You can't have one without the other.

Well, I guess I lied. This post will not be about any real roommates, or roommates at all. In fact, it's only about a room. A great room. An old room. Mine. Well, it became mine. Originally, it was mine and my brother's. But then he left for college, and even though I was just a year behind him, I continued to live at home because I went to college in my hometown. Many people don't do much with their rooms. It's a place to sleep in, possibly to work or study in, to store clothes and other various belongings in, to change or get dressed in, and I guess to, on certain rare occasions, to actually hang out in. That last one was always (and still is) the main purpose of my room. Even when my brother and I shared it, it was already quite different than rooms occupied by other boys our age. We actually put real art on our walls. We had this great stereo. We had model cars placed neatly on the top shelf (for display as opposed to play). We had a small growing collection of books and cds here and there. But the main thing, the real thing that made our room so much different than the rest was our lighting. We didn't just use the overhead light fixture coming out of the center of our ceiling. We used lamps. And not just one desk lamp or bed lamp, but both, and closet lamps, and corner lamps, and window lamps and whatever lamps. Lamps galore. And we also had twinkle lights or string lights or whatever they're called. Also, on the ceiling were hundreds of glow-in-the-dark star stickers. When my brother and I were very young, we got this mammoth package of these things and we put them all over our ceiling, with real constellations and everything. When we turned off the lights at nighttime, because there were so many, it was like we were in a sort of planeterium. I was beginning to really notice this stuff as I got older and I loved all of it.

Well, like I said, my brother eventually moved out and I stayed in the room for a good, I don't know, five more years I guess. Something like that. And during those years, I went to town. I was constantly covering the walls with all sorts of neat things--postcards, posters, photographs, things that normally don't go on walls like towels or linens, etc. I even painted an outline of a dinosaur on the wall. I took out the bright bulbs in the ceiling light fixture so there was never that real bright central light again. It was certainly not dim, not at all. I had plenty of lights all over the place that helped accentuate every nook and crannie in the room. I had a reading chair--this great golden easy chair I found at a thrift store for only fifteen bucks. I had a loveseat-sized couch that I got for free cos someone was getting rid of it. I had this old desk that my aunt gave to me when she moved. My bed, for most of the time, was a bunk bed that my brother and I had had since forever. I stayed on the bottom for a long time, but then, to help with space, I took out the lower bunk and moved my couch in place of it, so it was below the top bunk. This was all near the end. I had a turntable and receiver and speakers and my record collection was getting bigger and bigger. I even had a cassette deck and plenty of tapes to play. I had a goldfish in a small aquarium with a little castle in it. My small library was getting to be just that--a small library, literally. And the stars were still there of course, but I had eventually obtained two blacklights, so I could "charge" up the stars and make them glow even brighter than any incandesent light ever could. And this was all in my average sized room at the end of the hall.

There are many reasons someone might "go through all this" to have such room. They could simply be one of those people who love interior design and refuse to have their living quarters be a place where they can only do the things I mentioned early on in this post--the essentials. Or they could be a bit compulsive and can't help themselves--everything has to be in a certain place and look a certain way and it has to change and so on and so forth. Possibly they could have plenty of friends who also have awesome rooms and they're all doing it because it's a trend and they want to be cool. Or maybe they love to entertain, and they view their room as a gallery of sorts when people come to visit. For me, it was some of these things and more. I always viewed my room as place where my friends and I could come hang out and sit in the couch or the golden chair and play a record and just enjoy ourselves. I also a viewed it a sort of museum or, yes, even a gallery. I'm certainly not saying I had any fantastic relics or artifacts in there. No, it was all just my pictures and mail all over the walls, all very personal in fact. But nonetheless, it was quite curious still, to see and look at so much stuff all over the place. And that's what I loved most about it.

                    ~                        ~                    ~                     ~                     ~                   ~

That room is no longer. The physical room still exists but it certainly does not look like it once did. A year ago, I moved out because I transfered to a different school somewhere else. Immediately, my parents wanted to rent it out. So that meant I had to basically strip the room clean. It was very odd taking down every single thing. There are two closets in the room, one for my brother and I. I was told I could still use one of them to store things in. I used my brother's. My closet was gutted. After I left, I found out my parents had painted the room and filled in all the holes in the walls. I expected the holes, but they painted over all the stars on the ceiling and also my dinosaur. The dinosaur, sure I guess it could have gone. I was thinking maybe whoever the new tennant would be could simply put a small poster over it, no big deal. But the stars, I mean, it's kind of dark you know. I'm not one to shy away from poetic imagery and when I found they were painted over, I thought of the light or something leaving that room forever. Nothing left. Not even some silly stars on the ceiling. I'm not mad at my folks or anything. I was at first, but to them, it was simply a room to make some money off of since I was leaving. That's fine. I know I'm in the minority when it comes to rooms. To most people, rooms are just places to stay, and nothing more. They're four walls, maybe a window, a bed, a closet, a small desk perhaps, one door. But to me, a room is so much more. So very much more.

