college livin'

"The place is a piece of **** with no disposal or ice maker!!! I feel like I live in the 70s!"

That's a quote from ApartmentRatings.com, a Web site where you can rate and comment on your former dwellings, plus the landlords or management teams who stopped caring about your well-being once you paid your security deposit. I wasn't able to find the apartment complex where I lived my sophomore year of college in Athens, Ga., or my first apartment building in Atlanta (which was torn down in 2000, so ... uh ... case closed), but every other complex or building I've lived in is listed. It looks like my junior- and senior-year Athens residences have been in declining health for a while, and my second and third residences in Atlanta have apparently become new circles of hell. (You heard correctly—the circles are brand-new, but the contractor and his crew did a very shoddy job building them. There's always a catch.)

The quote up top comes from a recent resident of Aspen Apartments, formerly Players Club Apartments, where I lived from September of '96 to August of '97. As my friend Beau pointed out to me, college students these days probably expect more from apartments than we did ten years ago, but I've only had an ice maker once, and I've lived in apartments for 11 years now. Next Joe College will be complaining that the washing machine in his apartment isn't big enough to wash both his whites and darks at the same time.

I lived in three decent apartments in Athens, and I had quiet neighbors in all of them. How come all of my neighbors got louder the older I got? Isn't college the time in your life when you expect to be woken up by drunken idiots blasting their stereo through the wall? Unfortunately, it's happened to me ever since I started working for a living.

Okay, confession time, people—I didn't write what you just read on September 11th. I know, I know ... the blog clearly says that September 11th is the date of this entry. But it's not. I'm writing this right now on September 19th. A full eight days later. Can you forgive me? (On a side note, do you think President Bush uses "091101" when he plays the lottery? Those numbers sure did bring him plenty of good luck in the last election.)

One other thing—I'm not a panda. I know, I know ... the blog's name clearly implies that I'm a panda. But I'm not. I don't even like pandas that much. In fact, I slaughtered one when I was younger and made a beanbag out of it. Can you forgive me?

One more thing—I didn't make the beanbag myself. I know, I know ... I just said that I did. But I didn't. I asked an old alcoholic Indian dying of cirrhosis to do it for me. And then I paid him with a few jugs of corn liquor. (Or maize liquor, if you prefer.) Can you forgive me?

One final thing—I just realized I'm a real man's man, because I know how to make my own ice.