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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

smokehead said:
Spooky. I was once terrorized by a large orange Smurf appearing at the window.
I used to sit on the stairs to do my college work, with the books spread out on the landing.
Slowly aware there was something in my peripheral vision, I looked up and put in a decent claim for the unassisted flight record.
Once calmed I snuck downstairs and flung open the front door, there was my brother, holding a line prop with the Smurf on the end going "whooo, whooo"
In a moment of comedy gold it took him a couple of seconds to realise I was in the doorway intent on bloody murder. He dropped the prop and fled.
Don't ask me why it was Orange. Some weird hobbyist had made it.
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I like your brother smokehead :)
 
I'll tell him. Bless him. He was bullied as a kid. I wasn't, I would thump people back. Sometimes on his behalf.
Very different in adulthood, I would walk ten miles out of my way to avoid a confrontation whereas he won't, or wouldn't, he's calmed down a lot as he's got older.
O.k., he was just being who he was, but when you just want a quiet days fishing y'know.
Fishing the Severn one time there was a bunch of lads on the opposite bank, they were a bit noisy and annoying, but I don't own the river so who am I?
Not my bro. he put up with it for about an hour then shouted across telling them to stfu.
They responded with threats, what followed almost qualifies as minor strangeness.
I went and stood beside him. We were told we were going to get our effing heads kicked in. I'm 6'2" and my bro is not much smaller.
My other brother, a sizeable lad himself joined us. Still the threats continued.
Then my dad, in his late sixties, somewhat shrunken by age and in no way physically imposing came along. There was a collective "oh" from the opposite bank and they did indeed stfu.
Afterwards we decided they had seen the size of the lobworms he always fished with, of such dimension the height of the Severn would lower when he reeled in.
One time a police siren could be heard. My bro shouted across "Dad! One of your worms has escaped!"
 
Arriving at the Kinver canal one morning we saw a large plastic lobster floating in the water. My bro fished it out and put it in his box.
Any time someone walked past he would pretend to be having an almighty struggle putting it back in the box, including the fake lobster grabbing him by the neck. I don't think many people were fooled but it was funny.
 
Lost something in translation?

I've just been perusing some IT situations vacant and saw one job description apparently posted in Latin.
out of curiosity, I ran it through Google Translate - and it came out all Stanley Unwin!

"On television, kids need a large real estate, or targeted players now in the care or not and diameter. Nulla. Clinical and graduated as a propaganda nutrition casino. Monthly and convenience ugly. In law enforcement, so that developers receive free Mauris no clinical skirt, but it had previously carrots salad. To put Zen players or a sauce. Vulputate until the court itself, a lot of tomato carton football."
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Lost something in translation?

I've just been perusing some IT situations vacant and saw one job description apparently posted in Latin.
out of curiosity, I ran it through Google Translate - and it came out all Stanley Unwin!

"On television, kids need a large real estate, or targeted players now in the care or not and diameter. Nulla. Clinical and graduated as a propaganda nutrition casino. Monthly and convenience ugly. In law enforcement, so that developers receive free Mauris no clinical skirt, but it had previously carrots salad. To put Zen players or a sauce. Vulputate until the court itself, a lot of tomato carton football."
Click to expand...

Sounds more like those spam posts we get featuring health powders, sexual enhancers and hair products.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Lost something in translation?

I've just been perusing some IT situations vacant and saw one job description apparently posted in Latin.
out of curiosity, I ran it through Google Translate - and it came out all Stanley Unwin!

"On television, kids need a large real estate, or targeted players now in the care or not and diameter. Nulla. Clinical and graduated as a propaganda nutrition casino. Monthly and convenience ugly. In law enforcement, so that developers receive free Mauris no clinical skirt, but it had previously carrots salad. To put Zen players or a sauce. Vulputate until the court itself, a lot of tomato carton football."
Click to expand...

Perhaps this is a code for really clever programmers.

The idea being that only really clever people who have learned Latin and broken the code will apply thus saving HR the hassle of going through lots of resumes.
 
I'm surprised there was a Latin translation for television.

INT21
 
I put the computer to sleep for a few hours today, and when I woke it there was a bleep I hadn't heard before, and then I noticed the screen formatting had changed. The monitor has a flat wide screen, and now web pages are wider and fill most of the screen; easier to read too!

But I've been using the monitor for weeks now, so why has the computer waited till now to adjust things? Is this a sign that Win 10 is developing a mind of its own?! :eek:
 
rynner2 said:
I put the computer to sleep for a few hours today, and when I woke it there was a bleep I hadn't heard before, and then I noticed the screen formatting had changed. The monitor has a flat wide screen, and now web pages are wider and fill most of the screen; easier to read too!

But I've been using the monitor for weeks now, so why has the computer waited till now to adjust things? Is this a sign that Win 10 is developing a mind of its own?! :eek:
Click to expand...
Windows 10 has had a major update. Perhaps it installed silently and reset various parameters?
 
rynner2 said:
I put the computer to sleep for a few hours today, and when I woke it there was a bleep I hadn't heard before, and then I noticed the screen formatting had changed. The monitor has a flat wide screen, and now web pages are wider and fill most of the screen; easier to read too!

