February 8, 2001: The search for player number four
As hard as it is to find a decent and yet affordable place to live here in the city, it's possibly just a bit harder to find a good roommate to move into your place.

When you are looking for a place, you can browse your options and work to get into the places that look best. Nobody calls you up to hassle you about whether you are still looking, and there's no rejection involved if you're not interested in a place. You can safely blow off anybody--the leather, chains and bondage household that quizzed you about possibly assisting in intimate body piercing sessions, or the glassy-eyed slumlord that wants $800 to rent out her kitchen cupboard--all without hurting anyone's feelings, because there is a line behind you that will gladly take the place. Looking for housing is like looking for a job: familiar and businesslike.

Looking for people to live with you is more like choosing to date somebody you are not interested in. Whoever you pick will be someone you will have to put up with for a fairly long period of time. Its like a marriage of convenience, political union, or fictional spin.

Occasionally you hit things off really well and things work out great. It's just as likely, however, that things won't work out so well, and you find yourself staying late at work and scheduling unnecessary surgery just to get away from the house. Its especially bad when you are paying gads of rent to live there in the first place.

So that being the case, we thought the internet would help us find the perfect player number four. We also thought we could leverage the site and our readership to help select a perfect few candidates, since none of us have any time on our hands to screen people. Well, none of us except for tat, and his screening could have disastrous results. He recently invited a stranger to sleep over, who promptly screwed up my vcr, leaving me powerless to timeshift television programming. On the positive side, the stranger did not kill us all and bury us in the backyard.

Here's how it works: people who are interested in living here and joining the experiment can apply by submitting a photo and a dossier following the pattern of ours. Mail this, with any other comments but please no cash, to the typical place. You need to submit this by friday, february 23, 2001, but sooner is better.

We will post your applicaton as soon as we receive it, and our registered readers will be able to vote for their favorites. You, the registered reader, can vote for a first, second and third choice. If you change your mind, you can vote again. We'll update the results for your most recent vote. Your top three choices get one, two and three points, respectively, so specify your order of preference clearly. Registration helps us keep your current vote for player four accurate and prevents ballot problems.

The results will be tracked regularly on the site. While you, the applicant, can't stuff the ballot box for yourself, there's nothing wrong with getting your friends to register and then vote for you.

So get cracken! We're stoked to get another player who can pay some of the rent and supply some additional adventure fodder. For more information about the room, see our craigslist posting. Please also read the rules.

More information about roommates, getting along and looking for things: