• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

Ooh, Beamaris Gaol! So they'll tell you spooky stories there? I'm up for that!

We sometimes cycle near there. I had relations in the area as a child and we'd holiday with them, and visit Beaumaris and the Castle. I don't think the Gaol was open to the public back then. I thought the Castle was most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. We must go back in the spring!
 
I think they are going to close until March but are hoping to open all year round from next year. She did say it had been closed for a while. The guide was brilliant, lnowlegable and enthusiastic about the Gaol (not just the ghosts).
 
Friday I was thinking about Italian sports cars (something I rarely do) and It dawned on me that you don't often see Maserati cars these days. I think they were taken over by FIAT. anyway. I went into town and pulled into a parking space, right behind a white Maserati.
 
How about this...
We got a new kitchen fitted last week and the fitter left some long pieces of wood on the living room floor overnight. I am always the first person downstairs in the morning, and, when I came down this day I saw one of my son's little toys (a digger from Superwings) on the wood, facing towards me at the door. I didn't remember seeing it there when I went to bed the night before but ignored it, put the kettle on and went for a pee in the downstairs toilet.
When I came back into the room about a minute later the toy was roughly 3 feet away from where it had been, still on the wood - and FACING THE OTHER WAY.
I immediately went upstairs - wife in the toilet, son still in bed playing his tablet, daughter in bed on her phone. I am certain none of them had come downstairs, cos they'd have had to pass the toilet I was in and I'd have heard them.
The fact the toy had turned around was the thing - maybe it might have rolled away, but to turn? On a piece of wood only about 4 inches wide?
 
Xeper,

Every time I read your username I am reminded of the film 'Electraglide In Blue'.
 
I didn't remember seeing it there when I went to bed the night before but ignored it, put the kettle on and went for a pee in the downstairs toilet.
When I came back into the room about a minute later the toy was roughly 3 feet away from where it had been, still on the wood - and FACING THE OTHER WAY.
And just how awake were you at the time? Sounds like you hadn't had any caffeine yet . . .
 
When it gets close to knocking-off time I have been known to sing 'I'm going home to see my cat!' the the tune of Ilkley Moor.
.. my favourite knocking off time anecdote (apart from the one when a chef in Staffordshire I was working with melodramatically 'flounced' by arm sweeping about 200 glasses off of a bar I was managing .. I agreed with his opinion btw) .. was the time my old flatmate became so pissed off working at Morrisons that he threw his arms in the air out of sarcasm and loudly sang "come with me, and you'll see .. A STORE OF PURE IMAGINATIONNN!" .. you probably had to be there to be fair.
 
At the end of the last century I was working in a secure area that had to be locked down and locked up with alarms set at 1700 each workday. The security officer of the day would come around, notify us workers it was time to leave, and perform all the securing procedures at closing time.

One particular officer of the day was relatively young and apparently a Monty Python fan. He would always notify us of closing time by coming to the secure area's entrance door circa 1655, poking his head in, and shouting "Run away! Run away!"
 
This happened a couple of nights ago.
I had a particularly vivid and semi-lucid dream that I was somewhere near a port or harbour. looking to buy a pair of shoes.

In my dream, I distinctly heard a woman say two seemingly nonsense words that sounded like "hugger mansons".
I woke up at this point, with those words stuck in my head. I reached for the iPad on my bedside cabinet, fired up Google translate and typed the words in.
It recognised them (with a slight spelling tweak) as "huggar mannsins" meaning men's comfort in Icelandic.
Apart from the usual basics of yes/no/hello/goodbye/thank you, I definitely don't speak Icelandic.
Thinking back, the dream did feel plausibly like downtown Reykjavik.

Edit: I should add that we did have a short break in Iceland a couple of years back, but I didn't buy any shoes there and had no idea what those words meant. I guess I must have heard someone say them and, for some reason, they stuck deep in my subconscious until my dream brought them to the surface.
 
Last edited:
He, (probably Zepper) was one of the two cops who were the main characters in the film.

Zepper's dream was to own a Harley Electra Glide. And it had to be blue.

It's a good film.
 
A rock in Omaha has become a 'Net sensation because people can't seem to avoid hitting it with their vehicles ...
A rock in Omaha became an overnight attraction thanks to the cars that can't seem to avoid it

A boulder has become a bit of a rock star in Nebraska after an untold number of vehicles crashed on top of it recently, sparking an unexpected fan base.

The rock, which rests inconspicuously in a parking lot median at N 156th St., has become Omaha's hottest new tourist attraction thanks to a vibrant Facebook group, Reddit community, and a 5-star Google Maps rating that features photos of cars, trucks, and SUVs wedged on its perch. ...

Over the past six weeks, Arrow Towing has responded to at least six calls of vehicles that have crashed into the rock, manager Steve Rains told CNN. ...

