Crazy, crazy Chemtrail guy

The BBQ Pit
1

So, I realized at 9:30 tonight that I forgot to pick up the books I need for my students tomorrow. I checked the hours of the local Barnes & Noble, and saw that they’re open until 10:00. Great! It’s 5 minutes from here, I’ll just head over and pick up what I need.

I got there at 9:37, and quickly found what I needed. I went to the cashier, enrolled myself in the teacher discount program, and paid the $64 for the three books I needed. Everything is awesome at this point.

And then I walked away from the counter.

A white male, shorter than my 6 feet and older than my 27 years came up and grabbed my shoulder from behind. I spun around and looked at him; I started to ask what the fuck was going on, but he started first:

“I saw your shirt. Have you heard of Chem Trails?”

I’m wearing a green t-shirt right now. The front says, “One Less Car. Keep Banff Green.” The back says, “Bikes… The Link to Green!” and has a picture of a bicycle chain and a picture of a car, circled with a slash through it (the “no” sign).

Because of the shirt I’m wearing, and because I heard, “…shirt. Have you heard of … trails?”, I think he’s talking about mountain biking. I don’t think this is illogical, and I still am finding his behavior rude. I just quickly said no, I’d look it up, and started to walk away.

Tinfoil Asshole grabs me again, and starts in on a spiel about how the government has modified 757s and 767s and they’re flying lower and he’s looked with his binoculars and it’s the Chinese or the Russians working with our government and mind control and Illuminati and don’t I see the CARS aren’t the problem, it’s the wasted JET FUEL?!

I told him, “You know what? I have heard about this. On NPR. They were debunking it.” He then started yelling about me closing my mind off and haven’t I noticed the different flight patterns in Gilbert in the past 10 years?

I answered that last question. “I’ve only lived here a year. I’ve most of my life within two miles of an Air Force base (Selfridge ANGB in Michigan). I’m sure whatever chemicals they’re spraying, I’ve gotten a higher dose than you anyways. Plus didn’t the airport in Gilbert change three years ago from Air Force to passenger service? Maybe that changed the flight patterns.”

He rambled some more, and I told him, “Hey, ya know what? I’ll look it up when I get home.” (I did, both through the SDMB and Google; that’s some Grade-A crazy, right there). He got angry and yelled as I was walking out the door, “Yeah, well, our money all says “New World Order” on it in Latin! Think about that!” I wanted to go back in and either A) remove this crazy asshole from this planet, or B) point out his shitty, fallacious, ad-hominem-filled debate tactics. Instead, I walked out to my car, got in, opened my wallet, and took out the $5 and $20 bills I have in there.

There is no Latin on either one.

2

Dude, don’t piss off the Illuminati.

3

Well, you’ll likely know there’s Latin on the one-dollar-bill, as part of the Great Seal of the United States – ‘Annuit Coeptis’ and ‘Novus Ordo Seclorum’, the first meaning ‘He approves [our] undertakings’, and the second means ‘new order of the ages’, not ‘new world order’, as it’s often mistranslated by conspiracy crooks (that would be ‘novus ordo mundi’, I think). Seclorum actually should be saeculorum, but that doesn’t fit a hexameter. The phrase merely signifies the beginning of a new era with the American Declaration of Independence.

Or at least that’s what they say. :stuck_out_tongue:

4

So how do you explain those two lost minutes? Two minutes taken from everyone and the Illuminati will soon control time itself.

5

Try living in NYC and having “9/11 was an indside job” scrawled on every subway ad.

The latest one I saw was that “Obama = New World Order = Trilateral Commission”

Trilateral Comission?!?!? That gag’s got whiskers on it!

6

Yeah. I’m thinking that at some point, all the mentally ill in this city were kicked out of shelters and given cartloads of conspiracy theory stickers.

Adames is the real mayor!

7

This is where I slam the heel of my hand into his nose.

Fun story otherwise.

8

Wow he musta been an elitist crazy. From what I’ve read on the SDMB, all the other crazies hang out at the library where the books are free. This guy hangs out where you have to pay for them!

9

Doesn’t US tender always have E pluribus unum on it, or is that just coins?

10

Their website…

And the words of The Master himself…

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_295.html

11

That reminds me of a time when I was accosted by a street loonie. I was waiting in a parked car for my husband to come out of a shop, so I was a trapped target.

