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.