The Cleanliness of Man

Everything's starting to come together here in Pittsburgh. The homework is starting to pile on, I now have internet, all my furniture is put together, if not quite organized, and pretty soon, I will have tastefully neutral curtains hanging on the openings. I spent all evening working on my room, finishing around 9:30 and talking with Ben for an hour. Then I spent the rest of the evening cleaning the kitchen. I always thought of myself as relatively messy, but today, I met the true kings of messiness. The nice thing about my apartment is that when the people who lived here before us left, they also left behind a lot of furniture and utensils. While I like most of the furniture (my desk is both hideous and uncomfortable at the moment, but that's my only furniture related complaint), the kitchen things were...lacking. We brought our own pots and pans, so in reality, we didn't need anything at all. What we got was a cabinet filled with about ten pens, three pots and miscellaneous other things. After Christi pulled a crud-covered Foreman Grill out of the cabinet, she decided to go no further, and up until today, it remained the cabinet of disgusting, stomach curdling ickiness. And then I had free time and a strong urge to clean and polish.
Today I learned just how disgusting college boys can be. I can understand a fleck of food here and there, accidentally left on the pan. I can understand a heap of dirty pans in a sink. What I find absolutely incomprehensible is putting the pan away while it's still dirty. Four of the pans were covered in so many layers of food and grease that I couldn't even figure out if it was teflon coated or not (as in, can I use the brillo pad to scrape away all the gunk?). After serious debate and consultation from Christi, we decided that by the time I brilloed all the gunk away, there would be nothing left of the surface of the pan. In the trash they go. It makes me wonder what condition their scrambled eggs were in after using those pans...It makes me wonder how they didn't all die from food poisoning...
I also found a very old, 70s-esque waffle maker complete with the crummy leftovers from the last time our former tenants made breakfast with it. Year old waffle crumbs...yummmm... I couldn't figure out how to wash it without damaging the electronics (apparently, neither did they) so I opted to toss that too. I topped it all off with a liberal scrubbing of the kitchen floor and a splash of antibacterial. If that doesn't work, I don't know what will...