A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

[SilentNight]

Have you ever been travelling somewhere and witnessed an event so hilarious you suspect it was staged for your amusement? Perhaps not, regardless, tell whatever amusing anecdotes you might have to share.

Alternatively you could discuss the excellent musical of the same name.

[Vero]

Alternatively you could discuss the excellent musical of the same name.

<3 Stephen Sondheim

When it's evening, and we're in our tent for two,
I'll sit on his knee,
Get to know him
Intimately,
That'll show him
How much I really love you!

I'm SO going to be humming that all day now!


O hold on... you really wanted actual transport stories, right? umm. "There was a smelly guy on the bus this morning."

That's about the best I can do. My bus journeys are normally spent with nose very deep in book ignoring everything around me.

[Lord Loss]

Someone hung onto the doors of a train a few weeks ago. Someone noticed him and the train stopped, whereupon his name was taken down and he was kicked off.

[Totally Guy]

I was driving along a few months back and I witnessed a van by the side of the road that had broken down.

The van was black and said "Marvello's Circus of Freaks" on the side.

Beside the van stood a midget in a top hat and a man that was stood upsidedown on his hands, feet in the air.

[arguskos]

On the way to class yesterday, I noted a strange vehicle.

It was what I call a "stalker van", you know the kind, one of those white vans with no windows on the sides, always portrayed as the van a stalker might use to spy on you from since it's so non-desrcript. This one was white, but it had a red stripe maybe 4 inches wide running along the top of the van, and there was a picture of a chocolate pudding cup with whipped cream on top on each side of the van. Oh, and it had government plates. :smallconfused:

No name, no identification, just a whipped cream and chocolate pudding cup stalker van cruising around. Was preeeeeetty strange.

[Dr.Epic]

I once saw the hubcap fall right off a moving vehicle. There was no other traffic and the driver kept on going. It was pretty hilarious.

[Crimmy]

My cat jumped. When scared.
So high into the air.

[valadil]

Alright. So this happened a couple years ago. I was in the pet store picking up a new light for my fish tank* and I went to the check out counter. The clerk was something. Hostile wasn't the right word. But 3-4 years later and I still don't know how to describe him.

His name tag said Blackula. Apparently he was the main character from a well known 70's blaxploitation movie. But that wasn't relevant yet.

I was wearing a shirt with a picture of Borat on it. I now find my taste at the time questionable, but that's beside the point. The point was that "Blackula" (which is the only thing I can call him as I have no other name) thought my taste in t-shirts was impeccable. He started talking about the movie. Like, asking deep and interesting questions about it and then answering them in the same breath. It almost sounded rehearsed, or at least pre-written. He'd clearly spent a lot of time thinking about Borat and the societal implications thereof. I've read graduate level papers that lacked the eloquence of Blackula's diatribe on Borat.

I was terrified. The manic energy that this man was putting into an inconsequential rant was overwhelming. He seemed to have forgotten he was working at Petco and just went on and on. Eventually he introduced himself and shook my hand. I gave him a fake name (probably Steve). He looked down at his name tag, read it, and told me "I am Blackula."

I don't really remember what happened after that. I assume I paid for pet gear and left, but have no idea how much ranting was endured before I got to that point. What matters was that the next thing I remembered was that I was cruising down the street, doing 50 in a 30. I realized I was likely to get pulled over if I kept this up. More importantly I realized that no good things would come if I told a cop I was speeding to escape from Blackula.

* The fun thing about this story is that it takes place in another story. Before I went to Petco I was cleaning my fish tank. Aquariums have a little hallogen light on top of them to light up the fish. I'd taken the light off while cleaning and somehow ended up breaking it. I'm a bit of a klutz so this is no surprised. I pitched the light and cleaned up the glass.

Shortly thereafter I went to plug in the tank again. Fish tanks also have a heater and a filter. I kept all these on a power strip so I'd only have to deal with one cord when disconnecting the whole aquarium. Raise your hand if you think I remembered to unplug the light from the strip before plugging the strip back in. Nobody? Good.

