My roommate rocks, with one very noteworthy exception- the things he does to the kitchen leave a lot to be desired.

 
 

In the above shots, the toaster is mine. The mess, in its entirety, is his. You wouldn't believe what this shit smells like in the summer.

Do note that in damned near all other respects, my roommate rocks the house, which would be why I tolerate this disgusting state of affairs. And he actually does clean the kitchen, roughly once a month - after which it immediatly commences a rapid descent into its "natural" Fincher state.

However, tolerance doesn't in the least bit bar me from showing everyone who's interested why, exactly, I never bring people home or have friends over - it's because my roommate is subconsciously driven to turn the place into some sort of biological weapons testing facility. I've cleaned the kitchen top to bottom only to see it decimated in the blink of an eye - every attempt at maintaining cleanliness under these conditions has proven to be wasted effort. This is filth that wants to be here.

I don't care how he keeps his room. Mine isn't a bastion of cleanliness, but we're talking piles of books and boxes of computer cables - not organic, biodegradeable waste matter that smells like Swamp Thing. The kitchen concerns me because it's an area that I have to use (to make sammiches, which don't require contact with The Mess) and pass through on a daily basis - and unlike the bathroom, it's an area everybody coming into the house sees. They certainly can't be thinking happy thoughts about it - and anyone who's known my roommate for as long as I have knows that this Comes With The Territory. He stays out of your way, he's out of your monkeysphere for days at a time, bills get paid, rent gets paid, and the common areas become landfill. The people he's previously lived with include a host of anal-retentive neat-freaks who have aneurisms if the dishes aren't stacked just so... so either this is How He Is or he's getting a whole lot of pent up OMFG CLEAN FREAK >_< out of his system.

The guy I lived with in 2000-02 was a complete clean freak, to the point where he thought everybody else ought to be cleaning up his mess. Here we have the polar opposite.... and despite the photographic evidence to the contrary, I've never had an urge to kill Ben (the current roommate). The year and a half I lived with Drew (the clean freak) was spent in a continuous near-homocidal rage... and I'm not interested in giving up that much of my mental health in exchange for a clean floor.

When I say I live in the Fight Club house, I fucking mean it. You'd have to pay set dressers thousands of dollars for the labor and equipment it would take to generate the industrial strength filth that occurs naturally in this kitchen. Were I of a more entrepreneurial bent, I'd figure out some means of turning the natural direction of the kitchen into positive cash flow and I'd be charging you to read all about the vile pasta sauce fueled funk that permeates my domicile.

Until then, I'll settle for this being the one Seriously Irksome Quirk of my roommate, who happens to be one of a very small number of people in the northern monkeyhemisphere that I can get along with for extended periods of time.