Odd People: Cranks, Eccentrics & Nutters

[LaurenChurchill]

Hmm. That reminds me of the old guy walking around town with a sandwich board saying stuff abouit how Bush and Blair and Howard are evil and will bring the world to its impending doom. The words change every week but the message remains the same.

 

[_Gnomey_]

Hmm. That reminds me of the old guy walking around town with a sandwich board saying stuff abouit how Bush and Blair and Howard are evil and will bring the world to its impending doom. The words change every week but the message remains the same.

Would this happen to be in Perth? Because if so, I think I know the guy you're talking about

 

[Graylien]

There was a woman in the supermarket this morning who was walking around continually making what can only be described as sinister hissing noises.

Naturally, she queued up right behind me.

She started muttering to herself about how prices were different in Switzerland than England, then went back to hissing. Hiss, hiss, hiss. She also kept darting from side to side and kept bumping against me. It was a rather long queue, and I had to restrain the growing urge to say something unkind to her.

Proper freaked out, I was.

 

[Doctor_Occupant]

The place I used to work had a regular caller.

We'll call him Tony.

Tony would call us with the usual run of the mill issues and we'd try to fix them for him, and then the conversation would head south spectacularly.

Tony, you see, is embroiled in a legal and personal battle with a major service provider. They are suing him for billions and have threatened to assassinate him. They are watching him right now.

Tony has been told this by business rivals of that service provider in secret meetings.

Tony is also unable to approach the court house in a major US city because the guards there have been ordered to kill him on sight.

He's involved in a legal battle with his family, who have enlisted the support of senators and a state governor to bring him down.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Tony on at least two occasions. I had to resist the impulse to introduce him to the concept of the Illuminati (the one thing his stories lacked were a shadowy conspiratorial organisation) and, I have to admit, enjoyed the experience both times. He was so matter-of-fact about the whole thing that it was like having a face to face chat with the Conspiracy forum.

 

[fnordish]

i once had this somewhat unnerving experience. i was taking a moderately long bus ride (only about an hour or so, but it seems awfully long this time), and i sat about halfway back on the right side. everything seemed normal at first, until i actually looked around and observed the people around me. lets see, clockwise from my left: man clutching a ratty plastic bag, peering at everyone very suspiciously, like we all wanted to steal it. in front of him, there was a man who, i swear, was talking to his wallet. i had a good view of him, he had no phone, not even a hands free, and was talking directly to his wallet. in front of him, a guy sitting crosslegged on his seat rocking back and forth in a very exagerrated way. across the aisle, there was this woman who was the most depressed looking creature ive ever seen, staring morosely out the window. next to her, chatting away in a very animated fashion and totally oblivious to her, was some man. didnt seem to notice she wasnt paying the slightest bit of attention to him. behind them, in the seat in front of me, was a man staring intently at the shiny side of a dvd. i wouldnt have thought him particularly odd, except that he turned out to be a chatterer, who talked my ear off about how his landlord and the local government was out to get him the whole damn ride.
for a while i was seriously worried i had jumped on the wrong bus and was on my way to the local mental hospital. but no... i got where i was going, a little exasperated, but with no problem... this is just the state of the city i live in.....

edit: yeah, i forgot to mention that, aside from the driver and myself, these were the only people on the bus. it was eerie...

 

[Mythopoeika]

My own experience of using buses has been similar - buses do seem to attract nutty people of all types. I've met my fair share over the years.
Trains are less likely to attract nutters, perhaps because they cost more (or something).

 

[fluffle9]

Round here the local trains are cheaper, but what you say is still true. Maybe it's because trains require slightly more forward planning and effort, but if you plan properly your journey will usually be quicker, so they're less likely to be used by the randomly-straying mentally ill than normal people on the way to work.

Yesterday I got the bus into town and there was a man on there cutting his nails. :cross eye

Not bus-related but definitely strange: some friends recently told me about "Gay Ray", a local tramp who goes around asking people questions. They'd encountered him in the pub a few days before and one of them had made a recording of him on her mp3 player shortly before he was removed from the premises by force, but I believe they'd seen him around before. The guy is called Gay Ray (by them, at least) because he likes to ask people if they're straight or gay. He also asks people the time, and when they last had sex (he claims to have last had sex in 1988). I realised I'd met him myself - I was out with my boyfriend and an old man asked him whether it was 3 or 4 o'clock (it was quarter to 8) and then whether he was straight or gay.

 

[taras]

Edinburgh's vagrant drunks. OK, so drunks aren't strange as such, but a peculiar incident happened the other day which made me smile.

A bit of back story:
Edinburgh's drunk brethren used to hang out at Hunter Square, just off the Royal Mile, but they have now been barred from that area (ASBO'd out?*), so they have been forced to roam the streets for a suitable new place. For a while, they hung around at Bristo Square near the University, but it seems the uni has banned them from their property too. So they are forced to find a place in between the two.

