2.1. Hello Baby.

Hey there friends and fiends! Sorry I haven't written in a while - I guess a few months have passed. It kind of feels like a new chapter here in Chicago. I guess you could say I'm now in my second season with Balki. We both still work at Ritz Discount, and live in the apartment upstairs. Balki still sleeps on the couch like he's just crashing for the night. And we have continued to build on our dysfunctional relationship wherein I enable Balki's childish behavior and he drives my blood pressure closer and closer to quadruple digits, and we can both barely contain our disgust for each other. In other news, Balki has taken to wearing extremely ornate vests and dress shirts.

So anyway big week, lot if hijinks. Witnessed the miracle of life, NBD. Here's the scene: Balki and I were negotiating a refrigerator in to the store on a hand truck, and along with the fridge Balki was dragging another 165 pounds of sass. I was doing an expert - AN EXPERT - job directing Balki where to push the fridge, how to avoid steps, and where to swing it in while he just openly glared at me and questioned why he was "doing all the work." How about because the hand truck only has one set of handles, and I have a perfect sense of spatial navigation and a bad back, all right?

I explained to Balki in no uncertain terms that "somebody has to be in charge. Somebody has to have a plan. That's me. Somebody has to carry out the plan. That's you." I've decided to take a new, more direct and less compromising approach with Balki this year. Like most untrained animals, he acts up because he lacks discipline - and I'm going to bring this puppy in line. Also, I've really discovered lately just how much I love having plans. God, having plans feels good.

Makes me feel taller.

But I digress. The Ritz now sells exactly one refrigerator, which I would consider an odd business model if I wasn't 100 percent positive that everything we sell in this store is just stuff that Twinkacetti's nephews stole. Balki followed my directions to where we were going to park it, and then all passive-aggressively pinned me up against the wall with the fridge and pretended he didn't notice.

Before I could even tell him not to ever - EVER - do that again, a very pregnant woman ran panicking into the store calling his name and OH MY LORD BALKI GOT SOMEONE PREGNANT. My heart stopped as I slipped into a walking nightmare, imagining Balki attempting to raise a child in our apartment and committing a line of parenting offenses so long that Child Services would have to rename their manual the "Balki." I don't need that shit. I held out hope that she was just going to shake him down for money and split; if I hadn't been trapped behind the fridge I would have reached for my wallet to chip in if it would help make this problem go away.

Any way she wants.

The good news was, it turns out it's not Balki's kid after all. The woman was Gina Morelli, an Italian immigrant from his citizen class. Gina realized I was being crushed by a refrigerator and freed me, instantly engendering more goodwill with old Cousin Larry than Balki has in months. I would have traded him for this complete stranger and her anchor baby right now, straight up, no returns.

The good vibes of course didn't last. Gina broke into tears immediately, saying that her husband was a truck driver currently crossing the empty plains of Texas and she couldn't get a hold of him, and she'd just been evicted from their apartment and had no money and nowhere to go. She said that Balki is her only friend in this country, so she came to the Ritz.

This sounds suspicious.

Of course Balki drank up every syllable like a baby sheep (for God's sake, now I'm dropping shepherd analogies) and offered to let Gina stay with us until her husband gets back without even discussing it with me for like, one second privately first. I don't know this woman at all. She just dragged a fridge across the room while supposedly nine months pregnant. Can we do just a little bit of homework first, Balki? I tried to hedge a little, just to MAYBE get the briefest of asides with my roommate before we make agreements about long term guests, but he wasn't having it.

I asked where she'd sleep. Balki said he'd give her the couch, but I pointed out that she would have no privacy and would need her own room.

Balki of course interpreted this back to Gina as me offering up my own bedroom to her for the length of her stay. So now I'm not only agreeing to let another perfect stranger live in my apartment, but I've also given her my bedroom? Are these two working in tandem? Is this Balki's secret wife? Has the plan finally been put into motion?

Gina called me a saint and kissed my hand, which, well, finally someone is treating me with the right level of respect around here. Off they went to collect her things, leaving me alone and feeling played for the 100th time since last spring. This entire sequence took approximately 90 seconds.

Later that night, Balki was tucking Gina into bed while I was kind of storming around the apartment. I was angrily pacing back and forth in front of the foldout couch, which was ominously made up all nice with two sets of pillows. That's correct, dear readers; for some length of time Balki and I would be sharing a bed.

