THE I.R.N. ANSWER -- Vol 5, #2 A N S W E R S T O T H E I R N Q U E S T I O N ----------------------------------------------------- "Uh, somethin about weird things strangers did to you, don't 'member exactly" Volume 005, Number 002 January 31, 1994 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "- all the gnus that have fits to Prince -" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM THE EDITOR I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I have just realized that these two facts are really incompatible. -- ASRDW1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM -- ACAD3A::ASRDR "my moral standing is lying down" Glf. Tryshniblyz. Escrat wernidol ex tryltai kanmyglar. Voykan! Loc gumpo westoilam rebbiluf! Styntoi numrelmat iubaton. (or something like that...) Woody R: A quote from an actual column in a rag some friends brought me just after I got banged up in a car wreck: M: "My husband passed away recently, and on his deathbed, he motioned for me to come to his side, and as I leaned forward, I distinctly heard him say, "Lornax exnor dorn." What does this mean, Madam Olga?" O: "My team and I will be at your house Tuesday morning. Don't worry - we've seen this sort of thing before. It's satanic." R: Needless to say, this didn't help my broken nose heal very well. O: I have a special ointment for broken nose made from the testicles of ... R: Er, thanks, but no thanks. M: What about my husband? O: Don't worry, dear. We have the latest equipment .. M: Yes, but I am worried about his soul ... R: He was the Antichrist. Problem solved. Can we move on, please? FROM -- ORION::ASGAM "Mee. Who else?" I don't talk to strangers! And besides, everybody is strange, so how can I discern between, say, YOU, and someone I don't know?? I must say that I have done some pretty weird things to strangers, and to non-stangers, as a matter of fact! What these weird things were and continue to be is MY SECRET!! heheee.. (Actually, Royce, you may have been the recipient of one or more of my weird acts. Or, you may be in the future, I don't know.. Really, no one knows when or whom I will strike next!) R: Funny, but these photographs here in the Star next to Madam Olga's column seem to sum up your behavior pretty well ... what sort of limbering exercises do you do, anyway? FROM -- ORION::ASMEC "Matt at UAA" On the way to work one morning about two am, I stopped at the 7-11 in Spenard to get a soda. When I got to the counter there was this young blonde woman standing there. I smiled at her and she returned the smile. When the clerk came to help her, she said that she needed some D Cell batteries. The clerk fetched them from the back of the counter and sold them to the woman. The woman then took the batteries off of the counter, held them up to me and said, "These are for my vibrator." I replied with a smile and a nod, as I was left speechless. She smiled at me and strode out the door, leaving both the clerk and I scarred for life. God I love Spenard. Matt Childs a.k.a Chilly R: D-cells? D-CELLS? Jesus, might as well hook up the jumper cables. FROM -- ORION::ASRST "Salmon Eye" hmmm... does "stranger" mean they have to be stranger than me? is that possible?? anyway(could you spare 15 minutes so I could introduce you to the AMWAY program?)whatever it means my answer is still the same. NO !!! WAIT!! SCRATCH THAT!! I DIDN'T MEAN MY ANSWER IS "STILL THE SAME"!! my answer is: married me... R: In answer to your question that was supposed to be answering my question but is acceptable ONLY THIS ONCE and I will poke you with a sharp stick if you do it again, no one is stranger than you, Snohomish Boy. In answer to your answer which is what I am supposed to be doing anyway before I got so rudely interrupted, by an amazing coincidence, the weirdest thing that a stranger has ever done to me is married you. FROM -- ORION::ASSLI "The Lady in Waiting" well there's that "making love" thing... yes I think that would be it... R: Wow. I guess "The Lady in Waiting" doesn't exactly apply anymore, then. You should have a talk with that nice "Unapologetic Virgin" fellow. FROM -- ARIEL@DUCKMAIL.UOREGON.EDU I, being a stranger to myself, once tried to mug myself in the street. Luckily, I was carrying a small can of mace in my pocket. After spraying myself in the eyes, I ran to the nearest emergency call box and got myself arrested, and bedridden for a week. I feel so violated. R: I had my doubts for a while about somebody from the U of O being sufficiently weird to participate here, but somehow I think that you will fit in if we cut off all the pointy bits and push real hard. FROM -- ORION::ASFJP "Irrev. George W. Hayduke" The wierdest thing a stranger has done to me: One night, about 4:30 am, I had one jump out in front of my truck while I was driving down Dimond Blvd... Missed her by about a foot and a half. On the return trip, she was in the median waiting to catch me going the other way. I stopped. She got in. I didn't want her to get in. She got in anyway. It was a bit annoying. She