Am I the only one here who fondly remembers Stanley Green?


He passionately believed in his cause and gave up all the comforts of life to promote it. A gently spoken eccentric who enriched London by his existence. I miss him.
(ubergeekian, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 22:41, 1 reply)

God
We had a guy at university who we named "god" because he was everywhere all of the time.

Strange guy, middle aged, with a strange growth on his head (no punch line sorry, he just had a lump on his head).

No matter where you were he was there. Library, Refrectory, Old Bar, Harvey Milk bar, refectory. Even the Poly bop he was there. Different courses, different Universities, everyday, everyone in the house had seen him that day.

If you went to Leeds you probably saw him. I dare say he's still there.
( buffet_the_appetite_slayer ٩(●̮̃•)۶ jacked in to the ICE on, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 22:12, 4 replies)

possibly an odd one
i have seen somone a few times around my uni who i could have swore wass a man in drag, i have recent;y been informed how ever that it is in fact a woman (who just dresses as though she is still twenty which she isnt)

i still think its one of them a cock in a frock types
( Reme Philips laid an epic dump on, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 21:46, 1 reply)

My mum
My mother is gradually becoming a legendary figure on b3ta and it's only fair that she should feature in this QOTW. A few of the things she's come out with over the years:

"Will they still say FUCK on them when you get your lenses put in?" - said at full volume in the middle of Specsavers on a Saturday afternoon

"I think you should know, I've just been told off for being drunk and disorderly on a bouncy castle" - oh dear God...

"I met my friend Sam - he's black! - for dinner last night" - oh well done, you've got a black friend, how terribly MODERN of you

"Your uncle is a pillock of the community" - this one I agree on

"You're not fucking playing fucking Delius!" - on wondering whether I should play the 1st movement of the Delius Cello Sonata for my Grade 8 exam...she feels very strongly about Delius

"Do you think you stand a chance of passing this exam?" - every bloody time I ever took an exam

"So few black people are well-spoken" - MUM!!!

"You look lovely and slim, dear" - every bloody time she sees me, as if nothing else matters

"You shouldn't buy black bed sheets, dear, because black sheets show, um, stuff..." - :s

"It's okay, as long as you wash your hands afterwards" - on masturbation...I was 10 when she gave me this piece of advice.

This woman is 57 and owns a Johnny Depp calendar. She doesn't close the bathroom door when she's on the loo. She tells me all about her sex life. In fact, she expects me to listen attentively about her sex life whilst she's on the loo. Click "I like this" if you think she is growing old disgracefully.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 21:13, 7 replies)

My brother
likes to make up mildly offensive jokes, just came up with this:

If Barack Obama wins the election, will they rename the White House, the Black House?
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 19:13, 18 replies)

ye olde murkeyside oddbods
well theres 'NOSMOKE', an iranian refugee who cycles around on a bike wrapped in polythene covered in no smoking signs. prone to shouting this statement in the faces of those who light up in his presence.

Theres capeman, aka dogburger, a rather portly moo moo wearing gentleman who was believed to have been caught in storeton woods attempting to consume a lightly roasted dog.

There was Damo, found in moreton cross, wearing shorts, legs covered in foil, wearing sunglasses at night, with a picture of his girlfriend, the virgin mary, shoved down his pants.

Purple aki, not so harmless, who has the nasty habit of asking young men to squat and/or feel their muscles, as well as allegedly carving initials into the botty of his victims.

Dirty Harry, a shell shocked WWI soldier, who had the alarming habit of hurling dog faeces at any children who may cross his path. His house was apparently full of jars of excrement.

There is R2-Oddie, a 4 foot tall gentleman who is the size of R2, and the beard and glasses of bill oddie. prone to excessive marry jew arna use.
(were all dEvO!!, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 18:46, 2 replies)

Brightons Best
After living in Brighton for years you meet some of the best people. I cant possibly explain all the strangeness here but just list my favorites.

Atters: a genuine bounder, dresses like its 1940 and he is in a terry tomas film down to the sock suspenders. Hes a paranormal investigator. head of the handlebar society. editor of the chap magazine etc, etc. he is genuinely one of the nicest people i have ever met. link

Draco: A friend of Dali that modeled for him in Christ of St. John of the Cross .Hes about 70, i first met at a club werating nothing but boots, a top hat & a chain linking his nose ring to his genital peircings. On speaking to him i found he has no memory, on mild investigation it turns out he was in a major car crash in the 80s and has lost all his memory. His house is now a load of photos & notes on clips & string all over the house. Its like walking through his memory.

