CSI. My Apartment. Episode One. The Bathroom.

Slightly disheveled bathroom. Towels hang lopsided from racks. Rumpled bathmat. At least twenty bottles of bath and body products loiter around all corners of the tub and sink.

Camera pans in on chrome toilet paper holder. We absorb the silver color and lack of fluffy white surrounding it. Camera backs up and out of the bathroom turning to open a small linen closet. Camera pans in on empty plastic wrapper that once encased 16 rolls of toilet paper.

The familiar theme song plays: Whooo are you? Who-hoo? Who-hoo?

Commercial break. Then back to the show.

Five people live here. There are five suspects. Interrogation tactics ensue. In an exciting twist of plot, the interrogators are all suspects themselves. Lights shining in eyes. Sleep deprivation. Good cop bad cop. Meanwhile the crime lab examines the evidence. In another exciting plot twist, all of the crime lab technicians are suspects too.

In the end, nobody really knows who used up the last of the toilet paper. Some cases are never solved. But at least everyone suspects each other.

In Other News, Please Bring Your Pitchforks and Torches to My Residence at 10pm Tonight.

some trusty villagers on their way to my residence to drive out my foul-tempered roommate

My foul-tempered roommate is not delicious to live with. And my poor little furry friend, Gerard Butler, is feeling the brunt as well. My cat, Gerard Butler, is not used to being verbally abused. That's it. That foul-tempered roommate has got to go. 10pm. And tonight it won't be stylish to be late.

In other news, everything I am wearing right now was purchased by Gerard Butler's deadbeat dad. The important thing to understand about going out with people with $ is that you pick someone who is not your dress size. Likelier than not, they will show their affection by buying you things. And because they aren't your size, once they are inevitably no longer affected by you, you will get to keep the merchandise. Not that I need cocktail dresses living in poverty and squalor as I do. Of course there are those fancy dress parties I throw in my bedroom for myself and my cat, Gerard Butler.

Ah! I just went down to the corner for Jarritos and now I am Jarrappy!

Apropos Gerard Butler. Last night when we were playing 'Beowulf' and 'Selma,' I got to be 'Selma' for once. My cat, Gerard Butler was quite dashing as Beowulf. I could see why Selma wanted to sleep with him. Of course she also slept with Grendel. Oh my god, did I just write that?! Did I just give it away?! We still haven't figured out just who Selma is. But this much I know: Beowulf + Selma + Grendel=LOVE TRIANGLE! If I were the anonymous poet, I would probably go back and forth between thinking all of this was very funny and periodically turning over in my grave.

In other news, my mother said if I came to Chicago to visit her she would make me piping hot tuna melts and delicious tapioca pudding every night if I wanted her too. Actually she didn't say anything of the kind but it never hurts to plant the seed. She also mentioned that it would not be any sort of problem for her whatsoever to do all the dishes herself while I lay face down on the sofa.

I was thinking I should write something called, 'Frankly, I Prefer My Own Mother to My Mother-in-Law.' Actually I don't have a mother-in-law right now, but I sort of did for awhile. Brrrrrr! The best part ever was when she sat me down at her kitchen table and told me to give her the "dirt" on my mother. My mom and I had a good laugh over that one. Everyone knows only I am allowed to criticize my mother. Usually during some part of the process of being ungrateful. In any case, the moral of the story is you shouldn't talk shit about my mother or I while make fun of you on the internet.

When I Watch a Movie Called 'Druids' Set in 60BC and Starring Christopher Lambert, I Am Not Looking for a 'Cultural' Experience.

Let's resurrect the order of the Druids and go to Stonehenge once a year in our long white robes to celebrate the summer solstice in our completely authentic ancient ways! Oh wait. That is already being done. Somebody should talk to these people.

"There can be only one!" my roommate, the Schadenfreude Prophet, kept yelling whenever Christopher Lambert looked like he was going to get it.

