Aminimalism

My blog url Aminimalism looks like I switched the "m" and "n" in animalism and added an "im" because I got confused with which syllables I'd already said and came up with a new word. Animalism isn't a real word either. It sounds like a word. Like a philosophical belief that animals are the most moral creatures, and we should be like them. But wait! We are animals. Science says so.

AND! After some googling, I've found that George Orwell used Animalism in his classic Animal Farm as an allegory for communism. Also it's a band's album. I don't care enough to find out which band, what other famous people have used this word I've mangled, so I'll get on with it.

This is about my 50th blog, including livejournal, xanga, myspace, and even blogspot. But I've forgotten the names of them, email addresses and passwords and feel maybe I don't want to be associated with those ideas. I'm sure it was a rant. That's my usual reason for expressing myself: to complain.

I like complaining. Not about big things like the drug problems in South America, or popular things like the president, or even things that are important like the aliteracy of people. I like to complain about my flat soda. Or not having tacos. Or that I sweat too much when I'm nervous. Or the squeal my dorm's bathroom's faucet makes when you leave the water on for more than three seconds.

That last one, I'm sure, is a conspiracy of my college. They're pretty pragmatic and like to make shit up so you'll be more environmentally conscious. They told us that TVs suck up the same amount of power off as when turned on so long as the cord stays plugged in. I know it still sucks up a lot of power and we should unplug unused shit, but no sense exaggerating it.

And so the faucet. We have three faucets, two stalls, two showers and no urinals for an all-guys dorm that has always been an all-guys dorm since the early 1900s. It's not very big, so I understand that urinals aren't necessary but it seems odd. I'm conditioned to pee in urinals and feel effeminate somehow just peeing in a stall. Maybe not effeminate, but like I'm a nervous pee-er. And I'm not. The shower curtains get replaced every summer, the bathroom is cleaned twice a week, the shower head is replaced the day or the day after it stops working properly and spraying every which way. If a pipe under the sink is leaking, someone comes in to fix it.

My point is, they take care of us pretty well. But in the three years I've been using this bathroom (because I've had the exact same room for three years running), they've never fixed the two faucets that are more obviously broken than the other things they fix. The last sink has water fountain attachment so you can drink out of it more easily than sticking your head in the bowl to catch the running water. But it doesn't have any pressure. You have to suckle that attachment if you want to use it. I assume no one does. I don't. The middle sink squeals, as I said earlier. No matter how much you turn it on, so that just a little trickle comes down or a downpour, the thing squeaks. It's loud enough that I can hear it from my room at the other end of the hall (three 8' x 10' rooms away) and it often wakes me up in the middle of the night. Or it'll give me a dream about someone keying my car and I'm so pissed i have to track them down and rip their lungs out. I don't even care that much about my real car. But my dream car, which is the same type, age, and with the same damage of my real car, is very precious to me--apparently. And this faucet sprays. It doesn't reach me unless I turn it on all the way, but it's not an efficient use of water. I'll hold my hand under it, expecting gravity to take over, but it's like FUCK GRAVITY! and goes all around and hits the side of the bowl before my hands. And it's not consistent with its aim. I'll compensate and move my soap hand to where the stream was, but then it'll switch and aim at the back of the sink. Sometimes it'll even shoot upward so that it hits the faucet and then trickles down and there's no way I'm getting my hands rinsed.

The "good" faucet works perfectly and after the cleaning ladies clean it every Tuesday and Thursday, I am in there thanking it for surviving in pristine condition. But that only lasts for a night. College boys are disgusting, as many assume. They're worse than your imagination. We have these two Chinese boys who are real polite, but they like to cut their hair themselves. Just a little trim from time to time. And they do it over the good sink. Usually, it's not so bad. It's a few hairs they missed when rinsing it out. Sometimes though, I don't think they rinsed it at all! It actually has led me to the assumption that they never rinse and sometimes only cut five hairs at a time and leave them for the rest of us to admire. It is rather silky hair, I guess.

But they're not the worst of it. On top of the hair, we always have eco-friendly people who don't like to waste water. They follow the rule "If it's brown, flush it down; if it's yellow, let it mellow" (a disgusting rule because piss after marinating for a day or two reeks. And our dorm isn't big enough that my far-corner room can escape that smell). But with the faucet, they will spit their toothpaste on top of the hair and not rinse either. THEN, someone, who I assume is the same eco-friendly person as before, doesn't want to waste paper towels or toilet papers or tissues to blow their nose. So they do a farmer's blow. Do you know what that is? You close one nostril and shoot a snotty torpedo and hope your aim is true. And, as you can probably guess, they don't rinse this either.

I'm all for being environmentally conscious and saving Tasmanian Devils, polar bears, pandas and other cute but probably dangerous animals from extinction. But some of the sacrifices are too much. You want me to turn off my computer at night and unplug it? Fine, whatever. You want me to donate money to your cause? Sure, I can go without groceries for a week. You want me to donate my time? Well, I guess I don't need to sit in my dark room and watch Law and Order marathons. But hygiene is something I never want to sacrifice! If I've wiped my ass and there was no breach and no obvious smell from my finger tips, I'm still washing my hands.

But my college, I theorize, has left these sinks in the condition they're in, because it forces us to avoid the bathroom. To dehydrate rather than waste a cup of water.


By the way, Aminimalism was the result of TheMinimalist (I think that might've been my other blog's title), aMinimalist, Minimalism, and every other version of the word without adding numbers or an x or two or o's or whatever to make it unique. "A Minimalism" is weird grammar. Not necessarily wrong, but it does imply there are multiple minimalisms elsewhere and I'm just one of them. Maybe that's true. I haven't dabbled in enough philosophy to know that.

-Cantwhistle (I'll always sign it like this)