And a little known fellow that i dont know the name of myself. He stands on western road and claps at busses with suck glee, its awesome. I have never seen a man as happy as him, when he was getting onto a bus. I love him.

I may remember more later.
(twocoats, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 17:31, 11 replies)

Leather Pants Man
In Bristol city centre there was a guy who from May to September could be found striding purposefully around wearing a stout pair of leather pants and a stonking pair or 20+ eye biker boots he also had a rather huge bushy beard.

My group of friends all took seeing him as the official arrival of summer like the first cuckoo of spring. One summer we hadn't seen him and where drunkenly (ie loudly) discussing his absence whist at the fantastic Ashton Court Festival (non Bristolians google it) People around us over heard us and joined in agreeing that the Leather Pants Man had indeed been absent this summer. Then as if summoned, the Leather Pants Man came striding over the hill into view. We went wild cheering and clapping drunkenly shouting LEATHER PANTS MAAAAN!!!! Our numbers had swelled somewhat and it was a fair sized group. LPM stopped, smiled, bowed theatrically, and stomped off.

Legend
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 17:25, 2 replies)

crazy danish kid's mum
sorry in advance for the long-ish post.

ok, so I was on Gmod, on that game mode where you're on an island and you have to survive. I'd been on it several hours alone, and I'd got all the stuff I really needed, such as a water fountain, iron buildings (made from those doors) and eventually the server started filling up, just a couple of my steam friends, some server regulars, and then... this little kid came on and started trying to steal our resources. we drove him off with stunsticks and crowbars, he starts inging very badly, swearing, and eventually someone tells him to put his mum on. you could hear the sarcasm. but he did! he put his mum on! she said they had friends who could come onto this server and steal our stuff, break our stuff (we had no wooden stuff by this point), kill us all a lot (we had the only weapons and a monopoly on the resources, good luck getting anything) and generally not be very nice. then she went on about how we were chicken for killing him, I ended up arguing about how he was trespassing. then eventually she said her son didn't speak a word of english. well let's see...
he could say "cut the shit, motherfucker" and made that clear many times. he knew the lyrics to we are the champions, barbie girl and a couple of christmas carols (did I mention this was in august?) and he also knew enough to annoy us plenty. then she said, and I quote: "I bet you all think denmark is a city in europe, well it's not, it's a country, there, I have learned you something." about 2 or 3 poeple videoed this from about 2 minutes after he put his mum on, but the files corrupted. by the time he finally got the message, he'd died over 370 times. 372, if I remember correctly. to end this, a couple more quotes (and what she really meant):
"how do you expect him to learn if you keep killing him?" (meaning: let him leech your resources, you bastards!)
"he has brain damage" (meaning: he's a complete retard but I don't want to admit it)

sorry again for the long post.
(venort apparently exists, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 17:03, 5 replies)

Fun and games on the train
This was back in the days when we had those old trains with the little private carriages for 6 people. I'd been bulldozed onto the last rush hour train out of London with the rest of the livestock and managed to grab a seat in one of these little compartments. Stressed and tired, I turn on my Discman and start to zone out for the 2 hour trip home. Well, that was my plan anyway.

Instead, some drunk Irish feller decided to plonk himself down opposite me. And despite having large, early 90s DJ headphones on, still decided to have a chat with me.

"What'r ye lissnen tew"

"Erm...Korn?"

"Torn?"

"Korn"

"Fawn?"

"Korn"

"Cewl. Ken I have a lissen?"

(Fearing I'll be stabbed if I say no) "..ok".

Look at the state of this man, I'm resigned to not getting my Discman back. But bugger me, he did. But then this drunken man felt he now had enough knowledge to discuss nu-metal with me. So I pulled the old trick of jumping off at the next station, running up the side of the train and getting on further up. So I plonk myself down in another seat and bugger me, 10 minutes later he sits opposite me again.

"I thought you got off?"

"Ooooh....erm...no...no. My...my friend is on this end of the train. He's in the...loo?"

"Ooooh right so."

"...I'll go and see if he's ok!"

So up I jump and go even further down the train and joy of joys! A carriage with the lights out (good old shitty Connex South Eastern). So I spend the rest of the trip hiding under my coat in a blacked out carriage. Funnily enough, people looked at me like I was the nutcase.

