Hell's Coffee Table

I was walking through a Barnes and Noble recently when I happened to drift through the “Coffee Table” section. From what I gather these are supposed to be books that you leave out in the hopes of starting a conversation with socially-impaired guests. I had almost finished walking through when a book caught my eye: a coffee table book on the Holocaust.

I’ll repeat that: A COFFEE TABLE BOOK ON THE HOLOCAUST.

Who the fuck leaves that lying around? I mean really…what conversations are you starting with that book?

“Speaking of your new gas-grill, you’ll never guess how my grandfather died.”

I’ve begun working on an idea for my house: a coffee table designed strictly to make guests feel uncomfortable. The Holocaust book is first on the list. What else would be on the table? I’m glad you asked.

First of all, there’s the matter of the table itself. I figure the only way to do things right would be get one of the glass top display cases, so I could keep objects in plain view. You know, just your usual conversation pieces: a human hand, a pile of jagged pebbles marked “kidney stones,” and maybe one or two pig fetuses floating in formaldehyde.

No coffee table is complete without some sort of candy…at least, that’s what I’ve come to believe based on all the old people I’ve met. And they seem to be the only ones who have coffee tables, so I tend to believe that for the first time ever, old people know what they’re doing. And I have just the thing for uncomfortable candy.

A few years ago, a friend of mine gave me a recipe for home-made toffee sucking-candy. I did my best to follow the directions, and when I finished, I had some pretty decent looking treats. I held my nose and popped one in mouth, fully expecting to keel over dead instantly. But it actually tasted pretty good. Just as I was getting hopeful that I might not be a complete bust as a desert-maker however, I sank my teeth down and tried to bite the thing in half. Big mistake. Turns out that I had created some sort of caramel-tasting crazy glue. The thing bonded with my teeth like whores on Charlie Sheen. My jaw was instantly locked shut. I couldn’t even pry it apart with my hands. It was ten minutes before the candy dissolved and I was free to resume all those fun activities like speaking and eating solid foods.

A lot of people would have been discouraged by the beast that I'd created. I wasn’t. The first thing I did was put the candies out on the kitchen counter and wait for my roommates to come home. I figure I’d have to have a bowl full of these babies on my coffee table.

It seems like a good place for pictures too. So I’ll want an 8”x12” framed color portrait of my cock. No explanation, just proudly and unavoidably staring right into the face of company. In fact, maybe I should just swipe some of the pictures they used to scare me back in Sex-Ed and make a photo album. I can see it now: my guests, already out of sorts from the pig fetus whose eye seems to be following them about the room, reach for the untitled leather album in a vain attempt to strike up a conversation. Then they open it up, and, because I’m staring right at them, feel compelled to cover their horror and make some sort of comment.

“So…that’s Chlamydia looks like.”

One can only image what the rest of my house will be like. “Don’t worry, mom. We can have Thanksgiving at my house this year.”

Playing God

Every so often I hear talk of geneticists cracking the human genome and bringing us a whole new level privacy invasions. “It’ll be the end of birth defects and illnesses!” they crow triumphantly. Soon couples will be picking their children the way they pick a new car.

“OK, we want the “Messiah” model in Republican, the deluxe “package” and the DiMaggio upgrade. Oh yeah, and do you have that in white?”

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, people. I can’t even find someone who can install a toilet properly. Playing God might be a little over our heads. These were the same people who promised I’d be living on a Moon colony and driving a flying car by now.

Still, it creeps me out that this is something that people want to shoot for. I mean, it pretty much guarantees the end of our country and culture in the space of no more than two generations. Americans can’t figure out how to buy anything effectively. Imagine shopping for a son like an SUV. Everyone would be having cool looking but thoroughly impractical kids. They’d say “I want John Kennedy” and then be shocked when they found him banging the step-mom.

I can just picture myself walking into a doctor’s office one day and saying, “Listen, Doc. I have a few ‘touch-ups’ I want done to my kid.”

“What do you want?”

“OK, give me those red cat's eyes, wings and fire breathe.”

“I don’t know if I can, in good conscience, do that. Besides, If your child breathes fire wouldn’t you be concerned for the safety of your wife?”

