OK, so college weirdness…
A squirrel, lying dead next to a bottle of Heinz ketchup, ketchup open, some on the squirrels mouth.
A steak, lying on the sidewalk outside my dorm. (this lead to the evacuation of my dorm, BTW)
The guy wearing the Mike Tyson “If you can’t beat em, eat em” T-shirt.
The girl with the wicker hair.
Of course you left out the part about the footprints starting infront of the YMCA that has a pool.
Alright, this may not be as good as the potato in the movie theater one, but none the less it is an out-of-place fruiting…
I’m a freelance graphic designer in Michigan, and I work in a 2-story studio someone built behind their home (above the garage) nestled within a “gaggle” of pine trees. It was the dead of winter and while I was admiring the falling tranquil snow out the window – low and behold! A frickin’ orange was balancing on one of the branches of a pine tree – 2 stories up! A big juicy one at that, on a small pine branch. The contrast alone of this abomination was disturbingly wrong. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. The next day it was gone, nowhere to be found. But I had the sneaking suspicion that maybe, somewhere in Florida, there was another graphic designer who looked out his window and saw a lone pine cone finely balanced on an orange tree…
Many, many years ago, whilst a high school student I worked part-time in a movie theater. (Old place, only one screen.) After the last show some of us had to go through the theater picking up the trash on the floor. It was the usual stuff mostly- popcorn boxes, cups, liquor bottles, the occasional dollar bill or comb, along those lines. One night though I found a pleated skirt and a pair of panties. Still haven’t figured that one out. I know no patron left that night half-dressed.
Wow, I thought I was pretty f***ed up mentally 'til I read some of this stuff…
The most I ever pondered for a day (more like 2 weeks) was how the hell a Rubix Cube works. If you think about it, the center most cubette never moves and is never visible. The 6 cubettes touching it only need to rotate in one plane parallel to the center cubette. Pretty easy. But the 8 corner cubettes have to fully rotate in PERPENDICULAR planes.
So I took one apart and was deeply disappointed to find out how simple it really is. Worst $6.50 ever. Now the 4x4x4 Rubix Cubes…how do THEY work?
Let’s see, i know I’ve seen some wierd stuff…
For one, when I was about 7 years old, I was being driven somewhere with my little friend, when I SWEAR I saw a rabbit in a tree. In Dallas. It was a long time ago, but I’m fairly sure of what I saw.
In LA I have seen seriously buff guys wearing really nice clothes begging for money. These are not people who are deeply in need, and if they were, they would be very employable.
Another LA story, one time we were in a Fatburger and a SERIOUSLY dirty Al Pacino started randomly talking to my sister. He looked and smelled like he hadn’t showered in a week. That was just wierd, not really fitting with the rest of this.
Hmm, I KNOW I have more.
Oh yeah!! The mystical man!! Allow me to explain.
A friend and I are skiing at a place called Mt. St. Louis/Moonstone in Ontario, Canada. We end up on the backside, at the bottom of this one lift, and for some reason I still can’t remember, I take one of my Skiboards off (about half as long as a ski and twice as wide. Double tipped with wierd bindings) and am unable to put it back on. We notice that there is a road behind us, and a ski shop across that road. Seeing as the fit of my bindings has been annoying me anyway, and I need a way out of this mess, e walk across (this was wierd enough, leave the lift line and walk across the road) and end up in a little shop run by a man with some sort of eastern european accent.
I explain my problem and he tells me “Go outside and jump”. There was not, repeat not, a buildup of snow under my boots. I for some reason do as he says, and as I do it he comments to my friend “Where’d you find this guy? He’s a moron” He has not touched the bindings and when I come back they FIT. Wierd. But it gets wierder. We get back across and my friend finds that his bindings are too LOOSE. We go back, repeat process, same results.
Later back on the mountain we tell each other about the comments this dude made, and we both start laughing. There is no way that jumping should have fixed both those problems, except if the Mystical Man (our name for him now) had required it as entertainment, the price for his magical services.
Wierded us out.
MarxBoy
I can still remember the first thing she said to me: “You have weasels on your face”
In the neighborhood where I grew up there was an older man, about 50 or so. He always wore the same grungy pair of jeans which he would stuff with a roll of toilet paper. You know, like a girl would stuff her bra to make her breast look bigger.
A whole roll. Still on the tube. You could tell it was a roll of toilet paper because, well, it looked like a roll of toilet paper stuffed down the front of a pair of grubby, tight jeans. My cousins and I would laugh and wonder who he thought he was fooling. He also wore a curly toupee. It only covered the very top of his head. I always wondered if the man had any mirrors in his house.
This is one of the best threads I have read in a long time! Now what can I add to it…?
I once was unable to sleep, because I was hung up on a word. You know, when a word or phrase goes through your head over and over and over? This time, the word in questions was Mövenpick - the restauraunts. I was awake for HOURS, until my brain said “move and pick”. I promptly fell asleep. What a stupid thing to get hung up on!
I think I’ve mentioned this on the boards before, but I have a picture of a guy I don’t know, which I got from a friend’s lawn, and since the house is kind of isolated, we don’t really know how it got there. I really should scan it some day in hopes that someone knows who it is.
One day I’ll dig up the "stupid list"my friend and I made up - all the stupid things that happened in one day to us a couple of years ago. Gotta have good stories there! 