I know he was more drunk than mad, but like the shit I used to listen to has to have a whiff of madness about it.
(GONEism, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 16:57, 11 replies)

My Cousin ...
I shall not mention his name as I do also feel rather sorry for him,
Born Fourty years ago, Male and is Still Living with his Mum & Dad, Never has he had a girl/Boyfriend, Has absoluty no social life at all, and his dad (retired) still makes his sandwiches.
The highlight of the week is when he goes to budgens every Saturday to buy a tin of curried beans, takes it to our Nan's warden controlled flat,(Nanna's 94 this year) and expects her to warm it through for him!!!!

I don't know if this is eccentric or if he's a complete fuck head who may well have been starved of oxygen at birth?!
(Murran_Butchstansanger Good bye Tony, R.I.P, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 16:25, 4 replies)

PUGGY!
When I was in school, there was an old feller who used to wander up and down the road outside the school picking up coins and whatnot from the floor. He would do this everyday for the whole seven years I was there and had done it for many years before that and as far as I know, continues to this day. He was affectionately called Puggy by the nasty little fuckers like myself who would throw pennies and watch him pick them up all through lunch break.
Cut to a couple of years later I was working at a local recycling facility which offered equal employment opportunities to people with learning disabilities or other mental/physical impairments. This was where I met Puggy - or George - for real - and he was an absolute sweetheart. Along with many of the other local 'characters' who got abuse thrown at them by unpleasant schoolkids and ignorant crowd followers (hanging head in shame).
They may all have had Downe's Syndrome, or been complete and utter loons but that was by far the most lively, loving and fun workplace I've ever had the pleasure of working in.

*not strictly 'eccentrics' I know, but alot of these posts seem to be highlighting mentally impaired people, rather than harmless nuts*
( BlueHaze Chutney. All good., Tue 4 Nov 2008, 16:22, Reply)

Eccentrics
Here in Bermuda there is a bit of a eccentric guy called Johnny Barnes.
He greets commuters with a never ending chorus of 'Good Morning' and 'God Bless You' and 'I Love You' which sounds like 'Ilovya, Ilovya, Ilovya' (because let's face it, he has to make sure he targets every person that's driving through. That's a lot of I Love Yous

Johnny Barnes started greeting commuters in 1983. He was about 60 at the time. A retired bus driver, born of migrant parents that originated from the West Indies island of St. Kitts, Mr. Barnes is also known as the 'Happy Man'. His message of love has inspired many and the fact that he's still going strong 20 years later, is a testament to how much love this man truly has for everyone. Mr. Barnes has been honoured with a 6 1/2 foot statue of himself in his most famous pose and has also been honoured by Queen Elizabeth II. He truly is the island's most famous resident.

Nice bloke but Strange.

More info here

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Barnes

BTW my 1st post so be nice :)
(Bermuda_import Beach party this weekend, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 16:20, 3 replies)

Once again, in Birmingham
Very early in the morning, walking through the Pallasades to New Street station. Typical early morning humdrum of men in suits. In front of me was this very large African gentleman, impeccably dressed with a briefcase. Could not have looked more part of the scenery...

...until he threw his briefcase down, stood on it and proclaimed:

"THAT'S THE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE TODAY! NOBODY SPEAKS JAPANESE!"
(GONEism, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 15:56, 1 reply)

Dancing Ken
famous in cheltenham, he seems to walk around the town centre in his fantastically eccentric clothes, cowboy hat and credit card earrings. I think he raises money for charity, but I'm not entirely sure, and he met the queen once, cut his hair especially for her.

farm4.static.flickr.com/3216/2698557543_801db55fb2.jpg?v=0
(rosie-pie, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 15:47, 1 reply)

I'll say it again
Purple AKI.

LOVES muscles...

that is all


(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 15:20, 1 reply)

My family and other animals part 2
Ah wonderful great Aunt Lowes. Another example of one of the fine branches of lunacy that seem to make up the various aspects of my family tree. Lowes was a character, to say the least - her house when she died was a treasure trove of filth and junk. It was every health and safety inspector's nightmare (or wet dream depending on which angle you look at it from).

Lowes was a product of Edwardian Britain - educated to believe in the Empire and in the sound reasoning of foreign diplomacy that Britain was always right, irrespective of subject matter.

Whilst this might not sound too PC today, she was a charmer - She wasn't authoritarian and there was always a twinkle of mischief in her eye. She just believed that she, being British, was infallible.