Be professional. Pt. 2.

Next post will be about roommates again. I promise. From me it will be anyway. But trust me, if you worked where I do, that would probably be the center of your misery as well. It just gets worse and worse. I've tried looking for another job, but it's no good. No one's called. Oh please, oh please, someone, please call back. Please call me and hire me. Take me away, I beg of you, from this place, this godforsaken hellhole. God is not present where I work. He is absent. He's absent from two places -- Hell and Suckway.

So, since the first post about this place, a good two months ago, much has happened that is worthy of note. First of all, I'm happy to announce that the notes have been getting less and less. Of course, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this -- the managers simply don't come there anymore. If they do, it's to look at the freezer that's been broken for three weeks, say some stupid things, grab some free food, and then leave in their industrial strength pick-up trucks. That's right, for nearly a month, our freezer was busted. It was almost as cool as the refridgerator. I'm pretty sure we were breaking all kinds of FDA rules. So what do we do? Lie in the temp checks? I guess so. It's okay to sin here, though, because, as I said before, even God doesn't go there. Anyway, the thing is apparently fixed now. So...thanks guys up top. You all showed some great managing skills during that terrible crisis where most of our food was ruined. One day, when I'm a moronic manager like you, I'll use you guys as my role model. Whatever anyone else teaches me, I'll simply throw out the window...because that's clearly what you've all done.

Hmm...what else. Ah yes, cameras. Surveillance. That's right, they can finally watch us and actually see how busy it gets while they leave me there all alone each and every nite. It's hilarious how many cameras they put in. The place is really a pretty small store, but there is definitely six cameras up and running, watching our every move. Rumor has it that four can record audio. We certainly haven't censored ourselves, believe you me. I'm still waiting for that phone call from them telling me that I shouldn't eat that cookie, even if it's broken or old or stale or burnt. And that's when I get to ask them why they only have five people currently employed at our store and why they only care about productivity.

Here's the thing with them and why we're always rushed. As I said, we only have five people working now. And those five people always work. I let my supervisor know tonite that I'm sick of this and what the heck is their problem? Why haven't they hired more people? This is ridiculous. He told me that as long as productivity is high and workers are low...they're making good money. I mean, it makes sense (cents. ha). We're getting loads of customers and they only have to pay for a couple people working there at a time. Sure. We'll take care of it. Don't worry about the people actually running your--

But I'm still there. And it's all I've got. So as miserable as it makes me, I gotta find something good in it. Mmhmm. This post will actually have a happy ending. Most customers are morons. But some aren't. Some come in and are regulars and tip me every time because I help them out and they feel bad I'm the only one there. Alot of times a couple will come in and the guy will joke around with me about how it sucks they leave me there alone like that or something. They allright.

In which Luke gets clever at work.

Another gripe about my job at suckway (Hi, welcome to Suckway. What can I get for you?). We have satellite radio but it's special subway radio. There's like ten stations to choose from. Technically, satellite radio doesn't have advertisements or commercials because, after all, it's satellite. You're paying for it. However, this is subway radio. Every three or four songs, on comes one of, I don't know, three or four different shitty ads subway has to over. And believe me when I tell they're annoying. Holy cow. I can't stand them. They're some of the dumbest things in the world. I won't go into exact details or dialogue that's involved with them, but they drive me nuts. I had a bright idea this evening at work while I was closing. Well actually, someone else did, because when I arrived for my shift, the radio was off. I noticed it immediately and I was about to turn it on because, normally, I'd rather have music playing than just silence, even if it's awful music with even more awful ads as a companion. But this time, it donned on me- Hey! Why don't we just Not turn it on? What an Idea! What a genius thought! How clever, Luke! Surely, you Are the most clever there ever was! And so, I worked my whole shift without that godawful ------ excuse of ------ radio at that horrible ------- of a place. And thus I've survived yet another miserable shift in the trenches.

Be professional.

The world lives and dies by its minimum (or less) wagers. Billions of untalented unprideful morons out there serving all the other morons in food, labor, sales, anything. Sure, we all start out in this area. You kind of have to unless you have a gift of some kind. But the reality is that alot of us don't have any gifts. We are just lazy losers. Yeah, we have all kinds of excuses and reasons in an attempt to save face, but come on. It's almost like your losing it the more you try to save it. In other words, knock it the hell off.

It says not to take us seriously, but let's be honest . . . and be honest. Besides, they say sixty percent of a joke is, in fact, truth. That's more than fifty, so why not round up and just go with saying the whole thing is really what you mean? At least I am. Stab 'em in the front.