Some wild-eyed guy approached me and commenced a diatribe about how the human brain looked just like a tree and was designed that way for some cosmic reason and somehow worked Jesus Christ into whole lecture. On and on he went.

I was desperately signaling my husband inside the store to hurry up, but he wasn’t looking in my direction. I was afraid to abruptly roll up the windows and lock the doors, because I was afraid I’d piss off braintree guy and trigger some sort of violent meltdown.

Insanity frightens me more than it should. I guess it’s sort of a phobia for me.

12

For my book column, I once mentioned a pamphlet some local guy had written in which he raved about chemtrails and the Illuminati. I didn’t get all sarcastic or anything; it wasn’t even a review. Just said that if you wanted it, here was the address to buy it and how much it cost. I completely restrained myself.

He e-mailed my editor and told her that

He sent her a separate e-mail to forward to me, asking, in part,

This just from giving the name, author’s pseudonym and price of the booklet.

She had our corporate counsel look into it and found that he had charges against him for domestic violence, resisting arrest, and menacing by stalking.

You don’t want to taunt these people. Really, it’s funny to talk about them in their tinfoil hats raving about their chemtrails, but I think this guy beat the shit out of his mother and stole her credit cards. I did not write the slightest thing dismissive about him, but he perceived it that way. **Teela Brown ** was right to be alarmed. Some people are harmless eccentrics and some people are really dangerous.

13

I had to find my keys!

14

I seem to see more crazy people in book stores than other places. Is it the print they come in to sniff or what?

15

Maybe so. The other place they favor is the public library.

16

The chemtrail folk are pretty thick* on the altie message boards these days.

My favorite was the recent posting of some photo purporting to show the interior of a Secret Chemtrail Plane containing large canisters of whatever mystery substance the Gummint is spraying all over the country to paralyze our will, or whatever. When even some chemtrailers had to admit that the photo had elements of a hoax, one came up with a prize explanation on the order of “Well, if it was a hoax, it must have been perpetrated by the feds to discredit chemtrail activists, which means chemtrails are real! WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!!” :smack:

*wordplay intended.

17

Oh, do they ever. Most of them are harmless, and often very sad, but some of them are damned scary. A few of the greatest hits:
[ul]* a middle-aged Korean man, very intelligent and usually polite, who was convinced the spirit of Nietzche lived behind the elevator control panel. He’d just ride it up and down, up and down, all day, having quite interesting conversations with the controls. Regulars would calmly ask him to punch a floor button; strangers usually took the stairs.

  • the woman who knew, knew, she was the rightful British queen. See, she was a twin born minutes before the Elizabeth upstart. They (the usual undefined ‘they’) put a silver plate in her head so she could always prove her right to the throne. She haunted the public library (in a medium sized US midwestern city, mind) in search genealogical proof of her claim. When we couldn’t produce any, we became part of the conspiracy, she became violent and then had to be removed by police.
  • “Word Man”, the doughty mountain man and aspiring author. In all weathers he tromped around in thigh-high boots that tied down the sides, a calf-length furry cape thing that smelled like roadkill on a hot day and carried a walking staff that was at least 6’ long. People got out of his way on sidewalks, even if they didn’t reel sideways from the stench first. He’d march up to the desk and bark out words he needed for his novel. Pornography, based on his requests: “PENIS!” “BREAST!” “SHAFT!”“QUIVER!”, all the while leering across the desk. We’d just write down his words on scratch paper, in nice block letters, and hand them to him with a blank face. We finally called the police when he came in sporting a large hunting knife.[/ul]
    Gotta love the profession. All that, and books too.
18

Was that you? You should have said so. Sorry for the inconvenience. I guess it was just bad luck for you, which is kind of ironic.

19

What a co-incidence! I was hoping to hear more about the braintree thing.

20

If this woman ever ran into Lyndon LaRouche (the nutbag who’s always running for President, and who thinks the queen of England is a drug trafficking kingpin), there’d be a perfect storm of lunacy.

Some of these folks are harmlessly entertaining. I once spent two hours trapped in conversation with a fanatical admirer of Thomas Edison, who had amazing insights to share on how the Victrola ruined modern sound reproduction.