�It has been said that anyone who wants to live in a dormitory is either a freshman or a mental defective.�
� Eddy, Threesome

Outside my dorm room, 3:00AM:

A door: �[slam]�

Some guy: �Motherfucker!�

Some other guy: �Listen here, bitch...!�

Both guys: �[unintelligible yelling]�

Me: �Would you please SHUT the FUCK up? Some of us have CLASS in the morning!�

Welcome to my hell. It�s worth mentioning that these flagrant violations of our floor�s posted quiet hours go unchallenged by the resident staff. Jerks. All they do is hang out in their rooms playing football on PlayStation and blasting their stereos so loud that I have to make the kids on Passions scream to be heard.

There are things about college that are as good as I thought they would be, but there are things about college that are worse than I could have ever imagined. For starters, whoever came up with the roommate concept is just plain sadistic. I can hear him saying, �Yes, let�s pair up random students and force them to live in a shoebox with unreliable air conditioning.� That cruel, evil man should burn in hell for what he�s done. There is just plain not enough space in one of those rooms for two people to coexist peacefully. If it were just me, there would be no problem. The place would be my sanctuary, I�d put the beds next to each other and be able to stretch out, and I might even be tempted to bring in a couch. The problem is that I can�t seem to afford a single room, what with my current unemployed status and everything, so I�m stuck with a roommate for the foreseeable future. He understands now, though, that fucking with my VCR is a serious offense that will result in the breaking of bones. I don�t mess around when it comes to Regis and Kelly, y�all.

My college isn�t fancy enough to have suites with individual bathrooms, which presents another exciting challenge. Each time I need to shower, shave, or brush my teeth, I have to go downstairs and untie my pack mule (his name is Gregory) from his post, wait for the livery elevator, ride up six flights to the fourth floor (don�t ask), and saddle my beast of burden with various toiletries. THEN I have to make sure it stays put and doesn�t eat all the paper towels while I pee. This is every trip to the bathroom, so I�ve been trying to devise a system that will keep my potty adventures to a minimum.

I really can�t complain about the dining facilities. The food is generally excellent, it�s all-you-can-eat, the staff is way friendly, and the drink selection is not to be believed. But leave it to me to find a flaw: the hours of operation are very restricting. Forget breakfast (at 7:30?!?), because I�m lucky to tumble out of bed by 8, and then I�ve got the whole aforementioned mule experience to contend with, which can take no longer than forty-five minutes if I want to make my 9:00 class. Lunch falls just between my late morning and early afternoon classes, but it requires a special trip across campus, and most days that�s just not going to happen, not when I can be playing Solitaire in the library. So I usually only get dinner, which is served most days from 4:30 until 7, except on Fridays when it�s 4-6, alternate Wednesdays when it�s 5-5:15, and rainy Mondays during which they don�t have food service at all.

�But you can always go to late-night dining.� No. I�m sorry, I can�t. If I�m going to eat, I want a meal, not some reheated, leftover fries from lunch and a pickle. That�s a poor attempt at a snack. �But you have cereal and Ramen in your room, right?� Well, yeah, but the Ramen never cooks right and I ran out of milk for the cereal a week ago. Don�t start, because I don�t have any money to buy some more and the cereal I have basically requires milk. So that�s my one complaint about the cafeteria: it�s not open 24 hours. Oh well.

I�ve decided that my life would be a lot better if this tax plan would pass on Tuesday. Alabama would change for the better, according to the governor, who was here today, incidentally. Criminals who ignored posted quiet hours would be shot on site by newly hired security guards. I�d get that full scholarship thingy, which would free up my own meager (and now tax-free � woo-hoo, poverty!) income to go toward a single room with its own bathroom. The pack mule could be released back into the wild where he belongs. And in addition to being open 24/7/365, the cafeteria would implement a room service program so I wouldn�t ever have to leave my room. Well, I might have to leave it once a year to go vote, which I�ll be doing Tuesday. You should, too, or you don�t get to bitch about what happens. Those are the rules, kids. Deal with it.

Wishing a happy birthday to: Rachel. Congratulations, girl! Much love. Someone got here by searching for: "Georgia speeding tickets" Reading: The school paper, which is chock-full of grammatical errors. I may just have to go over there and offer my proofreading skills. Listening to: Fountains of Wayne. Watching: The local news. An antenna tower at one of the stations collapsed today and killed three people. Damn.