I have to tell you, I truly enjoy when two seperate conversations line up just right and you end up with one of those moments where you just can't help but go....Oh wow man, that is weird.
This happened to me recently. It started with a conversation about my current living arrangment which can only be summed up by This!
Yep that is how I roll.
Sorry about that, it was necessary to make me happy! I promise the next link will be more fun for you.
Anyway, so I was describing my current living conditions and the question came up, is there really any good rooming houses out there? I thought about this for some time, bringing up past thoughts on places I have lived and really came up with no.
Yesterday I got an email from the person reading my manuscript. There was one question and only one question. Where do you come up with these assinine character? I thought about saying that they were charactures of aspects of my own personality, but that would make me look like an ass, so instead I said...why, I used to live with most of them.
So for you entertainment, here is a listing of every single rooming house I have ever lived in and why they indeed sucked.
The Central Clearing House. Bathurst and College, Toronto. I lived here for only a short time. I was dealing PCP, Meth, XTC and pot out of the top floor room. This place wasn't so bad...apart from the Russian LAN parties. Seriously, all night long these two russians who lived there would curse at each other in russian and play some sort of Quake, Duke Nukem thing. I call it the central clearing house because it was half a block from Central high school, one of the toughest schools in town, and well, everything was priced to move.
The Minagerie. Augusta St, Toronto. Technically E and I had our own apartment in the basement but, with 15 people living in what was essentially a 7 bedroom house, this was insane. We rented out the upstairs kitchen as a room...seriously. Also, a hooker stole our rent money and ran away to Vancouver. We had an awesome outdoor living room though...until the rains came...then we learned about tarping. The problem, other than the mass of smelly humanity was the fact that we also had 17 animals living in the house. Cats, dogs, mice, rats, some kind of snake.... The smell was....If you walk through the neighborhood now you will notice the house was torn down right after we moved out.
The Enterprise. Near the Corel Center, Ottawa. At first glance, this was a nice place. It was in a nice little gated type community of row houses and such. What went wrong? The guy in the room next to me, apart from being a real ladies man, was also...an amway salesman...who incidentally looked exactly like This!
Ok I know I said I would not do that, but it is true, he looked like that. There were a bunch of other weirdos in and out of there, and that story I like to tell about being kicked out of the National Art Gallery for making out with my roommates sister on an exhibit...yeah this was the place where I met that roommate and that sister. It is called the enterprise because anouther roommate had his entire system set up with noises from star trek. You know when your computer makes a sound to tell you it is turning on or off or a program closes? Right, he had all sounds changed to mimick the computer of the enterprise D. Oh and it spoke to him.
The Lesbian House. Convieniently Located for like ten minutes, Ottawa. What can I say, me and 5 lesbians. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this place....right up until one fo the girl's girfriends started humping my foot. Seriously. Oh and also, when a lesbianish woman is spurned by anouther, she may in fact show up at your door with a shopping bag full of lesbian porn and sex toys. I make no guarantees, but it is my experience that this will happen. I complain because I moved here to be within a five minute walk of work, and then a week later my station was sold and moved to the middle of nowhere...seriously, a twenty minute drive...or an hour and forty five minutes by bus.
The Alabama Slammah! Port McNicholl Ontario. This place was fine, apart from the 500 dollar a month phone bills and 500 dollar cab bill to get to and from work. Also, everyone there drank and was married to their sister. It was interesting to say the least.
The Crack House. Peterborough. Renting from a devout man seemed like a good idea. He made me sign a morals clause...which by the way included me not plagiarizing any of my college papers, and I thought this will be a relaxing place to get some work done. A half a dozen visits from the cops later (they were looking for the homeless woman who lived in the basement, and the drunk guy who kept breaking everybody's stuff) and I was sure this was hell.
The Den of thieves. Current domicile. Really, you stole my ketchup and margerine? I get using some of it, but taking the whole frigging thing...twice... and not leaving me anything? WTF? My favourite was the graduation card from my parents. You see, for some reason they thought it would be nice to congratulate me for my hard work by sending me a card, which for some reason one of my roommates decided to open, just in case there was some cash inside. There wasn't, so said roommate came to my door and said she "found" the card in the basement, ya know all open and without the envelope. This amused me for some time...right up until someone ate my frigging hot dogs. The part that amuses me the most is, everyone here complains about people stealing their stuff, that is why they all have mini fridges in their rooms. So wait, someone who doesn't like their stuff getting stolen so much that they bought their own fridge is stealing my stuff? DUDE! Oh and someone stole my cold water. Seriously, I had a bottle of TAP WATER! in the fridge cooling off, and they took it. They took my tap water man.
Well there you have it, my odesy through rooming houses. I left out two places that were sort of rooming houses but not really. The hiipy love farm and the steroid happy funtime hour house. This was more me living with a family...neither lasted long.
That is all for now, unless you want more of This!
As soon as know about my manuscript I will let you know.
