Manning Leonard Krull ([info]manningkrull) wrote,
@ 2008-05-05 21:04:00
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Absurdité
There are many brief moments in my existence where I stop for a second to appreciate the fact that my life is fantastic and absurd. The latest was:

Very very late Saturday night, post-picnic, unbelievably drunk, alone in an unfamiliar bedroom, trying to feed someone's pet rats for them because they asked me to, dropping the container of rat food all over the floor and scrambling to pick it all up while making as little noise as possible, as the rats strain against the bars of their cage and pretty much obviously laugh at me. The room is spinning and I'm on my hands and knees picking up rat food one piece at a time amongst clothing and other junk on the floor, barely able to contain my laughter. It seems like a moment ago I was a kid working at the mall in New Jersey and suddenly I'm old and in France and can't hold my head straight and there are French rats squeaking at me.

I would like to hear your absurd moments too; the situations that seemed so natural as you were getting into them, but then you suddenly wonder how on earth you ended up there.

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(Anonymous)
2008-05-05 07:26 pm UTC (link)
Ah, what will surprise you even more is when such things happen when you're MUCH older, still drunk and staggering around, still finding yourself in situations you could never have imagined at some previous point in your life, and you think, how could it be?
For the record, I'm the mother of someone who had once a rather tenuous connection to you. I continue to read and enjoy your posts even though the connection is long since severed (and she doesn't do LJ anymore). I have commented in the past on a post or two when you and tamisevens were on the first sojourn in Europe.
I moved to Germany at the age of 50 and love the European life, although mine isn't quite so colorful as yours, which is another reason why I continue to follow your adventures. I love Paris, took my kids there about 6 years ago when they visited, and would love to go back. Your LJ is not a bad substitute : )
I hope you don't mind!

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[info]manningkrull
2008-05-06 09:14 am UTC (link)
Hey, hello, yes, of course I do vaguely remember me and Tami receiving the occasional LJ comment from you! I'm happy to hear you're still reading from time to time!

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[info]paft
2008-05-05 07:29 pm UTC (link)
Back in 1993 I was waiting for a BART train to take me from Oakland to San Francisco. I'd just come back from eating at a pretty decent Mexican place in Alameda and I had a doggie bag containing one untouched, very large burrito that had been part of my order. A skinny, sad-looking homeless guy carrying a guitar case approached me on the platform and asked me if I had any spare change.

I said, truthfully, that I did not. But would he like this burrito?

For an instant he brightened. "A burrito? A whole burrito? Are you sure?" I opened the bag and took the burrito out to show him.

His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What's wrong with it?" he asked.

"Nothings wrong with it."

"It's poisoned, isn't it!"

"No, no, it's not. It's a very good burrito."

"I think it's poison. Take a bite," he said, plainly unconvinced.

I bit off a corner of it and chewed. "Swallow it," he said. "I want to see you swallow it."

With some effort -- I was pretty full, I swallowed it and held the burrito out to him.

"But what about the other side? Take a bite of that." A train was coming.

I took a bite out of the other corner. The train had arrived. Its doors slid open, I shoved the doggie bag and burrito into the homeless guy's hands, and I jumped into the car, my mouth still full of burrito.

He chased me onto the train, and as it pulled out of the station I was running down the aisle to the next car, chewing desperately, while this guy galloped after me waving the burrito and yelling, "Swallow! swallow! I want to see you swallow it all!"

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[info]manningkrull
2008-05-05 09:59 pm UTC (link)
Now THAT is a wonderful story. Delightful!

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[info]ninja_style
2008-05-05 10:48 pm UTC (link)
I usually like to poison a burrito and then wander around until I happen to find a homeless guy.

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[info]paft
2008-05-06 12:43 am UTC (link)
Damn. You're onto me.

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[info]jenn
2008-05-05 07:30 pm UTC (link)
A bit earlier, I accidentally sent this to the wrong person via IM:

awesome, now we have plot points for band camp

...and I couldn't think of a non-weird-and-long-winded way of explaining that to the very confused person on the other end. Pretty much any scooter rally I've attended in the past two years is an alternate universe. But then, so is the rest of my life.

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[info]iphisol
2008-05-05 07:44 pm UTC (link)
Haha, I was just thinking about this! Yesterday it kinda hit me that I'd changed my sex and, for the most part, gotten away with it. That is a big one.