He had dragged the TV into the bedroom for Gina to watch, so we couldn't even count on basic cable to distract us from how weird it was that we were going to be sleeping five inches apart from each other for the next several days. I quipped that I would put Gina in my will, but she already has everything I own - BOOM SOLID GOLD JOKE, COUSIN LARRY! RIMSHOT! - which finally tipped Balki off that I wasn't especially thrilled with our current predicament. At least it was out in the open. Also out in the open? Balki's Spiderman pajamas. The pajamas really upset me; but part of me was relieved that they were a one-piece. God knows what Balki does in his sleep.

Now you're going to live through every detail of Balki and I going to bed together in writing, because I had to in real life; and I understand it's therapeutic to write these things down. I was irate. I tried to get in bed, but apparently had taken Balki's regular side of the bed. After an instant shouting match that would normally estrange two non-related roommates for days but was just kind of status quo around here, I agreed to take the other side of the bed.

In an attempt to smooth things over, Balki told me how much he admires me for giving up my bedroom to a woman he hardly knows. You read that right: He and Gina barely know each other! Although he's never mentioned her before now, I had just assumed these two really connected in the hours that Balki and I are apart, but it turns out she's just some lady! He also told me what a great guy I am for taking "the hot side of the bed." Apparently it's the hot side because the sun breaks through a hole in the curtains at 6 am and shines on the space where my head was with the concentration of a laser beam.

EFFFFF THAT. I'd put up with a lot already, but I wasn't sleeping on the hot side of the bed. This was all Balki's fault! So we switched sides, and I rolled over to find myself nuzzled into the ass end of Balki's stuffed sheep, Dmitri. I unceremoniously tossed the sheep off the bed, which sent Balki into a complete tailspin. He shuffled off the bed to "say his prayers," - which I've never seen before, and up to now had been pretty certain the Christians hadn't found Mypos yet - to protect Dmitri down there all scared and cold and exposed on the apartment floor, and then he hid under the covers and started sobbing loudly.

Sure enough I broke like I always do, almost entirely because I just wanted to sleep and couldn't hear myself think over Balki's loud crying. So I recovered the sheep, and of course Balki had to punish me with humiliation by making me apologize. To Dmitri.

This is one of those examples we run into a lot around here where Balki uses his Myposian heritage as an excuse to act like a spoiled four year-old. There's a big difference between cultural eccentricities and behaving like a bratty toddler; and I have to assume that life on a dirt poor, agrarian driven small island would force you to grow up early, not the other way around. Balki is full of shit with this act. Anyway, rant over.

There we were, in bed on a pullout couch. We appeared to be settled for the night, if not comfortable, and I finally accepted that we were doing a good thing and should be proud of ourselves. That's when Balki decided to tell me that the baby was due two weeks ago, and this lady was going to go into labor any second.

Balki is so buying me new sheets.

There would be no sleep in our apartment that night. Look, I come from a big-ass family, all right? I've seen enough child births to know how often things don't go according to plan.

And you know how much I love plans.

I wasn't going to let this child birth go off the rails. Not on my watch! I dragged Balki and Gina out of their respective beds and initiated a rigorous training schedule that would get her out the door in a matter of seconds when the contractions started. Stopwatch in hand, I ran them through drills for hours and hours, until Gina finally passed out in the armchair from exhaustion and Balki started whining.

I just couldn't get him there on why this is a big deal. Balki said they didn't even bother going to the hospital when they have babies on Mypos. Here's how he said it works, word for word: "The woman is working in a field. She takes a short break. She has the baby. And then she cooks dinner for eleven men."

Mypos is starting to come into clearer focus now, and it does NOT sound like a very friendly place for women.

I let him know that in America, women have to go to the hospital, and to get to the hospital you have to have a PLAN. Balki does not have a PLAN! How can he LIVE like that?

We went back to square one and ran through the cycle again, and left Gina out of it for expediency's sake. Balki was responsible for getting the suitcase while I was responsible for calling the hospital, and he did NOT agree with that workshare. I tried to gently explain to him that people at the hospital won't have the first damn clue what he's talking about, what with his bizarre verb confusion and limited vocabulary; and for the second time tonight, Balki started to cry. So I decided to just let him prove me right and do a dry run where he calls the hospital.

Here's how that went: he picked up the receiver, yelled, "hospital, baby coming!" And hung up.

Whatever. It's not my kid. Anyway we decided to give the run-through a break for the night, and I offered to stay awake all night on watch. I told Balki that "this must have been how Eisenhower felt just before D-Day." A short time later, I was fast asleep.

Sure enough, Gina came tottering out of the room and woke Balki up with the news that she was in labor. They woke me up, and I was so friggin out of it that I didn't know who Gina even was or what baby everyone was talking about until Balki hit the right trigger word - "Cousin, remember the PLAN?" And it all came rushing back in an instant. I sprung from the bed and into action. I attempted to calm Gina by telling her that first babies take a long time, and she responded that she'd been in labor for a long time but didn't want to bother us. Also of note: in this moment, Gina's accent sounded a lot more like it it hailed from Florence, New Jersey than Florence, Italy. If she is running a con, she's not doing a very good job staying in character.

I'll admit I got pretty wound up at this point. We had to move. There would not be a childbirth in my apartment, nosiree. I sprinted across the room toward the phone, cleaning out a lamp in the process. Balki beat me there, but I reminded him that he failed his test to be "the guy who calls the hospital" instead of "the guy who carries heavy shit." I pounded away at the keys on the phone, dialing up the hospital and then yelling, "hello, hospital? The baby is coming!" Click. Whoops.

I of course Blame Balki for planting that line in my head during our last run through. But at least I got in the greeting and articles in my panicked scream-dial (hello, the, is) so I did better than Balki. Jersey Gina, now making no attempt to sound like she was from Italy at all, assured me that the hospital would know why she was there when we arrived and out the door she went. I, meanwhile, could not find my keys. I couldn't find them because they were in my pants, which I couldn't find because my pants were in the closet. I could not find the closet.

Looking back now, I was pretty much a hot mess. While I was in full meltdown Balki found my keys, and that made me madder than ever. I was circling the drain when Balki finally full on slapped me across the face, and we both acted all shocked like he doesn't beat me regularly, as I've detailed thoroughly in this journal. The slap brought me back to reality though, at least enough that I was able to get out the door and follow Balki and Gina to the hospital. We were all still in our pajamas, but I stopped caring about that stuff a long time ago.

Because the plan had me driving and we were not deviating from the plan regardless of my mental state, I drove like a wildman through the dark and empty streets of Chicago toward the hospital while Balki tried to chill Gina out. Some cop who must have been driving drunk or something almost let me crash into him, but fortunately my feline reflexes kicked in and I swerved just in time.

Balki, who was supposed to be my navigator, was riding me from the back seat about how I needed to drive faster and in the process of dealing with him I missed the turn for the hospital. We hit a big bump, and apparently in that moment the little bugger started crowning because Balki said he was going to have to deliver the baby in the backseat of the moving car. I told him that wasn't a good idea, and then for no reason Gina grabbed my head and pulled it backwards.

She was not letting go. I was looking straight up at the ceiling while the car careened forward. I had no control. I begged Gina to let go, and told her in the calmest voice possible that we were all about to die. Balki finally did something useful and got her to let go, allowing me to recover from another imminent accident at the very last second.

Balki told me to stop the car, so I hit the brakes in the middle of a busy intersection. Next thing, I hear a baby crying. She'd had the kid in the backseat of the 'Stang. I saw the video in health class; the resale value of my classic car has just dropped to nil, those stains don't come out.

I turned around and saw the baby, and the mess, and then things just went fuzzy. I passed out.

Balki got me home, and I started to have my little moment. I was feeling pretty crappy about how much I'd panicked when the shit hit the fan and to make matters worse, Balki did everything right. I told him I always panic - hence the relentless rehearsals, maybe now Balki gets it - and that I'm worthless.

As I trudged off to bed, Balki told me he was going to help Gina find an apartment and they were going to start on Delaney Street.

I stopped in my tracks. "Delaney street is all wrong!" I said. "Gina needs to be in a neighborhood with good public transportation! She has to be within walking distance from a supermarket! What about a daycare center?" I told him I'd have to go with him so he didn't drop Gina in the middle of some gang turf war, when he took his little ruse too far by being way too effusive about how smart I was and I figured out that he was just trying to make me feel better. He recited some saying in Myposian, which sounds more like a racist impression of Chinese (some of the words sounded like "bing bong"). The gist of which was that "if everyone learned how to herd sheep, there would be no one to write poetry."

Wise words.

With all that settled, we decided to change out of our PJs, put on our pants and go get shitfaced to celebrate what we'd just experienced together. It had been quite the night. Gina had a baby, and I gained some respect for Balki's ability to perform under pressure.

But seriously, Delaney Street?

Idiot.

