James is yammering at me while I work, lost in thought. “Right now though,” he says, “I need a blow-torch, a copper pipe, and a vice.”

I’m barely paying attention, because he’s always like this. “I’m going to start blogging you,” I tell him.

He seems amenable to the idea.

For someone who finds his own life terminally uninteresting, he sure manages to make things intriguing for the rest of us. When he wants to broadcast something provocative—which in this case can run the gamut from thought-provoking to profoundly disturbing—he tells us in bits and pieces, always with a list of strange web links and consistently surprising philosophies. The only note to rival this last in cryptic flavor came in mid September, maybe two weeks ago: “I’ve collected a few more things for my invention… A wooden mouse and 100 brass buttons.”

“Soon,” he said. “Yes, soon.”

I can only wonder, or wonderingly, get back to work.