But I've been using the monitor for weeks now, so why has the computer waited till now to adjust things? Is this a sign that Win 10 is developing a mind of its own?! :eek:
Click to expand...
That little mystery may never be solved - after the overnight shutdown, the system has today reverted to its original formatting... :rolleyes:
 
I had a slightly strange experience this afternoon. I had been performing in my band, doing a one-hour slot at an annual river carnival in my town. It was quite a crowded affair. I left after our slot and walked off the field. As I crossed through a strangely-deserted area(a small park-within-a-park) which should have been crowded with people as it was part of the main route from the town centre to the riverside carnival area, I suddenly felt everything go cold. As if someone had poured a jug of cold water slowly down my neck. What gave me the creeps was the slightly distorted, booming tannoy system echoing off the nearby buildings. I don't know why, but I had a sudden, terrifying sense of impending doom. Maybe it was something to do with the energy being given off by the massive crowd on the other side of the river. It was something I've never experienced before.
 
It sounds like you have met The Great God Pan. There is a thread about it here somewhere.
I read something similar about a man walking along a canal. he encountered a very localised cold spot and an eerie feeling. Iirc, again it was the sudden intense feeling of cold that struck him as strange.
It's an experience that defies rational explanation. The wind at ground level can behave very differently to what you feel on your face. I used to have a smoke by the fire exit door and watch the wind swirl the loose packing chips around, like little tornadoes, twisting them round this way and that very close to the ground.
I sometimes wonder if one of those little vortexes contains very cold air and that's what you feel. It's not a particularly convincing theory however.
 
smokehead said:
It sounds like you have met The Great God Pan. There is a thread about it here somewhere. ...
Click to expand...

There have been multiple threads on Pan encounters, such as:

CLASSIC ARCHIVE MERGED: PAN(IC) IN THE WOODS
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/classic-archive-merged-pan-ic-in-the-woods.10709

Meetings with Pan
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/meetings-with-pan.27725

pan stalker, giant foot and vanishing purse
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...t-foot-and-vanishing-purse.34196/#post-805124

FT article on Pan/Panic
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/ft-article-on-pan-panic.23345
 
I imagine fog would be most people's favourite as eeriest weather.
I did walk through my local park once through thick fog. Fortunately nobody loomed out of it and I found it more disorienting than scary.
Personally I consider a hot, still summer day to be the most conductive to weird feelings, nothing seems to be moving and it's very quiet.
 
PeteS said:
I thought it was just me- very quiet hot summer days in the middle of nowhere I find, for some reason, very claustrophobic. You would think it would be exactly the opposite.
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Do you live in a very humid region? When I lived in a high-humidity climate, eerie feelings like that were common in summer. Now here in a semi-arid climate, it doesn't feel that way at all. I've long suspected that high humidity and perceptions of the paranormal are related. Perhaps the water in the air acts as a conductor for...something.
 
Driving home late one evening, last week...I drove past three gigantic trucks parked in a layby, escorted by a small van covered in flashing amber lights.

The trucks were of the type which have a set of wheels on an extending jib, and are used to transport wind-farm propellor blades or offshore gantries etc.

But it was what I saw on the back of each that surprised me. It looked like an identical piece of railway track from a 1:1 scale model railway....concrete sleepers, rail bars, ties/rods. Just impossibly like a giant (but relatively-short) section of ready-made railway track. And not really in miniature....

Now, I instinctively-believe railway track (cf 'railroad track') is, in reality, created in situ. With seperately-cast concrete sleepers, long pseudo-continuous seperate lengths of cast metal track bar, and pins.

Not curious big/short lengths of ready-made track, just about the length of 1-and-a-half-carriages. Or the length of a steam loco plus tender.

So what the hell was it?

(ps the obvious might be to say it was something-vague, like 'narrow-gauge railway', but this was far from narrow (certainly, wider than a truck) and it was very chunky....it just literally looked like a full-scale version of a piece of model railway track, made of real-world materials. All three of them)
 
Could they be for the Channel Tunnel? I'm thinking they may have to be stronger and perhaps wider than average
 
smokehead said:
I imagine fog would be most people's favourite as eeriest weather.
I did walk through my local park once through thick fog. Fortunately nobody loomed out of it and I found it more disorienting than scary.
Personally I consider a hot, still summer day to be the most conductive to weird feelings, nothing seems to be moving and it's very quiet.
Click to expand...

You just gave me a flashback to a slightly eerie experience I had around 20 years ago.
There was extremely thick fog in Hampshire that evening and I had walked up to my local pub (around half a mile up hill) for a beer. On heading back down the hill an hour later with a couple of pints inside me, I noticed that the fog had thickened and was probably the worst I had ever seen. I was walking down the pavement on the left of the road and could not see the other side of the road through the fog. I think the Moon was almost full, which gave the fog a weird luminescence and impenetrability.

What I did see though was a strange dark figure, maybe 2-3 feet high, slowly plodding down the middle of the road, a short distance in front of me.

My pulse quickened as I wondered what the gnome-like apparition could possibly be. I was, however, determined to find out, so quickened my pace towards the shadow-like entity.

And I saw.....

... can you guess?
 
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