Those of you who have visited our humble abode have heard certain stories about our cave-dwelling landlord and his fusty, musty ways. Frankly, the guy is brilliant -- a gifted computer guru, and he can be the nicest, most sensitive dude in the world. He is definitely off-balance, however, and on occasion has exhibited some of the most bizarre behavior you'll come across. He also has a Cap'n Jerko side, and here and there manages to rouse himself from his day job as a programmer to do his tenants (that's us) wrong. Examples include:

• Cranking up his stereo to blare techno music in the wee hours!
• Tossing his trash off of his balcony, which adjoins ours -- looks like the back side of a Chinese factory back there!
• Walking past our windows at odd hours like Tor Johnson in...in...in one of those movies Tor Johnson was in!
• Lighting up tha chronic next do' when my inlaws have come to visit! ("why, no, Jerry, I smell nothing odd...say, why don't we all go out to eat tonight?")
• And never, ever, ever initiating any repairs that don't directly concern him. Even in the case of the latter he often has to be prodded (one time I had to go wake him up on Sunday at 2 pm to make him call a repairman for the water pump which had gone out at 10 p.m. the night before).

Eeeyep, he is a joy to rent from. Typically, though, he's pretty trouble-free, given that he is usually oblivious to the world around him.

But the other night, he starts up the techno next door, and I'm like, "It's 12:30 -- what in the hell is Mongo thinking?" So I call him and ask him to turn it down. He was happy to do so, but he took the opportunity to remind us to pay our rent, which was, true enough, a couple of days late. What makes me mad, though, is that we have a list longer than Santa's of things he's never followed up on doing or has only done at the point of near-coercion. So we're a couple days late on rent. How about the fact that he's over a year late (and counting) on fixing our attic door? What about the fact that we invariably have to call repair folks ourselves and take it out of rent to avoid going through him?

Needless to say, we are getting tired of having to defer to the guy as the landlord. Soon, though, we'll be making the move to Chicagoland, and will finally upgrade our status from that of neanderthralls.

note: the image above is from www.flamewarriors.com, but it's such a great likeness of the guy I had to post it. Click the thumbnail to see the full portrait.