Lockless, I encounter a tiny Scot, am subjected to the obtrusions of a bombastic busmaster, and return home happily.

All in the course of an evening. Suddenly solvent after a week of poverty, I went to make a trimming of the wild outsprouting of head-hairs I had inadvertently developed over the course of a month. To do so, I travelled to a mall via taxi, with overwhelmingly excellent results. As a very thin man ravaged by my years of self-abuse, it does take a quality haircut to bring out the best in me, and such was what I received.

Unburdened of my crazy bio-wig, I was thus satisfied to return home, though this time the mode of transportation was our town's beloved system of public transit, the Nashville MTA, with which I am engaged in an apocalyptic struggle. When I left the mall it was 9:30 p.m. The next bus didn't arrive until 10:48. I cast about for activities, sighted a wine and liquor shop, and autopilot took care of the rest. Very shortly thereafter I found myself on a patio outside the shop smoking Lucky Strikes with a tiny Scotsman. I will quote myself in an IM conversation I had this evening on that very topic; when asked just how tiny he was, I replied:

I could've used his head to open beer bottles. But I wouldn't've wanted to. He was very enthusiastic about a whole range of things, most notably wine. The problem, you see, is that I elected to wait for the returning bus in a wine shop. Run by said Scotsman, with whom I smoked cigarettes while he gave me a tour. And he said 'And you should see our Australian selection," and I said, foolishly, because I was on a good-hair high, "I've grown quite fond of Australia of late." And he said, "You like the Australian wines?" and I said, "Well, I like their women. Well, one of them." And it was all downhill from there. But eleven dollars for what turned out to be quite a good port (of Australian vintage) was no real pain to me.

There you have it.The man was a hell of a salesman, and an odd and delightful character to boot. At one point, I actually said "I wish I had a million dollars." And he replied, "Are you sure you don't, pally?" I checked my wallet just to be sure, but if there were millions in there, the wallet was stolidly refusing to disgorge them. But the Scotsman, whose name was Joshua, took my email address and put me on a mailing list for wine sales and wine-tasting events, which should be some weird fun and an excuse for me to vacate my little cavern every now and again for some human-type interactions.

If it weren't for the ensuing MTA battle, this could very well have been an ideal evening, but unfortunately I twisted my chiropractically-fragile neck while trying to chase down this bastard bus, whose bastard busmaster stopped at my stop when I waved to him, and then he made the "go on ahead I'll pick you up later" gesture! So I had to run, whacked in the spinal column with my new bottle of port, twisting around to see just what the hell the bus was doing. And then, surprise surprise, before you could say "Shit," the right side of my face was like a block of wood and I was swallowing funny. But the ride home was uneventful, save for the awkward staggerings of an indigent type who kept listing dangerously toward an angle that could capsise him, and when I got home I took this photograph, possibly the only photograph of a happy me you'll see for a long time, me hearties, so drink a long draught of it and savour before swallowing.


In other news, I am in love with a woman who lives on the other side of the world, it's making me even weirder than usual, and there's nothing I can do about it. I move to eliminate all spatial dimensions. A cohesive space-time continuum is so last-week, anyway.