1.6. Happy Birthday, Baby.

Larry here - another wild series of miscommunication and mishaps led to a breakthrough of sorts for Balki and me this week. It's becoming more and more common that after an escalating series of screw-ups that make me want to kill Balki, we end the day finding common ground. I'd like to say it's because Balki is starting to assimilate to American culture and general human decency, but it's far more likely that I'm rapidly losing touch with reality.

I turned 24 this week. It was a traumatic birthday, to say the least.

Things started as they often do around here. I was at work, nervously screwing with an adding machine, not even noticing the customers milling about around me. I was trying to focus on work, but my mind was on the phone parked right in front of me. I was waiting desperately for a phone call that hadn't come.

"Why won't they call? They said they'd call! I'll tell you why, because nobody ever returns your phone calls!" I said out loud to no one. If you're wondering whether you should start to be worried about me, the answer is probably yes. Lord knows I am.

Anyway I was so entranced by my current hobby of blindly poking away at the adding machine and talking to myself that I didn't notice Balki descending the staircase. He swept around the front desk and reached for the phone, but I pounced after his hand with the kind of Appleton ninja speed that I know is always lurking just beneath my skin. "Balki, use the phone, I break a bone" I told him, meaning every syllable. Life with Balki keeps both of us in an environment shrouded in constant violence, either in the form of me threatening him or him actually assaulting me while chalking it up to "how they do things on Mypos." It's an unhealthy and dangerous relationship. I can't imagine it will end well.

Balki asked why I was so nervous and fidgety and accused me of getting up "on the wrong side of the flock" (because he's a shepherd, right! Shut up, Balki.) I snapped at him, and we just stood there staring at each other for a second, probably each imagining watching the other drown. Just before the tension in the room caused the windows to shatter, the phone rang. It was THEM!

More specifically, it was the photo editor of the Chicago Weekly Gazette. I had submitted a photo I took of a burning building, and they were interested in printing it. Although it was an especially important call from people I need to impress I simply told them, "great, I'll be there," and then slammed the receiver down without saying "thank you" or "goodbye." The call triggered an extremely dramatic mood swing; I was on top of the world.

They needed me to get over to the paper by 6 pm to sign a release so Cousin Larry could get his ass paid. As is our custom at Ritz Discount, I ignored the accounting work I was in the middle of, threw on my coat and headed toward the door mid-shift without even considering coming back or asking Balki if he felt like sticking around for the next hour to cover me.

He was pretty psyched for me though, and as the hatred and tension dissipated we organically launched into a little ditty we've been working on called "The Dance of Joy." If you'll remember, when I accompanied Balki on his first date at a fancy Italian restaurant the band started playing a song called "The Dance of Joy" and Balki and I kind of grooved on it. So we worked up a pretty sweet dance routine that involves kicking our legs out side to side in unison, jumping up and down and screaming, and then I leap into Balki's arms. We only do this when we're happy, which isn't often. But I have to admit we've got it down.

The Dance of Joy is rad, you guys.

So for the first time in a long time, we're doing all right. I'm in a good mood because I'm on my way to becoming a respected photojournalist who takes intrusive pictures of people's homes burning to the ground, Balki is in a good mood because I'm in a good mood, the Dance of Joy is jelling nicely and, by the way, it's my 24th BIRTHDAY, y'all!

I let this slip to Balki, who erased a lot of goodwill instantly by asking what I got HIM. Back down here on Earth, Balki remains the most selfish asshole I've ever met. He acted like it's his firm belief that on your birthday you're supposed to buy a gift and bake a cake for - I don't know, some guy I guess, he didn't explain why it would be him specifically. Then you know what he did? He FORGAVE me because I was having a good day professionally.

You see what Balki did there? Killer move. Not only did he talk himself out of getting me a present or baking a cake, he FORGAVE me all magnanimously for not doing those things for HIM. As if I'm supposed to feel bad about it but he's the bigger man for letting it slide. On my birthday. Fuck you, Balki.

I was in such a good mood though that I just ignored it. I told Balki that I hadn't told him it was my birthday because I haven't been in the mood to celebrate lately (well documented here; I didn't mention this mood is entirely his fault) but things were looking up.

Just then Twinkie burst in, and he was in a mood of his own. He called Balki and I "Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber" and when Balki told him I'd sold a photo he got really dark on me, telling me I was going to work for him at his crappy store until I die. It's possible he was in a bad mood because he saw that I had my coat on and was clearly planning to leave for the day even though he was paying me to work, but either way the old man kind of crossed a line. Fortunately he went into his office and I was out the door.

