He always dreads opening his mouth at this time of day. Doing so means having to taste that suffocating, pasty fog that is born and dies every morning between 3 and 4 AM...Far Too Early, of course.

"Stupid paste."

"Stupid paste-taster."

"Did I ask you?"

"Tick...tick...tick...tick..."

This sin't exactly what you would call "worth barganing for". Observe:

"Is this worth barganing for?"

"No."

See? Big fat waste of breath, wasn't it?

"Yep..."

It's right about now that his mind stumble-drags like a lopsided tumbleweed on sedatives to a song from his childhood of which he can only remember one line. He could only remember the specific line in the fisrt place because as a Small Impressionable Person he had so much trouble figuring out what was really being said, as in the song "My Girl", which he continually mistook as "Magic". It's a somewhat fortuate coincidence that his parents were (past tense used to denote the fact that they are no longer) Presbyterians and not Baptists, lest he be taken aside and told of the Hellish, Evil Practices of Satanic Lesbian Pagan Musicians, who would invite him into their orgy-fied gingerbread house for all sorts of strange graphic sex acts involving blood and animals and Satan and animals' blood and Satan's animals and Satan's blood and Satan's animals' blood and so on. But that's a bit beside the point, innit?

"No, do go on."

If you insist...