I've been guilty of going to Best Buy just for a quick snack; when you're stuck in Box Box City and your girlfriend's at Babys R Us shopping for her friend's baby shower, sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

His work here is finished.

Back at the bookstore we had a bunch of people as interesting as this, but our town was a major hub for crazies on account of the various mental hospitals and drug rehab facilities.

My favorite one was this guy who used to come in and give everyone raises, as much as a million dollars in one raise if he wasn't taking his meds. He used to tell stories about how he could shoot laser beams out of his, and this one time he even stopped a local marathon. The race route took the runners past our bookstore, and whenever somebody came by, he'd wave and shout at them to stop, walking into the street and shaking their hands and telling them he was going to give them thousand dollar raises or being such good athletes. Twenty, thirty runners got stopped by him; usually took them a good thirty seconds before they realized the poor guy was nuts, and a good fifteen more before they could extricate themselves from the situation. God bless him.

There was also this short fat white lady who'd always come in asking if we had any books by "Mister Bin Laden". (this was during the height of the Al Qaeda scare) She'd then stare into space and start rambling about how Mister Bin Laden was such an inspiration to her and how she loved him and blah blah blah.