five years before that. You do the math. He constantly propositioned me for threesomes with his newly post-jail-bait girlfriend, who was also about a foot talled than him.
c) a girl who had a pet rat, bred the pet rat with someone else's pet rat, and subsequently had her pet rat and 16 little rats. one time she put them all in the same bucket in the middle of the kitchen while cleaning the cage, and went out, leaving them there for the whole day without any food. By 8 p.m. they had all cannibalized each other; one rat survived, with the collateral damage of one eye.
d) Kaety M. Anyone who knows me or knows Kaety M. knows the problem therein.
anyway, so I decided that I will have to treat this whole roommate-search extravaganza as an exciting project otherwise it will drive me crazy. I envision and interviewing process--kind of a cross between an 80s getting-it-done montage and that scene in "Shallow Grave." Nicole and I were brainstorming today about what we should put in our ad. There are so many things to consider. Do we put "420-friendly" and risk sounding like retards, or, worse, HIPPIES? do we ask for people's astrological sign? despite Charlie's atheism on the matter, I SWEAR I can identify people's signs and I do think that a statistically significant number of people are "typical" of their horoscopes. I am not saying there is some necessarily metaphysical shit at work here--I am agnostic on the subject--it is entirely possible that this effect is overdetermined by people being bombarded by how they are "supposed" to be by horoscopes from a young age, and unconsciously being influenced by that. Maybe it's a built-in category of belonging that people on some level fit themselves into, highlighting in themselves the features that are reflected as the "typical" ones in a rare instance of a totalizing, yet fun and harmless discourse. Whatever. I have NEVER met a messy Virgo. I KNOW what happens when I date Geminis. But if we ask people what their sign is, again, we risk sounding like retards, or worse--NEW AGE HIPPIES. so we ask people if they have an iPOD and a livejournal? Cuz if they do, they probably already live with us. Should we try to replace the departing Nuncstans with another Child of Mark?
So many possibilities.
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Hmmm
Date: 2003-04-11 06:27 am (UTC)Do you live in a major city? I've had great success with Craigslist for such roommatey... www.craigslist.org.
Re: Hmmm
Date: 2003-04-11 01:23 pm (UTC)i live in NYC and am well familiar with craigslist--having conducted an ongoing odyssey (redundant?) of moving apartments over and over last year in which craigslist was of great help. that's what where we plan to put the ad. put the ad, and wait for the freaks to start rolling in.