My roommate has bad ideas

Addressing the unspoken rumors

2008-09-11T17:24:00.001-07:00

So the last few posts have dealt with my roommate saying some slightly unconventional things (for a straight guy, at least), and it didn't help that he has an effeminate voice and is really sensitive about his feelings and stuff like that. And some of us quietly wondered whether he was gay.

And then one day he triumpantly entered the room with a Perfect 10 magazine.

SPC Ed - "Hey look at what I got!"
Me - "Hmm? Oh, porn. Ok cool."
SPC Ed - "Do you know what this means? This proves that I'm not gay! I'm leaving it on the coffee table."

Over the next few weeks, he made sure all the guests we had knew that it was his magazine and that he was a fan of boobs. Then one Saturday while we were cleaning up he said "well, this has served its purpose" and threw it away. Well ok then.

Note: I've since come to the conclusion that he's not gay. He just talks effeminately, and I don't think he grew up around any dudes whatsoever, so he's just kinda weird like that.

Raising eyebrows

2008-08-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

And then there was the time SPC Ed enthusiastically went to go watch Brokeback Mountain opening weekend with a friend. A male friend.

2008-08-30T16:05:00.000-07:00

Yeah I know that the existence of this blog is itself evidence that I was unnecessarily passive-aggressive (which I consider to be a character flaw I have since improved somewhat in the last 2 years), but I think it could have been worse - I could have done this:

Army girls

2008-06-26T16:59:00.001-07:00

When we left basic training, I was disappointed but not shocked at the relative low quality of Army girls aesthetic qualities.

So I'm standing around and chatting with a buddy in the doorway of his barracks room; I'm standing in the hallway. SPC Ed passes by while I'm wondering aloud why most male soldiers are far fitter and more athletic than their civilian counterparts while it seems like so many female soldiers are far less fit and, uh, softer than their civilian counterparts to a friend of mine, and SPC Ed interrupts the conversation:

"YEAH! I know! It's so weird that the DUDES in the Army look so much better than the girls!"

Um, ok. My other friend couldn't hold in his laughter and just slammed the door in our faces to muffle his hysterical laughter.

Restored

2008-06-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

Ok it's been long enough - I'm putting the site back up. I had a bunch of other entries written or outlined, but I'm not sure whether I'm going to put them up or not - I honestly don't remember quite as well since it's been a few years. But the site is back up because I figure nobody knows both me and him anymore, besides the people who already read the site.

The biggest promoter of this site

2006-12-03T18:39:00.000-08:00

Is in fact my old roommate. Congratulations are in order to my old roommate, who has told many of his peers the url to this web page (albeit without password because he doesn't know it) in the context of trying to drum up sympathy, but is in fact leading those people who don't know me to ask me and my friends about the site. Usually I don't give them the password and instead give a condensed version of the story, usually touching on the XBOX story or the ending of public schools idea. Of course, when people here ask me about him I usually am more forthcoming about his professional shortcomings and his personal indiscretions, which I do not mention on this site.

Fashion

2006-11-21T06:45:00.000-08:00

There was a guy with a unique sense of style (to put it as diplomatically as possible) who used to live across the hall from SPC Ed and me. We'll call him NiceGuy. He would wear clothes that didn't exactly conform to social norms; we would laugh it off and didn't think anything of it. One day, though, SPC Ed decided to correct the outfit NiceGuy had on, by telling him a bunch of stuff about how you can't wear X with Y, etc. I wasn't really paying attention. What caught my attention though, was when NiceGuy decided to disagree, and SPC Ed loudly proclaimed "No! You have no sense of fashion. Trust me, I grew up with older sisters who taught me everything there is to know about fashion."

From the opposite corner of the room, my hysterical laughter interrupted their conversation, and my roommate gave up. As much as I generally dislike when people appeal to authority in their arguments, I find it hilarious when a 25 year old appeals to the authority of his big sister on the virtue of her being a female.

Back up

2006-11-20T21:56:00.000-08:00

Obviously I'm behind a password wall now. The password will last only as long as my old roommate and I are in the same company until early next year. And I will be putting up my saved material over the next few months until I run out of stuff. Then I might make it a blog about just living in the barracks. There is plenty of funny happening around me every day.

Links

2006-10-21T23:09:00.000-07:00

Some of you have discovered this blog from the noise made when I had to move out. Some of you may have been confronted by Specialist Ed, my old roommate, and found out that way. Regardless, there are enough new people that I have to point them towards a good sample of what this site is about:

Bad Idea #2 - "Using an XBOX will break it" and Bad Idea #3 - "Will you buy a DVD player for the room"
Bad Idea #5 - Cleaning muddy boots in a bathtub that already has difficulty draining.
Bad Idea #7 - Let's charge $1000 a year for all students in public schools.
Note on Whiteboard
I have to convince him that bribery should be illegal.