So God help the poor bastards that tried to kidnap her. At some stage in the post-war years she went on a cruise (God knows where). The ship pulled in to some small port, and Lowes, being a keen botanist, disappeared off into the surrounding hills. That evening she hadn't returned and the crew on the ship informed the captain. After some fretting and informing the local police, a ransom note arrived to the tune of a couple of hundred pounds for 'the return of the English woman'.

There was little that the captain could do except acquiesce, and so he gathered the money and waited to hear what to do next. Problem was another note arrived, not detailing where the money should go, but lowering the initial demand to one hundred pounds. Thereafter, a small flurry of increasingly desperate notes arrived, each time lowering the price for the Englishwoman. Finally, one arrived asking for one bottle of vodka.

The poor buggers had been so traumatised by their experience with Lowes continually berating their lack of table manners, unwashed hands, slouching, dress, and general demeanour that they had become increasingly desperate to be rid of her.

Pirates capturing Ukrainian and French freighters off the coast of Somalia? Pfffff. If only we still had Aunt Lowes to go and tell them to wash behind their ears - that'd sort them out....
(sugar_tits, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 15:15, Reply)

Oil Be Back
A friend of mine, Chris related this story to me:

He's part of a very traditional family, in that him, his old brother, Phil, and younger brother are expected to follow in his dad's trade of choice - working as an engineer on oil rigs. Since his dad has been working there so long, he was able to use his connections to get Phil, and more recently Chris, jobs working on the same rig in Scotland for Exxon.

They're often out there for months at a time, and as you can imagine, it's pretty isolated and can be quite boring when you're not working a shift. Whenever their shift breaks overlap, Chris's family - his dad, Phil and him, would relax in the break area provided by Exxon, and took to performing little magic tricks to pass the time. They are pretty competitive guys and would each try to better the trick performed by the others.

Eventually, they began working together, colluding in a big trick that required all three of them. Now I've seen this trick first hand, and let me tell you it makes David Blaine look like an underperforming children's entertainer. Anyway, the complexity of the trick means that they are constantly practicing, improving and refining it whenever they get the time on the rig. I'm not sure what exactly they're hoping to achieve, or if they'll ever perform it in public, but I think working as team helps them bond more as a family.

A couple of months ago, a new guy started work on the rig by the name of Gary. A rather rotund, Scottish fellow, Gary was, by the sound of it, fairly lonely with few family or friends back home. He got on fairly well with Phil (they worked in the same team, and partook in a good bit of friendly banter), so he got to know the whole family and began tagging along with them, to the point of annoyance.

One day, the family were once again practicing their big magic trick on the Exxon oil rig when Gary walked passed the window and peered through, quite curious as to what they were doing - "I'm curious", he said, "what are you doing?". To which Chris's Dad replied:






"Fuck off Gary, none of your business."
(osmouk, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 15:15, 6 replies)

It's at a convention, it's quite good
It's just odd running into your english teacher like this.


( Allisade would love to hear from you, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 15:01, 9 replies)

The Geekpad
What happens when you put 4 of the geekiest extroverted guys in the world together in one house?

You get the Geekpad. It has it's own email domain, website, etc - but more important are it's parties...

You come in and you're directed to a back room, where an ID card is made for you - a picture taken, a name put on it all set!

What's the ID card for? For getting drinks of course - when you go to the free bar they swipe your card and enter which drink you wanted. Why would they do this?

For the updated Up to the Second, running totals leaderboard displaying everyone's blood alcohol content in the main room!

Each person's name and BAC was ranked displayed and adjusted itself over time for how quickly your liver would take care of things against how much more alcohol you were putting in... want to know the right time to pounce on that girl across the way? Well, where is she on the board? Do you get to keep your keys? Where are you on the board? Want to know how much liquid courage it took for that guy to approach you? check the board =)

It was an instant conversation starter, they had the proper "buzz" levels marked for each weight category, and it was just weird enough to be cool.

Of course the competitions guys had to hit #1 were ridiculous - quite possibly the most dangerous "video game" ever - but on the other hand, it's not like guys don't compete to be drunkest idiot anyway...

Good fun, good people - and I think it counts as eccentric =)
( Allisade would love to hear from you, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 14:37, 11 replies)

My old man
eats Vaseline on toast
( Captain Tripps is your taxloss lover from Liverpool, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 13:47, 4 replies)

Been away for a few days
Has anyone mentioned Purple Aki?

