Note: To my readers. I do apologize for the below article. It is rather sharp in wording and not up to the quality I expect from myself. I’m not going to delete it however, as it is a reminder to me to not write this sort of article while I’m having a bad week and generally I’m in a bad mood. That being said, however, my next post may be a bit of a rant as I’ve had one hell of unique weekend.

- Josh

So I was told recently that I hadn’t done a Weird People post lately. Which isn’t to say that I haven’t run into some weird people but I’ve been very busy with the boat, work, life, etc. I do in fact have a few posts that are 1/2 written just not posted yet. Anyways as I was saying I have run into a few interesting folks lately.

The last one I saw lately was when my Dad and myself took the contractors that did my tiling out to dinner at a restaurant called the Watermark. While we were sitting there a lady that you could smell before you saw staggered a bit on up to our table and asked an innocent enough question which was if she could sit with us. Now first off before people say “Awwh why didn’t you let her sit there?” there’s a few things you have to know about this lady:

1. She smelled rather bad
2. She was drunk out of her skull
3. We saw the fake plants in the restaurant wilt near where she had been
4. After we turned her away she tried to get other people to buy her more drinks
5. Did I mention she kinda reeked?

So needless to say we said “No we’d rather not.” She tried to change our minds by saying she was from the country and tried acting “cute” I suppose… or spastic… Could’ve been both… But ya. So to add to the awkwardness she went back to her seat and glared at us for the next hour until she was escorted out blind drunk to pass out on the bench in the mall there. Fun times.

Next up on this retelling of people I’ve met was one that happened today. Homeless dude wandering around in the PATH tried to scoot around the lunch entourage claiming “He was on his way for business.” after growling at me. Full out growl just under his breath. Normally this would be the end of the story but he happened to continue our way and he was met by… an automatic door. This particular door is opened with a proximity sensor on the wall that you just wave your hand in front of for wheelchair access. He decided to start pounding on it. Despite the fact that the door was already open and had been for several minutes prior to his arrival. Ahhhh people.

Now the last person. This one got rather offensive but in unexpected ways. The office I work at had a cruise with the entire floor lots of fun was had by all (no photos sorry). After getting off the boat one of the guys I work with and I went for a quick walk to talk about boats (he found out about my “little” vessel and wanted to hear more). In comes the homeless smiley dude… or rather the normally homeless smiley dude. He kinda of Mr.Hyde’d out apparently that day and was very aggressive to many people. He demanded money from us or he’d bust in our teeth and other forms of bodily violence… Then called me a… Well… Derogatory term for an African American. Which is funny for 2 reasons. One is that clearly this marketing strategy of getting people to give him money wasn’t working to his advantage at all and I later found out he tried this on everyone that got off the cruise. Second if you know me I’m whiter than rice. I’m so white that Ray Charles complains about the glare off of any skin I actually bare to the sunlight.

So ya. That’s some of the fun from recently.

A few days ago I had a string of weird people meetings on the GO Train. 3 in 1 day in fact. First on the way in I sat across from 2 highschool students that were going into University soon. One was going for some fairly generic courses (can’t remember which exactly), the other was going to like University for like Volleyball so she could like do like cool stuff like maybe become like a like doctor like like! When I come into power I figure one of the first words I’ll have stricken from the English language is “like”. Everyone will be forced to us “similar to” or “has properties which are some what like” JUST to stop short single word abuse.

Next when I was getting off the train at my stop I turned around and came face to face with a lady that seriously looked li… similar too beaker. Same crazy hair, same down turned smile of mild dismay, and same bug eyes. It took quite a bit not to exclaim “Meemoo MOOOO!” And because this paragraph is a bit short here’s a youtube clip of beaker.

Finally on the way to the boat I met… Toooh-neeee….. Tony isn’t quite all there and is kinda smelly. I made the distinct mistake of shaking his hand in greeting after we had talked about how to get to Center Island and if you had to pay to get back. When I got to the island I naturally washed my hands… and then again… and then finally the “essence” of Tony was finally thwarted by a liberal use of industrial hand sanitizer. Smelly Tony is a nice helpful guy (wanted to help carry the cooler I had brought along) but as the nick name suggests… He’s kinda smelly.

Anyways that’s all the weird people I’ve seen lately of any significance. News wise the move of the boat went well and I’m in a great spot now. Construction is also moving along at a good speed and I figure we’ll be totally done demolition by the end of this week. I’ll have to do a more thorough post on what is going to be going on with the boat when I get a chance to digitize my floor plan sketches.

Well that’s all for now. Ciao.

I’ve been meaning to write about this lady for a bit but there’s not much to really say. When I walk to my train station in the morning there’s this lady sitting in a mini-van praying like there’s no tomorrow. I’m fairly sure she gets on the train afterwards but I find this praying right before getting on the train a bit disconcerting. It’s like being on an airplane and sitting beside someone that’s praying for the plan to not crash. Nothing particularly wrong with it per say, but it’s a bit unnerving that it looks like someone thinks that maybe today will be the day the train derails and performs a double somersault into the highway. I suppose I could try talking to her and ask “For the love of GOD do you know something that we DON’T!?”

So I ran into him on the way to work today. He actually was riding a bike around… It was lime green and the kind that is usually labeled as a “girls” bike (metal fenders, the different frame type etc). It also had the pole for a large bike warning flag out the back. Now I don’t want to cast aspersions at people that ride those sorts of bikes but it was most likely not the sort of bike he’d go out and get himself.

So as some people know I tend to run into and have conversations with homeless or very weird people often. I’m beginning to think there’s a memo sent out to odd people saying “This person is too polite to totally ignore someone that’s talking to them” or something because they never seem to have issues finding me or striking up the most bizarre conversations.

Case in point last night when walking home.

Walking home at night I came across a rather… mmmm… toothy individual (missing teeth and the others mostly chipped). When I say came across I mean more smelled from a distance, looked up to find the source and saw him. Anyways this individual had with him a pair of bolt cutters and was about to test them out on a fence (he wasn’t trying to break in though as the fence is on a property line and he could easily just walk around it) when he caught sight of me. I was more than happy to just walk by so I could get home and warm up, but oh no. We couldn’t let that happen. We had to have a conversation. Roughly it went like this:

Him: “Heh heh… Bolt cutters like the guy with crack in the news paper!”
Me: “What? I was more curious why you had bolt cutters.”
H: “Oh! I’m here cuz I need to cut the bolt off of my bike. I’m not doing anything illegal. I mean hey! Bolt cutters the cops might not like that.”
M: “… Well as long as you’re not-”
H: “Like that guy with the crack and all the bikes in the news!”
M: “What guy?”
H: “You know the one that the cops found! He was stealing bikes and selling them for crack and pot! He had 2 BAGS of pot man!”
M: “Ya. Ok. I hadn’t read that. I don’t really read the news-”
H: “Imagine that much pot!”
M: “Ok.”
H: “I’m waiting for my friend to help me with my bike. I’m not stealing anything!”
M: “Great… Well… err… you have a good one then. Bye!”
H: “Ya have a good one buddy!”

How do they find me? That conversation is paraphrased a bit as I got more details of the drug/bike bust but that’s the essential just of the conversation and bang on for the style. Perhaps I should start listing out all the encounters I’ve had with these odd folk over the years. Oh well. Another adventure survived unscathed.