Roommate shopping.

My roommate Laurie is moving out of our house because she hasn't found a job and her parents won't send her anymore money for rent (fuck the real world). She has posted an ad on Craiglist for our house, and so far I've met three prospective roommates.

1. Martine.
Martine was actually cool, but she decided to live somewhere else. Of course the best one had to come first and every other person who comes by kind of sucks.

2. Patrick.
Patrick comes from Snoozerville. Or Cincinatti. Either way, he had no personality. Here's what we know about him: He has a job here in marketing, he owns a pool table, and he "did jazz dance in college." The last bit of information was obtained when he asked me and Janna what we did. Janna told him she danced and suddenly he showed some emotion, telling us about his dance history. That was limited to "jazz dance in college." I don't know; I feel that if the only dancing you did was jazz dance, and it was just in college (meaning he took one class as an elective because it would be an easy A), you probably shouldn't brag about it in the way that sounds like you dance dance dance!! I cannot imagine how weird it would be for that guy to live in my house. I bet he doesn't watch Gilmore Girls.

3. John.
John wrote Laurie an email saying that he was a computer science major "who was not a geek." Which means that he is a geek. He came by today; I shook his hand and that was probably the only interaction I had with him.

Is it bad to want a roommate I can actually seeing myself hanging out with? I don't know, I just don't want someone living here whom I cannot have a conversation with. I think I'm pretty outgoing, but I think it's really limited to a certain type of people. Maybe that comes off as snobby, but I can pretty much tell in five seconds when I'll be able to have a conversation with someone.

It's also weird to think that I'll be living with someone I don't know in about a month. That hasn't happened since sophomore year of college, when I lived with the asian version of Norman Bates. If I had the time, I could commit an entire blog site just for stories dealing with my sophomore year roommate. Here are some highlights.

1. He wore Dove deodorant. Dove deodorant is for women who have dry skin under their arms from shaving. As far as I could tell, he did not shave his armpits.

2. He used baby wipes. I swear to God.

3. On the first day of class, I woke up at seven in the morning because he was blasting - blasting - "My Heart Will Go On" on his computer.

4. He bought a keyboard one day, out of the blue, specifically because he wanted to learn to play "My Heart Will Go On".

5. He used to spy on our neighbors' conversations. He literally stood outside of dorm room doors, listening to the conversation. That's not all. Sometimes he would ask our neighbors to explain what they were talking about.

6. He spent seventy dollars on a brand-new Human Sexuality textbook from the university bookstore. He wasn't taking the class, he was just curious. When asked why he didn't just buy a cheap sex book from Barnes and Noble, he replied, "I didn't want people to think I was weird!"

7. He owned a copy of the Marquis de Sade's collected works, which he read in the bathroom.

8. He told the hall director that he shouldn't be allowed to own golf clubs in the dorm since they could be used as weapons.

9. He told a female friend of mine who was suckered into hanging out with him once that he almost touched her breasts, but decided not to.

10. He told me that my father reminded him of Randy Quaid. My dad will never get over that.

11. Even the RA hated him. He made her be his lab partner in a class they took, and he creeped her out so much that she had to switch sections of the class.

12. He thought about being gay once, but decided against it.

13. He would rip certain scenes from movies onto his computer. Not the whole movie, just random scenes. And there were movies like Clockstoppers and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

14. He would get books from the library and read only the last fifteen pages. He'd do the same thing with movies: "One time I rented Sophie's Choice, but I only watched the choice scene."

15. He told a mutual friend that one time he went out to dinner with a girl and brought her home to watch a movie. He ended this story with the phrase, "Then things got weird." One can only imagine what the hell that means.

This is why I'm afraid of roommates.