My Cheap Roommate (Part 2)

So I haven't posted in a while - this is mainly because I've been lazy and busy but I'm going to blame it on the fact that my penny-pinching roommate/landlord "Balki" (I gave him that pseudonym in a previous post based on the character in Perfect Stranger) , switched us to a different internet provider that will save him valuable pennies every month but renders me unable to log onto websites that have anything more complex on them than basic html. Cheap bastard.


Unfortunately my roommate is not only actually not named "Balki" - he is also not as charming, fun or hillariously foreign as the character portrayed with such expertise by character actor Bronson Pinchot.

While I might have a rather high standard of what is a necessity rather than what is a luxury, my Balki's standard is intolerably and insanely diminished. Sure you might call me a spoiled brat for considering high-speed internet a necessity rather than a luxury - but when the cost and bandwidth is shared by three people I think that charge is not as warranted. Balki however, considers the following to be luxuries:

• Daily Newspaper subscription.
  
• Eating anything more expensive for dinner than root vegetables and soy products. (He's not a vegetarian - when I've offered him my left-over meat or fish he was on it like Oprah on a cheescake.)
• Basic heat during on winter nights. (He has a lightbulb on a timer next to our thermostat which lowers the temperature in the house by about 5 degrees every night and shuts off in the morning. I wake up freezing if my blanket slips off during the night.)
  
• A functional TV. (The house's TV set is from the early 80's, is about 17 inches and has fuzzy reception. Not such a big deal for me but considering that Balki's only recreational past time is watching CBC shows, you'd think he'd spring for a slightly better model. Also I have a theory that he favours the CBC so much because of the rationale that since he's paying tax dollars to support it, he would be wasting that money if he didn't watch the shows. I think this would have to be the rationale for anyone watching the CBC.)
  
• A car. (I could understand not having a car if you lived in an urban centre on a subway line. Balki lives in London however. Our house isn't close to anything except for the university. How do you not have a car in a place with a crappy public transportation system and where it snows every day in the winter?)
  
• Touchtone Dialing. (I shit you not. He's in this phone plan from the 70's from when touchtone dialing was optional. It would cost him 50 cents more per month to have touchtone dialing on the house line. What this means is that every time I want to make a call that involves any sort of voice-mail menu - I have to go through this elaborate sequence of switches and buttons on the phone to give that individual call touchtone dialing capability. Larry did some internet research and discovered that the majority of the developed world has adopted touch tone dialing. Basically touchtone is to pulsedialing what agriculture is to hunting/gathering.)

Now despite the horrific extent of this list (there's more but that would take all day and be overly nit-picky) you might think I'm being too hard on the guy. Maybe he's really in a bad financial situation and can't afford these basic amenities. But consider these factors:

• He's in his mid-30's and has been working full time for about 10 years.
• He lives in his parents house and pays minimal (if any) rent.
• In addition to a his job, he has supplementary income as a computer and bicycle repairman.
• He has no dependents (he doesn't even date).
• I accidentally saw one of his bank statements and he's got considerable cash in his chequing account. (That means he could have way more in savings, bonds, etc.)

What this means is that he's a miser. My brother is obsessed with the Guiness Book of World Records and he always spews facts about record breaking human extremes. He told me about the world's cheapest person and it's a crazy story. I tried going to Guiness' website but they've become so sensationalist since their Fox TV show that they don't even have that piece of trivia anymore - it's been replaced by World's Sluttiest Slut.

The Greatest Miser in History -
"An estate of $95 million was left by the notorious miser Henrietta (Hetty) Howland Green (nee Robinson) 1835-1916). She had a balance of over $31,400,000 in one bank alone. She was so mean that her son had to have his leg amputate because of the delays in finding a free medical clinic. She herself lived off cold oatmeal because she was too mean to heat it, and died of apoplexy in an argument over the virtues of skimmed milk."


You know that lady in front of you in every store checkout who spends an hour counting out all her pennies. Well you shouldn't laugh at her because she's a widow, living on a government pension and her grandchildren never call her. This old bitch on the other hand had over a $100,000,000 in her bank account. Do not pity Hetty Green.

While Balki is not quite there (hindered mainly by the fact that he doesn't have $95 million in his name), he is certainly in the higher percentile range. And I have to live with him. Oh well. At least the rent is cheap.