I am Jack's moral dilemma.

My roommate cooked this huge dinner for him & his girlfriend last night. The dishwasher was mostly full when he started, so he loaded it up with a couple dishes and started a wash around 11PM. Then he went with his girlfriend back to her place, leaving behind a rather messy kitchen with dishes, pots & pans everywhere. I emptied the dishwasher this morning, re-loaded it with some of the stanky stuff that was sitting in the sink all night along with some of the pots & pans, and I'll still have to run another load to get all of his stuff washed. The kitchen is still a mess with spatters & powder everywhere.

Now the question becomes: do I clean up after him because I realize that he has a limited amount of time with his girlfriend because she's working nights this month and he also works and doesn't have a whole lot of time to clean up while I do, or do I leave it be for him to clean up since it was kind of a dick move for him to create a mess and then leave without even a cursory sponging and I shouldn't feel the need to clean up after him since he's 28 and able to do it on his own?

I am Jack's moral dilemma.

My roommate cooked this huge dinner for him & his girlfriend last night. The dishwasher was mostly full when he started, so he loaded it up with a couple dishes and started a wash around 11PM. Then he went with his girlfriend back to her place, leaving behind a rather messy kitchen with dishes, pots & pans everywhere. I emptied the dishwasher this morning, re-loaded it with some of the stanky stuff that was sitting in the sink all night along with some of the pots & pans, and I'll still have to run another load to get all of his stuff washed. The kitchen is still a mess with spatters & powder everywhere.

Now the question becomes: do I clean up after him because I realize that he has a limited amount of time with his girlfriend because she's working nights this month and he also works and doesn't have a whole lot of time to clean up while I do, or do I leave it be for him to clean up since it was kind of a dick move for him to create a mess and then leave without even a cursory sponging and I shouldn't feel the need to clean up after him since he's 28 and able to do it on his own?

I was watching MTV2 and Michael Jackson's latest video came on. I watched it for about 10 minutes before I had to turn it off, since he made this whole motion picture that he probably could've put up on the big screen, charged admission to see and gotten Roger Ebert to review. Now he's even whiter than I am, and he's also had his nose sliced clean off. He looks like he's got gills growing on his face.

I was watching MTV2 and Michael Jackson's latest video came on. I watched it for about 10 minutes before I had to turn it off, since he made this whole motion picture that he probably could've put up on the big screen, charged admission to see and gotten Roger Ebert to review. Now he's even whiter than I am, and he's also had his nose sliced clean off. He looks like he's got gills growing on his face.

Being not of the workforce for an extended period of time, I've not participated in the weekly tradition of the Sunday Bitching about How Much I Hate Work for a while now. But I've started noticing how much others do it, and it almost seems like it kills the entire day's potential for fun.

Granted, the fact that it's Sunday is a reminder to people that they're going back to work after the next time they wake up (unless you take naps on Sundays), so it hangs over your head all day that your time off is fleeting. Sunday is the Day of Drudgery, the day you put off all your chores because you didn't want to think about them on Saturday and you wanted to feel like you actually had some real free time to yourself. So it's like Work at Home Day, which is depressing because then you're dreading doing all the work around the house and then you're dreading returning to the five-day workweek the next day. It's like a double whammy.

This so-called Sunday Syndrome can effectively make it feel like you've only got half a weekend, because you spend so much time thinking about the week ahead that you don't enjoy the day at hand. And it's not a habit that's hard to break either, especially when you spend time with people on Sundays who share your Office Space mentality.

On the flipside, not working makes it very hard to get anything done. You keep saying, "Well, it's not like I've got anything to do tomorrow... I can put this off until then." It's justifiable because you might be doing something at the moment, however ephemeral and stupid it might be, but you're occupied so why not save your drudge work until you've got nothing to do? Of course, it never works like that because you can always find something you'd rather do, so later on you find your bills are all overdue, your dirty laundry pile is taller than you are, the bills still aren't paid, the apartment still isn't cleaned, and the cat hasn't been flossed in days.

Being not of the workforce for an extended period of time, I've not participated in the weekly tradition of the Sunday Bitching about How Much I Hate Work for a while now. But I've started noticing how much others do it, and it almost seems like it kills the entire day's potential for fun.

Granted, the fact that it's Sunday is a reminder to people that they're going back to work after the next time they wake up (unless you take naps on Sundays), so it hangs over your head all day that your time off is fleeting. Sunday is the Day of Drudgery, the day you put off all your chores because you didn't want to think about them on Saturday and you wanted to feel like you actually had some real free time to yourself. So it's like Work at Home Day, which is depressing because then you're dreading doing all the work around the house and then you're dreading returning to the five-day workweek the next day. It's like a double whammy.

This so-called Sunday Syndrome can effectively make it feel like you've only got half a weekend, because you spend so much time thinking about the week ahead that you don't enjoy the day at hand. And it's not a habit that's hard to break either, especially when you spend time with people on Sundays who share your Office Space mentality.

On the flipside, not working makes it very hard to get anything done. You keep saying, "Well, it's not like I've got anything to do tomorrow... I can put this off until then." It's justifiable because you might be doing something at the moment, however ephemeral and stupid it might be, but you're occupied so why not save your drudge work until you've got nothing to do? Of course, it never works like that because you can always find something you'd rather do, so later on you find your bills are all overdue, your dirty laundry pile is taller than you are, the bills still aren't paid, the apartment still isn't cleaned, and the cat hasn't been flossed in days.

Well, friends, here we are. It's been... well, actually a pretty short road to get here, since I've only been blogging for 4 months. But I guess the outcome of launching my own site was rather inevitable at some point.
A very very special thanks to Candi, without whom this never would've been able to happen. She singlehandedly built this site and installed Greymatter, albeit with a fair amount of pestering and moronic questions from me. And, of course, thanks also to all of you who keep stopping by to read my mindless blather.

So, without any further ado -- let the adventure begin again, this time with a little extra. Check out the site, take a look around, let me know what you think. It's 2 Cups Mayhem, 1 Teaspoon Reality -- Remixed. (And yes, I left in a little llamaliciousness for all'a'y'all.)

Well, friends, here we are. It's been... well, actually a pretty short road to get here, since I've only been blogging for 4 months. But I guess the outcome of launching my own site was rather inevitable at some point.
A very very special thanks to Candi, without whom this never would've been able to happen. She singlehandedly built this site and installed Greymatter, albeit with a fair amount of pestering and moronic questions from me. And, of course, thanks also to all of you who keep stopping by to read my mindless blather.

So, without any further ado -- let the adventure begin again, this time with a little extra. Check out the site, take a look around, let me know what you think. It's 2 Cups Mayhem, 1 Teaspoon Reality -- Remixed. (And yes, I left in a little llamaliciousness for all'a'y'all.)