Whoever named the movie Druids probably never watched the movie. Although an aging Max von Sydow--Isn't he a cultural experience?--plays a druid, really the movie is about the trials and tribulations of Gaulish chieftain, Vercingetorix, as he tries to unite the tribes against the somewhat fey Julius Caesar, as portrayed by Klaus Maria Brandauer. Just another aside to all you snobby, 'cultural' people. Isn't 'Maria' also the middle name of famous German wordsmith Rainer Rilke? Isn't that a cultural experience?

Regardless, the movie does not necessarily have a happy end for two reasons. First of all, the really hot guy, Ludovic, gets it. He has a really cool hair style in which most of his hair is cropped quite close to his head except for these crazy floating things on both sides of his face. Almost like huge, unattached sideburns. This proves once and for all that being a barbarian does not have to mean you lack fashion sense. Plus, those adorable plaid pants! I need some of those, for sure. And those whimsical winged helmets!

The second bad thing that happens in the movie will hardly come as a surprise to fans of the Roman Empire, like myself, who know that it is no secret that Vercingetorix was forced to surrender to Caesar and was then taken to Rome and thrown in prison where he languished for a little while before being strangled on the orders of his good friend and Dictator of Rome, Julius Caesar. Of course, as many of us know thanks to the hugely popular HBO series Rome, Gaius Julius also gets his in the end from his good friend, Brutus. In the movie they just show Vercingetorix surrendering to Caesar and do a voice over about the other, bad parts.

In the middle of all this heartbreak, my other, snobby roommate did a voice over as well. He told me in no uncertain terms that while he used to think of me as intellectually intimidating--all that poetry and black and white samurai movies, no doubt--he no longer does now. He said it started with me watching The Phantom of the Opera. I am not sure why he thinks he's so great. All I ever see him doing is watching The Simpsons, heating up his hot pockets in the toaster oven, or eating his hot pockets while watching The Simpsons. I eat salad! And Vercingetorix, after all, was a Frenchman.

A Few Reasons Why Wolves Are Easier To Get Along with Than Humans

my good friends, canis lupus

• Wolves tend to live in forests with lots of room and not in shared living situations with four other roommates and one bathroom. Really, don't you think wolves can go the bathroom whenever and wherever they want anyways?
• I am a human raised by wolves and I have better manners than many wolves raised by humans. It was a sad day indeed when some well-intentioned missionaries caught up with me in the forest preserves outside the Chicago suburbs. Until then my only contact with humans had been LARP (those engaged in live-action role playing games) and the occasional klansman, but suddenly there I was in Catholic school. Walking upright no less.
• Ranchers taint sheep carcasses with lithium to teach those wolves a nasty lesson. They bite in and get sick sick sick. But the point is, wolves are well-medicated. They do not take out their personal problems on, say, their roommates. Also, if memory serves, wolves do not take hour long showers in the morning when other people also have to go to work.
• People often pretend to be wolves when really they are just an exquisite, exotic kind of sheep. You bite in, they make you sick. Wolves, however, are just wolves. They remain fairly predictable in that they do wolfish things in wolfish ways.
• A lot of people go haywire around the time of the full moon and act odd in strange ways. For example they might be extra grouchy to their, say, roommates and yell and pout that they want to be left alone even though they are in the middle of the common area and have a very large bedroom at their disposal where they can be very, very alone whenever they feel like it. It is not like anyone is stopping them. Wolves, on the other hand, just get together in their social groups and enjoy a good howl.
• Wolves clearly have a better sense of style than some humans. Their sleek gray coats glisten in the moonlight in a way that horrid sweat pants never will.
  
• Wolves do not throw away their roommate's food during manic cleaning sprees because the, say, perfectly good milk is one day past the 'enjoy by' date. Don't think you can convince me that wolves care about these sorts of things. They don't. I used to live with them, remember?
• The dog, by the way, is not even its own species. It is a subspecies of the wolf. How's that for man's best friend?
• Wolves do pool their resources to hunt as a group.