the adventures of yesterday.
29 May 2005 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimorenei. accosted by crazy personal-space invading smelly woman in the street
on the way back from an extravagant grocery expedition yesterday we got cornered by this FREAKY CRAZY old woman at the bus stop. she was walking up and down and talking loudly, half the time facing away from us. at first i thought she was talking to someone standing off to the side that i couldn't see. for a while i thought she was talking on a hands-free phone (in finnish, so i didn't know what she was saying). but she didn't shut up long enough for wax to have heard me if i whispered. then i spent some time mourning the fact that wax doesn't speak spanish, which i figure has a better chance as a sekrit language than swedish or english with the finns. although swedish is fairly safe with most of them.
so anyway, i murmured "du borde lära dig spanska."
but wax didn't hear me (and didn't know i was speaking swedish) and said "what?"
disaster. i repeated myself (but as i learned later she still didn't hear) and the lady apparently also thought i was speaking english and switched languages. she actually addressed me for the first time. in retrospect it would have been better if i hadn't looked at her or shaken my head when she asked if i spoke finnish and lived here, but i was startled.
i've never been accosted by a crazy person in the street before. she talked for twenty minutes without pausing long enough for anyone to fit in a single word, the whole time until the bus came. after about five of those minutes she stepped right into my personal space. for half an hour after this i was fuming. but even having never met a crazy street preacher before i knew it would be worse if i actually spoke to her, even to tell her to back the fuck off.
anyway, her thesis goes like this: (1.) europeans are evil. they are the root of all the evil in the world. (2.) european nations used to colonize other countries and kill their residents. (3.) they want anything they don't have, which is why they all have erectile dysfunction, unlike non-europeans. (4.) america is doing evil stuff right now. that's because americans aren't really americans, they're all europeans too. (5.) europeans build stone buildings because they're evil conquerors. all the stone buildings in finland were put there by evil europeans. (6.) finland is next to be colonized, because it still has resources, namely plants and air, and europeans cannot, genetically, allow non-europeans to have anything. (8.) finns, american and african natives, and asians are the only non-europeans of the world.
and then on the bus some other crazy stranger yelled at us for a second. something about talking to strangers and how he personally never does it. oookay.
ii. the original manchurian candidate, starring frank sinatra
but we also watched the original manchurian candidate. the remake was a vast improvement, we're agreed. it ironed out some giant nonsensical plot-holes, and it was driven by the characters of ben marco (frank sinatra/denzel washington) and raymond shaw (laurence harvey[british!]/liev schreiber), where the original was driven by its elaborate and rather silly plot. but there were a couple of priceless silly scenes in the original that they couldn't have gotten away with today--like the Communist Leaders of the World Convention that the soldiers sit in on in their hypnotised states, and how they think it's a ladies' garden society meeting, so the scene keeps switching back and forth, showing us the hotel lobby and the little old ladies with their hydrangeas, and the big arena-place with all the communists. and then how the hypnotic trigger for raymond shaw is solitaire, yes, the card game, and can be set off by accident, which in one scene results in him being accidentally programmed to take a cab to central park and jump in the lake. sinatra's reaction shot as he stands on the pier and watches harvey jump in is priceless. (they had to break a foot of ice off the lake with a bulldozer before he could jump in, too. heh heh, heh.)
on the way back from an extravagant grocery expedition yesterday we got cornered by this FREAKY CRAZY old woman at the bus stop. she was walking up and down and talking loudly, half the time facing away from us. at first i thought she was talking to someone standing off to the side that i couldn't see. for a while i thought she was talking on a hands-free phone (in finnish, so i didn't know what she was saying). but she didn't shut up long enough for wax to have heard me if i whispered. then i spent some time mourning the fact that wax doesn't speak spanish, which i figure has a better chance as a sekrit language than swedish or english with the finns. although swedish is fairly safe with most of them.
so anyway, i murmured "du borde lära dig spanska."
but wax didn't hear me (and didn't know i was speaking swedish) and said "what?"
disaster. i repeated myself (but as i learned later she still didn't hear) and the lady apparently also thought i was speaking english and switched languages. she actually addressed me for the first time. in retrospect it would have been better if i hadn't looked at her or shaken my head when she asked if i spoke finnish and lived here, but i was startled.
i've never been accosted by a crazy person in the street before. she talked for twenty minutes without pausing long enough for anyone to fit in a single word, the whole time until the bus came. after about five of those minutes she stepped right into my personal space. for half an hour after this i was fuming. but even having never met a crazy street preacher before i knew it would be worse if i actually spoke to her, even to tell her to back the fuck off.
anyway, her thesis goes like this: (1.) europeans are evil. they are the root of all the evil in the world. (2.) european nations used to colonize other countries and kill their residents. (3.) they want anything they don't have, which is why they all have erectile dysfunction, unlike non-europeans. (4.) america is doing evil stuff right now. that's because americans aren't really americans, they're all europeans too. (5.) europeans build stone buildings because they're evil conquerors. all the stone buildings in finland were put there by evil europeans. (6.) finland is next to be colonized, because it still has resources, namely plants and air, and europeans cannot, genetically, allow non-europeans to have anything. (8.) finns, american and african natives, and asians are the only non-europeans of the world.
and then on the bus some other crazy stranger yelled at us for a second. something about talking to strangers and how he personally never does it. oookay.
ii. the original manchurian candidate, starring frank sinatra
but we also watched the original manchurian candidate. the remake was a vast improvement, we're agreed. it ironed out some giant nonsensical plot-holes, and it was driven by the characters of ben marco (frank sinatra/denzel washington) and raymond shaw (laurence harvey[british!]/liev schreiber), where the original was driven by its elaborate and rather silly plot. but there were a couple of priceless silly scenes in the original that they couldn't have gotten away with today--like the Communist Leaders of the World Convention that the soldiers sit in on in their hypnotised states, and how they think it's a ladies' garden society meeting, so the scene keeps switching back and forth, showing us the hotel lobby and the little old ladies with their hydrangeas, and the big arena-place with all the communists. and then how the hypnotic trigger for raymond shaw is solitaire, yes, the card game, and can be set off by accident, which in one scene results in him being accidentally programmed to take a cab to central park and jump in the lake. sinatra's reaction shot as he stands on the pier and watches harvey jump in is priceless. (they had to break a foot of ice off the lake with a bulldozer before he could jump in, too. heh heh, heh.)