tried suggesting we go home and rut, but I'd have to have been far more intoxicated than even she was. Of course, her (previously unseen) boyfriend in the silver car started following us, so I had to drive in a rather bizarre manner. Or kill me. That was entirely too odd, you see. I guess you'd have had to have been there. Or maybe you were. R: Oh, that was you? I enjoy being previously unseen in my spare time. FROM -- ORION::ASEMG "snowhite" i would say the weirdest thing a stranger has ever done to me is feel my butt on the bus... But i don't know... he might have jsut been getting change... R: By an amazing coincidence, in an alternate timeline, the weirdest thing that a stranger did to me was allow me to feel her butt on the bus. Then she gave me some of her change. FROM -- ACAD3A::FSJJP "Lord Corwin" what's the wierdest thing a stranger has done/said to me? Royce your not a stranger anymore, your more like a brother I never want to see. One that I'd rather forget I had. or something like that. You know the day you got caught by the police.... Oh, no .. that's right, you said that to the police, not me .. hmm .. now what .. oh yes, Have you ever been fucked to Ozzy? Wait a minute, I said that .. she didn't say that .. I did.. hmm I got it, yep .. I've finally got it, no not the clap .. sheesh but the answer .. hehe ... now I won't tell you what was done, but she said, "Make ready for the best night of your life." Does that qualify as strange??? R: "Make ready" ... do you have a bulk rate discount at Dow? I'm a bit confused about the phrase "fucked to Ozzy," however. Is this to be taken in the same sense as "fucked to blue blazes" or "fucked to the brink of insanity" ? Is "Ozzy" some metaphorical ultimate experience? It just seems sort of odd to gaze into the face of Atman and feel nirvana, and then call it some phonetically bizarre word like "Ozzy." I was thinking something more like "Baio." FROM -- ORION::FSSPR "Me" Probably not the strangest, but it qualifies nonetheless... One night around the end of this past summer, I was walking to work. I was about 2 blocks away from there, when I notice a bum leaning against the light pole. I recognized him as being someone who hung around the Transient Center...er ah, the bum station, er ah, you know, that place downtown where all the homeless people and juvenile delinquents spend all their time. Anyway, as I walk by, he says to me, "Hey, Bob." Truly among the Great Moments In Slack. I wish I had had a pipe at that time, as it would have made it truly fitting. R: Oh, sorry, I thought you were Bob. FROM -- ORION::ASLJL "The Lady Rhavyn Of The Art" Well there was the time that I was looking for new age books and was told that they were behind the "REAL BOOKS" which turned out to be christian in nature. I think that no one can top my strange Dad, who was a science teacher in my highchool and would walk down the school halls as the Hunchback of NotraDame, or Igor, slip into Star Trek or Star Wars or Dune Monolog in the middle of EarthScience class, and then sound like a crazy german nazi, or Freud? or name both female and male skeletons and sit them in the class rooms as students? No, nothings crazier than him, well maybe Gak..... the weirdest things done or said to me was from my mad dad, as for strangers? My mommy and daddy told me never to talk to strangers and If they did say anything, I don't remember. Best I can do Royce, living with my parents was never dull.... R: Yeah, I remember all those cool times when your Dad would get up on the table and start shouting "Father! The sleeper has awakened!" and then jump off and try to give us all nerve pinches. He was so much more fun before they cured him. FROM -- ORION::ASDYP "Dave 'Philios' Prentice" Weirdest thing that a stranger has ever said to me? Well, I can think of any number of blatantly moronic things which people have said to me. Lately, nobody (that I recall) has said anything patently weird. At least, not to me personally. I occasionally pick up snippets of conversations in the halls of this fine academic (cough-cough) institution that give rise to wandering subprocesses in my mind. Then I have to kill them (the spawned processes, not the strangers!). Then there was the time that I was doing something academically related on IRC one evening (or was it in the wee hours of the early morning?). You can run across countless numbers of self-styled "weird" people there. I must not have been paying attention (am I ever), because someone asked me if I was in Alaska. Before I could answer, I had to check to make sure. I looked around the room, out the window, at my driver's license, at the map, and finally back at the computer screen. I did a /whois on myself, and plain as day it said 'asdyp@camelot.acf-lab.alaska.edu'. Then I knew that this must havee been a joke. I did what any sane person would do at this point - I ignored it. R: You know, it's theoretically possible that the entire world that you are experiencing right now is completely simulated