I don’t have a hell of a lot to say here, but:
I am still laughing over this. I have got to go to Cambodia.
BOOM, you damn chicken!
I love this thread, it’s making me cackle with delight.
I know a Native American shaman. His kid (and the reason I know this guy is because the kid is my cousin) is supposedly the reincarnation of two different people, including the father of a filmmaker. This filmmaker made a documentary which was supposedly about this relationship, but was basically 2+ hours of random scenes of Flim Guy painting, Shaman Guy…shaman-ing, and my little cousin running around the house being cute. Oh and at one point they go to a zoo and film some goats for 20 minutes.
There is a guy in one of my classes who wears all tie-dye, every day. His pants, shirt, and sweater are all tie-dyed. I don’t know much else about him but he seems to be BFFs with the know-it-all who sits in the front row.
I have a super awesome Internet pal who wears capes and masks outside on a regular basis. She’s incredible at just about every artistic discipline including crafting stories, but she is very private about her writing. In fact, she’s fairly…mysterious, I guess? in general, probably partially because she’s interested in secret societies, and doesn’t like to explain the titles of her work and that sort of thing. Her accent sounds very strange to me which adds to her charm from my perspective.
I’ve got more but I’m in a hurry…
Uh, without a doubt it would have to be my mom. Far and away she’s the weirdest person I’ve ever met.
Where do I start? She’s brilliant - came to this county, didn’t speak the language, graduated med school in 3 years and was one of only a few women in it to begin with. She’s also terribly genuine, to the point where her honesty makes people love her. I can’t think of anyone who’s ever met her who didn’t love her - except for maybe 1-2 people who are universally disliked themselves.
She professes her homophobia, but has close friends who are gay who she supports in anything they do, even their relationships, including a very close lab partner in college. She claims she doesn’t believe in interracial relationships or dating - but she’s been married to my father for 25 years, who is certainly not of her race. Some of my parents’ best friends are people in interracial marriages. She thinks Christianity is the only decent religion, but was married in a Hindu temple and allowed my dad to partially raise us as Hindus. She wears saris, loves Indian food and the culture, but then will turn around and sigh a breath of relief about how “Glad she is that we weren’t raised to worship elephant gods”. She claims she’s a devout Catholic, but is pro-choice and pro stem cell research, and never attends church. She thinks all priests are gay.
She somehow manages to think of herself as the most racist and bigoted person there is, when her real life and friends and people around her know her to exhibit exactly opposite beliefs.
Growing up, she was always a good role model - in terms of job and career goals - but never really good at personal stuff. She beat into my head that I could never ever live with a guy before getting married. That sleeping with anyone before getting engaged would ruin me. Of course, years later I piece together stories and timelines, and realize my parents did live together before getting married, and she was engaged before my dad. No parents want their kids to make the same mistakes, but she concots alternative realities and insists they’re real.
Another example is her absolutely awful memory. She has no recollection of our fights in high school, insisting instead that I was a saint. She also has no recollection of how I dressed or wore makeup - now insisting that I was “better looking” in high school, even thought I now dress more how she likes and wear more makeup than before.
She insists that my two somewhat serious boyfriends before my current SO (and future hubby) were gay. She swears by it.
She’s the most persuasive person I’ve ever met. She could sell ice and an ice making company to Eskimos. She’s talked her way out of EVERY speeding ticket she’s ever been pulled over for. She gets discounts on the wildest things. The most notable story is when she was pulled over in an area that was clearly marked no parking. She swears up and down she didn’t seen the 15 signs in the past 100 feet. The cop yells and yells at her. He goes to his car to write the ticket. He comes back to our car. He yells some more, she apologizes some more, and he tells her his wife was ticketed for the same thing recently, and she had to pay the fine. THEN HE TELLS US TO HAVE A NICE DAY. No ticket! Unfreaking believable! She’s not a sympathetic figure - she was in a year old luxury sedan! - didn’t hit on him, nothing. Unfreakingbelievable.
It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized how nuts she is when I told stories about her to friends.
All I got to say about the chicken shooting expedition in Cambodia is that dude got ripped off. I bet the Cambodian guys spent the next week laughing about the gringo who paid twenty five fucking dollars to shoot a chicken.
I teach at a college, so it is sort of unfair for me to even comment as, well, let’s just say there are plenty to choose from.
However, one that caught me off-guard:
New student, quite pretty - Asian ancestry - we have quite a few students from China, Japan, Korea, etc. - and usually the Asian women are quite good, nice students but on the shy side.
