A repulsive riddle

What has:

Clutter that magnetically collects more clutter.

A permeating, foul odor. 

A magical sink (and surrounding counters) full of dishes that dirty themselves.

Cupboards in which even a small amount of organization is an impossibility.

Stacks of unused boxes, bags, cartons, and containers.

Half-emptied sacks of groceries.

Old coffee cups.

A recycle bag whose adopted home is the middle of the kitchen floor.

Forgotten tea.

Unfinished laundry and accoutrements.

A garbage can that often rivals Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout's.

A sled.

Used water bottles.

A broken chair.

Old magazines, ads, and newspapers. [some of questionable content]

Shriveled strawberry stems. 

Etc.

Etc.

Etc. to the millionth power

Etc. some more

Answer: G-pod the Third


Sigh.

5 steps toward becoming a better hacker

I opened my inbox this morning and found a message impatiently waiting for me from Teri Shipps, the IMAP coordinator (IMAP = International Music Academy Pilsen, the program I've attended in Czech Republic the past two summers). However, this email was rather unlike any other I had ever received from her, preceded by a subject line that screamed "HELP" in all caps with a few dozen exclamation points added for emphasis. I opened the message and was immediately assaulted by tragedy and heart-felt pleading, as detailed below:

I'm writing this with tears in my eyes, I came down here to London England for a short vacation unfortunately i was mugged at the park of the hotel where i stayed,all cash,credit card and cell were stolen off me but luckily for me i still have my passports with me.
I've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and my flight leaves in less than 3hrs from now but am having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let me leave until i settle the bills,I'm freaked out at the moment.Got nothing left with me..i was mugged off all i got,can you please help me out with some cash?.I promise to pay back as soon as i get back....So freaked out here

Teri Shipps
Admissions Coordinator
International Music Academy Pilsen, Czech Republic
3098 Cross Creek Court
Ann Arbor MI 48108 USA
ph/fax 1-734-222-8003
www.ima-pilsen.com

Calling all hackers. If you're going to hack the email of someone in a professional position, perhaps you should be aware of the following:

A professional:
1) doesn't refer to him/herself as an uncapitalized "i," which is a morbidly unacceptable way to treat a first-person, singular personal pronoun in the English language.
2) doesn't use the words "freaked out" in written conversation (or spoken, for that matter), especially multiple times in the same paragraph.
3) doesn't construct sentences like "i was mugged off all i got."
4) knows that hotel managers are in fact neither hostage holders nor bounty hunters.
5) realizes that the best way to get help in a dire situation is not to find the nearest internet cafe and email random acquaintances on his/her email list.

Better luck next time.

G-POD the Second

I once lived in a g-pod. When I moved out of this g-pod, I did rejoice muchly. I entered a (mostly) blissful living existence in which my environment was clean, there was very little drama, and my roommates were kind and considerate of others.

But I should have known that such an ideal way of life couldn't last forever, let alone more than one semester.

With that introduction, we now begin the saga of G-pod the Second.

Beginning of spring term: my dear, wonderful roommate, Alice, moves out to head to Montana for a summer internship. Into her place moves Tiffany (*name has been changed*), whose previous residence was Heritage Halls. Though slightly apprehensive about living with a person who is still quite freshly out of high school and the freshman dorms, I don't immediately suspect that things will soon be not-so-very-pleasant. For the time being, all is fine and dandy.

Until.

A couple days later, I come home to find a stranger surfing the internet whilst lounging on my couch with a pillow and blanket, all of her worldly possessions stacked around her in what was once my apartment's small but adequate living room space. A folded mattress is stashed in the corner of the room, and a big green tote occupies the coffee table, its innumerable contents spilling onto the floor. A sleeping bag and several miscellaneous objects litter the other couch. I notice a hairbrush precariously resting on top of the refrigerator. A feeling of panicked anxiety enters my mind as my days of toxic rubbish smotherization (i.e. crumbled cracker crumbs, dirty dishes, used tissues, soiled socks, bits of trash, etc.) in the g-pod suddenly flash before my eyes.

"Are you one of my new roommates?" I ask apprehensively. "Did you buy the available contract?"