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[info]manningkrull
2008-05-06 09:16 am UTC (link)
Oh fuck yeah, I ain't even tryin' to compete with you, seriously. I haven't even turned French successfully!

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[info]ludickid
2008-05-05 08:10 pm UTC (link)
Man, I think part of the key to my survival as a human being has been recognizing that everything I do is pretty much absurd.

But as far as specifics go: a number of my brushes with the law have struck me as pretty insanely crazy, as when I got busted by a cop in the middle of nowhere for taking a piss by the side of the road, and he patiently yet sternly explained that this could get me a conviction as a sex criminal due to the wording of the law, and it all seemed very reasonable and sensible as he explained it except wait a minute, this guy is telling me he will lock me up with the same record as a pederast or a rapist because he caught me taking a whiz in rural Wyoming and the only people within 50 miles of here are me and him. Fucking madness.

A few times in Paris I felt the absurdity of life crashing down on me, like when we were in that goth bar and that dude Laurent was explaining to us about Steve Albini. Also when Ozzy Osbourne wished me a wonderful Christmas.

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[info]ludickid
2008-05-05 08:20 pm UTC (link)
Oh and here's another one:

Once I was waiting to interview David Carradine (and that turned out to be in and of itself one of the most bizarre moments of my entire absurd life), and he was staying at the Four Seasons. Now, I have interviewed a lot of people there, because that is where rich famous people stay, but I always feel uncomfortable in the lobby, because I am a shabby working-class oaf and I dress like a thug and I'm always afraid that the hotel dick is going to think I'm a kidnapper or something and throw me out. So there I am, in the lobby, reading a sci-fi novel to pass the time and waiting for Carradine's handler to come down and get me so we can do the interview. And there's this older dude, suit and tie, balding, also hanging around the lobby, and he's giving me the eyeball. So I think, could this be Carradine's handler, and he's waiting for me like I'm waiting for him? It could be! But I sort of doubted it, because handlers are usually fashionable young dudes or chicks, and this was obviously a rich guy but also kind of a schlub. But he keeps eyeballing me! And I think, what, does he think I'm rough trade or something? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? And I start to get, for no reason at all, that kind of crazily paranoid feeling you sometimes get when you're someplace unfamiliar, and you're perfectly justified in being there, but you're suddenly gripped by the notion that something is going to go terribly wrong and you'll end up thrown our or in jail or trapped under a ceiling beam or something. So the guy finally quits making googly eyes at me and walks over, and I think, well, at least I'll find out what he wants. So he comes up to me and says:

"Excuse me, are you Dr. Rosenzweig?"

And I'm all, whuh hah wha? Because, okay, not only am I hanging around in the lobby with a sci-fi novel and a notebook and a shaved head, but I'm wearing a heavy metal t-shirt and black jeans and Doc Martens, and a used German army coat, and WHAT THE HELL KIND OF A DOCTOR AM I GOING TO BE LOOKING LIKE THIS? WHAT KIND OF A CRAZY MAN IN THE LOBBY OF THIS JILLION DOLLAR HOTEL IS THINKING THAT I AM SOME SORT OF A DOCTOR?

I just said "Uh, no, sorry," and he went back and sat down. I never figured out who Dr. Rosenzweig was. Oddly enough, the day got even more crazy after that.

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[info]manningkrull
2008-05-06 09:17 am UTC (link)
I love all of these stories, but I think the Ozzy tidbit might be my favorite.

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[info]trini_naenae
2008-05-05 08:11 pm UTC (link)
Which one? My life tends towards absurdity. Should I go with the last couple of years?

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[info]roninspoon
2008-05-05 08:14 pm UTC (link)
Every year I go to Portland Oregon on Columbus Day to party with friends. The weekend usually involves a pretty irresponsible amount of drinking, as well as the occasional pie making contest and lately live bands in the basement. It's essentially just a weekend to have an awesome time with good friends.

A few years ago, a decision was made to have a bonfire in the backyard. We needed wood though, for fuel you see. None was readily available, but Laurel mentioned as how her sister lived right up the street, and had just finished clearing brush from her yard, and likely had some wood we could use.

Steve and I needed no further motivation, and literally before she was done talking, we were out the door. From somewhere nearby we obtained a wheel barrow. With only a vague idea of where we were going, we set off up 8th avenue. It was probably one o'clock in the morning, and we were both intoxicated enough to think that running down the middle of the street pushing a wheel barrow would be inconspicious.

