One afternoon in June 1995, I found myself trapped in the Bodhi Tree, a stucco-fronted bookstore on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood where New Age wisdom-seekers sip herbal tea while discussing the latest ravings of Shirley MacLaine. I was freaking out because the professor I’d travelled 6,000 miles to meet had apparently stood me up. Stephen O’Leary, of the University of Southern California, had just published Arguing the Apocalypse, a prize-winning study of the rhetorical techniques of televangelists. I was researching my own book about the end of the world and was desperate to pick his brains. He was almost two hours late and the wind chimes were driving me nuts.

I liked to snack on benzodiazepines, which I always think go nicely with Californian sunsets

I was seriously considering flying back to London when this tubby little bearded guy scuttled in, babbling excuses and making a squeaky fuss about the best place to sit on the veranda. He wore shorts and Birkenstocks. Then he launched into his Aristotelian theory of millennial rhetoric, speaking so fast that he lost me in seconds. We’re not going to hit it off, I thought, not realising that my life had changed forever.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/ar...

 Manbird wrote:

then what happens...

HEY NOw COME ALL YE FAITHFUL  AND WATCH I AND I rip a Bakersfield 
phone BOOK into SHROUDS with the intuitive power of I'S undulating uvula!