MELLIPOP AND THE MOULDY ORANGE

Ok, so who the fuck could ever have guessed that juicers could be so complicated? I mean it's fruit. Just squeeze the fuckers. And carrot juice is an abomination anyway. If you can't squeeze it you shouldn't be bloody drinking it anyway, goddamn hippies. Man....this damn freelance assignment on organics is doing my head in.

Anyway, whilst we're on the subject of fruit, yesterday saw the dramatic resolution of an ongoing Citrus Crisis, in this very house. Now for two weeks, we had a Code Red Mouldy Orange Incident occurring in our fruit bowl. With four other unblemished specimens at risk of contamination. Ok, so I saw the bugger, but I wasn't going to touch the filthy bloody thing. Yuck. So I left it there. I mean, there is one other person in this house. PLUS, THEY WERE HIS ORANGES ANYWAY. It was HIS idea to buy the big 4 kilo rip-off bulk pack. I simply wanted to purchase a far more sensible number of oranges. A number we might be realistically expected to ACTUALLY CONSUME BEFORE THEY STARTED TO DECOMPOSE.

Anton, on the other hand was seduced by the big steal. Lots and lots of oranges. Cheap. Abundant. Substandard Overstocks. So naturally, we eventually got sick of eating oranges after a while, with the remaining five subsequently taking up permanent refugee status in the fruit bowl. And then the rot set in....

So for days on end, this stalemate continued. Each time any one of us went into the kitchen, we'd steal a glimpse into the fruitbowl on the elevated herb-garden window sill to chart the progress of this festering piece of fruit (we don't actually grow any herbs there but we are having some success cultivating bacteria at present). Neither one of us refusing to budge. Neither one of us conceding defeat. Neither one of us picking the damn thing up and depositing it in the garbage bin just three feet away. Oh no. But boy, we did argue. We debated about this damn orange more than any single repository of mould has ever been debated in the entire history of humanity (except for maybe that guy who discovered penicillin).

Our respective arguments went something as follows:

Mellipop's Central Argument: You bought the oranges. They are yours. You maintain ownership and accountability. Hence you throw the mouldy orange out.

Mellipop's Supporting Statements: I work two jobs so you should clean the kitchen. Ipso facto mouldy oranges IN THE KITCHEN fall under your jurisdiction.

Anton's Central Argument: I can't even see them up there. The ledge is too high for me to see into the bowl. (Yeah - I laughed too..)

Anton's Supporting Statements: You knew of the existence of the mouldy orange, yet failed to act accordingly in the vital early stages. You saw it first so you throw it out.

This went on for days, which dragged into weeks. No resolution seemed likely to occur as neither party could reach an agreement on who was responsible for the decaying filth in our fruit bowl. Until I came home one day and Anton had dumped the damn thing right on my freakin' keyboard. Smug prick.