Bill Denbrough beats the devil

Our most regular customer came in tonight. We'll call him...Satan.

Satan never buys pizza. Most of the time, he shows up at around five o'clock, buys a few beers, plops in front of the television, and sits there all night. Over the course of those five hours, he will speak to anyone near him. About anything at all. Anything.

Even more annoying, almost everything the man says is total horseshit. He will express his deep appreciation for movies he sees commercials for -- when the movies haven't been released yet. He found me watching X-Play one day, and commented on the game they were discussing. "Oh, I just played that," he said. "It's really cool, man."

"You just played this game?" I said, pointing at the TV. On it, Morgan Webb was talking about Haze.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "I just got it."

"You just got Haze?"

"Yeah."

"That's weird, 'cause they haven't finished making it yet."

"..."

He once told me the long, intricate tale of how the Russian Mafia attempted to assassinate him in the parking lot of the University of Houston, by using poison delivered by a stunningly ineffectual assassin. This has become his trademark story for us employees, and I employ it whenever possible to give my fellow coworkers some perspective.

"Man, Satan just said [x]."

"The Satan who was almost assassinated by the Russian Mafia?"

"...Oh yeah. Never mind."

So we all hate this guy. But there is one night of the week when even Satan is welcome among us, when even Satan can be counted as a friend. Thursday night. Lost night.

Those who have read my other blog know about my passion for the show, and it's a passion Mini Boss shares. Since ABC moved the show to Thursdays, it's become a communal experience: from 8:00 to 9:02, Mini Boss and I practically shut things down and take over the dining room. We spend each commercial break excitedly discussing the most recent turn of events and wildly speculating on what might follow. And since Satan is always around the place anyway, he's become hooked on Lost, too.

But the experience didn't work out tonight. We were incredibly busy, and Mini Boss is at home recovering from surgery. Of course, I had the show recording on my DVR, so no worries about missing it.

Satan, though, got to sit in the dining room and watch it live. And once it was over, he felt eager to discuss with me.

"Man, Ben is in--"

"No!" I said. "Not one word. I recorded it, I'm going to watch it later. No spoilers."

"Okay," he said. "But Ben said to Juliet--"

"Stop!" I said. "I'm going to watch it the second I get home, and I don't want it spoiled. I mean it."

"Okay," he said. "Well, Juliet is--"

"I will kill you if you say another word," I hissed.

And...it worked. Satan went about his business, and immediately decided to start talking about something else.

Hey: we all have breaking points. Lost is mine.

We're talking about a line in the sand, here, dude.