Cheap Bastard Wars VI: Return of the Landlord

My blog has been languishing this whole summer. No new material since May. This is not to say that nothing interesting has been happening or that I haven't had time. Summer was full of events that were both fascinating and hillarious - primarily the Great Junk Fiasco and Flattorama European Tour 2005. Both will be chronicled with appropriate detail and care in posts to come.

No no. What I've realized is that my muse resides in London. That muse is not the most attractive manifestation of inspiration - for she is the hideous love child of my tragicomically odd housemate "Balki" and my own procrastination when there is law school work to be done. On that note, welcome back to Flatt Like Me.

When we last checked in on Balki, he was writing me some rather ridiculous (although entirely sincere on his part) emails demanding that I paint his windowsill. My exaggeratedly sarcastic responses (see the previous entry) apparently put him in his place, since I never heard anything more about it.

Fast forward to the second last week of summer. I was back in Toronto recovering from Europe when I get an instant message from Larry (my other roommate from last year), informing me of some bad news. Namely, he had transferred schools and was not returning to the house this year. This would mean that it was just myself and Balki in the house. How could things get any worse?

Here's how: I sent Balki an email informing him of my expected move-in date and was informed that Larry was to be replaced by not one, but TWO new roommates - Balki's parents. Keeping with my theme of sitcom euphamism I will name Balki's ma and pa after the craziest old couple on TV that I can think of. And so I hereby dub them Frank and Estelle after George Costanza's charming parents on Seinfeld. Here's a little introduction:

In his Inferno, Dante listed living with your parents in your thirties as the eighth level of hell.

Frank - OH. MY. GOD. I have never felt like hitting someone so old so much. No wait. I have never felt so much like sneaking into someone's room at night, smothering them with a pillow and then burying them in their own backyard. So Frank is the real landlord. He's the one pulling the strings. The Emperor to Balki's Darth Vader. The Sherri Lewis to his Lambchops. The Cheney to his Bush. You get the picture.

"You wouldn't be too chipper either if you had a hand up your tuchus!"

He's a skinny little man, with a really sharp nose and huge bushy overgrown eyebrows. He has a shrill high-pitched voice which he uses to tell jokes whose punchlines invariably involve some sort of reference to computer programming language or laboratory procedures, which he finds so hillarious he usually starts snorting before he can reach the end. If it's not that, he uses that shrill voice to berate his son. I've never seen anything so pathetic. Here's an example:

Frank: BALKI! Did you reset the computer network?
Balki: ...uh... well... uh gee dad.. I.. uh
Frank: BALKI! Didn't I tell you not to make any changes unless I was present?
Balki: ... it's... uh ... my computer dad and I...
Frank: I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD! You undo what you did and when you're done go chop me some firewood!
Balki: [sob] ... but I...
Frank: NOW!

If I may remind you all, Balki is in his late thirties. His dad talks to him like he's five. It's kind of hillarious but in a really sad and pathetic way. Kind of like a clown stepping on a landmine and producing a funny sound effect and then he's all covered in ash and the flower in his hat is wilted but he's otherwise unscathed - but then it turns out his red clown nose is the result of a malignant tumour. Yeah. Not that funny. Kind of like Frank's computer jokes.


Estelle - Ok so I can't really make too much fun of her without feeling really really guilty. Estelle has MS and spends a lot of her time in bed screaming. On top of that she had to get a hip replacement last year and is really immobile. Not fun. That being said, the house has been customized to accomodate her. My bathroom - which is now shared with the lovely couple - is now "accessible". This means that I have one of those big huge handicap toilet seats with handles and a high perch. There's also a vibrating, heated massage chair in the living room. This would actually be really cool if she wasn't always in it and gave someone else a turn. I tell ya, some people! When the chair is vibrating it makes a huge racket because it's sitting on a hardwood floor. I can hear the noise from my bedroom - taunting me. And the worst thing is that apparently they are taking the chair with them when they leave in a couple of weeks. SADISTS!

"Who changed the settings on my vibrating chair?"

So yeah. At least they're leaving first week of October. But I'm not celebrating yet. Apparently the dude who was supposed to take the room after they go is backing out (Can't imagine why!) which means that they can drop in anytime they want. Frank and Estelle live in Israel but they need to spend a minimum of something like 150 days in Canada every year to mooch off of it's healthcare for or Estelle's frequent examinations and treatments. I have some problems with these dual citizenship people and their social service shopping. Choose a country people and stick with it!

Anyway, so I've had one minor confrontation with Frank but have generally been avoiding everyone. I shut myself in my room whenever I'm at home to avoid those hard to escape conversations. HOWEVER, I have one problem now with the old man going into my room when I'm not around. He always has some excuse that makes no sense like: "I had to check the polarity in your room." What? So my options as I see them now are:

A) Deal with it for another two weeks. They're almost gone and it's not worth being on bad terms with the landlord.

B) Politely tell the dude to stay the hell out of my room and watch him flare up with indignance.

C)Leave a note in a very visible place in my room saying in huge letters something like: "HEY FRANK! I HAD SEX WITH ESTELLE!" and then in smaller letters, "If you're reading this it means you're in my room again. Stay the hell out. Oh and doesn't that wierd thing on your wife's ass bother you?"

"Ok now I'm going to try to explain this pointed sarcasm thing to you again Frank but first you're going to have to put down the pitchfork."

I think the main benefit of option C is that it doesn't cause a confrontation unless the guy actually trespasses again. Plus the look on the guy's face. Priceless I'm sure. Eitherway let's get some feedback. This blog is going interactive - I'm going to need some comments to make me feel special.

Next time: Behind the Bins: The Untold story of 1800 Got Junk