I stood outside my house dancing a jig to the redundantly hypnotic trance beat of my fire alarm waiting for Ithaca's finest to come over and save all of my earthly belongings. Luckily, I live across the street from the fire station so it only took a few minutes for half a dozen men clad in protective gear to run into my living room and hose down one of my surprised housemates who was playing Xbox on the couch. Our alarm often goes off accidentally and since he could see clearly that there was in fact no fire in the kitchen, the sudden burst of high pressure water being shot at his face caught him off guard. The firemen continued to shoot their Super-Soaker 5,000,000 at my housemate until they could see through his white T-shirt.

Water-logged and sufficiently thirst-quenched, my housemate stood up only to be bum-rushed by the officers of the flame. Quickly, they carried him up to the third floor, opened a window and threw him out. He tried to scream but instead made a loud, uncomfortable gurgling sound until he landed in a safety net held by other firemen who wanted to get in on the action. Then, another group of men grabbed my housemate, gave him mouth-to-mouth, secured him to a stretcher, told him to hold on, told him that he was going to make it -- confided in me that they didn't know if he was going to make it -- and then signaled the ambulance to take off.

As I watched the ambulance lights speed towards Cayuga Medical Center, I slowly began to consider the consequences of trying to prepare my own food. Perhaps cooking for myself isn't the smartest and safest alternative to having another goddamn calzone delivered.

It all started when my grandfather encouraged me to cook my own food.

"Brad," he said, "right now you should cook for yourself. Before you know it, you'll have a woman doing it for you, and after that, eight-year-old volunteers from the local elementary school will be spoon-feeding you apple and asparagus pudding. Seize the moment! Cook, clean and wash for yourself before