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Rants >> Rant 371

::Today's soundtrack: Gnarls Barkley "Crazy" ::


My town is probably not unlike any other small town out there. It's got schools, churches, a Main Street with shops on it, mom and pop restaurants, and all that. It also has it's share of crazy people.

I have maintained to anyone who will listen that when the zombie apocalypse happens, it might take the locals here a while to catch on because a good share of the people yell indiscernible noises and and have that distinctly zombie-esque lumbering limp. I'm serious. You can drive along any of the main roads in this town at any hour and you'll come across someone who, at first glance, creeps along like a card carrying member of the flesh eating undead (watch out for those undead membership dives... they can be murder! I'm so sorry). Most of us in the medical field refer to this as "the Lithium shuffle" since we have an inordinate amount of our population with some sort of mental disorder and probably taking Lithium for it.

And that's just the general population stuff! Wait until you hear about some of our more famous crazy citizens:

Mr. Shouty. You may not see this man, but you will definitely hear him! Picture it: you're walking down Main Street, no one else seems to be around, then you hear from seemingly nowhere: "HEY! GUDDANNIT! WUSAGUYGUTTAGO?! COMHEERYAFUCK!" You look around, expecting to see a man running towards you being chased by two guys with nets and cattle prods, but.... there is still no one around! Like I said, it sounds like this fellow would be right in your immediate vicinity, but he is actually off somewhere else just yelling really, really loud nonsense. I wouldn't want to be near him when he has a yelling spell: if it sounds that loud when he is nowhere to be seen, just imagine how loud it is when you're face to face? What does he look like? Who can say? Has anyone ever SEEN this guy?

The Wavin' Dude. This is an elderly crazy person who spends his days just walking around town and stopping on random street corners to wave. He'll be standing there waving at every single car that drives past. Yes, even when it is 100 degrees Fahrenheit or well below freezing. If you can't see his face because of a scarf, we all still know it's him. Unless some other weirdo has taken up the waving at cars all day post.

Mr. Swiss-cheesed by Syphilis. He's one of our local famous citizens, he is. He's an elderly, aging gay man who was old even when I was young. He has come on to nearly every other male, straight or gay, in the community, and has had a promiscuous life style as long as anyone can remember. Well, all of that wanton sex has caught up with him, and his syphilis has literally ruined his brain. Yes, you CAN treat syphilis with simple antibiotics, but he never did, and now it is too late. I am convinced he is only even alive today because all of his STDs are in some sort of perfect balance that they cancel each other out.

That Old Guy With the Neck Brace. There is a paranoid old man who roams our streets and he constantly is complaining about his back and/or spine, even when there is no one around to listen. You can see him wandering around with a neck brace... and sometime he even chooses to WEAR the thing! Yes, I do mean to say that he complains of back issues and goes out walking while carrying the neck brace in his hands! Now, I'm no expert, but I don't think you're going to get any help from a NECK brace if it isn't, I don't know, AROUND YOU FUCKING NECK. Okay, neck brace guy, tell me again how the government is out to "get" you with back pain and not your own stupidity.

The Cigarette Kids. Where I live, in the United States, you need to be 18 years old or more to buy tobacco products. Therefore, if you are under that age and want a ciggy, then you need to get creative. Some teens will swipe one from their mother's purse, or pay someone older to buy them on their behalf. Not these kids! I was at a downtown restaurant with a friend seated at a window when we see two teenagers headed straight in our direction from across the street. We were trying to tell if we knew them and if they were coming to see us, when we realized there was a trash can right outside the window. We thought they were going to throw something away, BUT NO. You see, on top of this trash can was an ash tray, and these kids... well, they took all of the used, snubbed out cigarette butts and left. Other people in the restaurant saw them do this, and asked us if they really did see a couple of kids take USED CIGARETTES from an ash tray. The waitress said they do that ALL THE TIME and hit all the public ash trays in town, to boot. I have since noticed them around and yep, it's true! I don't even want to think about the sorts of bacteria brewing in their mouths...

The White Retarded Rapper. I know, what a racist and deplorable sounding name, but trust me, whatever it is you're picturing in your mind when you think about it, you're probably only about 10% off. There's this, well, white retarded guy who likes to stand on street corners, listening to his walkman and "singing" the lyrics as loud as he can to, yes, you got it, rap tunes. He does the "rap gestures" while he's doing it, too. Oh yeah, he's the whole package, ladies! The first time I noticed him, I was in my car paused at a traffic light and I thought he was waiting to cross the road and jamming to his tunes. The next time I saw him, I had my window down and that's when I heard the ridiculous singing. Of course I mentioned this bizarre sighting to friends and it turns out he's local legend.

Ol' Wall-eye. He's an imposingly large, mentally slow man who is perfectly polite and nice, but wall-eyed (what we movie buffs call "Jack Elam good looks"). This fellow calls everyone either "sir" or "ma'am" and will say "please" or "thank you" without any prompting. However, because he is enormous, has a creepy wall-eyed glare, and is mentally challenged, you can't help but get the feeling that he's going to be on the news one day and it isn't going to be good.

Bobby. This one guy is so famous around town that everyone knows his name, and if you ask about "Bobby", everyone knows who you mean, regardless of the number of people named Robert around here. He's a middle aged, thin, mentally disabled man who spends all day just walking around town saying "hi" to people. He's in great shape for his age and will probably outlive us all because of all the walking he does. He also has a memory a mile long and doesn't forget a single thing, it seems. Sometimes when he's saying his obligatory hello to people, they will start a polite conversation with him and he'll ask about something they did ten years ago. His continuous presence and greetings are pretty disconcerting, but he's rather harmless.

And that's only the tip of the crazy iceberg! I haven't even gotten into the throngs of senile old folks meandering about.... Got any crazies where YOU live?

William the Bloody (with a tip o' the hat to Mallory Maloney for a similar post on the crazy people in HER home town!)