What a cute intro. Onto the meat, the meal, the main dish. All of my jobs that I've had but one have been minimum wage. And most of them I haven't really minded so much. I've taken the mentality I mentioned above to each, and that sort-of twisted perspective has pulled me in with a strange desire to find a rather odd worth or value to the pointless tasks I work at. But not lately. Lately I've been at a subway. The ruiners of the sandwich. I admit, I've eaten there plenty times. Of course. I still do. We get free sandwiches and it means less for the food bill. Basically, believe me when I tell you I'm in it only for the money, but even that's hardly doing it for me anymore. There's a hint of my former note-leaving roommate at this place. Everytime I come in, there's a new note (or a few in fact) telling us all something what we're doing wrong or what we're still doing wrong or what we're not doing or what we're still not doing or whatever. One will point out our mistake and then "I don't know why I keep having to tell you this. You have All been trained how to do this, so do it! No Exceptions!" Key words there are the last two. I feel like we should be called Subway: No Exceptions! sometimes.

We recently had a health inspection. We had failed the five prior. They told us if we failed this one, we'd reportedly be shut down. Man how I prayed we'd fail. But we didn't. Just as well. The product I serve and how I serve it gives me no pride whatsoever in my work. In Orwell's Down and Out in Paris in London, he talks about how every job should have a sort of pride to it. And even sometimes in the lowest most pathetic jobs a pride is still attainable. There's no pride in what I do. None. They call us sandwich artists. That's our stupid name. One guy I was serving one day told me so. He said "Wow, what a sandwich. You're quite the sandwich artist!" I told him what we do is not art. I was of course being starkly serious but he thought it was funny. Good for him. Enjoy your art, retard.

The management is invisible. This is the first job I've had like this. Well, obviously they're not entirely invisible. Some jackhole has to be leaving those notes. The person who does our schedules, I still haven't met. I don't even know who she is. She apparently does the schedules for, like, sixteen stores or something. If we ever call any one of the five managers, they don't answer. If you keep bugging them, they might, like the other day. But over spring break, I had asked for the week off because I went home and they gave it to me. Well, the idiot who I haven't met scheduled me for that week and I had to call the main manager of that place, and because it was my cell phone number, she answered; but twenty seconds into the phone call, she hung up. I called back to the store, and my co-worker said "Oh yeah, she does that." Oh. Sure. Okay. She hangs up on you. Or doesn't answer.

It goes on but this post is long enough. And miserable enough.

I don't know how to end this post. I tried some endings earlier but, oh, let's just end it here.

the big jar

My roommate likes to grow things. In jars. When I moved in, I noticed a jar perched on the corner cupboard. A big glass jar full of a dark liquid and something floating in it. I didn't try to figure out what it was. A couple of days later, my roommate got on top of a chair and took the big jar down. A mushroom! oh dear, that floating thing is a mushroom. She set the jar on the table and went to the refrigerator and grabbed the pitcher she had been drinking from every day. She lifted the cloth covering the big jar, and carefully poured the dark liquid into the pitcher.

"What is that?" I asked.
"Kombucha tea."
"What?"
"It's really good for you," she began. This is never a good start. She said something about good bacteria and your body and maybe something about digestion or your immune system. She explained that the mushroom fermented the tea and made a drink with quite an acidic bite, which you then consume daily for heath reasons. I then watched her drink her daily dose. Her mouth puckered and her eyes squished down to her nose, which flinched. She smacked her lips and stuck out her tongue and shook her head. Every day, she suffered through a glass of that god-awful drink.

One day, she brought the big jar down to work on her mixture. (I found the directions on our fridge -- there's a lot of splitting mushroom colonies and harvesting and something about the "mother colony" and tasting for "bite.")
"Oh no! My tea is moldy, Sherry," she said.
"It's a mushroom," I said. "It is fungus."
"No," she said, not at all appreciating my quick wit, "There is mold floating in the tea."

It turns out something had gone wrong with something, and the tea had mold floating on the top. To me, the mold didn't seem any more offensive than the floating mushroom colony, but I guess even health nuts draw the line somewhere, because that day, Danae poured the whole thing down the drain.

