Overheard Starbuck

"Remember that guy who claims his neighbors and a secret army of others are shooting pesticide poppers at him, his family, car, pets, and house?"
---"Shooting?"
"He thinks they're propelled by CO2 or some other aerosol...He says he can't spend more then ten minutes in the bathroom before those poisons start coming in through the glass block window. Taking a bath or shower is a dangerous activity because that stuff makes him breathless, dizzy and disorientated."
---"Amazing. What will he think of next?"
"He takes his baths and showers with a fan running in the open doorway, which doesn't completely blow the fumes away, but it helps."
---"That guy should be in the OCD Hall of Fame."
"He says it makes him happy knowing some punk is 'on call'. That whenever he's taking a shit, clipping his toenails, or washing up, one punk or another has to stop whatever they're doing and hurry to make his life just a little more difficult. He wonders what they're being paid for their diligence, for their work ethic or for being on the front-lines in whatever war they're told they're waging. He thinks the connection between the fumes from outside and the fumes from the inside is more psychologically revealing of the people in charge then strategically sound."
---"That friend of yours sounds like fun."
"You want to meet him?"
---"NO! --Hell no."
...

"Other punks'll shoot their stuff when he stands at the kitchen window that looks out on the street in front and still others? throughout the night at his bedroom windows in the back of his house. He can't remember the last time he slept through the night."
---"Only in America huh?"
"You mean this sort of high-tech yet labor intensive harassment?"
---"No I mean only in America can I nutcase like him not be institutionalized and/or forcibly sedated."
"He once remarked if it wasn't for the greed of the AMA, he wouldn't be permitted to think at all. I didn't know what he meant until now."