Now he wasn't just eccentric - he was scary with it. Oh aye. And now I think of it, he probably still is.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 13:32, 6 replies)

Reading a few of these...
...I think maybe I am the eccentric one.

Over the years, I have made:

A helicoidal quadrafilar antenna for capturing APT (auto picture transmition) satelites pictures in real-time (still working as we speak).

An electronic catflap - it would open upon seeing any motion. It was attached to a laptop with servos attached (via a voltage regulator). It had a webcam (for the motion), and I actually wrote cat-face-recognition software for it (didn't work very well, although it did diferentiate human faces very well - it seems cat faces are very similar; who'd have guessed?).

A camera system for every room in the house and one on the front door so I don't have to climb down 4 flights of stairs to see who's just rung the bell. Not so bad in itself, but it also emails the pics to a hotmail account and/or notifies me directly at work (via a TCP listener) that there is someone at the door, in the kitchen, in the living room etc...

A hot air balloon made from a bin bag and coat hangers. Nearly burned the neighbours house down with that one. (surely everyone makes one of these at some point, no?)

A go-cart based on the inner workings of a Sinclair C5 (there is no way, despite Sinclair's claims at the time that it was run on a Washing machine motor - I could never get it working - 12v? 240v? Yeah! I think it speaks for itself!)

A program that changes my clock-in times in the database (of where I used to work), so that if I fancied staying down the pub at lunchtime longer than I should, I could simply use my mobile phone to tell it I had clocked in from where I was standing, rather than actually having to be at the clocking-in machine (gotta love those unsecured databases - yep, leave the installation to HR ;-) ).

A full sized arcade machine (based on Williams Defender) with kxMAME running inside. Should have seen the looks on people's faces when the estate agent was showing people around my house when they were confronted with 2 full sized 80's looking arcade boxes in the living room.

Am in the process of using my old servos (from the catflap - the cat, sadly is no longer alive) to control my telescope so that I can just tell it to point at a star system and it will move there automatically (if I stand near it, the resolution is such that even my weight moves it thousands of miles - I need to be *away* from it!) Thank God for Equatorial mounts!

EDIT: Forgot this; knocked a big hole in the side of my bedroom into my garage, which I then fitted fake beams and fake rocks to the walls, painted it all white, hung olde-worlde type things from hooks (parafin lamps, old knives, coins and trinkets), added a bar, fitted with pumps and turned the whole thing into a 17 century pub, complete with payphone and dartboard. Oddly, the misses didn't bat an eyelid (maybe she just got used to this sort of thing going on around her).

(still, with all this shit, I manage to get bored if I sit still for more than 4 minutes - is that a sign of being an eccentric?)

Mind you, reading this back, does it make me more devious and fun than eccentric?
(dchurch bah, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 13:25, 20 replies)

Laurence
This is laurence of Hartlepool

He loves nothing better than going to watch hartlepool united, wearing his dead mothers clothes and rocking out to his own personal sound track!

enough said

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K-gGBCKvshA
(barronshark, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 13:17, Reply)

CGL
For me it has to be the Crazy Ginger Lady of Harpenden. Bloody hell. What an oddity she is, with the power of teleportation.

She's known for being quite.. Well, fucking scary and odd. She must be in her late 50s/early 60s, messy ginger hair, typical old people clothes and really, really, thick baggy skin colour tights .

Observe:

She hangs around inside Sainsburies talking to people about their shopping, telling them which items she likes/hates/would like some of. In a local pub with my family lately we saw her on her hands and knees searching the floor. She saw us looking so stands up and says, "I overheard someone in church saying they dropped 5pence here.. I thought it would be nice to pop it in the charity pot."

Bless? NO.

She's known for going to funerals of people she doesn't know and speaking to people as if she's a dear old friend. "Ooh, how did you know him? Did you know him for long?" My other half's brother sings in the choir at many services, he witnessed her, after the ceremony, get in her car and follow everyone back to the house of the.. Erm, buffet.. Afterparty thing. They had to call the police to remove her.

Oh, and if you're wondering about her teleportation. As I was deciding what pizza to have with my friend, she came up and started asking what I was doing. Erm, reading the menu. So she began to tell me what she was doing that night, and why it couldn't possibly fit her schedule if she was to have a pizza with me. Not that I fucking asked her. She wouldn't go away so my friend and I drove to Southdown, a different part of town. There we went into Somerfield, bought some alcohol, and went across the road to the local Chinese to order food there.

