I, Shithead

So far, I've narrowly avoided umbrella eye-gouges 3 times today, albeit 2 of those times were from my own umbrella, but I'm definitely counting those. My last post about rain-walking was mostly hot-air (to help dry my dignity) and today I'll eat the left-overs: do use an umbrella! My favourites I've seen are the clear plastic brollies with the high parabolic profile (you can stick your entire upper-body in there and still manage to navigate with more than your sense of smell). They're meant to appeal to women, but hell, so do I.

The lady whose company I borrow ('keep' too fickle a word) is staggeringly engaging, and she'll regale me with crafted anecdotes - from the sidesplitting to the horrific - until we reach that region of the night that only psychopaths, eBayheads and upwardly-mobile librarians ever frequent: that timebelt of the insanely late. So we carved up an accord: today we get up AND STAY UP... We got up 7 hours earlier than yesterday and I think I might be hallucynating with tiredness, or from it.

Generally I find I can temper tiredness with food, and conversely sooth the hunger-wolf with sleep. So I vowed to keep myself topped up with food so's to stay innoculated from fatigue-induced shitheaditis and thought this to be the perfect occasion to try the $7.99 (+Tx) Indian buffet I see while toing and froing the Plateau. It sucked. It sucked to the degree that it corrupted the 'all-you-can-eat' slogan from that of enticement to that of taunting provocation. While I did get to ingest the DOA sheep that my subconscious had been laboriously hurling over the fence, there were what could've only been bone flecks in the vege dish and the rice was like machine-blended airplane insulation foam.

All this aside, I was floating in semi-conscious revery when I paid the bill. I followed the Indian gentleman to the register. We have a fairly good rapport - this used to have my favourite menu [a la carte]- and so sallied some, with his final joke being 'do not be fearful, but the bill comes to $9.11' and so I answered, too quickly and way too wrongly: 'don't worry, i'm not a suspicious person'. I paid, tipped, put on my coat and only when I was half-out the door did my shithead-comment alarm go off. Of course I meant 'superstitious', not 'suspicious', but if I were to return and correct myself then I'd have to possibly explain why saying 'suspicious' was such a shithead misadjectivism, only coming into existence because I was tired and not because he was brown etc. This further blustering would be an exercise in shitheadity of Costanza proportions. So naturally I meekly tiptoed out and now attempt to assuage my guilt in that neo-Catholic cyber-confessional commonly given the appellation of 'my blog'.

ps. Interestingly, this gaffing occurs reasonably frequently when I'm dog-tired. My last mega-clanger was several years ago, when after cabbing home from the airport, and genially nattering in drowsy English and my brutal pidgin French to the Haitian driver, we arrived at my apartment, I paid and leant through the open passenger window to give him his tip and say thankyou, good night. 'Merci. Bon noir' I cheerily nodded through the warmth from within, his smile froze as much as mine peeled slowly back by the rictus of horrific revelation: yes, instead of saying 'good night', I'd of course said 'good black'. I wheeled stiffly around and scolding myself something fearsome, gingerly retrieved my bags from the boot of the taxi. I did not look back. Until today, I'd honestly thought it was an isolated mistake, but apparently I'm actually a fucking bigot when I'm tired. Perhaps I should look for work within the government.