Drivel

Barnaby Pringle was a man of many words, though few of them made any sense. He sat at the corner of the local café every morning, nursing a cold espresso and scribbling furiously into a leather-bound journal. To the casual observer, he looked like a visionary poet; to his neighbors, he was the neighborhood source of .

Barnaby didn't care. He continued his , eyes gleaming with the misplaced confidence of the truly absurd. It wasn't until a large, friendly Golden Retriever wandered over and began to drivel —literally—onto Barnaby’s shiny leather boots that he finally stopped talking. drivel

"That is complete and utter ," muttered a woman at the next table, not looking up from her book. "Total balderdash ." Barnaby Pringle was a man of many words,

One Tuesday, Barnaby stood up and cleared his throat so loudly that three pigeons took flight from the sidewalk. Barnaby didn't care

He held up his journal. Within its pages was a disorganized rambling of arrows, coffee stains, and the word "Zest" circled seventeen times. His argument, as he explained it to a confused mailman, was that if everyone ate enough lemon zest at exactly 3:00 PM, the collective sourness would "electrify the atmosphere" and power the streetlights.

"It's not genius, Barnaby," the mailman sighed. "It's just .".