George Washington Was Into Aliens, Man

This is one of those times I really wish I had a scanner. If I could scan in images to the blog here, I could show you guys the most hilarious/creepy/bizarre thing I've seen in a while. It's a flyer that a guy brought into the store...A very very insane guy. He does Christmas decorations, you see. Paints Santa Clauses and reindeers and snowmen on your storefront. You know, for kids.

I'd say the largest problem with his scheme is that he's brutally insane. Brutally. He wasn't in the store 2 minutes before we deduced that he has major problems with language, communication and even delusional behavior. I'll delve more into this later, but it wasn't long before we were discussing his career in the military working as a liason between our human government and the space aliens.

For real.

The second-largest problem, and the reason I wish I had a scanner, is that the poor man can't draw a realistic figure to save his life. The sketch on the flyer, demonstrating his potential ability to design and create a store's Christmas mural, was an extremely rough drawing of Santa mounting a reindeer from behind.

I wish I could show you this thing...I think Santa is just supposed to be standing behind this reindeer, but there's no detail on the clothing, so it doesn't really look like he's wearing pants, and there's a sharp, um, protrusion sticking out from Santa's midsection. Maybe this is the flap of a coat, maybe it's just a wayward jagged line...but it does look a tiny bit like a festive, possibly candy-cane-striped Christmas cock.

I'm just saying...

So, I think it's safe to say that he will not be designing our Christmas mural. Fair enough. He still wanted to ask 100,000,000 questions about movies, and because it's in my job description, I had to try and answer them. At first, it was just ongoing obnoxious questions about old TV shows...He wanted to know if any old episodes of "The Honeymooners" were available colorized on DVD, he wanted to know if we had any used episodes of "That's My Mama," he wanted to know which seasons of "The Lucy Show" were available, he expressed his sadness about the recent passing of Bob Denver before asking too many questions about "Gilligan's Island" DVD's.

But it was one question in particular that stuck out, probably because he repeated it five times and it was such an odd question...

"Do you have any DVD's about UFO's...But not science fiction ones, the real hardcore stuff..."

My co-workers Ivan and Dina and I looked at the man, puzzled.

"I don't know what you mean," Ivan said.

"I mean, the real stuff. Not the fake movies. The hardcore stuff."

Eventually, it became clear that the man believes in aliens. And not just in the casual way that many people believe in aliens - that it's mathematically probably that somewhere else in the vast and unknown reaches of the universe there is more semi-intelligent life. He believes that the American military and government has knowledge of aliens, that we use alien technology all the time in Earth products, that eventually everyone will know about the aliens and that aliens can blend in by looking just like humans.

He wanted some DVD's that featured proof, and seemed upset that none were available in our store. (He wound up buying some TV special about UFO conspiracy theories anyway).

Even after it became clear that we couldn't help him with the alien DVD's, and in fact that we weren't interested in talking to him about aliens at all, the guy just kept going. He told us he was ex-military, and that when he was in the service he'd worked alongside aliens who looked just like people. He said he'd been in meeting with colonels and high-ranking commanders to discuss the alien situation. He encouraged me to order items out of a catalogue, the name of which I didn't catch, that will show me all the evidence I need in order to believe.

It got me to thinking. Two things, really. One, why do I have a job in the course of which I have to encounter such whackjobs? At my old office job, there was lots of obnoxious data entry and busy work, and I didn't get along with a few of my co-workers too well, but no one was ever chewing my ear off about alien conspiracies. Two, why do so many delusional crazy people develop the same exact delusions?

I myself am not a paranoid schizophrenic, mind you, so I don't know that I'll arrive at a satisfactory answer to this question. (I am quite paranoid, but I'm pretty sure I come by this naturally and genetically and there isn't much I can do about it short of electro-shock treatments). But of all the millions of fictitious things schizos could come up with to fear, why is it always aliens? You never see crazy people wandering the streets of LA mumbling to themselves that Bigfoot is out to get them, or railing at strangers for denying the obvious truth about trolls living beneath bridges.

That would make it way more interesting! As it is, a guy wanders in off the street and starts telling you he's hung out with aliens, you know he's crazy...But what if a guy came in and said that he knew of a guy who was into reanimating dead human tissue? You might almost believe him for a few seconds until you figured out he was crazy. It might go a little something a-like a-this:

"A real life Frankenstein monster? That's awesome. Where did it happen..."
"It happened years ago, I knew the guy. We used to hang out, and then the aliens told him to stop reanimating dead tissue and the army came in and shut the whole operation down and I barely escaped with my life and changed my name and hair color and moved here and, hey, do you guys have any used box sets of '227'?"
"Oh, you're crazy...I thought I was just talking to a guy!"

But, no, reality always has to get in the way of such charming little scenes. Instead of being fanciful, amusing lunatics, the real crazy people are sad little men looking for old TV shows on DVD in between incoherent rants about imaginary spacemen.