Then she opened her mouth and started talking.
She sounded like a Valley Girl from the North! This girl could not shut up! I mean, she just yaps away constantly in and out of class…and to hear her accent just cracked me up; it was so out-of-place to see her, but when you closed your eyes you could envision some blond air-head. Come to find out - as a child she was adopted from Korea and spent her life growing up in a nice Lutheran family that lived in Minnesota. Actually, the first clue should have been when I read her name on the roster - very Scandinavian. Think “Scarlett Johansson” (not her name, but similar). Quite the odd girl, and one I will never forget. BTW, she got an “A” in my class, but man - she made Chatty Cathy seem mute.
Is his real name MacGregor?
Oh BOY!!! rubs hands together
The downright strangest person I know, was a guy from my college. We called him StretchMark. (or Arm Flab Boy) He LOOKED like he had special needs or was a mentally ill homeless person. He also had this obvious robotic voice. He would sit down at random peoples tables in the dining commons, and start a monologe about computers or 80’s music or whatever. Then appros of nothing he would go " The skin on your arms is stretchy!" When he first did that to me, I was like " did I red your lips correctly? Are you on drugs?" Later on my friends asked me if he’d told me that the skin on his arms was stretchy. You would see him walking around campus poking at the skin on his arms. One of my friends said that he used to tell her " Boys have arm flab and girls have wobblies" He had an 80’s music obession and an obession with computers…but his trademark obession was the skin on his arms. He was about an inch away from being one of those kids who bang their heads against walls.
He also had NO social skills whatsoever. He got in trouble for following girls around campus, he actually even followed one of my best friends around b/c he thought that he was friends with her through me. He once even walked in on his RA when she was changing…and he had NO clue that he had done something wrong. He also thought that if you talked to him once or twice he was automaticly your friend. I remember too one time they had a comedian and Stretch was carrying on a conversation with him while he was doing his spiel and Stretch had NO CLUE that what he was doing was “huh? I remember another time he started ranting about some kids who had been talking about me. It was completly innocent as far as I know, but Stretch thought they’d been making fun of me. I remember my friend Brad was there and both of us were all " Huh? Why’s he so upset?”
He really was strange…One of my other friends is blind, and went to a blind school for jr high/high school. Most kids at blind schools are mutiply handicapped (ie blind and intelelctucally disabled or autistic) There are very few just blind kids. Kev said that there were some really strange kids at his school. But he also said that Stretch made them look “normal”
That would be my friend Scott’s ex-wife D. She’s not only weird, she’s a weirdness magnet.
While married to my friend, she told him he wasn’t satisfying her sexually enough, so she convinced him their marriage needed to be “open.” They propositioned several of his friends (including me) until she finally settled on a coworker. Then she decided she was a lesbian because she was getting hit on by another friend’s wife, so that added one more love partner, that we knew of. Needless to say, their marriage ended, but *she *left him.
She went on to found a LGBT support group, and met a guy at one meeting who turned out to be a cult leader. They got married. They lived in a shack in the mountains and basically schmoozed or stole what they needed to live. Scott eventually got remarried and decided to sue for custody of his son to get him out of that life. D and her current husband represented themselves and inundated the court with every irrelevant government conspiracy theory they could think of. The judge threw out the cult leader husband and put a restraining order on him to not get within 100 yards of the courthouse. So he camped 101 yards away and D would run out there to consult with him during breaks.
At one point during the trial, D mentioned that their dogs could talk. The judge asked her if she meant that their dogs made noises that sounded like talking, but she said no, they actually talked. It was just mainly baby talk, but they were starting to form words and sentences. The judge immediately called for a recess so he could go to his chambers and laugh his head off.
They lost custody, but assumed it was because Scott had paid off the judge, so they sued for custody in a different county. They lost again. They got the kid on alternating weekends, but whenever they went to pick him up, they’d bring along a police escort and a video camera. Scott and his son always made sure they were elsewhere when the loon brigade arrived, leaving his current wife at the mercy of their craziness. They refused to believe her when she told them the kid wasn’t there, so D would shout for him to scream and the cop would go in and rescue him. Of course, the camera was rolling all this time, so they could show proof that Scott had manipulated the law on his side.
The cult leader husband was the main source of the paranoia. He was convinced that lesbians had formed a secret coalition against him, because he stole one of their own and married her. He thought they were somehow connected to Scott, so he put up a website that tracked their potential connections to each other. This marriage would eventually dissolve, and guess what: D returned to lesbianhood.