On my way out I passed Susan and her friend Tina coming into the store and left them with Balki. As I understand it, this is the moment the three of them began to plan the surprise birthday party for me that will live in infamy.

Granted, they only had an hour or two to pull it together, but even by those standards the setup for the party was pretty dim. It consisted of three small bags of chips, a handful of nuts, a bowl of punch, and a sign that read - I shit you not - Happy Birthday Cousin Lary." He'd spelled my first name wrong. Look, language barrier or not, it's a person's name, and a pretty easy one at that. He's lived in my home for almost two months. He sees my mail. Gun to my head, I could spell his insane last name after the first few days, it's kind of common courtesy. How on Earth did this dimwit spell my name wrong, and how did Susan and Tina not catch it? How little do these people care about me?

Regardless, when I entered there was no sign of a party, as Balki had scrambled to hide everything they'd just set up and Susan and Tina ran off to collect the guests. This was fortunate because I was pretty pissed off. It turns out that at the last minute, the Gazette had decided to use a picture taken by some other guy. Just because this other guy got a picture of a baby being rescued from the burning building while my photo suggested there were no survivors, I get bumped.

"Another Birthday, another banner year of failure with a capital 'F' for Larry Appleton," I declared to Balki. "Well, that's it. No more. Me, a photojournalist? It's time I realized my limitations."

I was having a pretty soul crushing epiphany, especially in light of Twinkacetti's "work for me until you die" comment from earlier. I went on with my pity party about how my master plan is ruined, and about how I'd scheduled my goals of achievement for life and it was all falling apart. By now I was supposed to win a Pulitzer Prize. Right about that time I couldn't help but notice that Balki was sitting really weird on the couch, and I'd come to learn later it's because he had hidden the party chips under the cushion and was now sitting on them. Anyway, he tried to cheer me up and pitched that we throw a party, but I wasn't having it. I told Balki the last thing I wanted was a room full of people saying "hey Larry, how's it going, whatever happened to the old Master Plan?" Which in retrospect sounds a little Hitler-y when you put it that way. I was relieved I hadn't told anyone else it's my birthday, and of course Balki was now panicking because any second now the guests would start pouring in.

A rapid knock came at the door. Balki rushed ahead of me and yelled at the party guests to go away before I could see them. I told Balki I was hungry, and so he reached into his pocket and produced some loose peanuts. Of course, he had hidden them there in a panic before I came in the door, but the fact that Balki had loose peanuts in his pocket came as very little surprise. I asked why he had peanuts in that pocket and he told me matter of factly that he had a squirrel in the other pocket. This is my life now.

So I went to hang up my coat, and as I opened the closet and reached for a coat hanger I felt a hard push on my back. Balki had shoved me into the closet and locked me in there, which I now know was so he could try to chase off the party guests; but at the time I assumed he had finally decided to make his move and starve me out while robbing me blind.

My brief incarceration awoke that barely contained rage I'd started the day with, and when Balki freed me I sprung toward him guns blazing, ready to finally have our death match. He refused to even admit that he'd locked me in the closet - was Balki finally exhibiting fear? And so I grabbed him by his collar, pulled him close and dropped the most hard core Cousin Larry Crazy Eyes on him yet.

After informing him to never - EVER - do that to me again, I released Balki and stormed off to my room just as the phone was ringing. Apparently it was my mom calling to wish me a happy birthday. Time like this, a guy could really use the unconditional love and support of his mom on an otherwise miserable birthday, so naturally Balki refused to let her speak with me. Even worse, he put on some whole performance where he pretended to be me, then slammed the receiver down on her when I headed past him to take a shower. 

Of course there was no hot water.

So I stormed out to complain to Balki and found him pressed against the window. What had happened when I left the room is that a guy delivered a birthday cake, and Balki tried to throw it out the window instead of just putting it in the fridge to try again tomorrow when I'd cooled off a little. But since Twinkie is a slumlord, the window slid down mid-toss and he'd painted it with a completely wasted cake.

I didn't really care what Balki was doing in the moment. I was fed up with my life, and decided it was time for a change. I stole away to the newspaper looking for the want ads, and began scanning them for jobs for a college grad with a knack for photography and a horrible work ethic. I decided that this was the best thing that had ever happened to me, as a weird, almost euphoric peace passed over my body. I gave Balki a kind smile and complimented his shirt as I headed off to my room to look for a new job.