“So we’ll bottle-feed that one.”

I’ve never seriously thought about naming my kid “Ehren Jr.,” but if the kid could fly and breathe fire, I may have to reconsider. Think about it. It'd be the greatest investment in history. Everyone else would be having goody-two shoes pansies. There'd be no one to stand up to little E Ju. By the time my bad-ass kid hit puberty he'd be running the country.

I can just picture company coming over while my 3 year-old, clad in a diaper, darts through the room on bat wings, sending bursts of flame after a terrorized house cat.

“Ummm...Is that…normal?” they’d ask after a beat silence, looking visibly shaken.

“Oh that’s just Ehren Junior.” I’d say. “A regular chip off the old block, that one is.” Then I’d wink. And watch as the discomfort in the room escalated.

I guess I just know how to put people at ease. But come on. What else do you expect when you give me the permission to play God?

Ehren's Guide To Creative Vandalism

I think music stars have gotten soft. Either that or their publicists have gotten better. I remember the rumors of violence, depravity, and general bad-assmanship following the bands of the 60s and 70s…During a concert in 1966, Pete Townshend (The Who) walloped drummer Keith Moon with his guitar, inflicting a black eye and leg wound that required several stitches. The members of Led Zeppelin allegedly made a groupie have sex with a fish.

What the hell do we have now? Rock stars have been reduced to biting. Of course, it’s a bit of a stretch to call Axl Rose a rock star these days. Rock stars have to actually play music. I think FOX needs to bring back celebrity boxing and put Rose against “actor” Gary Busey. Now that’s good TV. You could almost guarantee one of them losing an eye.

Only once in my life have I really been tempted to trash a hotel room. And I was seriously considering going full-blown rock star style.

I was on a trip to Italy when my plane was delayed in Paris. The airline put me up in a hotel for the night, so I figured I’d forge around and make the most of my night. Everywhere I went, the people were unbelievably helpful and nice—except for my hotel. They refused to serve me dinner 20 minutes before the kitchen closed. They forgot to call me a cab. When I asked if they knew a place where I could change money, they said, “in town.” When I asked how to get there they said, “Take a train.”

It got to the point where I was lying awake thinking of how I could further trash the room. I think people need to move beyond the simple “destroy the walls and furniture” levels and get far more creative and vindictive. Think about it: I’m sure they’ve got tons of spare desks and TVs lying around. It’s almost no effort to swap them out. What you really need to shoot for is stuff that puts a serious time, effort, and profit hindrance on the joint.

Like voiding your bowels in the closet, or slaughtering a pig on the carpet, or stuffing frozen seafood into the mattress. If you’re going to smash something, fuck the desk. Go for the two things that are going to be a complete pain in the ass to replace: the sink and the toilet. There are few “Fuck You”s to the management greater than taking a sledgehammer to their porcelain.

Next, you have to move on to the furniture. And try to be creative, people. That’s why I recommend going down to the nearest hardware store and purchasing a case of crazy glue. I suggest smearing the entire table top with crazy glue and sticking it to the ceiling.

If you want to really be a pain in the balls and have the evening free, you could pick up some supplies and hammer about 100 headless studs three-quarters of the way into the walls. Next, take your six bags of instant cement and fill the bath tub. Make sure you spill an entire can of paint on the carpet—not just one spot, because the object is to make removal of the entire thing necessary. And, because no thorough trashing is complete without swarms of things, clean the pet store out of mice, snakes and bugs. Release them into the room before you leave and let nature take its course.

This is why I need to be a rock star. It’s obvious that today’s musicians are far too busy maintaining angelic images. I want to bring serious danger back to the world of rock. I want to be the dude who gets drunk and has to be hauled out of the Grammies for throwing a whiskey bottle at a teen icon and knocking out his front teeth. I want to be that guy who does doughnuts on the lawn of writers who give my album bad reviews, goes to famous restaurants in boxers and a wife beater, and walks down red carpets with a box-cutter slicing through the ties on the “dresses” starlets are wearing.

