Pickpocket? on the train

I posted this this morning in Liberty Hall. Right after the encounter, I didn't feel cool to post it on a non password protected site. A few hours later, that seems silly.

Judge by yourself. Here we go.

I've just been in a strange situation.
I was coming back home from my boyfriend's this morning. I was sitting on the train with this shady guy in front of me who was reading a free paper. He looked emaciated and had tracks on his arms. Another shady character was sitting across the aisle. In case anyone cares, the first guy was probably South American. The second's racial background was difficult to ascertain, but when he started talking it was obvious he was Spanish.

The first guy drops the paper and starts nodding off. I pick up the paper and start reading. The guy scuttles off to the window seat to sleep propped up against the window. He leaves a backpack unattended by his side.

The second guy picks up the backpack, removes a metal (silver?) cigarette case from a pocket and replaces the backpack by the first guy's side.

I start wondering if I haven't just seen a robber stealing from a junkie. I don't know what to do. The train is full of people, so my safety is more or less guaranteed. On the other hand, I remember the old Spanish saying: he who steals from a robber deserves a thousand years of forgiveness. This is none of my business, but I decide to butt in.

I look at the second guy. He gives me this blank stare.

"Is that yours?" I ask, pointing at the backpack.

"Yes"

"Then why are you keeping it over here?"

"I'm with that guy," he says pointing at the first guy. The first guy doesn't wake up. "Does it bother you?"

"No. Not at all." Ok. I hadn't considered this, I admit, but these two hadn't spoken a word to each other since they got in and I haven't caught any body language cues that they're together either.

"Are you from here?" The second guy says, referring to the suburbs.

"No," I lie, "I've come to see friends.

We get to my stop and I get off.

My question is: do you think these two were together? do you think I just saw someone stealing from a junkie? Do you think I was wrong to butt in?

There are other questions that bother me. The second guy looked odd but, would I have done the same thing if he were a nicely dressed old lady? What about a well dressed Spanish student? My guess is "no" to the first question and "yes" to the second, but I'll never know.

What was the junkie doing with a metal cigarette box in the first place?

Synchronicity

I found out about synchronicity yesterday, reading Jetse de Vries' blog for info on the the final selection of Interzone's May slush (my story "Slow Stampede" is on HOLD, so being me, I return for updates more than is resonable).

Today I found out that sacredmime from Liberty Hall has got a story accepted by The Town Drunk. If you've read my previous post, you know that my story "Master Yung" has sold to OG's Speculative Fiction. The strange thing is that sacredmime and I swapped these two exact same stories for revision for a Liberty Hall polish-contest thingy. It's kind of strange that they're being bought at the same time.

Sale! Master Yung to OG's Speculative Fiction

OG's Speculative Fiction has agreed to publish "Master Yung", one of my few straight SF stories.

"Master Yung" will be in this issue of the magazine, coming out on September 15th.

This is my second sale to OG's, the first one is due to appear in the anthology Forbidden Speculations.

Spam attack

Minor crisis,

I joined one of those stupid online groups for sharing pics and stuff and unknowingly send invites to my whole address book (including editors, yeah, it was that bad). I'm kind of pissed at the software, because they only showed me three contacts but I must have approved them to send spam to all my contacts, even those who weren't already in the network.

What makes this worse is that, in this case, the spam was sent by a stupid person (ie me) instead of by an Internet robot. What a foolish way to start the day.

Kill Me

After spending all morning studying, I reached my frustration-anger-desperation high point of the week.

This is what happens if you google "kill me"

Only 68 coffees to go.

Cardiology

Today I managed to study the three main types of myocardiopathy and revise cardiac valves. I know this doesn't mean anything to any of the people who read my blog (being writer types and all that), but studying all this in one day means:

1. I hauled ass
2. I study from a rather abridged manual.

Just wanted to share my exasperation. Now, I'm off to finish those valves and hopefully start with "shock".

101 reasons and clicking compulsions

101 reasons to stop writing is back! 101 reasons is one of my regular time-wasting compulsive clicking blog stops and when Sean Lindsey went on hiatus, I found the habit was hard to kick. I kept returning to the blog and going duh! when I realized that there was no new content.

Well, one of those compulsive clicks paid off: 101 reasons has migrated to a new fancy blog and I anticipate many happy masochistic reads.