Jester and the Horrible, Icky, Not-Clean Room.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So I decided to take a “mental health” day today. No work, nothing intellectually stimulating, just a day of rest and relaxation, filled with surfing the ‘net and staring off into space. Actually, looking back, that’s just about every day of my life, but today was different. Today I actually set out with the intention of not doing work. So it figures that every day that I try to do work, I end up wasting time, and on the one day that I actually try not to get anything done I fail miserably at it. No, there would be no rest and relaxation today. For today, unbeknownst to me, would be the day that I would have to embark on a room-cleaning odyssey the likes of which will be recounted by lute-playing minstrels for centuries to come. Or something.

It all started off well enough. I went to FYPictures, and then went straight back to sleep until 1, which was nice. Finally, I got up, and proceeded to do nothing at all for the next 2 hours. Everything was going smoothly, according to the plan. All was right with the world. Until Archibald showed up.

Archibald is a fly. Well, to be more precise, Archibald is a FLY-SHAPED-DEVIL-SPAWN-MESSENGER-FROM-HELL. But for the sake of space, we’ll just call him a fly. I named him myself, because when something has as big of a scarring impact on me as Archibald did, I like to name it. (That is, consequentially, why my Calc BC textbook bears the moniker of “Larry”). “How could such a small, harmless creature have such a profound impact on you?” You ask. Well, keep in mind that Archibald only looked like a small, harmless creature, but was actually a FLY-SHAPED-DEVIL-SPAWN-EVIL-MESSENGER-FROM-HELL. I added an extra “Evil” in there that time, for emphasis.

The way that Archibald carried out his horrid duties was by informing me that I had to clean my room. He did this by buzzing incessantly around my head for half an hour, and landing on me every once in awhile. Swatting at him didn’t work. Blowing at him didn’t work. Shouting “You want a piece a me, Punk?” at him didn’t work. (But it did make me feel better.) Finally, I came to the conclusion that something in my room was attracting Archibald. And since flies are usually attracted to gross stuff, that meant that there was probably some gross stuff in my room.

And with that, I came to the inescapable conclusion that in order to rid myself of Archibald, I would have to…gulp….clean my room.

I started off by picking up all the spare papers and whatnot from the floor. Not too bad, except that I had to read over each individual sheet to see whether it was important or not. I then vacuumed my rug. This was a bit harder. You see, my rug is a woven one, with lots of lil’ indentations and ripples in it that are just perfect for collecting dirt. It is also, as 20 minutes of vacuuming revealed, a light shade of blue. Who knew?

Then began the major struggle: laundry. I have been a bit…shall we say “lax” in this department for the last two weeks. My room-cleaning rampage was well-timed, since my laundry bag had reached the maximum structural integrity possible before it exploded in a shower of dirty clothes. I walked over to Dabney and proceeded to go through a good four full loads of laundry before I was done. And it didn’t go smoothly, either. At one point, when I was about halfway done, I reached a bit too far into the bag and unwittingly hit a major underwear/dirty sock deposit. The smell was so overwhelming that I barely escaped falling into the bag and being lost forever in a sea of filthy unmentionables. But finally, I got it all washed and folded, and then carried it load by load back to my dorm, getting a lot of weird looks in the process since I was carrying a stack of laundry that reached up over my head.

And at last, with the laundry put away and the garbage taken out (a task so disgusting that I won’t describe it here except by saying that the bag had broken sometime last week), my room was finally clean. I stood in triumph, and could practically hear my mother’s proud voice in my ear. “Waltington,” she said, “you did a very good job. Now, when was the last time you washed your face? And why aren’t you working? And…” I forced myself to stop thinking about what my mom would say, since if I kept at it I’d probably end up doing more work.

But what happened to Archibald, you ask? Did my cleaning assault really make him leave? Of course not. That would make too much sense. No, as I stood there overlooking my surroundings, I saw him on my desk, staring at me with his wee, beady eyes. I debated in my mind what to do next. Maybe I should just let him live out his life, since he had gotten me to have a nice, clean room.

Any feelings of sympathy were quelled, however, when I realized just how much pain and anguish he’d put me through. So I picked up a magazine, rolled it, and squashed the Hell out of him. Little bastard.

