Ugh. I had a bit of a fight with my roommate this morning about cleaning.

Back in November, I asked him to clean the bathroom next, since I was pretty sure he hadn't done it in a while. He surprised me by admitting he hadn't ever cleaned the bathroom. When he moved in four months earlier, I told him then that we didn't have an official cleaning schedule, but that we tried to take turns cleaning the common rooms: kitchen, living room, and bathroom.

I next asked him about cleaning the bathroom sometime last month. He got defensive, and said, "Just because you don't ever SEE me clean the bathroom doesn't mean I don't do it. I've cleaned it plenty!"

I was away at drill weekend yesterday and Saturday, but was hoping that maybe this would be an example of him cleaning when I didn't notice. When I saw that it was still completely gross today, I asked if he could clean the bathroom sometime this week. He responded, "This week? Uh, I could try."

I asked him when he last cleaned the bathroom, and he told me, "Last month."

"January?" I asked, "Are you sure?"

He rolled his eyes at me and replied, "Oh, right, I guess it's February now... so technically the month before that... December. And I cleaned it in November, too!"

I wasn't convinced, and asked if he mopped the floor when he cleaned the bathroom. He told me yes, so I asked him where we keep the mop bucket. He pointed to our back hallway and said, "Back there."

I asked him to go find it, and said that if he had mopped the floor twice, certainly he'd know where we keep it.

He stormed off to the back hallway, and came back empty handed. Without saying a word to me, he went into his room and shut the door in my face.

Through the door, I told him, "Not doing your share of the cleaning is one thing, lying to my face about it brings being a shit-head to a whole new level."

This is all less than 2 weeks after this month's rent-check debacle: On January 31st, my other roommate (who pays the utilities and calculates everyone's pro-rated share of the rent to make things even) gave us our monthly numbers, along with his check. I wrote my check, and asked "Mr. Can't Find the Bucket" to write his too so we could leave it outside our front door like we're supposed to on the 1st.

He told me, "Oh, I'll do it in the morning, don't worry."

The next day, as I scrambled home from a half-day of work to drive to NJ to see my grandmother in the hospital, I bumped into our landlord. There were no checks out front... and my roommate had not written one out. I called him on his cell several times, and sent a few text messages, but didn't get any reply. I eventually just wrote a check for his share and mine, and then (since I don't keep that much money in my checking account) had to run to the ATM to withdraw cash from my savings, then the bank to deposit it in checking (two different banks) so the combined rent check wouldn't bounce.

When I eventually heard back from my roommate, I explained that my messages to him were so upset since I was in a lousy position having to face our landlord with no rent checks, and since I was now almost an hour delayed getting on the road to see my grandmother.

"Don't worry about it," he told me. "I understand. It's no big deal. You know how crazy it can be in the morning trying to get out to work... I'll try to write the check the night before next month."

I'm watching Outfoxed with Jeff and Brian. If you're not familiar with it, Outfoxed is a documentary that sets out to expose Fox News Channel as a conservative propaganda machine. I admit is a very biased piece, but they just showed a clip that I just HAVE to blog about.

In the clip (from August 26, 2003), anchor Brit Hume says the following on air:

277 U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, which means that, statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California, which is roughly the same geographical size. The most recent statistics indicate that California has more than 2,300 homicides each year, which means about 6.6 murders each day. Meanwhile, our U.S. troops have been in Iraq for 160 days, which means that they are incurring about 1.7 deaths, including illness and accidents, each day.

At first, that almost makes sense... and I'm sure a LOT of FNC's viewers took it at face value. But if you look closer, you'll see what Britt forgot to mention:

At the time, there were approximately 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and the population of California is roughly 33.8 million. When Brian, Jeff, and I took the two figures above (6.6 and 1.7) and adjusted them for the difference in population, we got the following:

	Population	Deaths per Day	Deaths/day per mil. pop
CA Residents	33,800,000	6.6	0.20
US Troops in Iraq	150,000	1.7	11.33

So, at the time, the chance of a US troop dying in Iraq was actually 58 times higher than the chance of a California resident being murdered. Can we all agree that Mr. Hume (Managing Editor for the Fox News Channel's DC Bureau) was at best irresponsible, and at worst intentionally misleading?

As a side note, Brian has been to Iraq and to California, and asked me to let anyone reading this know that he would much prefer to return to California.