Cue me walking across South Bridge, to find them sitting in a near-perfect tableau, not dissimilar to the Last Supper. They had arranged themselves almost symmetrically, some standing, some lying down and some sitting on a bench, all bottles in hand and standing almost totally still. I wish I had had my camera, and the nerve to take a picture...




* I heard a rumour that they had been banned after several of the gentleman vagrants had been openly 'taking turns' on a lady of their kind in Hunter Square. This may not be based in solid fact.

 

[Xanatico]

Gentleman and lady vagrants? They're classier than the ones around here.

There was a poster here in the city, advertising some new slim phone. I think the brand was Motorola. It showed the face of a woman, with one ear ring looking like a black rectangle and on the other holding up her phone which had the same width and lenght as the rectangle. What was interesting was that the model in the picture was really elfin. She seemed to have pointy ears and also a rather pointy face with almond eyes. Wonder if she was entirely human.

 

[Anonymous]

I've stumbled across a few eccentrics over the years, though one particularly stands out, even years later.

This would have been in the mid-90's, at The Plaza mall in Greenville, NC. There was an older gent, probably in his 60's or 70's, and bald as an egg. However, apparently not content with that state of affairs, he had constructed an elaborate headdress for himself out of paper cups and great loops of pastel plastic tubing. And he strode through the crowded mall, nodding and gesturing grandly to the passers-by with a beatific smile on his face. As the thing lacked any sort of visible external support, I could only come to the conclusion that the thing was actually glued to his head.

I had chance to go back there on a school trip a couple of years later, and the Mall Pope was there again - only he'd exchanged his crown for two arced, rainbow crests composed of what looked suspiciously like drinking straws. Again, they appeared to be affixed directly to his scalp, and he toured the mall, delivering his strange benediction to those he met. My younger brother has had opportunity to spot him a couple more times, once with a towering headpiece made of cups stacked alternating bottom-to-bottom and mouth-to-mouth and once more with two "antennae" made of cups and more tubing.

Oddly enough (relatively), he was otherwise conservatively dressed - the one outfit I remember consisted of khaki trousers and a light blue polo shirt - and most people seemed to take him completely in stride. Though whether that was because he's a normal fixture at the mall, or they were just intent on not seeing him, I can't say.

 

[jandzmom]

Weirdness just today

Today, a neighbor's grown son got pissed off at another neighbor because she had a problem with him laying on her lawn with his dog. He was half naked and shouting obscenities at the time.

After he got off her lawn, he went across the street to his house. He re-appeared a short time later, dressed head to toe in camoflage like an Army comando. He set up a machine gun-type device in his yard, and proceeded to shoot paint gun balls at her cars, house , trees, and dog. Then he shot at random people -- a guy on a bike and a women with a baby in a stroller.

The police in our little Stepford town, swooped in, and the guy ran into his house. They spent four hours talking to this weirdo, before he left out the back of his house and they finally caught him -- again half naked.

The final weirdness? When another neighbor called the police because she had heard that something had happened, they denied that anything had happened at all.

JandZmom

 

[JudgeNutmeg]

There's a guy in my city who walks really fast while holding a radio to one ear and singing along with it rather loudly.

Haven't seen him for a while, though.

he doesn't wear a cowboy hat and carry a small picture of tho old bbc test card with him does he?
used to be a guy in wolverhampton did this all day long for years and years,known as the radio man or cowboy man.He used to carry a toy cowboy pistol too.I remember one day he was beaten up and had his radio stolen and the local shopkeepers chipped in for a new one for him

 

[kaptaincu]

well...........................
in my job i deal with weird people every day.
there is the old woman who really believes she is Queen Victoria and therefore should not have to pay for anything.
the old woman who contuinally calls us because there is a man and woman in her roof talking about her......
The certain minority group that sniffs paint till they cant remember their names and drink metho till thay pass out in their own vomit.....

the human species is one that i find extremely amusing due to our capacity for delusion.....
i used to believe in aliens but now i think that if they were out there they would have culled us by noe for being, well, stupid.....

 

[OneWingedBird]

There used to be a Down's Syndrome guy that went around Leeds dressed as a cowboy, remember seeing him on my bus to school sometimes cira 1985, and later around Headingley in the early 90s.

Haven't seen him in years, so no idea what happened to him...

 

[zardozzz]

My mates mum was one of those people who wander the streets, mumbling incoherantly. One of the few strange things i actually heard her say was "Benson & hedges, smoooooth............. Marlboro, harsh.." She also had a large collection of street debris piled up in her window.

Very ocassioinaly she would speak with great clarity. For instance she talked of how it was her theory that opiate (All opium poppy based drugs, ie: heroin, pethidine, morphine, codeine etc) addiction was caused by the practice of giving the mother pethidine to ease the pain of labour. The baby remembers this into adulthood and unconsiosly seeks it out again till it finds it.