I'm like, 99.9 percent sure I'm bipolar.

Five hours passed. It was the middle of the night, and I couldn't sleep. I stormed out to the living room and tried to rouse Balki, but he seemed to be dead. I yelled at him and shook him, to no avail. He didn't budge. I started to think that maybe ONE good thing happened on my birthday; but as a last ditch effort I made a wolf-sound effect and sure enough, the Turnip sprung off the couch like it was on fire. Classic.

With all my bellyaching, I finally admitted that what made me the saddest is that no one acknowledged it was my birthday, even my mom. Of course Balki had gone to great lengths to ensure this outcome, and he tried to explain that to me but I wasn't hearing it.

Another hour later, I woke to hear banging around in the kitchen, and emerged wielding the largest trophy I could find as protection. Although I know that Balki sleeps in the living room and him stalking around makes a lot more sense than an intruder, I thought this might be the best opportunity to beat the life out of him and claim I thought he was a burglar so I came out hot. The lights went on behind me, and I found the room filled with complete strangers screaming "SURPRISE" and throwing confetti. I embraced death, but Balki told me it was just a surprise birthday party. I was momentarily touched, but then reality set in and I asked who the hell all these strangers were in my living room at 3am. The party consisted of:

• A street cop.
• A guy who appeared to be the muscle in a motorcycle gang.
• A cool middle aged man in a leather jacket with slicked back hair.
• A heavyset man in all flannel
• A brassy woman in a donut shop uniform
• A mustachioed old gentleman with a bottle of booze.

It turns out Balki had called back through the whole guest list at 3 am and tried to get them to come back, but they understandably told him to go screw because he had corralled them on short notice earlier that night to come over and then rudely kicked them off the front doorstep. So instead he just went out and rounded up every stereotype he could find on the streets of Chicago in the middle of the night and let them into our home. Fortunately one of them was a cop, or dressed like one anyway.

The Biker approached. His name was Snake. He told me he was enjoying a 3 am donut at the shop down the street when Balki came in and bossed everyone in there into coming up to the party. He told me I was one lucky dude to have Balki as a friend. I patiently awaited a followup, wherein Snake would tell me to hand over all the valuables in the apartment; but it didn't come.

They brought a gift. It was crullers. They demanded a speech. I delivered.

I told them how much I appreciated how far they went out of their way to come to the party, and how it's moments like these when you realize who your true friends are. This speech was of course dripping with irony and directed at the absent collection of friends who I assumed had blown me off, but I'm pretty damn convincing when I want to be so I'm fairly certain that it came across as genuine. And so we drank and danced and ate donuts and created a lifetime of memories together. No big deal.

As daylight crested the skyscrapers of Chicago and Balki and I cleaned up the apartment, I told him that it was one of the best birthdays I've ever had. Balki told me I'm not a failure because I have friends, and inspired me to stick with my dream of being a photojournalist because "you can't set your watch by a dream. They operate on schedules all their own."

Pretty eloquent for a guy who had said about 12 hours earlier, direct quote: "What the matter with you is?"

As I headed off to catch a couple of hours of sleep, the old man from the party burst out of the bathroom with a glass and informed us that we were out of ice.

24th birthday recap: I think a strange old man drank my pee.

1.5. Check This.

Well I'm back from the hospital, where fortunately the doctors were able to help me regain feeling and use of my arms. I of course suffered this temporary paralysis at the hands of Balki, who continues to assault me at home and at work. What happened, you ask? Well, here's the latest from the apartment above the Ritz.

I awoke in the early part of the morning, to a bizarre mix of sounds including a woman screaming, strange music and loud thuds in the living room.

Balki has lived here long enough now that I'm conditioned not to over-react. Instead of suffering the natural reaction of abject fear that a normal person would have if they were jarred from a dead sleep by this disturbing cacophony, I switched instantly to frustration and annoyance as I pulled on my bathrobe and headed out to the living room to greet whatever minor disaster Balki was brewing up.

Turns out he was just exercising, which kind of made the situation worse. If Balki had gotten himself into one of his trademark jams in the middle of the night - like if he had let a robber into the apartment because the guy said he was the TV repairman and then Susan came down in a bathrobe and all of a sudden a bird that Balki was babysitting flew in the room and everyone started screaming and running in circles, for example (who knows, tune in next week) - I'd have to chalk it up to another case of idiot-meets-American culture and help clean up his mess. Instead he was just being an inconsiderate asshole, blasting his exercise tape and dancing around the room on the other side of the wall of his sleeping caretaker.

