I love me some random things – and I like interspersing light-hearted frivolous posts in the midst of more serious ones… ok who am I kidding – all of mine are rather light – but still. The consensus is that I’m a very random person. Writing reviews is difficult for me because it takes concentration and focus. Some of the other duckies have asked how I manage to read with my lack of attention span. (It’s one of those mysteries that likely will never be solved.)
So the purpose of this pondering… isn’t really a pondering. Or we can ponder the whys, and wherefores, and whyhows of the events. But what I want to know is… what’re some of the weirdest things you’ve said, heard someone say, said to someone, or witnessed? Bringing it back to books [see, there is some sort of common thread here] – what about books? Some things out there are weird. Generally those are highly disturbing as well, but they need not be. Were-creatures might be one. I know a while ago people were talking about weird paranormal creatures. Were-snakes, were-rats, were-horses? Were-spiders?
However, what was on my mind, was the villain in Shannon McKenna’s latest novella, Anytime, Anywhere in the anthology Baddest Bad Boys. If you haven’t read it – do. I love Ms. McKenna’s stories, and the MacNamara family is one of my favorites. Well, Mac from Meltdown – or the story. But that villain in Anytime. *shudders* Not going to be forgetting that one. Creepy.
Another strange thing – this in real life… I’ll give you a few snippets. “I’m going to come into your room and cut off all your hair in the middle of the night.” Another that took me aback was “I’m going to punch you in the baby maker.” But then I learned s/he stole that from the movie Anchorman. Or “watch this – I can put my entire fist in my mouth.” And he could. Then there was a strange call I got that started out with “Hey – so someone threatened to jump off the 7th floor of the Hart Building today.” (A rather public someone has an office there.)
The news often has these strange stories too – off the wall “I fell off a cliff while vacationing in Timbuktu, suffered from amnesia, built a boat from Styrofoam cups, sailed around the world, befriended an emu who saved my life, then on tour with my emu tripped on a rock and found my family in the neighboring city.”
Or the really cool ones: The Illiterate Surgeon Mamitu, one of the world’s premier obstetric fistula surgeons, just started third grade. (You might have read the article in June ’05). As opposed to the first which I made up – although I bet there’s something similar. Especially the emu part.
But what I’m looking for is real life events. Random bloopers you’ll remember for a long time. Like someone standing up at the lunch table saying, “Ok you guys – I have to go to jail now, and prison tomorrow.”
Do you ever had something happen to you, or hear something and think I wonder what the rest of that story is? Have you ever written that story? Or just mapped it out in your head, whether you’re a writer or not. [Or if you can’t think of anything, book talk is fine too. After all this is a reader blog…]
I know you have crazy things happen – let’s share a few and go nuts!
Really, there’s nothing I can think of. The weird moments in my life go right out of my head . . .
But yay for Dali! Actually, that reminds me of a strange story.
When my dad was giving away or choosing what to keep from the stuff in my grandparent’s house, he took this little odd sketch with him. Turns out it was an original Salvador Dali just hanging with all their other pictures.
Liv – you know, I couldn’t think of anything weird while writing this post either :X – so I had to go with “huh – that’s kinda weird” moments.
Eeee – seriously? So cool! I really like Dali 🙂 a lot of people/artist hate Dali and say he sold out but… eh. Haha. I still like his stuff.
Picture this:
I’m in a really Hemingway-esque hotel bar in downtown Perth (yes, Australia), getting tanked with one of my best friends. We’re sitting at a booth (cubby to you Brits), looking out the window, chatting about nothing in particular and people-watching.
We’re sitting there, sipping seriously strong martinis, speculating about the lives of the people we’re watching. You know the game, “I’ll bet he’s a plastic surgeon who never passed his residency,” “I’ll bet she’s a housewife who is having a torrid affair with the milkman.” We felt safe, insulated as we were behind tinted, mirrored glass, when from out of the blue, while walking past our window the HOMELIEST old man stopped and stared back at us, then kept walking.
It startled us so much we just turned and looked at each other in silence and then BUSTED up laughing for the next 20 mins. It was so startling and unexpected, it just couldn’t be described.
To this day, I wonder about that old man. He had the most interesting face and he stared right back at us. It was wild.
Here’s another one:
A good friend (he’s a lawyer with the Mint) and I went to eat dinner at a local Lebanese restaurant in Arlington, Virginia (Lebanese Taverna to you locals – I still miss that place). He ordered one of those dishes where this huge pile of rice and goodness comes all wrapped in this sheet of flat bread. You peel it open and eat, eat, eat. So good, but incredibly messy. You can picture it – rice on the table, rice on the floor.
So we’re sitting there, done with the meal, when the (Lebanese? Turk? not sure but not American or even western) waiter comes to the table to ask if we need anything else, etc., etc. We tell him it was wonderful and apologize for making such a mess with the rice. He says, “No problem, but it’s good we ain’t got no chickens.” My friend and I both nod sagely and agree. The waiter leaves.
My friend and I look at each other, both of us with perplexed looks and burst out laughing at the same moment. Neither of us knew what the hell the guy meant about the chickens but we both sure acted like we did.
We still giggle about that to this day…
I just thought of another one:
Same friend as before (the lawyer) and I were going to eat at a very well known restaurant in Washington, DC. We know we’re going to drink, and since we lived so close (6-miles), we decide to take a taxi.