She hooked up with a real kick stand butch dyke, and moved in with her and her mom. Their house wound up being a short distance from me, so she called me up one day and invited me over so we could catch up. Her son was living with them as well (yes, the same one D and Scott had the bitter custody battle over). He and I played chess that evening, and it was getting late, and I had to go. I didn’t see D around, so I asked the man/woman where she was. She pointed behind her and said “in there.” I opened the door to a dark room, but saw another room with a closed door and a light. I called out D’s name, and she answered back from behind the door. I told her I needed to leave, and she said she’d be out in a minute. I waited outside for her, she came out, and we said our goodbyes.
The next day, I got an email from her. The man/woman apparently got upset that I entered their bedroom without permission and violated their privacy, so I was permanently banned from their house. I decided fuck this, she’s back big time into the crazy, so I didn’t even bother trying to make amends. About a year later, Scott told me the two had a fight and the man/woman called D up on the phone and said she was going to kill herself. By the time D got there, the man/woman had stabbed herself in the stomach and bled to death.
Scott hasn’t told me anything about her lately, so maybe she’s finally got off the freak wagon.
You just reminded me of Amanda, who believes children from interracial relationships are 100% of the mother’s race and not one iota of the father’s.
God Lute, that just reminded me. One of my brother’s friends is dating a white girl; they’re in love, will probably get married when they graduate college. So, just to review, girl is white, boy is Indian, probably getting married and having babies down the line.
My mom says “Don’t they realize what their kids will look like!?”
My brother: “Uh, like your kids?”
The rest of us were in stitches. My mom, of course, didn’t get it.
Oh how I wish more social conservatives were like your Mom.
These stories are great. They make me feel… not so weird.
As far as the Cambodia/chicken/bazooka situation, apparently this is quite the racket and a popular activity for tourists. You can shoot a cow if you pay more.
I will never in my life forget Dennis’ stories of Cambodia, particularly a conversation he had with an eleven-year-old boy, in which the boy said something along the lines of, ‘‘I wish I lived in Vietnam. There, your rights are respected.’’
Yup.
Back in the day you could do it in Afghanistan as well, although that place probably isn’t the best to visit any more… 
:dubious:
See, that’s the thing though - she’s NOT socially conservative, she just imagines herself as one. In real life, most people think they’re socially liberal when they’re actually not.
If you leave her alone for long enough, she’ll get bored and start talking to service people in Wal-Mart about their lives. “You didn’t go to community college/nursing school/triangle tech? You really should have!” And instead of being incensed at her remark, they just hang their heads and say “I know, I know. You’re so right, you know exactly how I feel”. :dubious:
Happens every. Damn. Time.
I happen to have a biracial nephew who is obviously not white and considered showing his picture to Amanda then asking her opinion of his race, but decided against trying to reason with crazy.
I used to play a lot of the old World of Darkness games, and for some reason they are a magnet for people to whom roleplaying is Very Serious Business. Usually I didn’t really mind. I was a bit of a goth, and a budding writer–taking my vampires a bit too seriously sounded like fun to me.
Steve was our family’s lodger at the time. He was in his late twenties, me in my mid-teens; he got me into D&D and heavy metal. I thought he was cool to begin with, though there was always something a bit…off, about him. Kind of a vague past. A fascination with conspiracy theories. The tendency to throw himself into intense relationships with younger (not illegally younger, though certainly creepily younger) girls with “bad pasts”, who he would intend to “save”. A general low-level creepiness, in other words, but nothing that set off anyone’s alarm bells too loudly.
Eventually we met up with a kind of goth/geeky crowd who introduced us to WoD games. For a while, it was a lot of fun. All-nighter games, my first beers, lots of pizza consumed, etc. We had a good mix–about twelve people, at least seven of which were as sane as young gamers can get.
Steve started hanging out with some of of the less-balanced ones, though, including his most recent girlfriend, Samara, and her ex, James. Apparently there’s something about the World of Darkness games that attracted the kind of people hysterical anti-roleplaying propaganda warned you about. They wouldn’t just take it seriously–they’d live it. I didn’t realise how much until Steve knocked on my door one night after going out with Samara and James.
“I want to tell you something,” he said, grinning. “I’m Awake.”
“Yeah, I can tell, and it’s three AM.”
“No, no, I mean AWAKENED. I’m a Mage.”
Blink, blink. “You mean…you’re pagan now? You had a religious experience or something?”
He scoffed. “No, that’s all just crap. James showed me how to access my Awakened soul. He’s going to teach me real magic.”
“Oh…kay.”