Then one day she was taken into hospital and given a 2 week course of librium (and maybe other drugs ?) and she came out totaly cured. The effect if you'd seen it was nothing short of a miracle. Makes one wonder how many others are in a similar state ?

 

[Iris]

kaptaincu you don't work for a local council do you ? When my daughter stated working at her local council offices she wondered why the other staff suddenly made themselves scarce when a certain woman came in. She had a long written lists of strange questions she wanted answered most having nothing to do with the council, like where to get a solar hot water service and what type of poting mix should she use. After dealing with them the best she could the woman said she had spiders on her washing line and what was council going to do about it ? A little surprised, my daughter suggested insect spray. She smiled then and said " You've been so helpful I'm going to bring all my questions to you in future.

 

[fluffle9]

The other day I was wearing a green t-shirt and an oddly-dressed lady (I think she was wearing a sari, although she didn't look asian) passed me in the street and barked "I could have done with that green top this morning!" at me.

 

[alytha]

Once I went to a gas station to fill up my car, and there's a german golf in front of me. I couldn't see anybody around it or inside, so I supposed the owner was inside paying, and waited.
Then a guy gets out of the car, very slowly. He's wearing one of those huge black oiled raincoats and a cowboy hat. Taking all his time, he looks around, gives me a creepy look, and walks around his car, to where the gas thingies are. I supposed he was going to take one and start filling up his car, but no, he half turned away from me, and pulled his coat back, looking for all the world as if he was going to pee against the pump ?!
At that point, I decided to go and wait at another pump.

 

[escargot]

Earlier this week I was walking through town in my shorts with a rucksack on, with my two dogs on leads connected by a pink sports bag handle. When I came to a hill I put one dog either side and let them pull me along.

I suddenly thought, I've turned into one of them nutty people... :shock:

And immediately several of the local eccentrics hove into sight, and all greeted me politely.

There was the Bike Man - enormously tall, dressed like a tramp even down to a string-belt and with long hair and beard. He always rides a bike and has bits of other bikes slung across his back on more string.

The Frame Man - very elderly, bent almost double over his walking frame, with overcoat and woolly hat even on hot days, carrying a little ghetto-blaster which plays country music at full blast.

The Whippet Man - he has whippets. Lots of whippets.

They all said a cheery hello! and I waved back and thought, that's it, I'm one of them at last. 8)

 

[rynner2]

They all said a cheery hello! and I waved back and thought, that's it, I'm one of them at last. 8)

Ha ha, join the club!

 

[OneWingedBird]

Ha ha, join the club! Very Happy

I usually click on this thread with a certain apprehension, just in case there's a new post about a crazy woman from Leeds who has pink hair (among other things we won't go into)... :shock:

 

[mindalai]

I've always thought that once you have a dog it's only a matter of time before you're "one of them".

 

[escargot]

Like, one of them people who nobody sees for a bit and then they're found half-eaten by Alsatians? :lol:

 

[Niall114]

Like, one of them people who nobody sees for a bit and then they're found half-eaten by Alsatians? :lol:

Or, as in the case of Carmen Miranda, half eaten by a Chihuaha.

That's if "Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon" is in any way to be believed anyway.

 

[Bigphoot2]

Or, as in the case of Carmen Miranda, half eaten by a Chihuaha.

That's if "Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon" is in any way to be believed anyway.

That must have taken it ages

 

[escargot]

That's why I plan to buy Alsatians when I start being infirm. Much less mess.

 

[James_H]

Saw a guy in Oxford Street twice today: first time he was lugging a battered, small leather case on a trolley, second time taking donations for a Diabetes Charity. He was dressed in a very ancient grey top hat, and tails. Is he a regular sight there?

 

[mindalai]

That's nothing. I was in Leeds today and I saw this freak of a woman with pink hair...

 

[Zorya]

I hope this counts...if not, I apologise!

I passed a guy on my way home from work tonight, walking along the main street of a small village nearby. He was in his early thirties, and dressed like he was going to a wedding or something. As he walked along he was tearing pages out of a Thomson's directory (like very local yellow pages) and dropping them, crumpled, onto the ground.

He was very methodical and purposeful, and wasn't missing a page as he went. The street behind was full of crumpled yellow pages flying about in the wind.

I have no idea what he was doing, but it seemed very important, and he didn't look like the kind of guy who was just littering for no reason.

Disgruntled Thomson's employee perhaps?

 

[TVgeek]

Was he imitating Jonathan Pryce's character
from "Something Wicked This Way Comes"?
It sounds a bit like how he was dressed and the tearing
pages from a book -- which somehow (he was in a library)
began blowing around the streets.

Weird.
TVgeek