Anyway, those are my personal favorites.

Spreading the word

2006-10-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

I think it's a pretty bad idea to draw publicity to a site that lists your negative traits. But that's exactly what's been going on, and Specialist Ed won't stop talking about it. He has angry messages written on his whiteboard in his handwriting about this site, and he finds it necessary to continue confronting my friends about it, so I don't know what to do. I wanted to let it go, but he won't let the issue die.

So I will be posting the dozen or so stories that I had scribbled down notes for over the course of the next few weeks. In terms of content, this site still has some stuff left, so I'll be doing that. I will mostly be going back to crappy ideas that he had about society and public policy, rather than crappy roommate things he used to do. He was never a bad roommate. He was merely a bad friend and a bad soldier who happened to have terrible ideas for public policy.

Expectation of privacy

2006-10-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

My next post will break down what happened to me as a result of maintaining this blog, what changes are coming, and what the future holds for this blog. As of right now, I am putting it back up for a simple reason - my former roommate finds it necessary to talk incessantly about this blog, and his largely inaccurate description of what I was doing deserves a rebuttal, namely the text of the blog itself.

This brings me to another point - because my former roommate won't let the issue die, more people who actually know him have discovered the blog through him than through me. Many found out when he made a big fuss and I had to abruptly change rooms amid much curiosity-arousing noise. Since he complained to others about the blog and is confronting everyone who we mutually knew about it (not very tactfully, I might add), I will let the blog speak for itself.

With that, those of you who read the blog and actually know who my roommate is, please don't aggravate the situation. Some of you have copied and redistributed the text of this site. While this is legally permissible (I publish this site under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license), I would prefer that you do not do this to spite my old roommate, which some of you have been doing. In addition, some have taken to openly taunting the former roommate - it is unacceptable and unnecessary to mock him by writing things on his door.

Now I'd also like to clarify - this blog's purpose is not to make fun of my roommate. While I did have real problems with my roommate's half-baked ideas on politics, law, and society, and I also have real problems with him professionally, our personal differences are nothing special. I regret letting him find out about the blog, since I had miscalculated the amount of damage it would cause. I'll post more on this later, as well as address concerns that were aired about OPSEC, PERSEC, breach of trust, and expectation of privacy. Most of what I posted on was unimportant, impersonal, and commonly available knowledge. If you say something to a group of your peers in the dining facility within earshot of dozens of others, it is not generally considered to be a private conversation.

I've also deleted any posts which could possibly be construed as too personal or too private.

He found it

2006-10-03T19:23:00.000-07:00

Long story short, my roommate discovered the blog and became understandably upset. I don't think I explicitly called him any names, but he is upset that I gave information that could be used to paint him as a "loser" (his words, not mine).

So as of right now, I'm quitting this site and considering deleting all record of it. I probably won't make up my mind until the weekend.

More thoughts here.

Shiny new DVD player

2006-09-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

My roommate bought a portable DVD player, with its own screen and everything. It is like an 11" screen and has a battery life of around 3 hours. I don't fault him for that purchase. Not that I would've bought it, but whatever - he can do what he wants with his money.

What puzzles me is that when he got it, he promptly sat on the couch and watched a few Star Wars movies on it. Instead of watching it on the 30" TV with much better sound and picture quality, that happened to be directly in front of him, he sat for several hours watching movies playing from a device sitting uncomfortably on his lap.

Self centered thinking

2006-09-23T15:33:00.000-07:00

I'm done counting numbers with these bad ideas. I'm just going to post them.

My roommate went drinking last night and came home pretty late. I don't understand what he is thinking when he does things like this, but apparently he stopped by a friend's room at 3:30 AM asking for food. I don't know what kind of bum he thinks he is, but my friend is pretty pissed at my roommate. For good reason.

Then my roommate came home and started playing music while I was sleeping. WTF.

Of course, this is a long pattern of behavior in my roommate's behavior. He often does self-centered things, and I've catalogued many of them here - drinking my beer without realizing that I don't like that, asking me to buy a DVD player, as if that made any sense at all, or waking people up at 3:30 AM for no good reason at all.

The worst offense occurred the week after my father was murdered. My roommate called me the day we picked up my father's personal items and looked at his body for the first time, while I was on the way back home from seeing my father's stitched up, reconstructed face at the funeral home. He called me to get detailed tech support on the internet, when he fully knew that there were people he knew who knew how to reset the internet connection (unplug everything from the power cord, then plug it back in after a few seconds) living in the same hallway. To this day, I still consider that call to be the single greatest indicator of my roommate being a self-centered baby.

Elaboration on bad drug ideas

2006-09-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

While it is fairly uncommon, my roommate's drug legalization ideas are not unheard of. Some libertarians believe that education is a better method of deterring harmful behavior than outright criminalization. I disagree, but that's not the point here. Apparently my roommate does not even subscribe to this opinion.

