Why must you toy with me, Yahweh?

Insofar as my existence has a bane, my next-door neighbor is it. He is a gamer. And while that term conjures the image of a skinny 15-year-old, he's a actually a middle-aged man.

While I think playing video games after college should be banned as a rule, I particularly loathe this guy because his videogame sounds are clearly audible in my living room. Shoot-em-up games, in case you were wondering. Lovely thing to listen to, all gunfire, explosions and screaming, over a weirdly unmusical bass line. This typically goes on for 12 hours at a stretch on weekends, and four our five hours on weeknights. Still, I waited a long time before going over to complain because I listen to a lot of music and thought that whoever lived there might well tell me he could hear that just as clearly.

But finally came a day when the explosions and the repetitive bass line got SO loud that something had to be done. I knocked on the door, and my neighbor, whom I had never seen before then, answered. (Short and stout, indeterminately Hispanic and/or Asian, pockmarks, wife-beater. Isn't it vindicating to find out someone you already hated is ugly?) By "answered," I mean he opened the door about four inches and said, "What?" I told him what. He said, "Ok," and slammed the door. The noise subsided to a tolerable level...for that day. Over the following weeks, it crept back up, and this week I went over and complained again, with the same result.

But today, I heard the sound of moving men in the hallway. On my way to take out the garbage, I asked one of the movers who was moving. He indicated the guy next door's apartment. I was delirious.

But somebody must have checked my karma account and realized I was overdrawn. The doorman says nobody's scheduled to move today or tomorrow, and the game sounds are once again coming through the wall.