An experience that really sucked [groan]

My life as a scruffy, impoverished and blasé undergraduate is officially over: I have bought my first vacuum cleaner.  

Not that my attitude or habits toward cleaning have changed, mind you.  My approach to cleaning is to assume that the science of vacuuming is similar to the science of shampooing your hair: if you put it off long enough, eventually the dirt starts cleaning itself.

Of course, when it comes to shampooing and the quantity of my hair, the point is rather mute.

Nevertheless, this creative scientific approach has served me well in the past, and on those occasions when it hasn’t, game theory has come to my aid.  My tolerance of dust and grime around the house is invariably higher than that of my housemates (or more recently, Fi).  Thus, much like the Russians on the Eastern front in World War II, I can simply wait out the dusty Winter, confident that I won’t be the one giving way.

(While I am aware that this illustration could be misread as a comparison between my girlfriend and the Nazis, I’m confident that the fact that I bought a vacuum cleaner will override any misunderstandings both now and in the foreseeable future.  Money well spent.)

That being said, the process of buying a vacuum cleaner is a lot more difficult that I’d imagined.  I went into it thinking I could just pick up a $50 piece of plastic that would quietly suck up the mess every once in a while and then quietly go back into my cupboard, preferably without me having to touch it throughout the process.  I’d even heard of a model before – the ‘Dyson’ – and so I thought that was a good place to start.

Holy Shmoly.

It turns out that Dyson is not a model of cleaner at all, but rather a brand – or, more accurately, some sort of corporate cleaning conglomerate that somehow scams people into spending thousands of dollars to buy things that will ultimately encourage them to do more chores.  For the cost of one of their vacuum cleaners, I could buy an (admittedly not very good) automobile and simply drive away from the dust.  I passed.

Not that this simplified the process much.  Turns out there are walls and walls of different brands and models, all with dozens of ‘different’ features that, as far as I can tell, still just clean.  I thought that among all of these fancy-pants technological bells and whistles, I’d at least find one that would either clean for me, or get me a beer while I’m using it.  Nothing. 

In fact, the only brands I recognised at all were those that I really didn’t associate with cleaning.  Given the dust on my television or the state of my fridge, it was unlikely I was going to trust a vacuum cleaner made by LG.

In the end, for those of you who are wondering, I bought an ElectroLux Something-Or-Other for $300 that is apparently ‘a good buy for a medium-range cleaner.’  Whatever.  All up, a horrifying and surprisingly expensive purchasing experience that unfortunately is likely to lead to me having to use the thing in the future. 

…Or perhaps not.  It’s just hit me.  I’m now thinking of reinventing the scientific cleaning theory in the guise of the Evolutionary Big-Bang Cleaning Theory:  Basically, I put the vacuum cleaner in the midst of the dust in my living room, and watch as, where once was only the absence of light, Cleanliness emerges.

I hear this process can take billions of years.  I’m prepared to wait.