My roommate told me today that he thinks that drug education should not "focus on the negative aspects of drugs, and instead should teach people how to use drugs responsibly." Also, he doesn't think that "government should not advance any kind of agenda."

I am completely speechless. This guy is more retarded than I realized.

Big changes

2006-08-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

You guys probably noticed a new appearance around here. I'm using a new template called Curves in Red by Bryan Buchs. I'll be tweaking font sizes and spacings over the next few days until I'm satisfied with the details. I also changed my blog description from "Adventures of a soldier living with another soldier who spews forth bad ideas about politics, economics, academics, relationships, and religion" to what it is now, because my possible coblogger is a law student and not a soldier.

Also, I'll be going back and retroactively editing my posts to differentiate between my posts and anyone else's posts. I'm thinking of maybe labeling them "Bad Barracks Idea #x" or something like that. Or maybe giving my current roommate some kind of pseudonym. Suggestions/comments are welcome.

Bad Idea #22 - Forgetting that it takes two to agree on a transaction

2006-08-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

My roommate is getting rid of all his books, and he asks me if I want to read any of them. I ask about a few, and only one sounded interesting to me. I tell him I'm moderately interested in that one he mentioned, and then forget about the conversation.

The next day, I come back home to the book sitting on my desk. I think, cool, I'll check it out when I have time. The roommate peeks his head out and says

"Hey, it's sitting on your desk. I think you'd enjoy it."
"Cool, thanks."
"But the thing is...it's a textbook so..."
"Oh no worries. I don't have a problem with reading textbooks - I'm kinda a nerd like that."
"No, not that. It's just that it cost a lot, so..."
"Wait did you want me to buy it from you?"
"Uh...yeah."
"Oh well in that case, no, I'm not going to buy a book from you."

So he took it back. And I will probably never get a chance to read it. What a bitch.

My friends have roommates, too.

2006-08-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

One of my college buddies (and a former roommate) just started law school in NY. The combination of me running out of material from my own roommate, and the fact that he started complaining about his roommates means that I think he's going to be posting here, too.

I'll have more details to follow, as I figure out how to incorporate new bloggers on this site. I may reformat my old posts so they don't get confusing as to who is talking about who.

Bad Idea #21 - Talking about Star Wars and expecting me not to make fun of him.

2006-08-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

21. Talking about Star Wars trivia in my presence and getting offended when I call him out on it.

I was walking the other day, and noticed my roommate's voice was behind me, talking to someone else. He got closer, and I could start making out what he was saying:

Roommate - "What was...Ben Kenobi so impressed with the first time he met Anakin?"
Me (turning around) - "He was impressed with the fact that you're a huge freaking dork."
Roommate's friend - "Hey f--- you!"

And then silence.

Two hours later while we were quietly doing our own thing in our room, my roommate abruptly looked up from a comic book graphic novel to start this conversation-

Roommate - "Hey, you know, I would really appreciate it if you didn't call me a dork in front of other people."
Me - "Fine."
Roommate - "Well, do you think I'm a dork?"
Me - "I think it's ridiculously dorky to talk about Star Wars trivia in public and not expect to get called out on it."
Roommate - "Well I didn't think it was funny."

Great. Now he's easily offended. I wonder what he will think if he discovers this blog. Oh well, I'll deal with it then.

Bad Idea #20 - No consensual crime should be illegal.

2006-08-06T11:32:00.000-07:00

20. Any action in which nobody is harmed against his own consent, should not be made illegal.

My roommate's worldview is fairly impractical. He believes that no law should make any action where people's freedom to harm themselves should be made illegal. He believes that all drugs, regardless of how they are used, should be made freely available to adults. Basically he doesn't believe that the government should punish us when we make decisions that the government believes is harmful - prostitution, drugs, not wearing seatbelts, and pornography should not be illegal.

He believes that the role of government is to protect each individual from the encroachment of rights by others, not to make things best for society at large. Actually, he's probably never thought it through, and thinks that these two ideas are the same thing. I'm not going to address that problem, though, and instead will focus on how behavior that generally is harmful should be illegal.

His view is simple - if it harms someone that has no choice in the matter, it should be illegal. Unfortunately, his definitions of "harm" and "choice" are poorly conceived. I have given him hypothetical scenarios in which someone does what he believes should be legal, and I explain why it still harms others. He probably has never thought about concepts like Cass Mastern's Spider Web theory, or the butterfly effect, or anything at all about unintended consequences.

This is a pretty standard dialogue between me and him.
Me - "So you think that if a man wants to smoke crack cocaine that should be perfectly legal?"
Him - "Yes. Absolutely, what right does someone have to tell someone else what to do?"
Me - "But don't you think that causes harm to others?"
Him - "No, I don't think so."
Me - "And who will take care of his children? Should his employer be able to collect damages for him not fulfilling his employment contract? Who pays for the task of cleaning up the mess he leaves behind, if his own estate has already been plundered by his drug habit?"
Him - "Uh...I don't know. I'll talk to you about it later."

