This week, we shared the abundance of “crazy roommate” stories that we collected with our in-house battery of podiatrists, urologists, tax lawyers, duct tape artists, and storm chasers, and asked them to build a profile of the roommate you get when you cast your lot with (or find yourself assigned to) people you’ve never met before.  Our crack squad of experts studied the data closely and offered up the following observations:

Virtually all Chicago roommates are insufferable lunatics.  The remainder are merely crazy.  People who think their roommate is mentally unstable typically live with people who think their roommate is mentally unstable.  Women met through a “friend of a friend” are uniquely heinous.  If they show up with a cat, the prospect for trouble goes right off the charts.  The typical male roommate cannot hold his liquor and either barfs or urinates on everything you own, including you.  The typical female roommate hangs a luffa with mounds of pubic hair from the showerhead.  All roommates, regardless of gender, are equally likely to skip town without notice and become deadbeats on the rent.  When you try to track them down for an explanation, they defriend you on Facebook.  More than half the time, they steal at least some of your valuables before they leave, including laptops, flat-screen TV’s, luggage, and kitchenware.

The classic Chicago roommate bogarts your food and leaves a crusty patina of bile and undigested veggies at the top of your toilet bowl.  Much to your dismay, you get to be the one that scrubs it off.  Within a week, the handiwork returns.  The second you leave the apartment, your roommate rummages through your stuff and reads your mail.  Shortly after the lease begins, your roommate invites a significant other to move in, without asking your permission first.  Oftentimes the “other” is not particularly significant.  In fact, the “other” is someone who’s gotten the boot from, or sought refuge from, a roommate who plays the same Lady Gaga record for three hours in a row at the jet airplane decibel level, who refuses to turn off the television (ever) because the dog enjoys it, and who pulls out his johnson and bangs it against his thigh because he likes to boast about the manimalistic amplitudes he can achieve.

Attempts to “talk it out” are doomed to failure.  They merely exacerbate a bad situation.  The only solution is to log on to domu and start apartment hunting.

We wish we could hand out Pitchfork tickets to everyone who participated, with backstage passes to the guy whose roommate housebroke his dog by peeing on its head whenever it defecated on the carpet and honorable mention to the Northwestern student whose roommate video-chatted and baby-talked with his girlfriend six hours a day, proudly displaying the collection of stuffed monkeys she sent him.

Elisa stopped by our office in Streeterville to pick it her tickets today and kindly answered a few questions for us.

What do you do?

I am a full time student.

What is your sign?

I'm a Gemini.

Where are you from?

Chicago!

How long have you lived in Chicago?

My whole life!

What is your favorite thing about the city?

The great selection of restaurants.

What neighborhood do you live in?

Northwest suburbs.

Can you tell us about your about apartment?

It's old school, very homey.

Let's play word association.  I say "pineapple," you think . . .

Vodka