Crazy People

>>> Bang for Your Buck
By staff writer David Nelson
January 29, 2006

Essential New Word of the Week: snusk (definition hint: food)

Is it just me, or is the number of crazy people in public becoming disproportionately high? I don’t mean crazy as in, “You’re crazy if you think Seattle has a shot at winning the Super Bowl,” but flat-out, tinfoil-hat crazy. The kind of crazy that usually necessitates a state-funded helper. What my people sometimes refer to as “meshugge.” They’re out there, all right. Even though they once amused me with their maniacal laughter and lack of bladder control, the crazy people are now multiplying, and it’s starting to scare me.

I should probably be careful, as even the word “crazy” is no longer safe from the politically correct whitewash. I’m told that, with proper medication, mental illness is no big deal, and, unless we’re referring to Tourette’s Syndrome, it’s not worth shouting over. Well, I’m as PC as the next guy; I hardly ever make Latinos perform the Mexican Hat Dance at gunpoint. But I call bullshit on that. I know people don’t choose to be crazy, but I have to think that they could funnel their extra energy into, say, macaroni-based art instead of mutilating themselves with razors. You know, if they wanted to.

"Engaging this lunatic woman may have been a mistake, but she registered what I said with surprise. Then she began to call me a faggot."

Maybe it’s just a matter of perspective. I happen to live in Toronto, Canada, a city so dull that nearby cities sometimes get sucked into a geographical vortex of blandness. So yeah, Detroit is partially our fault. Sorry. But against such a monotonous backdrop, the insane may simply stand out more than usual. A lot of you probably know one or two Canadians who you suspect of insanity. And there’s probably a guy from your dorm that goes outside in sub-zero weather in a t-shirt, saying that he’s used to it because he’s from Canada. In case you didn’t know already, this guy isn’t really crazy, he’s just a
harmless douche risking hypothermia and impressing exactly nobody.

I was chatting with an attractive girl I know from high school and her equally-attractive friend when this batshit crazy woman marched up and started laying into us for standing where we were. Seriously, she was unstoppable. According to this woman, blocking the hallway was a sin roughly equivalent to overturning a bus full of crippled orphans onto a burning Bible factory while wearing a diaper fashioned out of the American flag. She was definitely on the less attractive side of forty years old, and while I admired her effort to recapture lost youth with extra makeup, I’d have been a lot more impressed if she didn’t just cut a wide path through a crowded bar using a cloud of her own billowing crazy. Oh sure, it would have been easy enough to dismiss the incident as the ramblings of yet another drunken cougar. But her eyes, caked in mascara and twitching nervously, told a different tale. Anyway, we were all too gobsmacked to say anything, but we had a little giggle and thought that was the end of it. But on her way back, she resumed her tirade, at which point I felt I had to step in.

I pointed out, trying to be diplomatic in case she was carrying pepper spray, or a bottle of her own urine, that the bar was in fact crowded, and if some people are in some other people’s way, then that’s really okay—all you have to do is ask politely for them to move and they will. It’s really the sort of minor social interaction that sane people have everyday. Engaging this lunatic woman in a dialogue may have been a mistake, but she registered what I said with surprise and confusion. Then she began to call me a faggot, with surpassing volume and intensity. I responded in kind by pointing out her cougarish tendencies, and suggesting that she might feel more at home at the hotel bar inside the Marriott. She withdrew a short time after that, still belligerently questioning my sexual orientation. I guess I’ll never know why she chose to harp on that. Most gay guys I know are thin, single, and neat these days; I’m becoming less and less of all three.

So the next time you run into a random incoherent lunatic, feel free to follow my example and try to get to the bottom of their psychotic behavior. Make sure to keep an eye out for antennae that might be picking up signals from outer space. At worst, you’ll have to make a run for it. At best, you’ll be doing the sane world a favor by gathering information about the growing threat, and maybe you’ll be invited to share some of his or her delightful medication to boot.

Essential New Word of the Week:
snusk /‘snUsk/ n: The name given to a new food that has been invented or conceived purely out of boredom, or by accident. The original snusk came about when a group of bored, and yet surprisingly creative friends began to rummage in the kitchen, and came upon a jar of that marshmallow fluff that is sometimes used as a sundae topping. One thing led to another, and it was decided that this marshmallow fluff was to be put into a blender along with some fresh blueberries, to see if blueberry marshmallow topping could be generated. The result was, predictably, disgusting. But, with the addition of a bag of powdered sugar, snusk was born. The inventors surely felt as proud as Thomas Edison when he invented electricity. And why was this heavenly concoction deemed “snusk”? All I can say is, if you saw it, you would understand. No other cluster of letters could possible suffice. It simply was, and forever shall be, snusk.