So the broken light was in the trash, which was also full of tissue paper, some hair, a couple of twigs. Pretty much any household item that looked like kindling. It went right up.

The trash can was on a white carpet. I did not want to have to put the carpet out as well, so I picked up the burning can and carried it over to the front door. The area around the door was faux marble paneling, and seemed less likely to burn. Opened the door, kicked the trash can, shut the door, and ran for an extinguisher.

My buddy Josh was sitting on the couch when all this happened. He didn't see the fire actually start. He only noticed it when I picked it up and carried it to the door. At this point though our descriptions of the events differ. Where I say I carried it across the room to the door, Josh claims that I threw a fireball across the room. My version's accurate, but his is better.

(And for all you gamers out there, I'll point out that yes I did briefly consider using the fish tank to put out the fire. I couldn't pour any of it out because it was already mostly drained of water. I couldn't dunk the trash in there because I didn't want my guppies to meet fire.)

[Lycan 01]

A random stranger in a hobby store accused my friend of being gay because of his Warhammer 40K army choice. We randomly got into a discussion about 40K because he saw me buying the Daemonhunters Codex, and it came up that my friend was about to start collecting Space Wolves. Without skipping a beat, he asked if my friend had come out of the closet. Apparently, he wasn't joking. We laughed awkwardly and tried to continue the conversation, but then he said, "No serious, have you come out of the closet yet?" with the most 'I'm not joking this is my serious face' look on his face. He is often accused of being homosexual, and is very touchy about it after years of being picked on even after assuring people he's straight. It didn't help that he was wearing a pink shirt that day. The guy was either completely oblivious, or simply didn't care, because he didn't apologize even after my friend completely walked away from the conversation. :smallconfused:

Dude then went on to insult my armies, too. :smallannoyed:




Edit: Second story was kinda off-topic. And sad.

[Cyrion]

I met Boris Karloff.

Or at least the closest you could get in 1988. We went to the local Friendly's (Morristown, NJ) for ice cream and were greeted by a man who was the spitting image for late-era Karloff.

"Good eeevening! How may I help you?"

Even his voice was dead on!

"Umm- we'd like a table for four."

"Would you like smooooking or nooon-smooooking?"

"Non please."

"I'm sorry. Non-smoooking is full. But there's nobody in smoooking right now. Would you like a table there?"

[Miklus]

I was out biking and passed by a small lake. There was two guys in a canoo and one very angry swan. Swans are made of pure attitude. It kept on attaking them. They tried to splash water on it, but that just made it even angier. It kept charging them with these attack runs where it flaps it wings and run across the water. They where trying to fend it off with the oares and paddle at the same time. Too funny. :smallbiggrin:

[Cyrion]

I saw an amusing bumper sticker on my way into work this morning:

Do you want to check you hit points before or after I slap you?

[banjo1985]

This one has a few parallels with Miklus' story above...

On a journey home through country lanes one evening I had reason to explore my ability regarding emergency stops.

A fox bombed out of the undergrowth right in front of my car, ears down and heading for the other side of the road like it's life depended on it. It was followed a moment later by a very agitated duck, quacking and flapping its wings as it chased the fox.

...one of the more surreal moments of my life.

[ghost_warlock]

I once saw the hubcap fall right off a moving vehicle. There was no other traffic and the driver kept on going. It was pretty hilarious.

Might have been my cousin. If he accelerated and then turned left quickly, the right rear hubcap would come loose and streak away from the car. Did it once in the KMart parking lot and almost hit this old lady; chipped the concrete wall next to her where the hubcap crashed into the store. :smalltongue:

[Dr.Epic]

Might have been my cousin. If he accelerated and then turned left quickly, the right rear hubcap would come loose and streak away from the car. Did it once in the KMart parking lot and almost hit this old lady; chipped the concrete wall next to her where the hubcap crashed into the store. :smalltongue:

No. It happened in front of my college.