N1H1

Since we're on the subject, there was another rather crazy lady I lived with at one time as well. I was new to the town and I think I got the place on impulse. I was certainly way off with my first impression of her. She seemed relaxed and all at first but she basically turned out to be just the opposite. She had to have everything very very clean. I thought she may have been, you know, obsessive compulsive or something, but she told me she wasn't. And she acted like that even the idea of thinking that was pretty obsurd. Anyway, specific examples of creating misery...well first of all, she'd leave me notes quite often. You know, those little hot coloured blocks of sticky notes that you see, well, just about everywhere. Well, I would find one just about everywhere except in my room. Notes like reminding me to turn off the light after I'm done in the kitchen or please clean up my fallen hairs in the shower or around the sink, but they wouldn't be worded so simply. I can't really remember exactly what they said but I know they were annoying. Now, strictly speaking, the messages themselves weren't bad. Of course we all want to conserve electricity and be clean. Sure. And I would clean up. All the time. But her cleaning level was like brand new clean, I think. It was probably mostly just her personality or whatever, but she was also always mentioning that she didn't want to catch N1H1. What an idiot. She didn't even know the correct name of the disease she was so afraid of catching. And the light thing, well, I'll just say it - I like lights on. Not all of them or anything, but, you know, enough to see. And yes, I'll leave on the range light throughout the evening. I always have. It's like a night light in the kitchen. I mean - wait! Look! This is not me justifying my actions! Good grief. She was nuts. And I hated heading back to that townhouse (not an apartment) every single time because it was depressing and miserable and she'd always have something new to tell me that she'd like me to do or not do. And her whole delivery of it all was so annoying as well. I couldn't do anything, practically. One time I tried watching a movie downstairs (living room and kitchen down stairs, rooms upstairs), and I had on just enough so that I could hear it and she said it was really loud and it was bothering her. Later I tried watching one in my room and she said that that was too loud as well. And eventually, she would only use the upstairs bathroom just to shower and if I ever used the downstairs bathroom, she'd leave a horrible note on the door that said something like "Girls only please!" or something. I mean, we were both paying rent. It's not like I was in her house and she was renting out a room to me. Not at all. Man, it was a pretty lousy time. Just picturing her face in my mind and her talking makes me feel so awful. Fortunately, I was able to get out of there within a month after moving in. Since then, I've seen this woman at school a couple times and have really gone out of my way to not bump into her. Once she was actually talking to a professor in a hallway that I was going to talk to. I went all the way around the building to the other side so they were on the other end of the hallway and so it'd be harder for her to see me. I waited outside standing half behind a pillar, every now and then looking through the glass doors checking to see if she had left yet. She made me feel that miserable. It's like a nitemare but worse. You wake up from nitemares and you feel good because, hey, it was only a nitemare, a bad dream. But this. This was real. This was misery.

Pooky

Well i was thinking of at least waiting a good day or so after starting this thing, let alone after rachel's post, but i have nothing to do right now and i have plenty to write about. whether it's plenty to read about, well, that's up to you i guess.

One time, an old roommate of mine, who i don't mind naming because she probably doesn't even know how to use the internet or what it is, tammy, drove me nuts. wait, that wasn't one time. that was just about every time i came in contact with her, or even thought of her. anyway, one night i was in my room reading or something and my door was shut, as it always is, and i hear her start talking to her stupid little untrained yorkie, pooky, in this very ridiculous voice just outside my door. think baby talk and then amplify that to beyond annoying and there you go. "Oh Pooky, you're so great! I wuv you! You're just the best! Let's see if Luke has some music for us! Should we ask Luke if he'd like to let us listen to some music? Should we? Huh? Yes! Yyyyyyes! Oh Pooky! Yayyy! (she did the yayyy thing more than anything) Let's ask him! Yayyyy Pooky!" and this continues for a little minute or so. just outside my door. keep in mind she still hasn't knocked on my door or directly addressed me asking me what's she's been asking her should-be-dead dog. finally, i get up and open my door, asking her what she wants. almost surprised she says something like, "Oh, Pooky and I were just wondering if we could listen to some of your cds, if that's okay." I say well they're out there in the living room, help yourself.

The thing with tammy is that she could (she's not around any more. thank god) be really repetitive and i never understood why. she would just kind of continue to keep asking me and telling me what she wants or what she's trying to say. so that's what she was doing this one night. which made me go to my cd binder (filled with some two hundred or so cds) and flip through it asking them what they wanted. i told her that i really don't think she will have heard of any of this music. it's not really radio music or anything. and then, quickly thinking, i said oh i don't have any country or rap or anything. then she asked me like four times if i really didn't have any country. not kidding. i said no, none. she made it a point to let me know that that was her favourite type of music. eventually i put on some m. ward. easy, acoustic, i don't know. she said she liked it. probably first good music she's ever heard. and then she started telling me that she had a boom box but that the batteries were dead and i said well don't you have a cord, and i don't recall ever getting a real answer from her. and then she started telling me about her life and that's another story.

Now, in describing this woman, it's probably easy for you to think that she was retarded (sorry. mentally ...whatever. face it, there's no polite terminology). i'm pretty sure she wasn't. but she definitely made me miserable.