A few things in life make me very happy: Mountain Dew, hot dogs, Saturdays. One thing that always lifts my happiness alert level to Orange (High) is having a somewhat interesting public debate interrupted by the insertion of a crazy guy.

Reading through The Washington Post, I came across a story about a guy who has a ladder chained to his house. The ladder, he says, allows the 60-year old to access his roof to feed birds. Fair enough. Old people like birds, and if the roof is where he can pursue this hobby, so be it.

The only problem is his house is part of a row of houses that have connected roofs. In the past few weeks a few of his neighbors have been burglarized, and police say the suspects came in through skylights. Now how might they have gained access to those roofs? Man, what a tough case to crack.

The ladder guy says there’s no way his ladder is responsible. Actually, he says the burglaries never happened. That’s where the story gets interesting.

Just as I was starting to think about the question of a man’s right to have a ladder on his own land, BAM, the guy is no longer a reader-friendly protagonist. Sure, it’s his land and there’s certainly no law against owning a ladder. The neighborly thing to do would be take the ladder down or come to some sort of compromise.

But no. Apparently there is a conspiracy against ladder guy, and the fake crimes are just a way to get him arrested for growing marijuana in his house. Oh yeah, the guy grows marijuana in his house for medicinal and religious reasons. The cops found that out when investigating the burglaries and saw his “farm” through the skylight. Whoops. He was arrested, but released that day.

Now the police are trying to seize the ladder as evidence, but unfortunately ladder guy probably won’t appear at the hearing to make that happen. Seems he can’t be served with a summons because he won’t open his front door. “The minute I open my door, they can grab me,” the Post quotes.

If that’s not entertainment, I don’t know what is.