Eventually we found a pickup truck loaded down with fresh brush cuttings. We had begun clumsily filling the wheel barrow with the brush clippings when it started to rain. Shortly it was raining very hard, and neither of us had anything resembling wet weather coats.

We did the only thing that seemed reasonable, we pushed and pulled the wheel barrow up onto the closest porch and stood there waiting for the cold rain to stop. Naturally, the home owner opened the door to see what was so funny. Rather unnaturally, they asked if we'd like to come in out of the rain. Drunk enough not to expect to be locked in the basement and cut into pieces, we accepted and I spent a very blurry ten or fifteen minutes playing with their dog.

The next day we found out the home belonged to Laurel's sister and husband. I don't remember what we did with the wheel barrow, but we never had a fire.

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[info]manningkrull
2008-05-05 10:02 pm UTC (link)
YES! EXACTLY!

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[info]zantimisfit
2008-05-05 08:47 pm UTC (link)
I once had a 15 minute telephone conversation with a man that I thought was my husband (it wasn't). I was at my brother's house and needed to call home about something. I dialed the phone and when the guy picked up and said hello, I immediately said something like, "Do we have a large phillips head screw driver?" The guy responded with something like, "Yes, why?" Then I preceded to explain some issue that my brother was having and we needed this tool and on and on. Finally, the guy asked, "Who is this?" I think I laughed and said, "It's me." The guy asked who "me" was. Then I asked who I was speaking to. It finally dawned on both of us that neither knew the other. The stranger and I had a good laugh over it.

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[info]zantimisfit
2008-05-05 08:59 pm UTC (link)
Oh, and I don't know whether this qualifies, but it was the most absurd thing I ever saw:
One weekend my husband and I took a drive down to his place of work so he could do something or other. The building was in Glocester City, NJ and this was like 9 or 10am on a Sunday morning. We had to drive on King St. which is all the way down by the river and at that was a pretty run down area. As we turned on to King St. I see this 20-something guy standing on the side of the road. He's wearing jeans and only jeans - no shirt, no shoes, no socks. Then I noticed that his pants were wide open and he's got his dick in his hand pissing into the road. So this guy who's wearing only a pair of jeans is standing facing the road on a Sunday morning pissing like he's in the privacy of his own bathroom. But the best part was that with his other hand, his index finger was like 2 digits deep into one of his nostrils. yeah, boy, Gloucester City!

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[info]manningkrull
2008-05-05 10:03 pm UTC (link)
Hahaha, that reminds me, one of the last things I saw in Philly before I moved to France in 2005 was two guys standing in front of a vacant lot in South Philly, doing lines of coke off of an overturned, abandoned refrigerator on the sidewalk. Right there in plain view as I slowly drove by.

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[info]drninja
2008-05-05 09:00 pm UTC (link)
At one point I was a member of the Junior Statesmen of America (I was fancy!), and, after arguing the relative benefits of Socialism to a roomful of Texas fundamentalists, lacked the wherewithal to sleep. This presented a problem driving home the next day, and I was near dead upon arriving. As I approached my house a rather blasé clown drove by in a Dodge Neon. This, in and of itself, was not incredible except for the fact that I was very tired and there was no one to corroborate what I'd seen. This has since been a running gag in my life that whenever I am too tired to think straight and am in a state to question my own ability to process my surroundings I wind up seeing off-duty clowns without anyone to back up their existence.

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[info]signorinakatina
2008-05-05 09:01 pm UTC (link)
haha, I wrote an entry one time that covered a day surprisingly full of those things:

http://signorinakatina.livejournal.com/147552.html

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Italian Ice Cream
[info]schtune
2008-05-05 09:06 pm UTC (link)
Being in the living room of a local family in West Virginia, watching them eat ice cream - the father scrawny, shirtless, tattooed, wearing thick glasses and using a serving spoon - as I was on their phone with AAA, the family ignoring me the whole time, the daughters watching Christmas cartoons.

Walking away from the Washington monument in the pouring rain as a couple dozen teenaged Italian boys sang their national anthem while jumping around and slam-dancing and the teenaged Italian girls tried to protect their expensive, already-soaked fashionable clothes.

Having Flyboy Rocco Rock smack his opponent's head into the water-ice cart I was working, then dip both his hands up to the elbows in the cherry and rub it in the other guy's face.

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[info]ndgmtlcd
2008-05-05 09:10 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, my recent absurd moments are rodent-related too. It's amazing how many laughs you can get when you have to squirt in some liquid antibiotics in a rat's little mouth, two doses, twice a day each.