Think about it: these days we never hear interviews with celebrities who actually speak their minds. It seems as if every single star we have is simply trying to be as bland as possible. Maybe that’s why we haven’t had a decent album or movie in the last decade. As these people act blander and blander, their art follows suit. And it’s time to take the suits away from Rock. Do your part: trash a hotel room today, and show Axl Rose how it’s done.

Fat People: Proudly Crippling Box-Office Returns Since 2003

I now understand why box-office numbers have suffered a significant decline over the past few years. Sure it’s easy to blame the movie industry for not having a single original movie or idea in the last 3 years. I mean, there’s a reason that all those cheesy 70s sitcoms went off the air. If you’re counting on “Love Boat: The Movie” to pack in audiences, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

I went to the movies over the weekend and decided maybe the lagging sales weren’t exclusively caused by the death of creativity in show biz. Maybe it’s because audiences are getting more repulsive.

I was sitting in my seat near the front of the theater when I suddenly became aware that the theater was louder than usual. Carefully surveying the crowd I noticed a huge percentage of kids. And not just kids, infants. Strollers and carriers littered the isles while siblings perhaps two and three years removed from breast feeding tore up and down the rows screaming, whining and fighting. It’s not like I was in a Disney movie, either. I had come to see the newest Jack Black movie and was appalled by the number of kids.

Who brings infants and three year-olds to the movies? I thought about it and decided that it’s simply disturbingly anti-social behavior. Like people who walk around naked, or get obscenities tattooed on their face, or listen to country music. It’s a level of hatred for your fellow man that is rivaled only by the most horrible of prejudices. Unless you’re hating on the Dutch. Fuck the Dutch!

Where was I? Oh yes, hatred. I was sitting quietly with my friend when a family of six stumbled up the isle. They began fighting amongst themselves in a way that let everyone in the theater know that they brought a level of self-loathing to the earth that Klansmen could only dream of. The disheveled and disorderly children scattered about the adults pushed each other while the parents cursed. It’s truly disconcerting to hear parents curse each other in front of their kids.

Without so much as an “excuse me” they climbed their way over me and filled up the isle to my right. The mother, an enormous, acne-ridden woman wearing some sort of muumuu, lowered herself wheezing heavily into the chair next to me. There’s something deeply disturbing about a person who’s given up all hope of being even marginally presentable. I struggled to look straight ahead as the beast to my right shoveled pop-corn into her gaping mouth. Kernels tumbled down to the floor or spewed off into the next row when she turned to yell at her kids.

How do you not look at something like that? Everything about her appearance and behavior screamed, “Look at me!!!” It was like she was begging for a confrontation.

The lights dimmed and I tried to focus on the movie, which isn’t easy when you’re sitting next to Jabba the Hutt. At any moment I expected her to tug on a chain bound to the neck of the youngest daughter and demand that the kid dance for her. The enormous figure to my right was overflowing over the seats. The armrest had long since disappeared under a mountain of arm fat. Her elbows had cleavage that would elicit jealousy from Dolly Parton. Come to think of it, considering all the wrinkled, hanging skin, the comparison to Dolly is disturbingly accurate.

I still could have let everything slide. But then things took a turn. The beast next to me began struggling for air. Every single exhale ended in a sputtering wheeze. It continued for about ten minutes while I struggled with the impulse to win the undying adoration of the theater by strangling her with a projection reel. Then the moaning started. Each exhalation ended with a groan of effort and a sputter of saliva that I could picture sliding down her chin. I left when I felt condensation forming on my arm.

There’s a certain law that people try to follow when confronted with a person of unspeakably horrifying appearance or behavior: we all try to ignore it, or act as if we’re accustomed to it. Having lived near to New York City, I’m experienced in the art of avoiding eye contact. But enough is enough.

You should have seen the dirty looks this woman gave me when I got up and moved three seats down. The whole experience was enough to scare me out of attending movies for the foreseeable futures. I’ve decided that I’m not attending another theater unless I’m seeing NC-17 pictures. Now there’s an audience that knows how to behave. Still, I can’t help but think that if major studios really want to see a spike in ticket sales, the best option is sending a dump-truck carrying 85 gallons of congealed hog-fat to this woman’s door. If that doesn’t kill her, it should at least keep her occupied long enough to let me enjoy Superman Returns in peace.