I've had this conversation about workplace safety as well. I don't believe that profit-minded entities can be trusted to do the right thing and provide for workplace safety in a transparent and fair manner, when it would be easier to maintain the status quo.

The best part was when I got him to say that auctioning off citizen votes in an election should be legal. I led him down that path for a bit and ultimately got him to uncomfortably admit that outright bribery of politicians should be legal. His reasoning was that the rest of society was free to bribe the politician NOT to take the other bribe, if they wanted it enough. But finally he conceded that the stakes were too high and that it would ultimately be bad for a society to allow bribery to take place. Seriously, when someone has to debate and convince you that bribing politicians should be illegal, your ideas are probably terrible.

Bad Idea #19 - Really crappy study habits

2006-07-30T16:39:00.000-07:00

Alright, my roommate and I are both students. We get GPAs and everything in our courses. My roommate has a B.A., which doesn't mean much except that I kinda expected him to know how to do well in school. I was wrong.

19. He has other people "tutor" him, or just basically do his homework while he pretends to understand each step.

That wouldn't in itself be a problem. That's ok, he's just good at covering up either his laziness or inability to learn (I suspect the truth is a bit of both). However, he comes home wondering why he has the worst grade in his class on tests, despite the fact that he's taking that exact test for the second time. That's right, he failed out of class before and started over, but he still can't really do much. He is on the cusp of getting his second "Lack of Ability" counseling statement. The LOA essentially is a document that says that the subject is too dumb to ever learn the course material effectively, and recommends that the subject do something else. Maybe pumping human waste from port-o-potties in Iraq. Or something.

Spontaneous blog post for a spontaneous bad idea.

2006-07-22T11:07:00.000-07:00

My roommate wakes up early on Saturday (like 7AM) and then crashes hard in the late morning or early afternoon. Today he has decided to fall asleep on his couch in such a position that may very well make his neck hurt for a week. What's funny about this is that he didn't fall asleep doing something, because the television wasn't turned on, nor is there a book within arm's reach. What is in arm's reach, though, is his actual bed. That's right. My roommate chose to sleep uncomfortably on his couch, 4 feet away from his bed.

It could be worse, part 2

2006-07-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

I just read this on craigslist:

Please don't use certain personal items of mine

While hilarious, it really does put everything back into perspective with my roommate. He doesn't do anything that comes remotely close to this. Of course, that would be terrible and I would not live with him anymore.

Bad Idea #16 - Figuratively cockblocking

2006-07-13T18:39:00.000-07:00

My roommate went out with a group of friends this one weekend, and their group was mostly over 21. The problem is that one person in their group (incidentally, my roommate from several months ago) is under 21. They wanted to go to a club where someone was putting on a show, or something, and they decided that they would just try to get in by just walking through the door. The first few people in their group are waved in by the bouncer at the door, who only looks at the military ID's and doesn't check the DOB on the back. Unfortunately, my roommate decides for some inexplicable reason to say out loud and draw unnecessary negative attention:

15. "Actually, he's [pointing] not 21 yet. But it's ok. He's not going to drink."

Of course they are all forced to leave, and my roommate is lectured on why that was a bad idea. Thinking that he had learned from his mistake, they went out to a restaurant/bar later. When they order a bucket of beers, my roommate does the exact same thing - "Actually, he's under 21. But it's ok, because he's not going to drink." What a moron.

And I know I wasn't there. But this isn't a court of law, so hearsay goes. I will adapt and adjust this story if necessary, since I know pretty much all the people involved.

Bad Idea #15

2006-07-11T19:29:00.000-07:00

In the Army, we generally know everyone else by last name. I know some of my friends by first name, but most of my acquaintances and coworkers I know mainly by their last name.

Back when we were in Basic Training, there was a whiteboard where we would write our names every time we got in trouble, and these people would get assigned a fireguard shift where they basically stay awake for an hour in the middle of the night, which sucked because nobody got enough sleep in Basic.

15. Writing your first name on the board when nobody in the platoon knows your first name.

When I was the one who had to wake him up for the shift, I realized that the next person on the fire guard list was someone with a Hispanic first name. I woke up every Hispanic person in my platoon (this being the U.S. Army, there were plenty of them) and the very last one I chose happened to be my future roommate. I guess technically he was my roommate then, too, in addition to the other 50 roommates I had.

That was my first interaction with this guy, and it left a very poor first impression. Later it was made worse when he would sing Tool songs in a tinny, squeaky, nasal voice towards the end of Basic Training.

And by the way, this week I will try to make like 5 posts, because my roommate has decided to feed me gold all month while I was too busy to really work on this site.