"Oh, hello!" she replies, seeming slightly startled. "I'm one of Tiffany's friends. And no, I'm not a new roommate." But before the rushing feeling of relief had quite calmed my racing heartbeat, she adds, "I'll just be staying here for the summer."

"Uh? What?" I ask, thoroughly confused by her apparently oxymoronic statement.

"Well, I'm doing this sort of camping study abroad thing."

"Camping study abroad?" I thought to myself. "What, camping on our living room couch?"

"Hmmm, okay," I said, deciding not to judge things too quickly and inquire further later.

************

Several days pass. The apartment becomes increasingly filled with rubbish. I ask illegal-roommate (Helga, for our future reference here, seeing as she is [as one of my coworkers put it] "practically a Viking invader") in a very nice manner if she could please clean up her (I was very tempted to use the word CRAP, but did not) because I couldn't have the apartment in such a state when teaching piano lessons. She kind of nods her head, but her eyes stay glued to the computer screen, and her earphones stay clamped on.

I come back from work just in time to teach one of my Friday afternoon piano students. He arrives for his lesson, along with his mother, but there is not even a place for her to sit on the couch, as nothing has been cleaned up whatsoever. I apologize, and realize that something has GOT to be done.

But then, suddenly, Helga disappears. Unfortunately, not all of her stuff disappears with her, but Helga has, for a few days at least, departed our abode.

************

A week passes. The apartment is cleaned up and livable once again. I begin to wonder if I had misinterpreted Helga's intentions about staying for the summer. But alas, no.

She returns.

How do I know she is back?

I come home Monday night and can barely open the front door for all of the revolting clutter lying everywhere in the living room. Piles of dirty clothes, smelly camping gear: it is quite awful, no exaggeration. Even G-pod the First doesn't compare. But things only get worse from here. I go to the kitchen to find something for dinner and open my cupboard. Food that had been there hours before has now mysteriously disappeared. I go upstairs to take a shower. My bathroom towel is not only soaking wet, (um, ew?) but also has mysterious pink stuff smeared all over it. What is the pink stuff? I don't even want to know. I retrieve a clean towel from my bedroom and take a shower. I climb in bed, (Tiffany dozing in the bunk bed above me, though she has left the light on), and glance at the clock: almost midnight. I wonder where Helga is, as she is not occupying her usual space on the living room couch and the hour is late.

A while later, my question is joltingly answered: the doorbell rings. As anyone who has ever visited my apartment or rang the doorbell knows full well, this particular doorbell is loud enough to awaken the dinosaurs from extinction. So, naturally, I grumble to myself about the complete lack of common courtesy some people seem to possess, turn over, pull my covers a little tighter, and assume Tiffany will get up and let her friend in. But, as the last tones of the doorbell die away and the ringing in my ears begins to grow fainter, no stirrings come from the bed above me. And then the pounding on the door and a voice yelling up at our window begins. Before I have time to pull back the covers, the doorbell rings again. I go downstairs and open the door, and Helga enters without so much as a "thank you." I go back upstairs to bed.

(Grammar alert: I'm changing tenses. Writing about the past in the present is officially no longer amusing me.)

Yesterday, while at work, I received a text from my other roommate, Ashley--one of the most mild-mannered, kind, thoughtful roommates anyone could possibly ask for. But mild-mannered, soft-spoken Ashley was no more. The text she sent me was a message that was nearly six texts long, an explosion from someone who had finally had the last straw. Her 21st birthday is today, so she had invited some friends over last night to celebrate a little early and obviously didn't want them to have to wallow in filth. So she'd asked Helga very politely to clean up her mess. But did she? No. Not only was the apartment still a filthy mess, but now also beginning to smell. No, not just smell. Reek. Is there anything more disgusting than the smell of ripe body odor?

Ashley proceeded to give the apartment a thorough cleaning. She stacked all of Helga's belongings in one corner (she was very kind not to put them outside), and left a long note telling her that we'd had enough and that she was no longer welcome to stay with us (though she hadn't even asked in the first place, anyway).

When I got off work and came home, the apartment was sparkling clean, and completely silent, though it still smelled. I opened up a window to get a draft of cool, rain-freshened air to begin airing out the stench, and walked into the kitchen, where I found Helga sitting silently at the kitchen table. No words were exchanged. I went upstairs where Tiffany was sitting in our bedroom. She was silently doing homework. I went to bed, and when I woke up this morning, the apartment was still clean. There was no sleeping Helga sprawled on the couch.

