• Join The Fed
• Advertise with The Fed

• About Us
• Contact

In This Issue

• Tom's Restaraunt
• Morningside Heights: Like NYC, But Not
• Letters to the Feditor
• Fed Guide to Internships
• CUicide and You
• Advisors? Who Needs 'Em?
• Housing and Dining Fun Quiz
• Attack of the Killer Barnard Blowjob
• Adventures in the John Jay Elevator
• If You Don't Smoke, We Won't Think You're Cool
• LERNER DELENDA EST
• Piss Off/On Your Roommate
• Fun With Fu!
• Guide to Your Columbia Nervous Breakdown
• THEY WATCH
• Comic - Stickman Theatre's Political Explosion

Ethan Heitner

"I will eat your spine. There is no vegan option."

Hate your roommate? Welcome to the club. Now unless you already have a girlfriend/boyfriend with a single, you're going to have to deal with this person a whole lot.

When I was a freshman, our Orientation website advised, "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 was whenever that little SEAS shit was 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 was taking part in my stuffed animal orgies.

So whenever my roommate decided to check in with each member of his wholesome Colorado family, I whipped out the big guns. Imagine Nerdo's response the time I raced into the room during minute 38 of mommy talk, wearing only a bubble wrap diaper, screaming, "MALE SERVICES, YOUR PACKAGE IS HERE!" But, as he laid there in the fetal position, sobbing uncontrollably and begging his mother to come take him home, I realized that I just wasn't being productive. Running around with popping plastic on your gonads may be fun (and sensual), but sometimes there is serious work to be done. The thought struck 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 first by throwing his shoes out the window.

Empty trash cans before they get too full.

Be kind to your roommate by emptying his, too. Roommate's trash includes: textbooks, ID cards, University Writing papers, heart medication. Regularly empty his trash in the proper receptacle to make him feel lazy. For example, empty your trash on roommate's bed while he is asleep.

Don't let food sit in your fridge too long.

Go into the nearest 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 intelligent human being that would not want to eat processed pork byproducts. And say the bits of newspaper means 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 Mam (Vietnamese fish sauce) and scatter it liberally under your roommate's sheets. Your roommate's cute nickname for the rest of his life will be "Stinky!"

Be mindful of noise pollution.

If your roommate speaks in tongues while sleeping, like mine did, tape-record it. If he is incredibly self-conscious about it, get it played on WKCR as "New Music."

Keep your music collection organized.

If your roommate owns only five CD's, and they are Staind, Creed, Nickleback, Disturbed and Linkin Park, this person does not deserve to live. Sell the CDs and the roommate on eBay.

Clean up all that nasty dust.

When your roommate's grandparents are visiting, sprinkle some powdered sugar on your dusty objects or floor, and then arrange it into nice neat lines for easy removal. Invite members of St. A's to visit, and see what happens.