Thanks, Oprah

Let it never be said I don’t owe something to Oprah. After all, it’s thanks to her that my legend started.

Back in high school, I had a friend whose mother was particularly bitchy. She used to tell her daughter that she was fat. She constantly demeaned her friends, and made very little secret of the fact that she despised us. Basically, she was a stuck-up white bitch whose sole purpose in life was inflicting self-esteem problems on her kids. This was such a fulltime occupation that she couldn’t even hold down a job. Instead, she stayed at home, watched daytime T.V. and yelled at her housekeeper.

At any rate, my friends and I were driving around one day when the topic of Bitch Mom came up. We understood that our friend was in a difficult situation, being torn between her friends and family so generally we tried to avoid the issue. But circumstances arose that left us with no choice but to make a stand.

Our friend had managed to procure for us several calendars featuring topless women on cars. She’d bought these for us under full view of her mother and had received no objection. That morning, however, her mother had come into her room and taken them all.

“What are you doing with them?” my friend asked.

“I’m going to give these to my friends.” Bitch Mom announced.

Now there are perhaps ten answers to that question that could’ve been substituted that I would have accepted without blinking an eye. If she had protested the idea of giving near pornography to someone else’s kid, I’d understand. If she had been opposed to the supposed degradation of women, I would have gone with it. Hell, if she had said that she needed the paper to manufacture a dildo so she could finally take our suggestion and go fuck herself, I would have cried Hallelujah.

But who would believe that her middle-aged friends were interested in topless calendars? And that’s ignoring the larger issue of:

“What friends?” I demanded on hearing a recount of the tale. “Your mom’s a raging bitch who never socializes with anyone. Gaurds at Siberian prison camps are more personable than your mother. We all know that she doesn’t have any friends.”

“Does so.”

Does not!”

DOES SO!”

“DOES NOT!”

“MY MOM HAS FRIENDS!!!”

“OPRAH DOESN’T COUNT!!!” I bellowed at the top of my lungs.

To this day, I have no clue where that line came from. It was one of those times in my life where my mouth opened and I didn’t know what was going to come out. But it cemented my legacy amongst my friends. I’m not sure if it’s really a flattering legacy, but at this point I’ll take what I can get.

So Oprah, I owe you one.”

REAL Must See TV

I really hate reality television. Not because the plastic characters and the unrealistic situations they’re placed in are so obviously distant from reality. Not even because watching human misery is the lowest form of entertainment. I hate it for a different reason. Much in the way a circumcisionist looks at a patient and wonders “what might have been,” I look at reality TV and say “if only…”

I think that reality TV is hated by many people because they feel it goes too far—I feel like it hasn’t gone far enough. Put me in charge of a TV station, and I guarantee shows that will absolutely dominate the ratings. And I’ve got a ton of them. Here are the best ones:

• 10 couples from Guatemala compete for the chance to get a green card. The competition includes drug smuggling, house-cleaning, and applying for work behind the Home Depot. The twist? The losers are immediately shipped off to military interment camps on the season finale.
  
• 10 ambitious college grads compete in a cut-throat contest to win a job as a corporate Yes Man. They’ll compete at such basic skills as weaseling out of responsibility, placing the blame on others, and being two-faced sacks of shit without a personality or opinion of their own. I can instantly nominate 5 people from my past experience that’d be perfect at this.
  
• 5 men start their own phony religion unbeknownst to the public. With the backing of some money, exposure and TV stars, they see who can convince the most people and whacked out celebrities to join. Hey, as far as I’m concerned this is exactly what’s going on with scientology.
  
• An Amputee, a Non-English speaking immigrant, two side-show freaks and a house-plant compete to be the next Governor of California.
  
• 20 beautiful women compete for the attention of one man. He’s smart, handsome, rich, and not a convicted rapist—or so they THINK. Welcome to Joe Not-A-Rapist.
  
• My next idea essentially plays out the same as the last one—only it involves 37 different forms of STDs.

