Ad nauseum
I knew a truly great guy, genuinely funny, patient and intelligent. Because he was such a diamond i'll not give out his real name for 2 reasons:

1. So as not to offend him, he's an I.T geek and for all i know visits the site
2. Because it makes me giggle to think of some b3ta reader i've never met thinking "omg does he mean me?"

So we'll call him Paul.

Well paul... you know the "fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down" phrase? We paul fell out of said tree, and after dusting himself off ate the tree and all the wildlife it contained. Then casually discarded the bones and leaves (he didn't 'do' greens). Suffice to say the guy was ugly, large and messy. (but still funny, intelligent etc... just to remind you :P)

His flat and specifically his bedroom would have been a goldmine for anyone wanting to do accelerated research into how sedimentary rock is formed. Alternating layers of cigarette packets and pizza boxes, interspersed with effects pedals like oddly musical fossils. You literally stepped up a foot when you entered his room to walk across the sea of waste.

The reason i endured this was both because he was a legend, and because we 'jammed' together, and i couldn't play drums in my flat (btw like the musical signposting earlier with 'effects pedals'? THAT'S structure... no? oh never-mind) So i'd travel over on weekends to muck about, learning new beats, and also learning that you could play drums with coke bottles.

Always willing to help a mate, one day when he was out me and another friend decided to do him a favour and clean the flat. After stocking up on several rolls of bin bags we dived in peeling back layer after layer, and disgusting as it was once we reached bedrock (sustained metaphor huh? pfft anyway...) anything that had gone before looked positively rosy in comparison.

The stench was bad enough, but we'd obviously aquired an immunity over the afternoon... but the particular brand of hell paul had fermented in his room came in two flavours. The first was areas of the carpet that had literally been eaten, melted or decomposed until the bare floorboards showed through. The second was under several of the pizza boxes (+half eaten pizza), the denizens that had done the corroding/eating of the much abused carpet. Loads and loads of maggots.

I don't know if paul ever knew this, i've never been able to mention it to him and i've not seen him for four years. more than likely it's all back to the same state by now. But when your filth can support colonies of large multi celled organisms, and the filth is in such huge quantities that this goes by unnoticed... then THAT could be considered a hygiene problem.

erm... never been sure, is there meant to be a punchline to QOTW's? If you require one please email [email protected] and i'll endeavour to reply :)
( Shiodome has realised numbers in names aren't cool., Thu 22 Mar 2007, 15:27, Reply)