The thread by JFK’s long lost daughter reminded me of times when I was doing an all-night bout of studying at the 24-hour hamburger joint across from the university, and the only other people there were probably homeless and doubtlessly nuts. They weren’t dangerous, at least not in the confines of the restaurant, but they could tell some crazy stories. And I found myself just a tad fascinated to listen to someone inhabiting a wholly different universe than I did. And on Youtube these days I sometimes watch people like Marshall Herff Applewhite and Jay Kordich the Juiceman, not because I believe in UFOs or juicing, but it’s just the same sense of morbid fascination to listen to someone who strongly believes, with unassailable logic in their own mind, something clearly just crazy.
(OK, I’m being a little hard on Jay, and I might even get a juicer one of these days. But I doubt I’ll ever be as passionate a devotee, if you know what I mean.)
Of course if I had to live with someone who had such problems, or was such a person myself in the past, I probably would feel differently – and apologies in advance, I don’t mean to sound like I’m mocking mental illness. But if you’ve got no stake in it, it is a bit fascinating to listen to sometimes. (Sad, of course, though not every crazy person I’ve met really seemed all that sad a case. Around the university, in fact, one of or two were known as local characters and had no shortage of friends, I believe.)
It used to be that you could tell the crazy people in public because they were the ones who were talking to themselves. Now of course, they could be talking on a Bluetooth headset so it’s harder to tell the crazy people from the yuppies.
I totally know what you mean. For me, one of the most memorable threads at the SDMB was this guy a few years back who thought he had found all sorts of hidden ‘anomalies’ in the Apollo photos. According to him all of the photos of bootprints etc were actually satellite photos where you could make out alien structures. Something like that anyway. It was pretty incoherent, but fascinating at the same time.
I just googled the guys name and wow, it turns out it was longer ago than I thought. In fact the thread was started exactly ten years ago today. Coincidence?!
I walked into a store a few weeks back and the owner, stocking shelves, started talking to me, the only person in the store. I didn’t have a clue what he was saying and started stammering about looking for greeting cards. And, of course, then I realized he was talking into a Bluetooth device. :smack:
Well, this might not be exactly what you mean, but part of the way my family deals with my uncle’s schizophrenia is by having a sense of humor about it. Some of his delusions are hilarious. Someone laced his Bangles cassette with LSD. Someone put
dirty pussy
in his cigarettes.
When I think about the tormented life he lives, the potential of his brilliant mind lost, it’s bleak stuff indeed. But there is absurdity, and humor there. Hell, when someone called him on the latter delusion, even he sort of cracked up about it.
It is sort of why I watch crap like Ancient Aliens or Legend Quest.
I am so amused by the jackass in Legend Quest. As an example [I just finished watching the episode so I think I can connect the dots] He is looking for Excaliber. He goes into some damned cave system linked to Merlin, finds a ca 12th century carven stone lion that leads him to Richard Lionheart. he finds some whacked illustration of Richard giving a sword to Tancreed in exchange for resources to go on crusade. So off they go to Sicily, to the palace of Tancreed. He finds some damned mosaic that had a madonna and jesus, a small castle, an angel and something the hell else I can’t remember off hand. This leads him off to some excavation area in France, where he talks to some guy who says that a 6th century sword had been found in this 12th century wreck of a castle, and it is currently in the British Museum, so whoosh off they go back to London, where they look at a rusted out sword that had been repaired at some point in its history. He of course links that to some obscure little apocryphal tale of Merlin fixing Excaliber [that I never found anywhere and I have done a fair amount of reading on the matter] so of course this sword is Excaliber … maybe. Trust me, this guy is bugshit insane on the issues of cryptorelics. You don’t even want to know about the Staff of Merlin or the Ring of Solomon episodes…:smack:
Two years ago, I was visiting my in laws in Eureka Springs the same weekend the UFO conference was there. I paid 10 dollars for my wife and myself to go listen to Nick Pope from the UK’s Ministry of Defense talk. We wandered around, talked to some of the people selling books and shirts, then went to a free open bar. I grabbed one beer and a bowl of goldfish crackers and ended up talking to the craziest man I have ever met.
Needless to say, the aliens in orbit in a mothership near Jupiter’s orbit were not happy with Cheney threatening to nuke the Southern United States if the aliens did a low flyover to incontrovertibly prove they were there. They needed to become accepted by the general population in order to help us fight off these other aliens that were coming in 2012.
Then he started arguing with a man who said that 2012 was when a black hole fragment would hit our sun. In his world, the moon was a hollow base for aliens and right before the gravity from the new black hole killed us all we would have a telepathic message asking us if we wanted to stay or go. If we chose to go, our souls would be stripped from our bodies and brought to the moon, and then the moon would leave.
I have an uncle that is as crazy as they come. He is currently under the care of my mother. A couple of years ago he got in his truck and just took off. My mom and dad had to go chase him down some 200 miles away.
Despite heading eastbound, he was trying to get to California. (From Louisiana) The police got a hold of my crazy uncle and finally got a number out of him to call my mom.
Why did he take off? Well, because the Gay Mafia was after him of course!
Oh man, The Gay Mafia? One can only imagine the hilarious details.
Reminds me of my last visit to San Francisco. We were waiting at the bottom of Powell Street for the streetcar, when I noticed a guy.
He was clearly unhinged - he was talking (excitedly) into his cellphone (which was actually a large screwdriver), whilst leafing through some kind of catalogue. He was feverishly ordering all kinds of stuff-and getting agitated.
Nobody else noticed-I guess that sort of thing is not unexpected in SF!
I used to enjoy reading conspiracy theories on the web and sites like Rense. Then I just got burned out on Teh Stupid.
I used to get annoyed with callers on my job who ranted about being hacked, and how the FBI and Homeland Security were either investigating, or in on it. Now I find them somewhat amusing because they’re just so ardently passionate that shit that is not physically possible is being done to them. (NO ONE is hacking your smart phone through it’s wifi connection from another country. No one is watching you through your computer monitor when you don’t have a webcam. No sir, watching your computer’s bluetooth wizard and seeing the cell phones of people walking by does NOT mean they’re hacking into your computer.)
Otherwise for the most part my patience with CRAZY has been exhausted. Ever since the ex-wife, I have a lot less time for people who throw logic and reason right out the window or just plain try to overwhelm logic with passion.
I have a friend who is a nurses aide in a home for semi-demented elderly people. She says that mostly, she enjoys that fragile, strange world they live in.
My absolute favorite part of my time interning at a nursing home was spending time with the dementia patients. They were so in the moment, always. And there was this old Jewish lady I used to help feed who had Wernicke’s aphasia, where she would talk but nothing she said made any sense. She once responded to my question with ‘‘Oh… banana!’’ I loved talking to her, for all she knew we were having a perfectly sensible conversation, and though she had no idea who I was, a part of her recognized me and she always welcomed me to the table (and offered me a drink, lol.) One day she whispered to me that it would be terrible if I married I goy (non-Jew.) ‘‘But sweet lady,’’ I said, ‘‘I’m not Jewish.’’
‘‘Oh, don’t even joke about that!’’
Then later when I was trying to get her to eat (she was pretty hard to feed), she looked lovingly in my eyes, smiled and said, ‘‘Oh, you… I could just drown you in a lake.’’
