(diaryland) August 17, 2004 - 2:51 p.m.

You know when you have those dreams where the same thing happens over and over again in a giant loop and eventually you freak out because you're so frustrated?

That happened to me in real life yesterday.

I was at the train station and I decided to go to the closest vending machine. When I got there, an insane homeless man was stuck in a vicious circle with it. What he would do was press the number 10 several times on the machine, and then walk back about three metres and survey it peacefully for a few seconds. Then he would do the exact same thing over and over and over again. He would always press the number 10. He had a little shopping bag full of brochures he'd discovered in the bin.

I freaked out. I felt that sort of frustration you get in those repeaty dreams. Another girl was watching the whole thing from afar. I think she wanted to use the vending machine.

I knew I had to stop the loop. I went up to the guy in the pressing the number 10 part of his routine, and said, "You want chips?"

He said, "gggggg-mmmmm. nnnnn nnnnnn," very quietly. He had tiny pointy yellow teeth. They were sort of cute.

I put some money in the slot while the man went to the part of his routine where he has to be three metres away from the machine. Then I said, "Which one do you want?" I sounded kind of terse for some reason.

The crazy homeless man came back to the vicinity of the machine and he ambiguously pointed at the chicken twisties with a little incoherent mumble. So I typed in the number for him, which, incidentally did not at all involve the number 10.

I grabbed the packet from the bottom of the machine and gave it to him. He held the packet out and looked at it like he didn't know what to do next. He also didn't really look like he even wanted the chips. Maybe he just liked pressing the number 10 many times with short recovery breaks, just for the hell of it.

I left him standing there comprehending the chips packet and went to the train platform. I never ended up getting anything for myself because I used up my last money on the homeless guy.

He'd better have eaten his chips, you know.

I cannot remember which comedian said that all homeless people seem to have copious amounts of healthy hair. It sure was true for this guy.