So this is California....

I get it, you're laid back.
So much so that you don't answer my emails for over a week when I reply to your roommates wanted ads. I start sending out emails in the middle of July, and still get replies a week into August saying that you're looking for someone to move in on the first. I'm flattered that you think I could pull that off, but really I'm not that talented.

I get it, you're progressive.
You invite me over for dinner, and its amazing. Tempeh tacos... mmmm.....
Sure the family style eating arrangements isn't really my thing, but everybody seems normal. That is, until the point where we start talking politics. Oh, you want Denis Kucinich to win the nomination? Don't get me wrong, anyone who looks like him and can land a wife who is half his age, a foot taller and drop dead gorgeous has some serious juju. But the Republicans would have to scrape deep into the bottom of the barrel to come up with someone who couldn't beat a pantheistic vegan midget.
Be serious people.

I get it, you think outside the box.
I knew that when I read your ad saying that you were a spiritual relationship councilor. I googled your email address and found out that you help women manifest their true love from the universe. But I'm an open minded guy and whatever you can do to turn a buck is between you and your clients. Although I have to admit that the fact that, as a spiritual relationship guide, you said that this town is full of flakes made me a little nervous.

But then the subject turned to 9/11 being an inside job. You saw a video about it. On the internet. Put together by a bunch of college students calling themselves "researchers". Set to bad techno music.

I admit that I realized that I was being a bad guest shooting down your 'evidence' that there was a massive government conspiracy behind 9/11. But you were really really wrong. Its not even that I think what you were saying isn't true - but even if it were true you don't have any evidence to back it up. "As someone who has no background in structural engineering, that doesn't fit with my understanding of structural engineering." is pretty thin.

Anyway, the thing is that I'm a nerd about epistemology, among other things. I'm interested in how we make judgments based on incomplete, unreliable and contradictory information. So I tend to pick conspiratorial ramblings - be they about 9/11 'truth' or Iraqi WMD - apart as much as possible.

And then a few days later I got the email telling me that you didn't want me to move in with you. You didn't want me as a roommate because I didn't think that 9/11 was an inside job. I had to reread it a couple of times...

I thought that you were open minded. In fact I read that in your ad - you were open minded and seeking people who were similarly open minded.

You consoled me by telling me that you were sure I could find someone to live with who agreed with me that 9/11 wasn't a government conspiracy. I wanted to write you back to tell you that I am, in fact, capable of relating to people who I don't agree with. It is, as I understand it, the most basic level of maturity.

So this is California? And these are the people that I will be surrounding myself with for the next three years? Thanks for the tacos, you people have issues.