You ever find yourself in a strange place and with strange thoughts? Like in a terribly sun-filled laundromat at 2 PM on a Saturday afternoon. And of course there’s a family in the corner doing a heap of laundry that’s seven feet tall, and the mom is talking on speakerphone with someone while not paying attention to her five kids, who are chasing each other around and eating handful after handful of years-old Reese’s Pieces from the little vending machine. In the corner there’s a TV mounted up by the ceiling that is playing like, ESPN4. And for lack of anything else to occupy yourself, you end up watching it. It’s playing something so narrow-interest and odd that you are a bit dumbfounded that it even exists. Something like “The 2024 Medium Craft Motorboat Racing Finals Presented by Liquid Death.” And you go “What?”
The announcers are talking like it’s a real thing, too. “Here we are in beautiful Clearwater Beach, Florida for the time-honored tradition of the Medium Craft Motorboat Racing Finals, brought to us this year by our friends at Liquid Death Premium Beverages. Of course the atmosphere is electric here, as the great Swede, Wolter Ruhndt tries to win his unprecedented fourth consecutive championship. But nipping on his heels is Italy’s favorite son, Vincent D’nofrio. No relation.” The water a harsh contrast of blue and blazing white reflection. All the boat racers have on jumpsuits with corporate sponsor patches and also sunglasses and spiky gelled hair. On the shore there are bleachers, and people are in the bleachers? People go to watch this shit? Who buys a ticket for a motorboat race? Surely, this are all just like, immediate family members of the participants, right? As the camera pans over the crowd, you can see all of also sunglass, spike-haired family members lean to each other. If you can read lips, you would see they’re asking “How long does this go for? This is like a 2 hour deal right? Are we gonna get something to eat after?”
Who is this for? And how do you even discover that you’re a world championship caliber boat racer? Maybe I am. Who knows? Maybe I have the prototypically perfect genetic disposition to be an elite boat racer. But I just never tried it. Instead it’s all these strange European trust fund kids. These fourth generation descendants of some long-dead aluminum baron from Brussels, who made his fortune selling low-quality canteens and chow trays to both sides of World War One.
Which reminds me, did you know that the Illumanti have a weather control machine? The power elite who secretly run the world have some sort of a mechanism that can control the weather around the globe. I’m not sure how it works, but they use it for nefarious means like to start the wildfires in Los Angeles, and to direct hurricanes at cities like Houston. Makes me wonder, though. Who, exactly, is in charge of it? I mean, it’s the New World Order, sure, but like, who has final say? Or is it like a conference room in an office building, where you book it by making an event in a shared Microsoft Outlook calendar? Like some dipshit son of an arms dealer tries to reserve the weather control machine with a note like “I’m taking my mistress to Madrid from May 3rd through the 8th, so I need it to be about 75-80 degrees, sunny, and with whatever humidity is comfortable (I don’t know that shit I’m not a nerd lol!) Thanks in advance!” And then can he get overruled by some higher-up in the world Satanic cabal? Like some Canadian tech billionaire who is higher in the ranks can be like “No, I can’t let you take the weather control machine for those dates. I need it. This jackass that I was in Skull and Bones with who always made fun of my weight is getting married in Aspen that weekend, so I need to make it freezing rain. Request denied.”
Makes life interesting, I guess. Interesting in the way that so much is mundane, but there is always something just a little bit out of sight that is truly strange. Know what I mean? Like there’s a lot of boring, ho-hum stuff but then every once in a while something completely novel shows up and you go “Woah!” That’s terrifying! That’s beautiful! Aaah!
Let me explain by way of example; The Sandown Clown incident occurred on the Isle of Wight in the UK back in 1973. Most people haven’t heard of this bit of High Strangeness, but it’s up there with Mothman for one of my favorites. See, these two little British kids, who were no doubt quite pale and had bad teeth, were playing around in the woods one day. They ventured a little bit farther into the wood than normal, and crossed a wooden footbridge over a stream. There, in a clearing, they saw a very unusual being.
He was like a psychedelic wiccan Tinman. “A cross between a clown, a robot, and an alien,” according to the reports. About the size and shape of a man, but with a perfectly spherical head on which his facial features seemed crudely painted on with bright primary colors. His “skin” was like off-white paper, and his clothes were like a ramshackle scarecrow’s. A motley of vibrant mismatched patterns and patches. His hands and feet were round, with only three long digits protruding out of each, like a child’s drawing.
The freakish British children approached this equally freakish creature and cautiously asked who he was. The creature replied “Hello and I am all colors, Sam.” He seemed to speak through some kind of a microphone or vocoder type thing which he held up to his mouth, and then the speaker was in a satchel that was slung over his shoulder in a little messenger bag. The children described Sam’s demeanor as one that was reserved but friendly. He was shy, but not cagey. They interacted with him for about a half an hour. The children left, going back to their house, hoping to get their equally pale and freakish British parents to come meet this fourth dimensional harlequin. But when they brought their parents to this magical clearing, Sam was gone. No trace of him was left.
I’m giving a very brief rundown of the Sandown Clown mythos, but it is really interesting. The kids were trying to work out what exactly he was, and one of them asked “Are you a ghost?”, to which he apparently replied “Well, not really, but I am in an odd sort of way.”
Now the logical part of me knows this story is probably hokum. A story made up by some goofy kids. That’s probably what it is. But I do think it’s interesting in two ways. One, there’s a lot of detail in it. Two, there’s a relative level of restraint if it’s a kid making stuff up. Like, at no point does Sam take the kids on his rocketship to the moon where they meet a bunch of giraffes and eat ice cream, or whatever. Know what I mean? It was probably just an imaginative kid spinning a well-told yarn. But maybe it wasn’t. That maybe is what’s lurking just outside of the mundane day-to-day.
It’s just like the other day at work, I went to get a cup of coffee. I went to the machine and it was empty. Now the impetus was on me to make a new pot. As a new employee, who doesn’t now the foibles and charms of this coffee machine, it means a lot of guesswork. How many scoops of grounds? Do they want me to use the filtered water out of the Brita in the fridge, or is this iron-rich tap water good enough? Can I just stick the coffee pot back in it’s normal place, or is there some trick to where the coffee-drip nipple has to be aligned a certain way? I imagine burbling black water pouring like tar over each side of the coffee pot onto the nice hardwood breakroom floor, the overhead lights flickering just because, and one of my coworkers turning to me with disdain screaming “How could you do this?!” as I helplessly gasp like a shorecaught trout.
So yeah that’s why I’m glad I don’t have to go to the laundromat anymore.
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