Walking back from lunch just now, I came across a man standing on a corner holding a placard. He wasn’t handing out literature or the like. The sign read:
“The world is filled with hatred and anger. I’ll give you only love and affection.”
Was he evangelizing or just looking for a date?
Sua
Sure beats the guy in downtown Indy today who walked from building foyer to building foyer yelling about some sort of corruption and corporate two-step that was taking place. I think he was following me - I saw him at 4 different buildings during my lunch break.
So, did you get his phone number?
Also beats the woman I saw the other day who was wearing a sign on her back that something to the effect of “If you DIED today, do you know where YOU would go?”
She was handing out literature. And, like a broken record, spewed forth a mis-quotation of John 3:16 every second or so. I stopped to watch her for a minute to see if she would change to another quote. She didn’t. I wonder if she knew any others.
Sua, Did you talk to the guy?
Over here by my campus is some Bible-waving fanatic calling everyone that passes a whoremonger and/or drunkard.
In the words of my lab partner: “You know, normally waiting for that buzzer [at the crosswalk] is pretty boring, but when you’ve got someone in your face damning you to hell, well, that’s entertainment!”
Beats the hell out of the old fat guy at the train station with two gigantic speakers hanging around his shoulders playing teeny-bopper music and screaming at people.
On my campus we have people who ask you if you’d be interested in bible study. This one asian guy who didn’t speak english very well approached me four times in less than an hour! He was by the door to a building that I was going into. He asked me then, I said no thanks. He asked me on the way out about ten minutes later, I said no thanks. I had to go back to that building about a half hour later and he asked me on the way in again, again I said no thanks. Fifteen minutes later on the way out he asked me AGAIN, so I said “actually, yes. You see I had an epiphany a few minutes ago and decided to give myself up to God, and now I am, in fact, interested in studying the bible with you! Of course I’m not you goof. I wasn’t an hour ago, I wasn’t 45 minutes ago, I wasn’t fifteen minutes ago. What do you think, that I somehow, miraculously changed my mind in the last fifteen minutes?!?!”
(actually I politely said no thanks for the fourth time and walked away.)
I know the guy probably talked to quite a few people that day, but come on.
And another thing, what is it with religious fanatics damning everyone to hell? Doesn’t the bible that they are so vigerously waving around say not to judge others?
It’s been a few years since I worked downtown, so I have to rely on the neighborhood nuts for my dose of alternate reality. And boy has this neighborhood gone downhill (Montrose in Houston). Used to be you could find someone who could channel greys or knew whether you were of The Elect at almost any bus stop (along with representatives of the alternative marketing guild).
This urban renewal, regentrification, what have you has been driving all but the hard core panhandlers away.
College is different - we had our fair share at UT in the '70s and I suspect colleges will remain a fertile ground.
I think Sir Dirx’s biblethumper splits his time on the campus of Michigan State University. We have one that does all of that - all the women are whores, all the guys are drunken sots. One professor sometimes comes out and debates him, corrects him, challenges him on his bible quotes and interpretations. They really get worked up about it. Most everyone else ignores them.
There’s a guy in Fells Point (Baltimore City) who has the best placard sign (is that what they’re called? The kind you wear over your shoulders, front and back). On the front, it says:
If God loved me, I would have a beer in my hand right now.
And on the back:
Why lie? You know what I’m doing with your change!
I always give him a buck. I applaud honesty.
Guy on street in Chapel Hill: The Lord has a name! Do you know it?
Drewbert: (walks past, considering whether to answer with what he’d always wanted to scribble on kiosk posters asking the same question, pauses… decides to go for it) Bob!
I was visiting Stanford to see a few friends last weekend and they told me about a group of Bible thumpers who were walking around the center of campus trying to distribute literature. Apparently, enough hecklers eventually gathered that they decided to leave. Also, there was another group that was trying to stop the administration from merging two departments, so they wrote on the ground with chalk: “Stop the departamental merger” about 100 times. The funny thing was that they misspelled a word every time, it should be ‘departmental’, which I thought was odd for students at a school as prestigious as Stanford.
Is the birdman of UC Berkeley still there?
I’ve heard all these stories about people who got flipped off by him and later had a great conversation with him?
Did he kick off or get shown the door by campus police or something?
There’s this great old street guy who hangs out around Venice Beach, CA, with a sign saying SUPPORT THE UNITED NEGRO PIZZA FUND.
If it was the latter, and it works, lemme know. I could use a new approach...Sua, do you remember the M Street Sign Lady? “Mandela’s White Whores Stole My Son Reagan My Husband Gone Aliens.”
I always wanted to work as her PR consultant - I felt the wasn’t pitching her message the right way to reach her target audience.
Not too long ago I saw a man on Michigan Avenue here in Chicago. He was wearing a sandwich board that claimed that the real Al Gore had been kidnapped by the Russians (actually, I believe he used the term “Ruskies”) and replaced with a plant. His proof? Two photos, side-by-side. One, “The Phony Al Gore” was a picture of Al Gore. “The Real Al Gore” was a headshot of Bruce Boxlightner. You know, Scarecrow from Scarecrow and Mrs. King.
It made my year.
ROFLDMYS!!
Know the “M Street Lady”?! Hell, I’m her missing son.
Sua
FYI Drewbert: my young niece told me after Sunday School that she learned what God’s name was: It is not Bob as you guessed, it is Harold: as in “Our Father who art in Heaven, Harold be Thy Name.” 
“Nobody cares how beautiful the souffle is if the appetizer is turds in a blanket” - Phil Hartman