Roommates!!

Today I feel like venting about roommates….but first; a brief rundown of my qualifications –

In less than 7 years I have lived with over 27 roommates. I have lived with almost every situation imaginable - I have lived alone, with one roommate, two, three, etc. until 5 rommates(That was/is my max). I have lived in the same room with a roommate, shared a bathroom, (i.e. basically lived on top of each other), but I have also have lived at times with my own room and completely different schedules so that we never see each other.

I have lived with all races/sexes including at one point (in paris), being the only person who spoke English and us all having to translate Russian/Japanese/French to have a conversation or to understand a phone message that was left (like in L'Auberge Espagnole)!

So – just to reiterate – I am great roommate, I have years of experience, and I think I have encountered almost every type of living style/personality quirk out there….which is why, one of my current roommates is mystifying me. He is. I am mystified!

My current situation lays out like this, I live with three actor/singer/dancers (I am not one), 2 are gay guys (who aren’t together) and one ia an awesome chica (straight as far as I know). So one of the guys – we’ll call him ‘Craig’ is moving out today. Our rent went up a couple of months ago and he has decided he would rather move to Astoria (where I used to live!) and pay less, than stay. Which is fine I get that, and actually we are all secretly happy because he is a bit difficult to live with. The weird thing is he can totally afford our apt. – he dances in a big Broadway show and is making a good chunk of change- but still he wants out.

What is mystifying me is that he acts all "green"/karmic and as if he has compassion/cares, and then when it comes down to something, he is always about the money. For example, the first day I moved in, Craig was shuffling some boxes into his new room and he asked me if I wanted his little 13" inch TV for my room since he had just gotten a flat-screen. I said “sure!”, I had just thrown my TV out because I too was going to upgrade, but I figured I should wait until I had my furniture placement set before I buy one. So I gladly took it off his hands and have been using it for about 5 months… because now I’m waiting for prices to come down/my paycheck to come up.

Anyways last week he came up and asked me how much I wanted to PAY him for the TV? I kind of stuttered and said that I didn’t need it since I was still going to upgrade soon, and that he could take it back, blah, blah, thanks for letting me use it, etc. - Still, it weighed on me that he expected me to pay for something he had practically thrown at me at one time. So, I very maturely just asked him what the deal was. I explained, I thought he was throwing it out and gave it to me, so that he wouldn’t have to deal with it. He said that no, in fact, he had always expected it back (lucky I didn’t upgrade during his vaycay!), but if I wanted it he was willing to cut a deal (like $20). I again, graciously thanked him but told him he could have it - $20 is way too much to pay for a fischer-price TV.

Meanwhile, yesterday he told Dave (our roommie) that if he wanted to keep the bathroom fixtures that he had installed, Dave would need to pay him (the full price!), before he moved out. Dave declined (because he could care less) and Craig completely stripped down their bathroom of the fixtures. All of this after a heated “pot” debate (the kitchen item not the drug) one night, in which Craig stated he would never buy something for the apartment and ask us all to chip in (rather, he would just pay outright for it). The fallout from the pots being that we ended up using Craig’s cheap Ikea pots (that we hated) over some really nice pots that Dave wanted us all to chip in for – that me and chica wanted. Ironically, Craig is neither taking the pots nor charging us for them – he left a message on the whiteboard last night that we can have them! Yay! Although I’ll probably make him throw them out – I hate when I roommate leaves his trash on move-out day!

Basically he cares until it costs him, and then he wants every red cent he can squeeze from you - and he's a liberal....

Also, while the roommies and I are all reasonably “green” – Craig takes things to a ridiculous level. Dave and I keep spotting the glade plug-in lying around various parts of the apt. (because we had been plugging it in whenever we found it out of the socket). Turns out Craig had been unplugging it to save energy!! -huh??

Too funny.

Lyric Controversy and Lost Wallets...

One of my big things about having this blog is that I was always going to mainly use it to catalog my life and not worry about readership or what people would care about. Which is kind of why I told Jew of I didn't want to have a blog at all now that other bloggers knew my real identity. But anyways, my point is - if I blog something boring I don't care - this is for me!

So today I had two unique problems, The first was that I forgot my wallet at home and only realized when I was about 20 minutes away. I figured I was just going to starve all day, but then I found 5 dollars in my purse -yes! I was set - I mean I brought my little snack and everything so I should've been fine. However, I am a huge coffee drinker and I had to get an iced coffee. That brought me down to $3.50 total. No biggie. At lunch time I strolled over to my huge new employer’s cafe to see whatever I could get with $4.47 which is what I had with change. Luckily the veggie burger w/fries was only 4.45 and there was no tax. Unluckily, the burger dude put tomatoes on without asking and apparently sliced tomatoes cost $.40 cents. So I got up there and was about .35 cents short and standing in front of some of the higher ups... I was just a little embarrassed!! But the cashier took pity on me and waved me through.

My second little issue was more of a crisis of conscience. I just started working at a Music Label which is what I've wanted to do since I moved up to New York. So anyway, I pretty much love music, and I love learning new stuff/back-stories on songs. Today somebody mentioned something about the song "Sweet Home Alabama" and how it was rather odd that they used it for a KFC commercial. I was sitting in my cube thinking "Why is that wierd? - it's a southern food!" (My family is totally from the South). So I googled – this and it brought up a number of sites/blogs that have discussed the potential racist lyrics of the song.

Lyrics in Question:

Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow

Chorus

In Birmingham they love the governor
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth

Apparenly “A Southern Man” is a Neil Young song…and if you misinterpret the lyrics it sounds like Lynard Skynard is hating on Neil’s Song which makes them racist. But their not, there is stuff in the background and deeper meanings and blah, blah, blah notracist, blah. I don't want to just reiterate what they say so I will direct you to here ------ Here are some links in case you don’t believe me though:

Wikipedia page and a disagreeing page

I went through a 10 minute period reading all of that a little scared that the song I enjoyed singing at the top of my lungs in dark bars was completely non-pc. I mean, whatever! I'm pretty liberal and I don't care too much if a song is offensive sometimes but - the way a couple of sites put it Lynard Skynard were complete racists or something. It's completely not true! But I was just surprised because I had never really listened to the lyrics, and I never heard about any sort of controversy...

End mini crisis of conscience.