No, not the damned boardimages: that would be progress.

Instead, I went to the dentist. With a headache. Albeit a slightly lesser one than it had been before mixing Advil with Vicodin. But that's another matter, for the most part.

Into dentist. Novocaine. Surgery. All done. A new prescription for more Vicodin. I'm gone.

Next stop: Safeway. For a couple of reasons. One: it was next door. Two: we're in there at least twice a week anyway. It's like a second home. Complete with taxes.

Back to the pharmacy. Hand over script. Shop for stuff while waiting for a guy trained in perhaps a school somewhere to stuff a few pills into a plastic bottle, which can't take less than twenty minutes because there's so much work involved.

Shop, shop, shop. This and that. A couple of things needed to make some lasange; a cardboard bowl of potato soup [Hunter was starving]; strolling about until tiring of strolling about; wandering back and having a boring seat and a copy of Discover while still waiting for a few pills to make their difficult ways into a plastic bottle.

Done. Pharmacist finds a new purpose in life: he can now charge us not only a dollar per pill for the Vicodin, but also ring up the soup and lasange stuff. Whee.

That accomplished, Hunter, displaying Basic Problemsolving, stuffs all but the soup, which would spill, and the pills, which are mine, into her backpack. That done too, we bid the pharmacist may fare well and spilt.

By now, I've got the bottle of pills out of the useless waxpaper sack. The sack itself, though useless to me, is probably useful to the guy who'd dig it out of the trash to steal an identity or two. Not wanting that to happen, yet not wanting to possess the stupid thing, I, still in sight of the pharmacist, slide the empty, personally useless thing into Hunter's backpack, where it should have gone in the first place. The receipt, which is useless to anyone but a thief, is stapled to it still.

Outside the store. Free at last. Until something speaking PigAmerican lurches out to accost us.

'Wait!' it says [it may actually have been halt, but I'll give the moron the benefit of the doubt].

'What.' That would be me. Curiously, despite my headache and fat lip, the conversation in general proceded back and forth with little interruptions from the moron.

'I need to look in your bag.'

'I doubt it.'

'Someone saw you steal something and hide it in there!'

'I see. What did I steal and hide.'

'An employee saw!'

'Wrong. I did not steal an employee and hide it in the bag. Try again.'

'Can I look in your bag?'

'Sure. Warrant first.'

'I'm looking in your bag now.'

'I retain doubts.'

This shouldn't be a shock, but I'm utterly taller than this twit. Which, to twits, generally also suggests heavier and better armed. He would be half right.

'I look in the bag or I call Alan.' [I think it was Alan; it sounded like it, to me]

'By all means,' says I.

'Bag?'

'Backup moron.'

'Alan! Come!'

And now there are two. A bald manager in a cheap Arrow shirt and bad tie, and his dog.

Oh, and the manager, merely hypothetical just seconds ago, knows far more about this crime, in this instant, than I do. Curious.

'Hi. One of our people saw you hide something in your backpack. Would you like to let us look at its contents?'

And now I'm confused, because I can't tell whether It is the backpack, or this phantom employee. Either way, I'm not terribly interested in spilling its contents all over the carpark. Yet.

Also, it's not actually my backpack. It's Hunter's. But everyone wants to talk to me. Couldn't tell you why; happens wherever I go.

Anyway: I look to Hunter, who looks to me, mostly with that Tell them to piss off; I'd do it, but I'd be loud look of hers. I think. It's pretty close to her I'm awake and aware of it look.

Baldy and Rover are expecting a reply, I suppose.

'It's not my backpack. It's the property of the chick wearing it. Weird, huh.'

By the way: I'd be far cooler here if everything I'm saying to these twerps didn't sound like Bill Cosby got totally drunk.

'Can I seach your backpack?' Baldy. To Hunter.

'Can you tell me what you're accusing me of?' Hunter. To Baldy.

'Someone saw you hide something in it.' At least the blame is now off me; last time, this ghost saw me hide something.

Hunter says, 'What happens here if I say No.'

'We can't make you show us,' Baldy says, 'We can only ask.'

Hunter looks to me.

'He's right,' I tell her, 'To force this, they'd have to call the police; the police would have to get a warrant; with a warrant, they could search, ascertain that you stole nothing, and hand over a case to sue the hell out of Safeway.'

'Well, Sir,' Baldy begins, suddenly more squeaky than before, 'you actually couldn't sue us for that; I mean, I could call the cops and you'd see that. Should I call the cops?'

Now, lemee explain something about legal logistics. Here's something I CAN do, in point of fact. I can, within the states of America, sue Baldy for being bald. It's my basic right to sue anyone for anything at any time. I might even win. Wanna see my opening statement?

As a child, if memory serves, I knew a kid who may have been molested, possibly by a bald moron. The potential emotional damage relative to that possibility has always remained minimal. However: on or about 18th January 2006, a bald moron accosted me during an instance when its mutt was attempting to restrain my constitutional right to travel upon public properties. We seek ten million dollars in damages.

So: I can, in fucking fact, sue.

Explaining that to the lying moron seems both futile and, potentially, damaging to my case.

'I don't care whether you call the cops. If you call the cops, it'll likely be because you actually believe in your accusation of theft. If not, we'll know otherwise.'

All of a sudden, I'm the badguy here. Baldy returns to Hunter, who uses fewer large words.

'No one wants to call the police. You can show me your backpack, or you can refuse and go on your way; I'll just pull your creditcard information and handle things.'

For the record, I didn't kill him. Though Rover may have growled at him for being a fucking felon.

Hunter, who would suck at poker, comes up with, 'I didn't steal anything. And I can show you that. But I'm not showing you this smaller pouch, because it's got nothing but personal information you don't get to have.'

Which, of course, was the right answer. Now Baldy has that look on his face: You DID steal something! It's in THAT POUCH! I KNEW it! Good for him.

Hunter starts pulling things out of her backpack. Including the receipt for anything originating at Safeway. Soup. Painkillers. Lasange stuff. The End.

Well, except for the latemodel overpriced DigiCam, and the UberHolyFuckItDoesTooMuchShit mobilephone, and, of all things, a hardcover of Lord of the Rings [which I'm starting to suspect might actually constitute contraband at or near Safeway, being a book, containing words, in print].

It's at this point that I'm so wrapped up in wishing to hell that she'd instead/also had a hardcover of Paroxysm so I could counteraccuse these imbeciles of attempting to sell a book I wrote without my or my company's expressed authorisation that I totally forget to have her grab the overpriced DigiCam and get a shot of a Dog and his Boy for this report. Sucks, huh.

Interesting news: nothing from Safeway which isn't also on the five-minute-old receipt. Oops.

Which quickly devolves into more of Baldy assuring me that I can't sue him for being bald, and finally into a wideeyed official apology over the accusation that the neurologically absorbant son of a seriously evil legal PhD was involved in anything resembling a witnessed crime.

So, that was pretty much my morning in a few hundred words. How've you been?

More later....

Forgot to add tags for this stupid entry.