Who tapped me on the shoulder? Who the fuck do you think? She scared the fucking life out of me. It went on forever, it really did.

Also, although I've not seen it I've heard many reports of some sort of plastic fetish. She walks around with bags picking up pieces of plastic, filling up several bags only to sit on a park bench and inspect/admire said pieces of plastic.
(MunchMyBalloons, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 13:05, 2 replies)

Janesville, WI
The weirdest people in town actually ended up banding together into a sort of loose-knit drinking circle.

- Kleptomaniac anarchist Crust-punk out on probation for biting a guy's nose
- Schitzophrenic guy with a white boy 'fro who dressed in a tiger print wizard's robe and hat
- Seven foot tall half native-American paranoid delusionist who ate palleteloads of robutussin and had a fucking swastika tattooed on his head to make himself look more like his idol, Charlie Manson
- Goth kid from Liverpool, England inexplicably in Janesville, Wisconsin (me.)
(Slyph, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 12:57, 1 reply)

My uncle.
He won't be named here, but connoisseurs of curry sauce will know his name.

Besides, he's a total fruitloop. He's not only a huge miser, he's a fundamentalist Christian miser as well. Oh, and certain other family members believe him to be a closeted homosexual, but that's beside the point.

He built his own Land Rover!

...using bits he scrounged from skips, tips, and scrapyards. To his credit, he got all the bits together and actually built the thing on the old 109-inch chassis. Except he forgot to put the right gearbox in. It only has a low-range one and as such won't get above 45 and uses more fuel than Al Gore's mansion. The exhaust must have been wonky as well because it was louder than a Manowar concert (for those who don't know, Manowar hold the world record for being the world's loudest live act - in 1995, they averaged 131dB.)

He also built his own glasses. He simply bought the lenses and then cannibalised a pair of safety specs from his work (in the engineering department at Cambridge University) - you know, the ones with the flared sides - to form the frames.

Okay, so you may think he's just a harmless tinkerer, a genial eccentric? Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

In 1981 he signed up to go on this missionary cruise. Basically he and a fellow mound of God Botherers went aboard this ship and sailed to obscure parts of the world with the intent of bringing the good news to remote tribes on Pacific islands. Well, it all went okay until they were sailing somewhere near Polynesia and the engine carked it.

So here they were. Forty or so Christian missionaries on a ship in the middle of nowhere. The nearest piece of dry land had last had Europeans visit it a hundred years before and they'd ended up in the pot. What to do?

Well, where as you or I might suggest, "send up a flare" or "put an SOS or mayday call on the radio" or similar sensible ideas, guess what my Christian, miserly uncle did?

Exorcised it.

Yes. He got his Bible and stood in the engine room and cast the demons of mechanical failure out in the name of Lord Jesus Christ.

It didn't work, so they sent up a flare.

Soon after this trip, he got married and had a son in short order. To be fair, whenever I visited my cousin and his family - my cousin, incidentally, is also a bit of an oddball, he's training to be an undertaker and he's into LARPing - my uncle and aunt's marriage seemed really rather loveless. One theory is that my uncle, being on this ship full of deeply religious young men who were rather desperately lonely was so disgusted at the urges within him that he got married in short order to try to prove to himself that he wasn't unclean or whatever.

Length? I have no idea.

Oh, and it's my first post. *pop*
(Blizzardbeast, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 12:52, 4 replies)

Borat
There is a guy who lives in my town (Zandvoort, Holland) who in the summer wears a black version of the swimsuit thing Borat wears (The green gstring)with flip-flops on and huge headphones.
Pubes sticking out all over the gaff, looks a little Eccentric in the supermarket or when it rains.
(amsterdam_neild, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 12:52, 1 reply)

I think this may be a pea-roast
Walking through the park one day, nice summer weather, just generally enjoying the sunshine.

Up ahead I spy some random in a suit lurking behind a tree, occaisonally popping their head out to see anyone coming - me, specifically, as I'm now about 10 meters away.

Assuming I'm about to get jumped or worse, I steel myself for what could be a nasty fracas, and...

Just as I get to within a meter of the tree, the suit does indeed jump out, and run like a bat out of hell down the hill away from me, which, in retrospect, was quite an achievement.

Why? You try running down a hill in fishnets, high-heels and french knickers.
(mymilkshakebringsallthemongstotheyard poison hearts, poison minds - joining hate, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 12:41, Reply)