I know. The real shock is that I haven’t already slick-talked my way into running FOX. I suspect that the only reason I haven’t is my inability to fit my entire tongue, nose, and head up George Bush’s ass. Isn’t that a lovely image? In fact, it’s enough to give me the idea for my last show: Who Wants to Be a Republican Shill? The winners would have to believe that every issue has only two sides, spin every world event as being anti-American, and in the last episode, be shot in the face by Dick Cheney.

My Solution To The Energy Crisis

While I was sitting in traffic this morning I solved the World’s energy problem. Every day I somehow manage to trick myself into getting behind the wheel of a car that’s essentially going to be parked on a bridge for 40 minutes in rush hour traffic. So each day I can be assured of about three quarters of an hour of uninterrupted thought. Usually, I think about boobs. Today, for some reason, it was the earth’s energy crisis.

This morning I was looking at a slender, middle-age woman driving an escalade. At least, I’m assuming that it was a woman. Really, all I saw was the top of a head and two hands clinging desperately to the wheel. In all seriousness, the driver was eye-level with the bottom of the window. I wanted to get out and give her a phonebook to sit on, but then realized that she probably wouldn’t be able to reach the pedals. In retrospect, that might not have been a bad thing. There’s generally an inverse proportion between a person’s driving abilities and price/size of their car. I notice this every time a rich woman in a Hummer switches lanes without looking, runs a light, or cuts me off while waiting for gas. Which to say every 20 seconds or so.

I’m continuously shocked by the trends in today’s automobiles. Why would people who never go off-road buy off-road vehicles? It’s not like they’re practical, or cheap on gas, or even all that nice looking. Escalades and Hummers have about as much sex appeal as an open sore. However, Americans have spoken. They've said, "Please, Big Oil, I know you're already fucking me over, but there's so much of my rectum that still hasn't been violated. Can't you fuck me so hard my children, the nation and the world feels it?"

Given the trend, I know exactly what the next big thing will be: tanks. We’ll go from one military vehicle to another. I’m talking full on bullet-proof siding, rocket-guided missiles, and side mounted machine-guns for the kids. I guarantee I could stick one of those on a Cadillac lot and the only question Yuppie America would want to know is “Can I get one in pink?”

Anyway, back to my great idea. When my car dies, I'm not getting another one. Instead, my next method of transportation, considering I have to commute over a bridge with icy water, will be a walrus. I can see it now: decked out in a scarf, riding gloves and a pair of those goggles that World War II pilots wore, I come barreling through the snow up into the parking lot at the office. Cut me off now, bitch!

Off course, with the demand for power these days, maybe I’d be better off getting about a dozen and harnessing them all to a sleigh. What’s that? Your Maserati has 400 horse power? Well, it looks like three of my walruses mistook it for a female in heat. Good luck repairing that axle and getting the smell of walrus love out of your seats! Now that’s a sight you don’t see every day: a skinny, fedora wearing Jew at the reigns of a fleet of 12 matched walri.

On Pee Wee, on Surly, on Khan and Evil Lincoln!
On Smelly, Petunia, Fat Albert and P. Hilton!
Go Isuzu! Go Shakazaramesh, in your stylish white turbans!
Now Felix and Brutus, go trash that Suburban!

Yeah, I’d pimp them out with gold tusks, and medallions. Get some leather seats and a subwoofer installed in my sleigh. My only concern is that there’d be no place to put spinners.

I guess the points of today’s post are two fold:

1. I have way too much free time.
2. Don’t just complain about the impending energy crisis. Be part of the solution.

Willis Haviland Carrier Is A God

Last June, I bought myself the greatest gift a man can get for another man. I’m talking about something that would, by comparison, make a night at the Bunny Ranch seem like the gift of Hepatitis B (although, in some cases the two are one and the same). I speak, of course, of the gift of Air-Conditioning.

Laugh if you must, but until you’ve lived through three solid months of 96 degrees and 85% humidity, you don’t really understand how fantastic a gift this was. I remember lying in my bed one night, covered in ice-filled water bottles and praying for the sweet release of death.