"The internet loves a good justice story, especially when it comes down to petty crimes being brought to light, like jumping a curb to gain three seconds on your day and instead finding yourself stuck on top of a rock for half a day"

"The beauty here is that 99% of the cars that got stuck on it have the exact same 'pose' in the photos, and it's just comedy at the expense of people's laziness and lack of attention, thinking they are smarter than... a rock."

A Facebook group called "The W Maple Omaha Rock" was started on October 21. The group, which has named the boulder "Rocko," has more than 20,000 followers who have populated it with memes and selfies taken with it. ...

"The whole point of the boulder is to make the curb it sits on more visible, so people stop running it over. You see big rocks that serve the same purpose all over town. For some reason, the people who frequent this area just can't seem to get it."

SOURCE (With Video): https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/09/us/omaha-rock-crash-meme-trnd/index.html
 
And these people drove over the curb (which separates the rock from the pavement) because . . . ?

It makes Omaha look like a pretty dull place, if that's the most interesting thing to do there.
 
Apparently so they could take a bit of a shortcut, wasnt it?

Yes ... Based on the photos of the repeated accidents it appears they all occurred when someone turned too soon or quickly to enter the parking lot.

I also notice the available photos all show larger vehicles (SUVs; full-sized pickup trucks) of the sort ordinary folks are prone to purchase and operate nowadays in the USA. Such larger vehicles require more care to drive and maneuver than the smaller vehicles most drivers used in earlier times.
 
A sort of serendipitous strangeness.

I mentioned elsewhere that I had bought some razor blades. Well, just opposite the shop I bought them from is a charity shop. One I haven't been in for years as they are getting expensive (Oxfam). I had intended to look on Amazon for a copy of the book 'The power of Now' By Eckhart Tolle. I went into the shop to see what they had, and there it was on a shelf. Price £1.50. If it hadn't been for the hunt for blades, I probably would not have gone in there. Not a street I often walk down.
Friday I was thinking about Italian sports cars (something I rarely do) and It dawned on me that you don't often see Maserati cars these days. I think they were taken over by FIAT. anyway. I went into town and pulled into a parking space, right behind a white Maserati.
Im sensing ... the return of rynner ???
 
Because there were train cancellations on my usual line this morning, I was obliged to drive to a different and quite remote station.
Was driving through some woods along the Surrey/Hants border around 7:00. The sun had just risen and driving conditions were good.
There was one other car perhaps 100 metres in front of me. I saw his brake lights come on and he slowed abruptly almost to a stop. I naturally slowed too - and spotted a sizeable animal running across the road from the treeline on the right, to some bushes on the left. The weird thing was, the animal appeared completely white. The car in front, that had almost hit the creature, drove on and, as I passed the spot where the animal had crossed,
I glanced to the left and saw a flash of white, as what was presumably the creature's backside disappeared into the undergrowth. This was definitely a quadruped and not a swan and I would say it was approximately golden retriever size, but it seemed to be galloping in a very low stance. I should add that these woods are fairly remote, with no houses anywhere near. Would love to know what animal it could have been!
 
Because there were train cancellations on my usual line this morning, I was obliged to drive to a different and quite remote station.
Was driving through some woods along the Surrey/Hants border around 7:00. The sun had just risen and driving conditions were good.
There was one other car perhaps 100 metres in front of me. I saw his brake lights come on and he slowed abruptly almost to a stop. I naturally slowed too - and spotted a sizeable animal running across the road from the treeline on the right, to some bushes on the left. The weird thing was, the animal appeared completely white. The car in front, that had almost hit the creature, drove on and, as I passed the spot where the animal had crossed,
I glanced to the left and saw a flash of white, as what was presumably the creature's backside disappeared into the undergrowth. This was definitely a quadruped and not a swan and I would say it was approximately golden retriever size, but it seemed to be galloping in a very low stance. I should add that these woods are fairly remote, with no houses anywhere near. Would love to know what animal it could have been!

An albino roe deer?

roe-deer-capreolus-capreolus-three-individuals-one-an-albino-germany-bavaria-X3RHXJ.jpg


white_roe.jpg


maximus otter
 
I would say that is certainly plausible Max, but the creature I saw seemed somehow less upright and lower and more stockily streamlined than a deer.
How rare are albino deer?

US info:

"Some wildlife managers have estimated that leucism may manifest itself in 1-2% of all deer in a given regional population, although pure white deer are much more exceptional."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nature-up-close-white-deer-carl-mrozek/

"...the chances of an albino deer being born are about 1 in 20,000, according to John Bates, Wisconsin Northwoods naturalist and co-author of White Deer: Ghosts of the Forest. Other sources say the odds are closer to 1 in 30,000.

Although these are the most commonly quoted figures, several more sources refer to a Wisconsin study (not found yet) that estimates the odds at 1 in 42,500. Still another source says the number of albino births could be as low as 1 in 100,000."

https://protectthewhitedeer.com/albino-questions

If the animal was, as you say, lower to the ground and stockier, I'd change my suggestion from roe to muntjac:


maximus otter
 
Back
Top