using precise eletrical impulses fed directly into your brain by some extragalactic race of superscientists who are searching for the secret to immortality. The weird part is that it is identical to reality in every detail. Just goes to show what some people will do for a grant. FROM -- ORION::ASBAM "Captain John Sterling" Once, a man wearing a red shirt and a hat approched me in the CAS lounge. He looked me in the eye. He continued to do this for the next five minutes. I never got a chance to thank him. R: The reason that you never saw him again is that they put him on the away team next episode and he was eaten by a rabid pack of Loofa Gerbils, a distant, and much hungrier, relative of the Tribble. If he had been able to establish the mind link he was attempting to make with you, however, he would have received the information necessary to fend them off (namely that small doses of Evian and Pop Tarts render them unable to drive) and would have survived the encounter. Because of his death, the entire Jedi delegation to the Federation was accidentally destroyed by the Galactica, sparking an interstellar war of unprecedented proportions, rendering uninhabitable almost every planet in the galaxy, and killing all known forms of life, except, by a vast coincidence, the Lesser Loofa Gerbil. This was irrelevant, however, as their main diet (small gnomes, who, also by a galactic coincidence, looked like Roger Ebert) was also destroyed, along with all evidence that any civiliation existed here at all. But hey, no biggie. FROM --BRADY@SATURN.UAAMATH.ALASKA.EDU That would depend on your definition of a stranger.. is a stranger someone you don't know, or someone you thought you knew, but didn't? I think about the bizarre-est thing I can remember at this particular moment is the time that someone (I still don't know who, and I don't think I knew/know them) called my answering machine, and played the contents of their answering machine, containing messages from people I don't know, into it. I was shaking my head and going "huh?" about that one for at least a week. Of course, I usually feel kinda lost when I don't have anything to shake my head and go "huh?" about... R: Wow! What a cool idea! It kind of reminds me of what my father says when he answers the phone: "Yeah, is Dave there?" FROM -- ORION::FSCLH "a (bi)sexual innuendo" *evil WICKed grin* hmmm... i don't know lots and lots of strange things have been done and said to me... oh, but you were talking about by strangers... not people i know... hmm.. not many stranger than me.. but i guess i would have to go with the very tall, elegant black Gentleman.. who, oh so politely, asked me to .. "put a little whip on it. Not too much, just enough to make it sexy..." and then proceeded to tell me... in just the most causual voice.. that he was going to lick the back of my knees until i was covered in sweat... ... of course... somewhere in anchorage.. there is a person who could tell about the very odd woman who stopped him in the street and asked if she could bite his nose... and she did... R: Yes, but did she stop to listen to his reply before biting? What would Miss Manners say? "It's not polite to draw blood." FROM -- ORION::ISPDS "The fool of raven's green hallow" Well I had an odd couple ,a mentally impared male (normal?) and a physically handicapped female in a wheel chair approach me and ask what brand of condom to buy.... while I was shopping for cough drops of course... And a wierd chick who asked me if I liked cherries.... and then when working at a fast food joint, some ugly dude wanted to sleep with me (he said anyway, I hope he was Joking) I must have been having a bad sex day... or maybe I'm a wierdo magnet for odd sexual occurences....or maybe all that stuff is normal... I know im really an incarnate Pan... and I attract strange sexual attention... Really Royce, what do you think? Maybe they were all WSS..... R: My God, I've seen the first couple you mentioned, bizarro and insistent they are, and seem to feel the same inner attraction to the Sears Mall that all fringe persons tend to obey. My friend Steve had a dream once that one of the microwaves that got returned was defective so that it worked even though the door was open and he ran madly down the mall, irradiating all of the truly frightening people that seem to be there 24 HOURS A DAY, so that they were rendered sterile and utterly unable to allow their murky and knotted streams to flow back into the gene pool. It was a great dream. Wish I'd had it. (The microwave, not the dream) FROM -- ACAD3A::AFALS "Marlys" First, he started by feeling, and then pulling on my head. The next thing I knew, he was yelling something about it being a girl, and had the audacity to slap me on the behind...to which, I, of course, started immediately screaming. R: Did he mistake you for a store dummy or something? I think that this would be a hint to move around more. (blush) Or something like that. But hey, if getting spanked makes you scream, you're okay in my book.