Titled No 17

There was an old guy in the corner, muttering to himself.

Now, it wasn't because of that that I was keeping away. Hell, sometimes I mutter to myself, it happens. Happens to all of us, I suppose. It's like a human thing... like opposable thumbs. Or 7-11s. Or following baseball teams that'll break your heart six ways from Sunday and still you'll keep watching them.


No, it was the cherry bagels he was throwing.

At least I think they were cherry. At first, like any god-fearing citizen, I thought they were cranberry, but a few hit, and reports were coming back from around the room that there was no way those were cranberry. "Cherry," someone said, 'hmph."

Which was exactly how I felt. That and I had the notion that, in a perfect world, this might be how a battlefield would feel -- bagels raining down from all angles (including some impressive bank shots off the pictures adorning the walls of the café), people trying to bravely soldier on through their coffee, despite the deluge, waitresses rollerskating around on some of the more hardy bagels like a 50s disco diner gone bad. Real bad.


I noted that I wouldn't really like battlefields, whether they were in the future or not, as they made it incredibly difficult to concentrate. And when you're trying to build together a catapult out of toothpicks to carry out an assault on a man throwing bagels around like they're going out of style you need a hell of a lot of concentration.


05 July 2004

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