Funny, but I find some parallel to learning about real news events from Uncle Bob to learning about real news events from The Daily Show. It's like, you go there expecting the funny and amidst the laughs you get some facts.

I hadn't heard about June Carter Cash dying. And by some cosmic coincidence, when I went to my iTunes to play some Johnny Cash, the random shuffle started off with "Oh, Bury Me Not."

So then ... our landlord continues to amaze me with his idiocy:

INT. LIVING ROOM. DAN sits on the couch, shelling peanuts into a bowl while watching the NHL playoffs on TV. It is 9 p.m. There is a KNOCK on the door. Dan opens it.

So that's the conversation last night. Then I asked him to come in to look at the peeling paint in the bedroom � paint that is peeling and buckling like nowhere else in the house, and it looks not unlike that which resulted from water damage at my parents' a few years ago. I just wanted him to see it. We don't care about the paint; we just don't want there to be a problem with a water leak from upstairs that becomes a big problem.'

His solution? Well, when I mentioned it on the phone a few days ago, his first response was, "I talked to the lady upstairs and asked her if she'd noticed any water leaking, and she said no."

Idiot. First of all, if it's leaking from the pipes beneath the kitchen sink or something, she's not likely to notice it. Second, she's an idiot herself, but he probably doesn't know that. So when I invite him in to take a look, he at first seems confused, like I'm mentioning it for the first time. Then, upon seeing it, he asks for a "chair or something." I bring him a step ladder, which if it were me, would've been my first request, a chair second. But again, idiot. He climbs up � his mail still in his hands, because that's why he came to the house in the first place (that's another issue, that he has his mail delivered to this place he rents out) � and starts putting his hand up to the ceiling to feel if it's wet. Fine, to see if there's any current leaking. But to make that your basis that it is simply old, peeling paint � in a way that it's not doing in the rest of the room, let alone the house � and certainly not a leak seems ludicrous to me. But maybe that's just my suburban upbringing and Notre Dame education speaking; I don't know.

Finally, after he's peeled chunks of the paint off the ceiling, he steps down and offers to scrape the paint off the section of ceiling that looks bad, but that we'd have to get the paint to retouch it. Which I may, but I'm also doing the scraping myself � I think I can handle it. "What you'll need to do," he said, "is then get a gallon of paint ..." and with that, he held out his right hand, his thumb and forefinger about two inches apart. I'm sorry, but who tries to indicate a gallon of paint with a hand signal that's no bigger than a bottle of nail polish?

Oh � and on his way out, as he's standing in the landing just outside our door, he looks up to the ceiling, where a smoke detector has been beeping for months because it needs a new battery, and I've mentioned it to him about six times (including Casey's letter last week). Once he tried to say, "Now, if it's in your apartment ..." and I cut him off, saying it was in the hallway on the second floor. On Wednesday, I called him to ask why it was still beeping. "I don't know," he said. "I replaced it this weekend. Maybe I need another battery. I'll check it out."

So last night, standing in the hallway, looking up at it, he said, "Oh. You meant this one? Oh, jeez, I didn't know about this. I will come by tomorrow and fix it."

This guy didn't know there were smoke detectors in the hallway on both the first and second floors.

I am convinced that Casey and I could lap everyone else in the house in the Common Sense Olympics.