We tell the cabbie the restaurant name. He starts driving across Roosevelt bridge and he tells us he’s not sure where it is. Friend and I look at each other – for all the times we’ve eaten there we’ve never had a cabbie that didn’t know where it was. We tell him and actually end up having to give him driving directions to get there. He was foreign, so I was tempted to cut him some slack, but what’s a guy doing driving a taxi in the DC area and not knowing where Pennsyl-fucking-vania Avenue was? I mean, seriously.
I was getting irritated and started whistling “If I Only Had a Brain” from Wizard of Oz. My friend looks over at me like “oh no you didn’t!” and it’s all he can do to keep from dying from suppressed mirth.
We get out of the taxi at the restaurant and my friend falls all over himself with laughter.
It was surreal to me. But it’s another one of those “giggle ’til this day” moments.
Gwen – JEALOUS! I want to go to Australia! And that is quite odd – I’d be freaked out.
I’m also jealous about the Lebanese. I’ve never had it – I wanted to get Ethiopian in DC, but didn’t get the chance. I was lucky enough to be there during a restaurant week though. For the chicken… O_o maybe/probably because chicken eat rice and would have been… pecking all over your feel? Cultural/background differences fascinate me.
Haha – for the place on Penn Ave [cruel, Gwen! Haha] – if it were a few miles shorter, my friends and I would’ve walked it. I can’t believe the cabbie didn’t know where it was. Was it … near the end? Like around American? Otherwise… hello White House.
Lime – I’ve been to Oz (Australia) a couple of times. East coast for business, and west coast for pleasure. It goes without saying that the west coast trip was the most fun.
I flew in and out of Perth, where I met my friend. We took a puddle-jumper up to, and back from, Geraldton. Drove the rest of the way up to Exmouth and spent a week snorkeling and diving the Ningaloo Reef. It was the MOST amazing trip I’ve ever taken. The beaches are completely undeveloped and the reef is just right there off the shore. No long boat trips out to it. It was really beautiful. The water was the most amazing shade of blues and greens it didn’t seem real.
I drank a LOT of booze on that trip too. Had a blast, ate good food, saw some amazing sites.
You know how we in the US have deer or armadillo roadkill all over the place? Down there it’s kangaroo and emu roadkill. And the odd goana (sp?) lizard (ENORMOUS lizards, by the way).
Gwen – eee jealous. Sounds like a ridiculously fun time. And, ew roadkill ew. Ew ew ew. A friend in hs used to take dead pictures of squirrels “for me” – so I’d freak out. Ass.
p.s. – is there something wrong with the review I just posted?
I remember once, about OMG pre-children so 20 years ago. My best friend and I are goign out to eat, we’ve got the windows down, the radio is blaring, this chick pulls up in a car next to us and my BFF and I are talking and laughing and all the sudden I hear sirens, so I turn down the radio and look for an ambulance or fire truck. My BFF says, “What’s wrong?”
I say, “I hear sirens.”
My BFF looks over at the car next to us and I SWEAR TO GOD says, “It’s her singing!!!!!!!!!”
The light turned green, we flew around the corner and HOWLED all the way to the restaurant–much like that girl with her singing. Holy Out of Tune BAtman!
And then a not-so-funny. So my mom and I weren’t getting along.
And then about a month to six weeks before she died I came )( close to being T-boned–the light turned green, I shifted, the car on my LEFT went and a car came out of nowhere on my RIGHT and hit the car on my left. If I’d been a little bit faster on the shift, i would have gotten hit and probably seriously injured.
So I told my mom when I talked to her a few days later and she acted like it was no big deal. Six weeks later she died in a car accident when her and my dad were T-boned.
Amie – For the first, that is hilarious oh my goodness – I can’t even imagine someone’s singing sounding like sirens. Definitely a fun- and memorably memory.
For the second 🙁 wow. That’s crazy. I was almost T-boned on my way to class a few weeks ago. This car came out of nowhere and it completely ran a red light. I luckily saw it out of the corner of my eye – I stomped on the brakes, squealing tires and everything. The other car didn’t even care. I was freaked out [and it’s an intersection where I’ve been in 2 other accidents already]. That’s so very sad about your mom. I’m sorry.
Amie – what a horrible way to lose your mom. I’m sorry for your loss. No matter the condition of your relationship with her, that’s rough.
Speaking of accidents…
My family and I were driving to an aunt’s house for last Thanksgiving. The road between here and there is windy, hilly, etc. What would be about 45 mins as the crow flies, takes almost two hours. I’m stuck behind a slower driver for about a third of the trip – something that makes my teeth grind on a good day. Turns out it’s a godsend in this case.
Incident #1: Slower driver barely missed another driver at a green light when that other driver totally ran the red.
Incident #2: A large deer missed by centimeters the slower driver as the deer lept over the hood of their car. A totally amazing sight, by the way. Freaked them a bit.
Incident #3: The slower driver was just reaching where another road deadended into the road we were driving on – we had right of way. This woman comes barreling down this other road, sails across our road – she was going 40mph, at least – and spins out in the dirt on the other side of our road. Stop signs all over the place on her road, plus the fact her road ENDED, but she either fell asleep or was drunk. And she’s laughing her ass off. She nearly t-bones the car in front of us and she’s laughing.
It’s a wonder the driver of the car in front of us didn’t just turn around and go home. Were I them, I’d have the shakes by the time I got where I was going. Three close calls in about a 20 minute window.
If anyone has an original Dali, I’d like to see it.