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Issue 17.3: living
Posted: October 13, 2001

Tips for Keeping Your Room Tidy and Your Roommate Pissed Off

Mike Noble

The New Student Orientation Program website (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/orientation/info/pre_college.html) advises, "Leave the room when your roommate calls his parents. When someone is talking to his parents, he needs a little privacy." Dude, fuck that. My philosophy is whenever that little SEAS shit is on the phone, make the person on the other end of the line think he's living with Charles Manson. Or at least that he's been taking part in my stuffed animal orgies. So last week when my roommate decided to check in with each member of his wholesome Colorado family, I had to whip out the big guns. Imagine Nerdo's response when I raced into the room during minute 38 of mommy talk wearing only a bubble wrap diaper screaming, "MALE SERVICES, YOUR PACKAGE IS HERE!" Running around with popping plastic on your gonads may be fun (and sensual), but sometimes there is serious work to be done. As he laid there in the fetal position, sobbing uncontrollably and begging his mother to come take him home, I realized that it would be easy to mix this love of pissing off my Dungeons and Dragons-playing friend with the necessary evil of common room cleaning. Here are some tips I came up with:

Don't leave dirty laundry lying around. Grab all of your roommate's clothes and make a mad dash for the stairwell. The freak won't catch you as easily if you distract him or her first by throwing his or her shoes out the window.

Empty trashcans before they get too full. Be kind to your roommate by emptying his or hers too. Roommate's trash includes: textbooks, ID cards, L&R papers, heart medication. Regularly empty roommate's trash in the proper receptacle to make him or her feel lazy. Empty your trash on roommate's bed while he or she's asleep.

Don't let food sit in your fridge too long. Go into the basement kitchen and fry up a few slabs of the brick of scrapple your parents sent you. Serve with bun and tell your roommate it's a veggie-burger. Works especially well if your roommate is a vegetarian, has a heart condition, or is generally any kind of healthy intelligent human being that would not want to eat processed pork byproducts. And say the bits of newspaper mean it's chock full of fiber!

Don't eat in your bed. Eat in your roommate's bed. Drink in your roommate's bed. Have sex in your roommate's bed. Commit double homicide in your roommate's bed. Get Nuoc Cham (Vietnamese fish sauce) and scatter it liberally under your roommate's sheets and on the pillow. Your roommate's cute nickname for the rest of his or her life will be "Stinky"!

Be mindful of noise pollution. If your roommate speaks in tongues in his or her sleep like mine does, tape-record it. If he or she's incredibly self-conscious about it, get it played on WBAR as "avant garde."

Keep your music collection organized. If your roommate owns only five CDs, and they are 3 Doors Down, Everclear, Nine Days, Matchbox 20, and Sum 41, this person does not deserve to live. Sell the CDs and the roommate on eBay.

Clean up all that nasty allergy-inducing dust. When grandparents are visiting, sprinkle some powdered sugar on your dusty objects or floor, and then arrange into nice neat lines for easy removal. Invite over members of St. A's and see what happens.