The Meat In The Room

It's been awhile since our store has been visited by the gentleman presumably named Mike, or "The Clappy-Hands Guy", as one of the young girls I used to work with called him, and stuck for many a year. I used to talk about him in my old blog all the time, how when he's on his meds he's perfectly fine. But otherwise he used to wander around the store, clapping his hands really loud and shouting bizarre phrases like "SAY HALLELUJAH TO THE WORMS IN MY ASS!' and "Do you know where your face belongs? ON THE FLOOR FOREVER!!!" We used to keep a calendar in the store's front office with each day having a quote of the day, and pretty much the best of everything this guy would say that particular day got voted as the day's internal reflection for the rest of the staff. Though after a time he was kicked out of the Barnes & Noble next door (for walking up behind female patrons, touching them lightly on the shoulder and quietly saying "whore") and subsequently spent all his afternoons in our store, licking the metal detectors and genuflecting at any piece of electronic machinery. When he started screaming out the "N" word and frightened a small child with Down Syndrome we finally kicked him out, and it took several calls to the police to to carry him out, only to have him turn right back around and re-enter the store as if nothing happened. Finally, I suppose he got the hint, or a new prescription, because he has not been back in nearly 3 or 4 years.

Now he's back. And he has this... thing.

One of the guys at work jokingly refers to it as the amulet, but I guess it's more of a staff really, or some kind of homemade weapon that he keeps strapped to his backpack when he comes into the store. He's very quiet now, doesn't yell or clap or lick things, and leaves everybody alone. But his new obsession, it seems, is to sit down at these burning stations (computers where you can enter a song or band and download it onto a blank CD or MP3 player), takes the "staff" and runs the blades under the red laser beams that read barcodes off the CDs, and then spends the next eight hours typing in random numbers and letters into the search function, and then pretends -- or at least thinks he does -- to "download" this secret information into his menacing looking thingamaboob. And yes, that is indeed a TV remote control taped to one blade, and an AC/DC bumper sticker on the other. And lets not forget the word "LITHIUM" boys and girls. Lots and lots of yummy, nutritious lithium.

I had to sneak this photo over his shoulder (you can see his hairy knee under the table) without him noticing, not knowing what hocus pocus he might unleash upon me with that thing. But don't you find it oddly.... amazing? Beautiful, even? I'm frankly spellbound by this thing. Has anybody ever seen its equal? If I make my own, can I secretly download all the data he's bulking up into that thing for myself? Can we do battle, like with axes? Will I finally be allowed into the SCA? Okay, now that is crazy, Melissa.