One time my brother and I were waiting out a storm under a storefront awning. A soaking wet man suddenly appeared, picked up a discarded but still lit cigarette butt, puffed it a few times, threw it back to the ground, then disappeared in the opposite direction. He walked bent low to the ground like Groucho Marx throughout his brief visit. It gave me the heebie jeebies at the time, but thankfully when I think about it now it only gives me the willies.
Sweet merciful crap! What happened there? Three day ketchup bender for fuzzface. That’s a horrible, gruesome scene, Cat! I love squirrels. I’d hate to think that one of them gave it up to the smack.
jarbaby
This thread is one of the best I’ve ever seen, if we could get more people to post here it could make threadspotting.
A wierd thing I’ve seen regularly: Grimace from McDonald’s. WTF?? Gee, we need someone to sell people Hamburgers, let’s call him GRIMACE?? Why not call him VOMIT or CHOKE? This really gets to me.
I also once saw a guy get caught stealing groceries. The guy was in his late 50’s I think, and he just took off with a cart full of groceries. He was apprehended in the parking lot, and I don’t think they did anything to him.
Another story from a grocery store:
The Albertson’s near us employs this mentally retarded kid, and one day there was a big (trash can sized) donation bucket with a piece of paper stuck to it declaring the name of the charity, etc.
One of the corners on the paper comes up, the kid pushes it back down, walks back to his register, and sees that the corner has come back up. Repeat process 3 times. He walks to the bucket, has a seat and holds the corner down with his finger. He sat there for at least 20 minutes, I left the store after that. He was visible from the parking lot, too. Sitting there making sure that darn corner stayed down.
BTW, that Potato thing is one of the best stories I’ve ever heard.
MarxBoy
Hmmm…haven’t seen anything that stumped me lately, but when I was a kid we went on vacation to Seattle and there was a strip/topless club* with a sign that said “99 Beautiful girls (and 2 ugly ones.)” or something like that. I think about that often and wonder things like: What if one of the “ugly” girls quits? Do they run an ad in the paper for an ugly girl? Do the two ugly girls know they’re considered ugly or are there 101 girls who all think they’re beautiful? What if the ratio of ugly to beautiful girls increases? Do they change the sign or do they try to make the extra ugly girls look prettier? Do people come in and request the ugly girls specificly? Who decides what defines ugly?
*We drove past the club in the car. Make no mistake, it was not someplace our parents considered a sightseeing destination, haha.
Thanks MarxBoy! I mean, I just provided the OP, but I was sincerely hoping that everyone would like it. My husband and I spend hours pondering things like dead pickles and phantom camels, making up AMAZING stories to pass the time on a road trip.
The potato story and the ketchup glutted squirrel will definitely be discussed tonight.
jarbaby
Somebody needs to be fed to the lions for that one.
And not in a good way.
But the footprints didn’t start at the Y! They started a block or so after!
The swimming option would be good, except the pool at the Y has been closed for months, so I hear.
The Grimace started as a villain in McDonaldland.
WHAT Grimace is supposed to be is a bigger question, though…
Note about Grimace: But what about the Fry Guys? McDonald’s message to kids: parents won’t buy your fries? Go steal 'em? WTF?
I’m full of stupid little things that bug me. Here’s one for now:
I’m driving home on my normal commute up I-95 in Broward County Florida – this was years ago. Suddenly, as often happens, traffic comes to a complete stop. Now, I’ve noticed before that if you look closely, you can find all kinds of crap along the side of the freeway. My guess is that sometimes when people move, they pile all their crap in the back of a pickup and sometimes shit flies off. Which is probably why you occasionally see a pair of pants or small pieces of furniture lying along the side of the road. (We are talking about 8 lanes of traffic usually moving at about 75-80 mph.)
So I decide to play I Spy with myself. I make a bet with Me to see how long it takes before I spot a used condom laying on I-95.
It took about ten minutes 50 feet. As soon as I got to nudge my car a few feet, there it was in all its spent rubber glory. Big ole used condom. Blech.
Bugged me all day: was someone carrying it around in their car with them? Pulled over for a quickie? Maybe they got down while driving? I dunno about any of you, but I have to pull over to, um, get off, if I’m going to be doing that kind of nasty in the car. Do ya s’pose somebody else got stuck in rush hour traffic and decided to make efficient use of their time? Maybe it was the only time the parents could get their kid to sleep: they lull him to sleep with a long drive, get a quickie over with while cruising along at 70+ mph and then toss the evidence out the window?
I’m still worried about how that condom got there… I drove next to those people. Their orgasm could’ve killed me!
how kazoos work
The scene: the men’s room in a cheap little restaraunt in Beijing. Above the urinal is a sign that says, in English, “Please Mang Out After Shit” with Chinese characters underneath saying, presumably, the same thing.
I took a picture. I have no idea what the verb “to mang” means. Nor do I know why someone would shit in a urinal.
Hmm, what IS Grimace supposed to be?
He’s what Barney would look like in his early fetal stages. A pretty sorry villain if you ask me. He isn’t even ill tempered, just apparently mentally retarded with a severe case of the giggles.
Now that I think about it, the entire McDonald’s team is a little off. I mean the Hamburglar? Is he supposed to convince kids that the hamburgers are more important than anything, steal to get them if you have to? Birdie isn’t really confusing, just random. And Ronald McDonald is actually somehow nauseating to me. I think it has to do with the garish colors and the lip-make up.
Now that I think about it, Grimace might be worth his own thread one day.