Miscellaneous

The man tells the stranger, in hushed tones of course, that he heard they were the person to consult if one were, hypothetically, in search of specific information. An eyebrow is cocked, though onlookers would be justified in an uncertainty as to whether this is in response to the suggestion, its phrasing, or merely a nervous tick of sorts, as is so often discovered in the conduct of others. ″Information with regards to the whereabouts of a half decent barber or perchance even a fully decent web designer″ the man continues, seemingly unphased by the possibly voluntary contraction of facial musculature. The reply, this time, is verbal in nature: What's it to him? And the man responds truthfully in describing his impetus as a gnawing uncertainty, as a distressing absence of knowledge he would prefer to possess. Arguments of this nature are known to be largely ineffective on strangers and largely strange to the people one knows, and yet, this particular figure, themselves a gnawing hole of factoids the man is not privy to, defies probability-based prediction of outcomes. They have lived a long life of not knowing a great number of things and have found the experience of living that life for the most part unenjoyable. While correlation does not mandate causation, a truth often acknowledged and scarcely applied, this statement happens to form a constituent part of the stranger's remarkable breadth of largely insignificant ignorances. They reveal that they are indeed familiar with the current whereabouts of the barber and the web designer, though speaking more on the matter could get them in serious trouble. The man is tempted to ask which of reality's myriad appendages it is that wields the threat of such trouble. He is tempted to then rhetorically ask ″the fuzz?″, primarily because he has grown, in an existence depressingly sparse in terms of non-linguistic joys, a profound fondness for these types of expressions. The urge is however diligently curtailed seeing how he has no desire to be the sort of person who would repay kindness with frivolity. Mostly he repays kindness in dinner invitations and curiously shaped rocks he finds in the sorts of places he frequents in those precious few moments in which he isn't having dinner. The man does not enjoy dinner, for he consumes it more often than is common and much more often than those who received education of a medical nature tend to recommend. It also tends to be rather noisy when he does, as he regularly comes into possession of great quantities of kindness in need of repaying. Digestion is impaired by such circumstances, as the many gastroenterologists sat around his oaken table enjoy to grimly remark, while doing their own digestion a disservice in kind. They tend to wield the sorts of polyethylene replicas of seagull-intestines that come in useful within the precise Venn-intersection of social chit chat and and elaborations concerning their chosen field of study, which comprises no more than 83 Percent of the human experience and and 21.6 percent of observable non-human experiences. Sadly, they will add that seagulls have, as of yet, eluded observation, but they are rather certain with regard to the accuracy of their to-scale polyethylene models regardless of the abundant absence of corroborating data. To the man, they look sensible, though he can't call himself an expert as result of the same quirk of character predisposing him to using terms like ″fuzz″. He might consider ″erudite″ perhaps, if it were that he was one. Even if he was, the accuracy of his assessment might be lessened through the diminished wit born of carcophony and stomach pain. He does not wish to invite the stranger to dinner. He hands them a rock.