Though her stuff is still piled in our apartment, I believe she may have learned her lesson: when one is a guest, one should act like a guest.

He said what he meant and he meant what he said

Remember Professor "You-are-going-to-hell"? Well, I guess he really meant business when he told us [his beloved Counterpoint students] that we could only have one homework infraction the entire semester without having our grades subsequently (and dramatically, I might add) lowered: I just received a great big fat juicy 'B' on my transcript. Ew. It looks like a squashed bug.

But never fear! BYU loves me so much that my overall GPA didn't change one iota. Apprehension overtakes me, however, as I sense that I and my 166 credit hours' welcome is running thin. Which is why I tend to claim my degree in April [yes, yes, technically August] and fly away. Quite literally.

I live in a g-Pod

You know the song "We all live in a yellow submarine" by the Beatles? Well, yesterday afternoon as I was strolling home to my apartment to teach a piano lesson, this particular music was pleasantly running through my head.

Until, that is to say, I arrived at the front door of my apartment and pulled the keys out of my coat pocket. As I unlocked the deadbolt and pushed the door open, I despairingly gazed at the Garbage Pit (yes, with capital letters) that is my living room. Suddenly, the excellent song I had been rather enthusiastically humming to myself morphed into the following:

We all live in the Garbage Pit of DOOM,
Garbage Pit of DOOM,
Garbage Pit of DOOM.

I won't give you all the dirty details of what may be found in this Garbage Pit of DOOM for fear of making you cough up your dinner, but suffice it to say that my apartment could easily be mistaken for the local landfill.

Now, I'll have you know that this is not due to a lack of attempts on my part to clean it--at least twice a week, in fact, as I cannot very well have students and their mothers wallowing in dirty socks, candy wrappers, used tissues, little bits of paper and cardboard, dirty dishes, cracker crumbs, and the like. Really and truly, the Halloween banner hanging haphazardly by a few pieces of Scotch tape in our front window says it all, (in blazing purple letters on a metallic silver background, no less):

"Beware! Enter if you dare!"

Of course, most people, upon knocking on our door, assume in blissful ignorance that this sign is, in fact, no more than a mere declaration of the apartment residents' festive spirit. What these innocent bystanders do not realize, however, is that they are actually standing at the brink of a black hole, and that if they set foot through the door, they may very well be sucked into a whirling vortex of death. Or perhaps a more appropriate wording for the latter part of the previous phrase would be "may very well become instantaneously smothered by a highly dangerous and toxic amount of rubbish."

Sadly, this condition in which the living room exists is not confined to that space alone. It spills into the kitchen and upstairs to the bathroom and bedrooms. I thought that at least my corner of the bedroom was safe from the onslaught of refuse, but alas, upon glancing under my bed, I found a pair of dirty...well, you can probably guess...that definitely wasn't my own. EW.

Yes, on a cleanliness scale of 1 to 10, my apartment ranks at approximately a 29,377. On a good day.

To use a new German phrase I learned today: Ach du Schande!!! [For crying out loud!] Pick up your trash, people. Pick up your trash.

Oh textbook with thine fine facade...

...of cheap binding and recycled paper, why art thou so exceedingly costly?

I whineth when I suppose I really should be rejoicing that my textbooks are only costing me two appendages this semester, as opposed to the usual four or five the bookstore sees fit to ever-so-cruelly hack off (yes, you should be amazed that I am still a piano major, though I am lacking more than eight semesters' worth of body parts). I've been purchasing books in increments over the past few weeks so that my bank account doesn't suffer too much shock all at once. But today, after the cashier wrestled my debit card from me with an evil cackle and swiped it through the money-gulping machine to pay for "This is my God" for the Judaism class I will be taking, I decided to look up my German book online, just to get an idea of what I was in for with my next purchase. Having taken plenty of language classes at BYU, I was prepared for a pricy piece of petooie. And, unfortunately, that is exactly what I found. *sigh* Even Amazon isn't going to save me on this one. Anyone know a good prosthetist?