Damien's Bedroom

The house that Damien and his father live in is an anonymous moderately sized two-story house on a nice street somewhere in a suburban district of Vancouver. The house is a clear middle class house; they aren't rich, but they're comfortable.

Inside, the house is always in a state approaching cleanliness. It never seems to quite make it, however, despite the best intentions of Damien's father. When it's neat, it still needs dusting. When it's been dusted, there's a pile of newspapers here, a stack of work on the side table there, and so forth. There are a number of pictures of Damien's late mother about (in which she is frequently smiling, and with Damien and his father).

Damien's bedroom, however, appears busy and messy, even when it's neat. It's a decent size, 12'x12', but Damien has managed to fill it with stuff. His bed is a loft, raised five feet into the air with a ladder leading up to it. Beneath it is his desk, which is dominated by computer equipment. In between the space occupied by CPU, monitor, mouse mat, keyboard, Jaz drive, printer, and external hard drive are stacks of computer books and manuals, pieces of paper with notes scrawled on them, empty coke cans, a phone, CD cases, and the like.

The bed itself is usually unmade. A small extention on the loft serves as a nightstand, and has a clock radio, a lamp, and usually a stack of books and such.

In one corner across the room from the loft is Damien's dresser. The dresser has five drawers, of which two are usually sitting half-open. The drawers are almost never full, as well, as there are stacks of clothes (both clean and dirty) on the top of the dresser and the floor area all around the dresser. (The floor around the loft is usually covered with books and papers.) Sitting on top of the dresser is Damien's "stereo," a relatively inexpensive boom box (with detachable speakers) that includes a CD player.

In the other corner across the from from the loft are a couple of throw pillows, suitable for sitting on, although these too are usually covered with stacks of clean clothes Damien hasn't bothered to put away yet. (Usually his father, sighing, ends up folding them for his procrastinatory son.) Next to the throw pillows stands a halogen torchiere lamp. In between the throw pillows and the foot of Damien's bed is the door leading out to the second story hallway. Down the hall in one direction is his father's bedroom; in the other direction is the bathroom.

In between the head of Damien's bed and the dresser is a wall covered with bookshelves. A good fraction of the bookshelves are covered with computer books, but there is a good collection of paperback novels by the likes of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, William Gibson, and so forth.

The blank walls of Damien's bedroom are almost completely covered with posters. A number of these posters reflect Damien's computer obsession; he's made an art out of acquiring free advertising posters for any number of products, and the ones he likes tend to make it on to his wall for a time. He doesn't hesitate to hang Microsoft and Apple posters next to each other.... In addition to those is a six foot high black and white poster of Einstien, a poster of Darth Vader (Damien having been as caught up as the next guy with the recent re-relase of Star Wars), and one or two posters of the musical groups that kids his age listen to. (Here, I have to admit to being completely clueless myself as to the identity of said groups.) In one place on the wall, the paper yellowed and the corners curling, is posted some of Damien's simple experiements with fractals and chaos, the intertwining patterns of strange attractors and the mandlebrot set plotted in greys and colors on pages printed by Damien's printer.

Even when Damien's room is as picked up as it gets (books on the shelves, papers in desk drawers, clothes in the dresser), the jumble of posters on the wall, and the melange of furniture, it always looks rather chaotic. [OOGM: Damien On-Line would logically follow.]