-Squeaky-clean Walt

2

So now he’s just “FLY-SHAPED-DEVIL-SPAWN-EVIL-MESSENGER-FROM-”?

I tend to do the tryint-to-work-and-not more often than the opposite… although I really do need to clean…

3

Two questions:

  1. You didn’t, by any chance, hear a tiny little voice saying [sub]“Help me! Help me!”[/sub]?

  2. Your name is Waltington?
    Your story has moved me, it really has. Congratulations on cleaning your room.

Now write to your Mother!
:smiley:

4

What? A fly made you clean?!

That sucks.

I usually clean only when everything else I have to do sucks more ass than actual cleaning does. For example, in college: if I had a 40 page paper due in approximately 24 hours (that I hadn’t started yet), rather than start on it, I would thoroughly clean the dorm room.

5

Heh. Right now I feel like I’m the clean one out of the two people living in this miserable hole they call a dorm room. I’m the one who does vacuming, I’m the one who cleans the mirror and other areas when it needs cleaning, I’m the one who picks the hair balls off of the floor*, etc. [*my roommate and I both have long, brown hair. We shed a lot and sisal rug floor coverings tend to ball up any lint or hair on them from just walking around on 'em. Plus, this room is really good at producing dust in a short amount of time. It’s almost disgusting how quickly it piles up.]

At least there’s good reasons to get out of this place at night. Good luck with any future “Archibalds” in your room.

6

Actually, he’s now the PANCAKE-SHAPED-DEVIL-SPAWN-EVIL-MESSENGER-FROM-HELL. And now he’s back home. sigh I love happy endings.

You know, that story reminds me of how Brazil started out. And you remember the main character died in the end. You might wanna try to revive poor Archie.

7

Yanno, not for nothing, but a few weeks ago I was driving down Forbes, minding my own darned business, when I saw this lanky leviathan of a human stumbling his way across the Commons, his head a writhing cloud of flies, a tattered Calc book flopping under one elongated arm.

There are already urban legends starting all along the Tenderloin, spreading from the Point to Frick Park, from the Incline to Shadyside, about this mythical Cleanliness Foole who listens to small insects and dances by the light of the moon, surrounded by meticulously clean underpants, socks and badly stained t-shirts.

Oh, the things that Legends are made of… :smiley:

Cartooniverse

8

Um, you have a place named Frick Park? :eek: :cool: :smiley:

9

Man, time was this was the Straight Dope, and people accepted new information with a glee and delight, not to mention intellectual stimulation that was a wonder to behold.

Fine, fine. Here ya go- I present for your thoughtful consideration, one Henry Clay Frick.

:slight_smile:

And, I don’t live there, I just get there a few times a year, and was downtown around the campus during first week of classes.

10

Wikkit: BWAHAHAHA! I wish I’d thoughta that.

Bumbazine: Thank you for pointing out that I wrote my name wrong. It is not actually “Waltington.” It is, in reality, “Wortington Frederick Von Strauten III.” Damn typos.

Horseflesh: I’ve never seen Brazil, sadly. But no movie could ever be horrible enough to make me want to revive Archibald. After all, he’ll probably come back in some form or another soon enough.

MIS: You get hairballs? :eek:

Cartooniverse: It’s obvious from your story that some loser in Pittsburgh is impersonating me, since I’m going to school down here at good ol’ University of Virginia. :wink:
If you see him around again, please run him down with your car for me. Thanks in advance.
(Also, if you come to da 'Burgh sometime this summer, tell us about it and we can have a fest for ya. PittDopers forever!)

11

I found out today just what it was that had attracted Archibald to my particular room. My roomate went home over the weekend, and guess what he left in the room? Why, the shoes that he rows crew in, of course. That is, the shoes that have gotten soaking wet in Charlottesville river water every single day for the last three weeks, and not washed once. And they were left in the room. In their box. Under his bed.
Given the circumstances, I’m surprised that my entire room wasn’t overrun by some sort of hyper-evolved, super-intelligent mold creature over the weekend. He opened up the box and we both almost passed out, just from the smell outside the shoes. Did I mention that I was FIVE FEET AWAY at the time? And he still hasn’t washed them, because that would make much too much sense.