[Cyrion]

I once saw the hubcap fall right off a moving vehicle. There was no other traffic and the driver kept on going. It was pretty hilarious.

I got the whole tire this weekend. You know those shreds of tire that you see by the side of the road all the time? I had one get made right in front of me on Saturday. We were driving down the highway and all of a sudden one of the tires of the pickup in front of me got kind of blurry, and then there were a few feet of airborne rubber strip coming at me. Let's hear it for fast reflexes...

Strangely, that was one of three times someone tried to kill me on Saturday. Sometimes it's not all that much fun being the center of the universe's attention!

[Brewdude]

My friends and I were on a road trip from California to Milwalkee for Gen Con back in the 90s. While trying to pass a truck on the 40, we see this goat on the road in the fast lane, so we swerve back behind the truck. Unfortunately, the goat decided to walk right in front of the truck in the slow lane, and SMACK!!!!!

...we were greeted with a flying goat head arcing over the truck and barely missing our windshield. There were goat jokes for the rest of the trip.

[Eldan]

I was out biking and passed by a small lake. There was two guys in a canoo and one very angry swan. Swans are made of pure attitude. It kept on attaking them. They tried to splash water on it, but that just made it even angier. It kept charging them with these attack runs where it flaps it wings and run across the water. They where trying to fend it off with the oares and paddle at the same time. Too funny. :smallbiggrin:

There was actually a five-line article in today's newspaper saying, basically, that a woman was killed by a swan. It didn't give any details, though, apart from that she had disturbed it.

[Starfols]

Once around 2 in the morning, a really, really tall guy knocked on the door of my dorm, wearing a ski mask and holding a laptop. He had overheard my and my roomate's conversation (reading Mr. Welch's list), and stopped to listen. He looked at my roomate's warhammer models with interest, and after about 10 minutes, he left.

[Vorpalbob]

I was walking home through a city park reading a book. I heard a rustling in the bushes off to my left, and quickly pocketed the book. There were numerous signs around the park telling of coyotes and the occasional wolf. While I doubted that one would attack a human, I felt that caution was best. Now at this point, my preferred clothing for travel consisted of a trench coat, dark fedora, sunglasses, and a sturdy cane. To the people who came charging out of the shrubbery, I must have looked as startling to them as they did to me.

Tumbling out of the woods was about a dozen LARPers, in full armour and regalia. I could tell that another group followed them, and I had to duck and roll to avoid a padded arrow.

I have never seen or heard of that park being used for LARPing before, as it is usually too crowded. It was relatively late at night, and these guys were really going at it. I stood and watched them for a while, laughing my head off the whole time. Half because of the situation (someone who looks like they wandered off the Matrix set wandering into a medieval battle) and half because of how useless these people were with their foam weapons. I eventually just went home.

[ninjalemur]

I have served Sarah Palin ice cream. She tips really well.


A few weeks ago my friends and i were traveling down a highway when we got passed by a truck advertising Ron's Taxidermy Service. The great thing was that their were three dogs in the back. Once we had notice that, we had to pull over because we were laughing so hard.

[SilentNight]

I got the whole tire this weekend. You know those shreds of tire that you see by the side of the road all the time? I had one get made right in front of me on Saturday. We were driving down the highway and all of a sudden one of the tires of the pickup in front of me got kind of blurry, and then there were a few feet of airborne rubber strip coming at me. Let's hear it for fast reflexes...

Strangely, that was one of three times someone tried to kill me on Saturday. Sometimes it's not all that much fun being the center of the universe's attention!

Well, good thing this didn't happen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvcwCCWkhBI) :smallbiggrin: (skip to 4:35)

[Flame of Anor]

Once around 2 in the morning, a really, really tall guy knocked on the door of my dorm, wearing a ski mask and holding a laptop. He had overheard my and my roomate's conversation (reading Mr. Welch's list), and stopped to listen. He looked at my roomate's warhammer models with interest, and after about 10 minutes, he left.

I take it you didn't ask whose laptop it was... :smallamused: