My flatmate. My fucking flatmate.
He's dumb. He's lazy. He's an "entrepreneurship" major who's taking six credit hours this term and at least six years to graduate. Is this because he's also working full time, you ask? No, his dad runs an accounting firm in the second-biggest city in the state, and these are on-campus apartments, they aren't the cheapest option around here. Instead he just sits in his room, all the time, and smokes weed...smokes vast amounts of weed...I'm pretty sure he's never not stoned. You walk into the living room at 4 PM on a Tuesday afternoon? Smells like weed, from smoke that has leaked under two doors. He's done harder stuff, too- one time we were out driving around getting groceries and he started telling me a story that started with "One time I was driving around town at 3 AM coming down off a shroom high..." That's the last time I ever catch a ride with you...
He throws parties. Parties in the living room at 1 AM with fifteen people all screaming at each other and noise metal blasting from his room. Keep in mind I try to maintain an early-to-bed/early-to-rise sleep schedule. I think way better at 8 AM than I do at 8 PM, my mind is much much clearer. Two Fridays ago he promised me that I would have advance warning of any parties that would be taking place in the living room. Great, that's good...if need be I'll kip on my friends' couch...This Friday I went to sleep at 10 PM in preparation for a nice long day of studying the following morning. At midnight I am woken up by fifteen people all shouting drunkenly at each other. Go out of my room- which, mind you, is the closest one to the living room, so that only a thin wall separates the two- and ask this idiot what all the fuss is about. Get some nonsense about a party being thrown and an exhortation to "just go to sleep, dude." I can't sleep. I was sleeping, and now I am not; that is why I am grilling you now. "Go sleep in [other flatmate]'s room." Fuckwad. Other flatmate shut him right down. I tell him to keep it down, he tells me to "just deal with it, it's a Friday night..." I finally get to sleep at 4 after the noise metal quiets down.
The next day he's all smiles and high-fives and "what's up, bro?" It's the most dishonest thing I've ever seen. Maybe that's just because I'm not really from around here- my family are old New England money whose money got pissed away by my grandmother. We don't smile unless we mean it. The smiles are endless in Oklahoma, which is nice, except that you can't tell if someone's really smiling at you or if they'd rather have you drawn or quartered. Maybe that's why I resent him so much- he is a lazy, ostentatious moron from west of the Mississippi and he will make more money than I ever will. You want to know why America is in decline? Exhibit A, the death of the aristocracy and the rise of Western nouveaux riches...
So all right, I say. I'll go talk to the powers that be. But the powers that be are purposely incompetent. The resident director of an 800-person complex of college students is already a full-time grad student. Her office hours? 10-2, Tuesday and Thursday. I'll be talking to her today because I have a free period during that time. They'd rather not do anything, of course. They've set it up so that it's impossible to get anything done if you have a roommate problem. There's more dishonesty for you- writing rules that you have no intention of enforcing. I'm going to have to figure out how much to play hardball. On the one hand, reserve and politeness are only to be expected. On the other hand, I feel like they've thrown me under the bus- I presumed, based on the survey about living habits they made me do in my housing contract, and the fact that the housing handbook guarantees me a right to sleep, that they would put me with people who would respect my sleep schedule. The Resident Director has put forward the disclaimer that they have very limited rooms available and that they may not be able to find me new flatmates who will respect it. Tough, I say- the onus is on you to do what you promised, not on me to pick up the pieces from your logistical incompetence. That's the funny thing about the modern West- its rational, enlightened philosophers have magical powers that the alchemists and astrologists of old could only dream of. They couldn't get an ounce of gold from their lead, no matter how much they toyed with their beakers; while we can find any old thing, and if we write it on a magical piece of paper under the heading Human Rights, it suddenly pops into existence, as if it had been created by God at the dawn of time, permanent and unyielding as the laws of physics.
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Topic: Things that made you RRRRRRAAAAGGGGEEEE today: Trust-o-nomics Edition (Read 3765302 times)