It seems to me like A/C is still a novel thing. Maybe because owning a unit is still so new to me. I don’t think I even owned a car with working air-conditioning until 2002. I’m sure that I was the last person in Western Hemisphere to own one. That doesn't stop me from acting as though I’m one of only three people in world who has one of these mystical devices. I brag about it to all my friends. I even tend to drop it into conversations where it has absolutely no bearing.

“Guys…I have cancer.”

“So what? I have Air-Conditioning!”

Awkward silence.

Sometimes I wonder about the man who owned the first air-conditioner. No matter how big a fortune he made, I think he was being a little short-sided on the pussy aspect of his invention. Think about: it’s 110 degrees. Women are literally collapsing in their hoopskirts around the cracker barrel at the town’s general store. Men are trying to impress the swooning ladies by comparing whose hat most resembles Lincoln’s. Suddenly, our man swoops in.

“Excuse me, madam” says Bartlebee Hupswithen, a fellow whose wagon wheels are equipped with spinners. “Mightest thou come thither and gettest thy groove-thing on athwart my mule?”

“Oh Mister Hupswithen!” proclaims Abigail Cockswollow, a lady who is so top-heavy, she looks to be in immanent danger of being toppling over. “Pray tell, is it true that your pants conceal a length of sausage greater than three hand-spans?”

“That and more, my lady.” Grins Bartlebee. “Come forgo thy hoopskirt and modesty. Let’s gettest us busy.”

“Excuse me, Abigail” says our inventor. “I’ve just completedest an aero-conditioner.”

“Fucketh me now!” demands Abigail.

Seriously, if you were the only man with an air-conditioner, the amount of women you could get would be unholy. It wouldn’t even be fair. It’s ten times the equivalent of the man who invented funk.

In my mind, the man has already been elevated to the status of God on Earth. It’s him then Prometheus then George Foreman. I’ll have you know that it’s currently 20 degrees in my bedroom right now. My dog is one nap away from being encased in ice for future generations to discover. I'm considering installing a number hooks on my ceiling in case I want to store 35 sides of beef there. And I’ve never been happier. I know a lot of people are probably thinking that I’ve gone overboard here. However, we’ll see who’s laughing when August rolls around. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go sacrifice a goat to Willis Haviland Carrier.

Room Wars II: The Empire Strikes Back

After reading yesterday’s account of my first college roommate situation, a lot of folks would be tempted to say, “Wow, I’m sure that’s the absolute worst roommate situation you were ever involved with.”

If only that were true.

My junior year of college I transferred back in the spring semester, so I was forced to throw myself at the mercy of School’s boarding department. And boy did they pick me a winner.

I first met my new roommate a day before classes began. He was a tall, dark, and brooding looking fellow. I smiled and extended my hand in greeting. He didn’t.

“Hey, it’s good to meet you.” I said, trying to ignore the fact that my handshake had rejected like a homeless guy at the Bunny Ranch. “We’re going to have an awesome room. I brought a fridge, a TV, a computer and a DVD player. Plus, I just turned 21, so we can have a fully functioning bar. Our pad is going to be absolutely TITS.”

“I can’t drink.” He responded curtly. “It interferes with my medication.”

You know, I probably should have just packed up my shit right there.

My new roommate, in addition to being as charming as a bag of rocks, suffered from Tourette’s syndrome and was a pathological liar. I'm sure Western New York has planty of relatively normal college students. But what are the odds that I'd get the only pediphile AND the only Pathological Tourrette's patient? Seriously, it's as if I had won some sort of karmic lottory. Maybe I was Hittler's roommate in a past life.

How did my roommate's two strange afflictions play out in day to day life, you ask? I’d be reading a text book, when he’d suddenly scream something. I’d say, “Jesus, are you ok?”

“Yeah,” he’d answer. “Why?”

“You just screamed, ‘fuckyourpenis!’”

“No I didn’t.”

It was truly a bizarre couple of weeks. Things didn’t REALLY get interesting, however, until his girlfriend came into the picture. That’s right; he had a girlfriend who lived about 40 minutes away. To this day, I have no clue how they got together and how they managed to stay together. Basically, she was wildly insecure regarding everything he did and said because he kept lying to her. And he, meanwhile, proceeded to lie to her about things that didn’t even matter. He lied about EVERYTHING. He lied about his classes, his meals, his hobbies...he even lied about me--while I was in the room.

