What recent nut cases have your run across?

Using an infallible transltor that is “While passing, Dope them French-speaking give you the welcome!” :confused:
I find these free translators are a life saver. :smack:

You should at least be sure that you don’t wait near the track for the train. You know, just in case he decides to push you as it pulls in.

Close 'nuff. “In passing, the francophone Dopers bid you welcome!”

(Guess I actually learned something in french class besides ‘Ou est la bibliotheque?’ :D)

I work in a downtown mall, so we have our regular crazies, though I hear that upstairs the whackos are much more entertaining…they never come down to our floor, for some reason(thankyouthankyouthankyou). The girls at Papyrus says their regular is a man in drag…very bad drag…fright-type wig, strange women’s clothes…who repeatedly asks them, “can you tell I’m a boy?”

Our best crazy is a woman, always dressed a bit flamboyantly…lots of jungle prints and headscarves and sunglasses and jewelry…who comes in talking a mile a minute about what she’s gonna buy when she finally gets that man to marry her and you know she’s had lots of men want to marry her and she’s gonna come back as soon as she gets some money because you know she’s had plenty of offers…wish I could recreate her patter better…she’s really manic.

Merci Matt_mcl ! Et bonjour au Québec ! :slight_smile:

Mon crayon es large et juene.

They’re talking in code! :eek:

Blah-blah-blah, yakkity-schmakkity!

(No, not aware of a local one…I don’t get out much…but someone might mention me, I guess…)

Yes, but I don’t like Winston Smith’s code :dubious: So back to english !

Spending a lot of time in New York as I do, I have gotten very good at spotting nutjobs, derelicts, etc., that others might miss. I do this simply by looking for signs of poor hygiene. Is the intelligent-looking dude in the blazer and sport shirt also covered in icky stains? Does his face have a greasy shine? Are his fingernails unusually talon-like?

Last Friday I passed a man who looked reasonably normal. Then I noticed that his light khaki pants had subtle dark greasy areas, as if from obsessive hand-rubbing, and even a hint of pee around the crotch. He noticed that I noticed, and for a split second I saw a look of pure defensive fear behind his glasses. I looked away and moved on.

I was stopped at a red light and there was a woman in the car next to me playing a tamborine. Not quite sure why a grown woman would be playing a tamborine in her car at 7 in the am. I’m guessing it was a religious thing.

I’m as capable of speaking French as I am of reading minds so I’ve been trying to follow along with the (highly flawed) help of Google’s Language Tools. This comment confuses me though. From what Google told me, Winston Smith said "My pencil is broad and " and was unable to translate the last word. Could you tell me what it was?

In a more topical note, I learned last night that a friend of mine has put a great deal of thought into how to survive a zombie apocalypse and into what weapons would be most effective in fighting of a horde of zombies.

This one isn’t funny- this guy was my client. I had talked to him after his court appearance, and left the courthouse literally 15 minutes before this happened.

I think Winston Smith’s last word was a misspelled attempt at “jaune,” or yellow.

-Mama Tiger, whose French passed the “Ou est la gare?” stage but not by much

Peut-etre le mot est ‘jejune’. Mais c’est Anglais…

I’m just hoping that Winston Smith’s use of “crayon” isn’t code for a certain portion of his anatomy that he would definitely not want to be jaune. Or jejune, for that matter.

I don’t want to hear anything about anybody’s red pencil box.

I don’t know. Let’s ask the crazy librarian chick.

My city seems to have loads of, uh, eccentric types. In the last week alone:

  1. I had taken a member of my team out for a frothy coffee and a natter after a stressfull afternoon. A lady in her early 40s came in, asked for a glass of tap water, then sat at the table directly next to us even though the whole place was empty. We carried on with our conversation. After 5 minutes, she got up, came over and yelled at me “YOU SHOULD LEARN TO KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN!! I don’t want to hear everything you have to say and you are shouting and shouting at me, I don’t want to hear all about your job so thank you very much THANK YOU THANK YOU YOU LOUD LADY”, and then turned and left the coffee place in a huffy manner. I have no idea what I’d said to trigger her temper, none of us could figure it out. She appeared to be quite normal but apparently I hadn’t been loud at all (if anything, I was keeping my voice down) so I stil have no clue what I’d said to upset her so.

  2. I swear for the last week I’ve had the JESUS IS LORD woman following me. I’ve seen her around before - I do a lot of walking to various meetings around the town centre and she’s the assistant (?) of one of the mall preachers, she hands out leaflets, one of which I said ‘No, thank you’ to a couple of weeks ago. She wears a hat, and a big messenger bag slung across her chest, with the words “JESUS IS LORD” badly handpainted across them both in 3 inch letters. She wears these with an odd combination of badly matched clothing and she smells of formaldehyde. I usually see her in town every couple of weeks. But this last week, I keep seeing her pop up behind me,at the post office, in clothing stores, on my way to lunch… I’m being stalked by the JIL lady. Maybe it’s because I said no to her leaflet. It’s like the start of a creepy horror movie, maybe I’ll see her outside my window tonight, JESUS IS LORD glowing eerily in the darkness…

  3. The mad monk: another famous eccentric in our town, and I always see him in the post office, queueing for counter services. It’s a guy in a black monk’s habit with the raggediest, matted, old and nasty white fright wig on. He has frightful BO that’s quite eye-watering, and strides to and from the post office with a terrific sense of determination. I stood behind him in the queue for stamps last week and had to breathe through my mouth the whole time, boggling at his wig. It’s the oddest thing, I can’t imagine what he keeps under it. Again, he appears to be in good physical health but his mental health is somewhat in question.

  4. The shouty dreadlock man: there’s a man housed opposite my office whose hair is matted into one enormous dreadlock and who comes out to randomly shout at people coming to our door for imagined slights or liberties taken. I spoke to him once when he started shouting at me and got a whole stream of batty conciousness in return that left me blinking. He’s obviously able to look after himself as he’s well dressed and clean (apart from the hair) and obviously feeding himself ok. He came out a couple of times last week to randomly wave his arms and screech at people ringing our doorbell.

Keep in mind, I work with people suffering mental ill-health, so it takes a lot to convince me that you’re completely hatstand (professional term).

Oh man, don’t even get me started!