I'll show YOU a WRIT

Its been a while, and I apologize. I’ve actually been working on this post for a bit but haven’t had a computer to upload it with, so its just been getting long and longer and longer.

Some of the things that amuse me most about living with Samil are his idiosyncrasies that I can’t figure out how he learned, ever. Like, when I came home on Labor Day, he was sitting on our droopy* couch, with a bowl of cereal at his feet, two different types of cereal boxes arranged like the top left corner of a picture frame around the bowl, and some soy milk over to the right of the bowl, but not neatly placed, at least compared to the boxes. It looked like he hadn’t gotten off the couch in a week, and he was just staring at the wall when I walked in. I don’t know.

I am pleased to announce that our trash has been taken out. Though, it did take Samil three tries to figure out that the trash bag goes in the can, not next to the can and that a shopping bag was not big enough for a medium sized trash can. After reminding him a few times, he finally put a bag in the can, though instead of using the trash bag sitting on the counter, he used a small shopping bag. So, by the time I went to throw any more trash in there, it had already fallen deep into the dark emptiness of the trash can, invisible with the Chinese food boxes and banana peels covering it on top. I calmly explained to him that this didn’t work after he told me about what he did, and so he eventually found the trash bag and dumped everything into it…. And then left it next to the trash can. Still, I think we can proudly stamp Mission Accomplished on this saga.

Later he told me we needed bigger trash cans, because it only takes a day to fill these up. This was no where near clear, since we hadn’t taken the trash out for a week and the bag he just put stuff in was clearly not filled. I understood his point, but I still don’t understand where he got a day from. Maybe he was thinking of the shopping bags getting filled in a day. I don’t know.

He also volunteered to get trash bags since that was the last one we had. He called me from the grocery store yesterday and said “what size bag do we need?” I was engrossed in a challenge in Arkham Asylum, so I just aid “Thirteen.” He asked me if I meant inches.

Remind me to tell him that if he’s walking through my room at night, to not leave his door open if he turns the light on. It’s a little distracting for me to sleep when a light is suddenly shining on my face.

Additionally, I have had a friend visiting for the last week. Lenore is one of my closest friends, and I’ve known her since High School. She now lives out in the Midwest, though so we’ve been hanging out a fair amount since she’s only in the area every three months or so. Before starting these (semi-)regular accounts, she was able to hear all the exciting things Samil would do. So this meeting between the two of them was pretty exciting, for me at least.

The first time she came over, we ran into Samil as we were heading out to an awesome local restaurant that serves local food. I showed her the place before we left, though, and she described his bedroom as someone who looks like they live in a shelter. Its true. I’ll get a picture of it ASAP, but he’s sleeping on the mattress part of our couch and all of his clothes are overflowing from his suitcases on the floor. He has nothing else. Personally, I’m hoping he has a lady friend over at some point soon to show off his place. Because nothing says swoon like sleeping on a stained bed thing and your underwear laying all over the floor.

*(Quick aside, our couch is almost unsittable… in fact Lenore ran for the chair when she saw how low it was and didn’t give me a chance to even clear it off.)

We went back to my place after dinner for beers, where Samil was patiently waiting to interface. The three of us ended up talking four about five hours. Actually, I think there were a few half hours where I didn’t say a single word and Samil kept talking, requiring Lenore to say SOMETHING.

The conversation revolved around really mundane small talk topics, namely god and politics. I should also mention that Lenore spends her free time blaming the Patriarchy and studying earning a Masters in Divinity, focusing on law, while Samil read a few books about God in middle school, smokes a lot of pot, and can become extremely distracted if he walks past a picture of a celebrity.

The two of them talked back and forth about why Lenore was an atheist and Samil was an agnostic. Samil kept trying to emphasize that there was a chance that there could be a god, and one shouldn’t ignore that. In my mind, I thought that logic was about as good at saying ‘there’s a chance a bear could fly if you throw him out of an airplane,” but I tried to keep my mouth shut. Lenore was just making the point that if you’re a reasonable person, you can be open minded if presented with new information, and that its lame to be a fence sitter. She was really polite though, which only gave Samil more reason to continue trying to hammer his point home.

With regards to the politics, Lenore really kept her mouth shut as Samil continued to put his foot in his mouth. To try and explain through an example, Samil is the type of person who told me that Maggie Gyllenhall is a good actress because 1) she is a WOMAN (say that in a really excited "boy do I wish I could get with her" voice) and 2) she was apparently really good in a role where she had to flirt with her boss, but he never actually saw that movie. In other words, he doesn’t go around hitting women, but he generally has a conception about what a woman should be to be ‘correct’ that generally involves them being objects around him. Not exactly something that meshes well with someone who views all men as brought up to be rapists to one degree or another. So Samil kept talking about how he has a very particular view of what is attractive, and how lots of women will overly PC about his humor concerning women and traditional roles. Being insensitively funny, clearly, is proof you actually care. The way these conversations would go is that he’d say something, she would nicely say “I don’t think so” and Samil would repeat what he said two or three times, eventually moving on to something else that Lenore didn’t agree with.

Truthfully, I thought the night went pretty OK. Samil didn’t do anything really amazingly dumb, I thought. When I talked to Lenore the next day, she just said, “he’s weird, and awkward, and I didn’t want to keep talking to him.” Oops. I guess I’m a little desensitized (now, I only find talking to Samil awkward when, say, he’s standing just inside my door looking right at me, trying to tell me what he thinks about Eddie Murphy being the Riddler in an upcoming Batman movie while I am clearly trying to change into pajamas). Samil also proved able to top himself in Lenore’s next encounter with him.

This was when, at the end of the conversation, Samil animatedly jumped up and imagined himself yelling at some snotty law student “I’ll show YOU a WRIT!” and then proceed to pummel him with face and body shots, using his imagined Black Belt worth of Martial Arts Skillz. The context of this was Lenore talking about law students that hide books from each other, and Samil imagining himself dropping all other responsibilities in his life to track these people down and catch them in the act. Not doing his job was a pretty consistent theme for the evening, as he started the night talking about how he was going to quit his job (again – music to a roommates ears in the first month of a twelve month lease), move to Chicago, live on a couch, join Second City, and become famous. I politely told him that not everyone becomes famous after joining Second City, and he modestly said “But this is me we’re talking about.”

Some more house cleaning… We still haven’t set up our stove. I don’t have a lighter, which we need to take care of it. He does, and has for the last two days not been able to figure this out. The first day he couldn’t find the manual for it, which was fair, except it only took me thirty seconds to find it and clip it to the fridge. Not so fair the second day when he couldn’t find it and didn’t notice the gigantic manual that appeared on the fridge. I wonder if it’ll be done tonight. I would kind of like to make dinner in this apartment, but I’ve been getting home at 7pm or later every night, and it takes two hours to do, and I am normally hungry before 9pm.

I’m going to be out of the house this weekend, so few things to update on then, and hopefully I’ll have a computer to use the following week. See you around.