As you'd expect, when I came out and made it clear that he'd woken me up I did not get an apology; instead Balki criticized me for being "grumpy in the morning." What a dick. I don't need to go into the graphic sexually suggestive "exercises" Balki went back to doing, because even writing them down makes me feel like a pervert. I pointed out that for the second day in a row, Balki had not folded the bed back into the couch, and he whined about how hard it is to do. So I set about to school him; but the bed didn't budge. Apparently whatever sick stuff Balki does on this thing at night had broken the sofa, and rather than stop me from trying to put the bed back Balki just watched while I struggled with it until I injured my back.

Naturally, Balki sensed my pain and pounced. It was a brief but frightening assault, as Balki lifted me up onto his lap, held me down there and tried to stretch me out to fix my back. But when I broke free, Balki surprised me by offering to do the first decent thing since he got here and buy a new couch. Balki set about to get his money for the purchase and immediately erased all of the good will he'd just earned, because his money-retrieval ritual involved flipping up the mattress that I was sitting on and tossing me onto the floor violently. I was forced to utter what's become my catchphrase these days  - "Don't you ever... EVER do that again" - before questioning why Balki would keep his money in a leather sack under the bed like he's in some kind of paranoid militia.

I let him know that keeping money around attracts burglars (as if keeping Balki around hasn't attracted enough trouble on its own) and that he's supposed to keep his money in a bank because that's what responsible people do. I told him that at lunch we'd go open a bank account for him, and he should bring all of his money. Of course, this meant Balki had to throw me off the chair I was now sitting on to get his "savings account" sack instead of just saying "can you stand up." The physical abuse continues unabated. For those keeping score at home, that's three attacks before I had my pants on.

Sidebar - judging from the wad he pulled out, Balki had literally four one dollar bills in the sack. His savings account looked to have maybe 10. Presumably, this offer to buy a couch was either another hollow promise that Balki had no intention of following through on, or he thinks furniture costs four dollars. Either way, it's hard to imagine this story not ending with me buying a new couch for Balki to defile, isn't it?

At lunch we scrambled out of the Ritz to the bank and I was already phenomenally frustrated with Balki as we walked in the door. The banker, not sensing that the rube sitting in front of him was about to put him through his worst account opening of the year, tried to sell Balki on a Cadillac account that came with overdraft protection and a free TV. I let the guy know he was dealing with a customer with the brain of a child, and he switched gears to a kid's account that had a two dollar minimum and came with a frog bank.

This sounded only slightly above Balki's capacities so I urged him to take it, but Turnip wasn't biting. He decided he wanted to learn how banking works, and - God help me - instead of just saying "they put it in the safe" so we could grab a couple of sandwiches and get back to our dead end job, I launched into a complicated explanation of interest and personal loans and credit scores. This 9th grade economics lesson only confused and angered Balki, until I explained the concept of writing checks instead of using money - and that absolutely delighted him.

RED FLAG! RED FLAG, COUSIN LARRY!

I failed to realize that Balki's wild swing from caution about banks to abject joy in having a check book meant that a fundamental misunderstanding had taken place. In my zeal to get Balki to hand over his cash - 127 dollars, it turns out, which is not remotely enough for a new couch so I don't know why we bothered putting it in the bank at all - I failed to remember the sub-minimal comprehension I was dealing with. Although I might not like to admit it, I take some responsibility for what happened next. I should have just taken Balki's money and thrown it in a trashcan fire. I realize that now.

Later in the day, I was back at work - although only sort of, since instead of doing work I was angrily instructing Susan how to give me a better back massage - when Balki arrived from wherever he'd been while he was on the clock. He had a brown paper sack over his shoulder and was calling himself "Balki Claus," and said he had gifts for everyone. He gave a pack of gum to Susan, and an apple and bug light to me (still waiting on that couch bro), and bragged about how he'd written checks for these purchases. So far, no problem.

Twinkacetti emerged from his office and told me he needed me to cover for him with his old lady. He was going to a poker game that night, but apparently he's a degenerate gambler and his wife doesn't want him playing poker, so he asked me to say we were going to a basketball game that night if she asked. I refused - I'm an honest man, as much as it frequently costs me - and so Twinkie ordered me to take my bad back across town to pick up an order of weightlifting equipment for the store. I'm left to wonder again how on earth we keep cramming this ever-growing list of products into a store that's smaller than my apartment, but I digress. On the way out the door I passed a deliveryman who said he had something for Balki.

