’Net Junkie
Your personal pigsty
could win you cashI don't know whether my first bachelor pad I shared with a couple of friends years ago would have qualified as a college apartment since only one of us actually went to college (when he felt like it, anyway). I do know that we would have jumped at the chance to win $10,000 and a free professional cleaning through Apartment.com's Messiest College Apartment.
If we ever got around to it, that is.
In its first year, John Anderson of Northern Ohio University took top honors (see http://prn.newscom.com/cgi-bin/pub/s?f=PRN/prnpub&p1=20000601-MESSY), while Indiana University's Matt Robinson's apartment -- christened the "Dark Pit of Filth" by Robinson himself -- was 2001's Messiest College Apartment (see a photo of his dorm at www.collegeboundmag.com/oct_01/clutter.html).
Last year's winners, UCLA roomies Tim Sexauer and Peter Debelak, were certainly deserving of the top prize in 2002. Check out their unbelievable dump at www.apartments.com/ messHome.htm. I dare you!
Assuming you can stomach the sight of a slovenly duo's squalid digs, I'd recommend the 360-degree tour. You'll marvel at their coffee table, shrouded in a heaping mass of discarded bottles and disused food containers. Their torn, discolored and mismatched sofas and armchairs are littered with used gallon jugs, phone books, half-eaten plates of food and sleeping bags. Two monitors, on a makeshift computer desk with wires dangling about, are flanked by bottles of beer and used cups. Clothes are strewn everywhere.
Their toilet is distinguished by a reddish-black ring of mystery sludge. A toilet-side wastebasket overflows with a pile of soiled tissues that rises higher than the toilet itself. In the kitchen, trash bags wait to get tossed out, while moldy, food-encrusted dishes pile up in the sink.
"Eating, to us, is a mere survival tool," explain Debelak and Sexauer in their flowery entry essay (Contestants were asked to provide up to four color photos of their home and a 250-word composition on why their pigsty should take first place). "Food is consumed -- its can or wrapper is left where it falls. Unable to part with it, we let our cherished heap of slimy trash grow on our kitchen floor."
A+, guys.
’Net Junkie drops every Monday.
Contact Shawn "Speedy" Lopes at slopes@starbulletin.com.
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