Somehow, it became my job to be the fact-checker. At the end of each conversation, she’d ask to speak to me, so I could confirm everythingg that he’d just told her. It made me really uncomfortable. On one hand, I didn’t want to start a war with my roommate. After all, look how the last one had turned out. On the other hand, I felt really bad helping to screw over a wildly insecure, but otherwise well-intentioned girl. Basically, I just tried to high-tail it out of there anytime he got on the phone.

The whole situation blew sky-high one day, when I came home to find the two of them in the room.

“Ehren,” the girl asked. “Has my boyfriend hung out with ANY girls since he started living here?”

“Ummm…not that I can recall.” I answered. “He’s been the model of faithfulness. The only girl I ever remember seeing came by about two weeks ago to get a copy of a missed assignment. That’s it.”

Acid looks were directed at me from my roommate. Meanwhile his girlfriend directed a glare at him that would have melted plastic. I looked around helplessly. I was just trying to be the good guy here.

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!!! WHY CAN’T YOU JUST TELL ME THE FUCKING TRUTH ONCE IN YOUR LIFE???”

“FUCK YOU, EHREN!” my room screamed, causing half the doors on the floor to open. “JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN’T FIND LOVE DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU HAVE TO LIE TO MY GRILFRIEND IN A PATHETIC ATTEMPT TO RUIN OUR RELATIONSHIP.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m having problems finding love because you’re currently fucking every girl in a 30 mile radius. I’m beginning to wonder why you even bothered packing pants.”

With that, I grabbed my coat and headed for the nearest exit. The sounds of destruction that followed me down the stairs were enough to make any man wince. Atomic Bomb Girlfriend had just blown sky-high. Suite mates ran for the cover of their bomb-shelters.

Mr. Pathological moved out a day later. I like to think that this victory made up for my failure to drive away my first roommate. On the other hand, what does it say about me when people with neurological disorders decide that I’m too weird to live with? Just something to ponder.

Room Wars

I was writing about my high school guidance councilor yesterday and it got me thinking about a meeting my whole class had near the end of the year. We were sitting in a room and my councilor was explaining something about “getting along with new people” and how it’d be required at college, particularly when dealing with a roommate.

“Not me.” I explained proudly. “My plan is to be so repulsive and creepy that I get my own room.”

It wasn’t a bad strategy. If you’re irritating enough that your roommate drops out, you get a single for the rest of the semester. Of course, it never occurred to me that other kids had arrived at the same conclusion. The result was a hygienic and psychological game of chicken played out over the first three weeks of school.

I stopped giving him his messages. He stopped bathing. I started hiding his belongings the room. He chased a girl from my room, threatening to rape her.

Clearly this was someone who was more committed to privacy than I was. It occurred to me that I might be overmatched.

He stopped doing laundry, going to class and started watching me sleep. He also began suddenly standing up and looking nervous each time I entered the room. It was the look of a man who’d been caught masturbating to pictures of his mother.

I started to weaken. I mean…I wanted my own room, but I wasn’t ready to give up my social life like this guy. Then I stopped wondering if my roommate was trying to scare me off, and started thinking that the act was genuine. Seriously, if you’re willing to give up sleep and stare at another dude for hours on end just for effect, who know how far you’d be willing to take this? Tonight he’s watching me sleep, tomorrow I might find him in bed with me.

The final straw came one night when I sat down in front of my computer and started clearing off the memory. Out of curiosity, I looked through the internet history. It was then that I happened on perhaps two hundred sites featuring prepubescent kids and bestiality. That was it for me. Ten minutes later I was pounding on the door of the R.A. demanding, “You have to get me the hell out of there NOW!”

Once pictures of crying ten year-olds being sodomized came into the equation, I decided that I just wasn’t willing to take the chance that he was messing with me. That’s my limit. Coincidentally, you’ll never guess what he was there to study. That’s right, Elementary Education. Keep you eyes open. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a news story about him any day now.

I guess the whole point of this story is: thank God colleges try to match likeminded people together. Otherwise, I might have been might have been paired with some freak.