RED FLAG AGAIN! COME ON, LARRY! ASK QUESTIONS! But my back was smarting and I had to go get the equipment, so I pointed him toward Balki and was off.

So who wants to guess how much Balki spent on furniture?

How much, you say?

You're wrong, it was more than that.

More than three grand, that's how much. Hours later, after hand-moving twelve tons of body building equipment by myself I limped home cursing revenge on Twinkacetti, probably by continuing to passive aggressively blow off work and be a generally terrible employee who he gives a lot of leeway to, all things considered. It took me roughly ten seconds to spot the fancy Victorian-style living room set that Balki had filled the room with. It did not appear that the couch pulled out into a bed, by the way, so he hadn't solved the single problem this whole banking adventure started with. Anyway, it also did not yet dawn on me how he pulled this off with 127 clams. I was mostly angry that without consulting me, Balki had gone ahead and thrown away all of my furniture. It was a gift, I get it, I know, but imagine if you came home and your roommate of one month had chucked all your shit without so much as a mention?

I told Balki how I didn't grow up with much back in Madison, and had 8 brothers and sisters, and it was rare that I ever had my own stuff - so I was proud to have bought my own furniture for once in my life, and Balki had thrown it all away.  As I worked through my own neuroses and came out clean on the other end, a sinking feeling set in. It was mostly me sinking comfortably into the soft fabric of a fancy cherry-wood dining chair.

This was nice shit.

Now that I was over my own problem I finally realized Balki's. He had written a check for more than 3K. After a little scream-questioning of Balki on my part, I learned that currency doesn't really even exist on Mypos and everyone's wealth is measured in chickens, pigs and cows, and he had no idea what he was doing.

As you'd expect, Balki blamed me for everything; but I wasn't biting this time. My back hurt, my furniture was gone, and I wasn't in the mood for another classic Balki-guilt-trip turnaround. It got heated. I did a lot of yelling. I told him he was going to jail.

And then Balki calmly and lucidly admitted that this mess was his fault; and damn me, I backpedaled on everything. "It's not your fault, it's mine," I said! "I should have explained banking better," I said! Come on, Larry! I've gotten so used to taking the blame when Balki screws up that the impulse kicked in even when he tried to take responsibility for his mistake. Moving forward, I can only blame myself for reinforcing his selfish, consequence free behavior.

Regardless, I told him in my softest Cousin-will-fix-it voice that we'd return the furniture and get mine back. Where was it, you might ask? Balki had sold it.

To my enemy, Mr. Twinkacetti.

Set aside the fact that Balki sold all my stuff. Set aside that he sold it to Twinkie, who definitely didn't need it and must have known that he could run some kind of long con with it. Forget those things for a moment and consider that Balki even sold my LUCKY ROCK! It was a ROCK! It had no cash value, it was just this rock that I had and cherished and why would he even consider lumping it into the furniture deal? What else did he sell, my toothbrush? Did he clean out the medicine closet? My frigging lucky rock!!

Twinkie was of course selling my stuff out the back door of the Ritz, and I learned he'd taken it from Balki for only 75 bucks so he was making a pretty sweet margin on it. He was in no mood to sell it back to me since I'd betrayed him the day before, but then fate intervened. Twinkie's wife Edwina entered, happy to see me and thrilled to meet Balki (which leads me to wonder what kind of nice shit the old man says about us at home). Twinkie had apparently told Edwina that he took Balki to the basketball game the night before ("Remember, Turnip? Bouncy bouncy?")

Yep. Balki had him by the 'nads.

You know how I've mentioned Balki has a legitimate dark side to him that comes out from time to time? You should have seen him work this one. Out of earshot from Mrs. Twinkacetti, Balki told Twinkie that he would be calling HIM Turnip now, and they were going to negotiate on the furniture set before she came back. He talked the old man down to a dollar for the whole set, just in time before the Missus came back in the room. She had found his gambling stash in the office so the whole negotiation was pretty much moot, Balki never even had to say he went to the game; but she dragged Twinkie out the door to watch her spend his money, and we basically stole all my stuff back while they were gone.

Surprisingly, Balki confirmed out loud that he has a dark side as we set out to drag the furniture upstairs. My back was still killing me though, and before I could stop him Balki picked me up and shook the pain out. It worked; however, the side effect of his warlock chiropracty was that my arms were paralyzed. Balki then shrugged and told me to go to the doctor.

God I hate Balki.