“He’s a Mage as well. And Samara is a vampire. They allied against the evil mages who seek to destroy the Astral Plane.”
By this time I was wondering if I was actually still asleep and dreaming this entire conversation, but no such luck. He continued to tell me all about their grand plans, and how they were going to form an alliance to fight the evil mages, and how it all made *sense *now because they were *also *the reptillians that had infiltrated all governments and were going to use FEMA to enforce the UN takeover of the world, et cetera.
Somewhere in this muddle I figured out that their “alliance” was not just an alliance but also a threesome. Which, okay, fine, but it made the next part a bit creepier.
“You could join us!” he said, eyes shiny with anticipation (or drugs).
“Er…maybe I should think about it…”
“James can teach you magic as well! Maybe Samara can ‘turn’ you…she really likes you!”
“IIIII think I need to go back to sleep now…”
Anyway, he went to his own room, and the next day he was a bit reticent about the whole thing. Samara and James didn’t seem to act any different, either, so I figured Steve had been drunk or high and had gotten a bit confused, and dropped the matter. Except…now and then all three of them would carefully hint things to me about their great powers and the secret war they were engaged in. I’d just ignore them; eventually they stopped.
Our group started drifting apart a bit. I hung out more with the D&D players around my own age, and eventually Samara broke up with Steve and moved to another state with James. Steve left our house not long after, going back to his hometown, and we all drifted out of touch.
A few years later though, I get a phone call from Steve out of the blue. He tells me that he needs me, that I should move up there with him. Understandably skeptical, I ask him why.
“I need backup, man. The werewolf clans here have all turned against me. Samara told me you had more power than you know–come up here and we’ll be soldiers together!”
Needless to say, I didn’t take him up on his offer. We chatted a bit more about old times, and then dropped out of touch again.
Last I heard of Steve, he’d married a woman twice his age and was trying to adopt her children. Last I heard of Samara and James, they were running a BDSM/goth club together.
I don’t know if they’re still fighting evil wizards on the Astral Plane.
Omg, Electric Sky, that is the best story ever.
I got an update on my friend Dennis yesterday. One thing I didn’t mention about him, though I’m sure nobody will find this surprising is, he dates crazy chicks.
Turns out his latest girlfriend has anti-social personality disorder or something. She told him that her ex was beating her up and terrorizing her into staying with him. Then she told her ex the same thing about Dennis. Then she introduced them.
He is showing maturity as he ages, though. He managed to break it off with her. ‘‘While I look for another girlfriend, I’m seeing whores,’’ he told my husband. ‘‘Don’t worry. They’re very clean here.’’
I don’t mean to derail anything, but this is too odd. I’m 95% sure I was friends with this person in high school. Are her initials JE?
This thread is fantastic, by the way. The weirdest person I know is my aunt, but her weirdness is perceived as an overall thing and doesn’t come through well in anecdotes. I guess I can try, though.
She only ever calls me for two reasons.
[ol][li]To fact-check things for her when she’s having a debate with her friend at work. Most recently, the topic was the name of Corky St. Clair’s “wife” in Waiting for Guffman. Another was how to say Jesus in Italian. She just assumes I’ll know these things. I don’t. But I guess I reinforce the behavior by looking up the answers on the internet.[/li][li]To sing Happy Birthday to me. Sometimes she forces her son (now 16) to join her. Her rendition is unfailingly operatic.[/li][/ol]
She has a little, brainless dog that pees in the house. She doesn’t like it that the dog pees inside, and she tends to blame her son for not letting the dog outside enough. But she doesn’t really do anything about it. Just accepts it as fact, and at the same time laments that she’s had to replace the carpet and then the new wood floor in her entry way.
She says melk for milk, pellow for pillow, salary for celery. To be fair, she got this from her mother.
She used to run out of gas with alarming frequency. I’m grateful that she seems to have gotten this out of her system, but I still assume the next time is just around the corner. If I overhear my mom on the phone with someone and it sounds like they’re asking her for help, I have to ask if my aunt ran out of gas.
She reads a lot, and she has the closest reading preferences to mine of anyone I know. She loves Victorian novels, and she’s the one who introduced me to the wondrous Jane Eyre. But we can never have more than a one-minute conversation about a book. It’s like she only reads for entertainment. No thinking allowed. It’s terribly disappointing. I know a lot of people who do this, but they usually stick to fluffy stuff. She reads the good stuff but refuses to think about it.
No, her initials are not J. E.
However, the fact that there might be another one like her out there - well, I smell a successful sitcom in the works!