Si elle ne se remet pas de sa pneumonie après ça, je serai très mécontent et la vétérinaire va avoir de mes nouvelles.

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[info]vitabeata
2008-05-05 09:11 pm UTC (link)
the situations that seemed so natural as you were getting into them, but then you suddenly wonder how on earth you ended up there

This pretty much sums up my life as an academic. One day your a teenager with a bad dye job stuck in the midwest; the next you're singing Carla Bruni songs with the Directeur of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.

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[info]brahman_atman
2008-05-05 10:24 pm UTC (link)
The military was a wellspring of absurd moments.

One day, we were practicing using explosives to open doors. See, in the army, we sometimes want to kill inconsiderate people who lock or barricade their doors. Lockpicking is difficult under combat conditions, so explosives is really your best option. I digress.

I'm standing about three feet away from a door on which I've mounted a sizeable explosive charge. The only thing between me and the explosion is a clear, flimsy, plastic shield that hangs casually over my arm. My instructors told me that it's important that I watch the explosive as it explodes. I need to be Johnny-On-The-Spot when the charge goes off, since the explosion gives the element of surprise. Surprised enemies are easily-shot enemies. Best to be through the door quickly after you destroy it.

So I'm three feet away from the charge, intently focused on it through scratched plexiglass. The charge is on a fuse that will go off soon, but I don't know the exact moment (I'm not directly setting off the charge). A butterfly lazily flies past me and lands on the explosive charge.

As the seconds ticked down, I was transfixed. All thoughts of what I was going to do after the charge went off (drop shield, raise weapon, enter room, shoot targets) evaporated as I watched the butterfly gently flex its wings. Part of me wanted to warn the butterfly somehow. Part of me knew that I'd never hear the end of it from my Army buddies if I did.

My entire world shrank down to that little butterfly taking a brief rest on top of a live explosive charge.

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[info]ninja_style
2008-05-05 11:02 pm UTC (link)
WELL WHAT THE FUCK, WHAT HAPPENED, DID IT GET AWAY?? DID IT DIE A VIOLENT AND HORRIFIC DEATH???

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[info]brahman_atman
2008-05-06 12:44 am UTC (link)
The story is ruined if I tell you. Enjoy the moment. :)

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So this is what adulthood's about....
[info]ninja_style
2008-05-05 11:00 pm UTC (link)
OK I had just started my first year as a teacher. I had spent so much time in the preceding months wondering what teachers talked about when students weren't around, and what it would be like for me to be in this secret club of adults, especially when I was only 23 myself.

Well maybe three weeks into the schoolyear, there's me and two other teachers, both females, by the way, alone in the teacher's workroom killing time before a student shows up for a meeting with the three of us. And we're all (I did NOT start the conversation) talking about anal sex. And the moment the student enters the room, on a dime the conversation suddenly becomes about comparing canned vegetables to frozen. And no one so much as cracks a smile to acknowledge among each other what just happened. We were so entrenched in fact that we did the "give us five more seconds" motion to the kid so we could finish the train of thought about vegetables.

Throughout the whole meeting I couldn't think of very much else than the few minutes that preceded the meeting.

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Ahh, the Clown Porn Party of 2005 in SF
[info]jordanlawman83
2008-05-06 02:10 am UTC (link)
I managed to get into a clown porn party, with a band performing some sort of rock & roll music. While dancing on stage with 3 women, one of them took their top off and danced topless with me! I thought this was so cool that I didn't notice that the woman behind me was a man for at least 2 songs.

Undeterred by this alarming discovery, I jumped off the stage and continued my grooving ways on the floor. Some very flamboyantly dressed man gave me the evil eye so I made some provocative 'don't fuck with me' dancing movements at him/toward him.

He responded back in kind and quickly we were circled by party people and clowns while clown porn was projected behind us on the brick walls and aerialists hung from ropes above us. Running on adrenaline and about 10 ounces of vodka, I tried to show this goofy bastard who was the boss of this dance floor. After I thought I had shamed him with some Michael Jackson meets Axl Rose, he stepped up and pulled out some crazy unexpected disco moves (WTF!? Disco moves with rock music?!). I countered back with something extra funky and got some whoots and hollers from my friends in attendance.

He backed off and retreated to the bar to drown his sorrow in something super lame. Probably Zima. I won that dance off.

...yes, this actually happened 3 years ago this May.

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