The nut that lives next door

All I can say is, "WTF?"!

this guy sounds like a real nutball....

I think I love your neighbours, seriously. They sound like an utter delight. And what sort of education is required to land a job like this man has?

Just today my new flatmate moved in. He's from the Czech Republic, doesn't speak a word of Danish (and his English is spotty at best). He arrived in the company of his father and two other middle-aged Czech men who will be sleeping on the floor of my flatmate's room until further notice. His luggage was contained in no less than seventeen enormous chests, though he will only be living here until June. The greater part of these chests' contents are glass jars of what looks to be fermented eel, homemade baguettes, some sort of sauerkraut-looking substance, and of course bitter schnapps. I await the next six months with eager trepidation.

Another fine neighbour I've had was a man known to others only as Liisaker who lived in a cabin with his two grown sons. Liisaker was an accomplisehd player of the nose flute, and every Constitution Day (17. May), he and his sons would slaughter goats by hand and hang them from the trees in their yard. Not a night went by that we were not treated to their raucous drunken serenades, regardless of the occasion (or lack thereof), and several times for no apparent reason, I awoke in the morning to find that live shellfish had been placed in the mailbox. And every winter, without fail, when the Laplanders herded their reindeer through the area (I grew up in Northern Norway; this may not make sense unless I explain), Liisaker would engage in some sort of spat with the herders and demand that they offer him a young reindeer for his own vague purposes. And when we were children, Liisaker and Company would watch my siblings and me through binoculars while we played on our own property. Once, he cut down one of our trees because he didn't like the shadow it cast over his picnic tables in the summer.

Liisaker died the expected alcohol-related death only a few months after my family moved from the area. His sons remain there, carrying on the proud tradition.

I don't have any crazy neighbors; however, some of my neighbors do. Draw whatever conclusion you like from that statement.

Soren, you live an interesting life.

Soren, I guess I have a lot to be thankful for - no slaughtering of animals next door!! Well, not yet anyway.

I suspect that you don't need much education to do what Jim does, just a big personality that can handle people thinking you're crazy. He goes around with huge signs like Verizon Sucks! FPL Sucks! Wachovia Sucks! and then stands in front of those places to "protest". All the while in a cowboy suit. Very odd indeed.

Au contraire, Tom. Liisaker had an interesting life. I was merely a spectator. Oh, and also, I forgot another of his pastimes. During "mørketid" (I don't know what the English translation of this is, but it's the time of year in northern Norway when the sun flies south to Capistrano with all the birds, and doesn't show itself again until the summer, when it never sets), Liisaker and his sons would terrorise the public places of our tiny, tiny town by burning the phone directories that hung in the phone booths on chains. It was customary to walk past a booth and see nothing but a charred chunk dangling there.

Hahaha, that's tremendously funny. What company hires him to do it?

I think I'd like to try my hand at that, but for the tourism industry. I'll travel to places I don't particularly like, dressed in a bulletproof vest and perhaps other riot gear, waving signs declaring my distaste for wherever I am.

hey if somebody paid me I would yell fire dan rather too, are you serious about these neighbours?

Well, we are fortunate enough NOt to have any "close" neighbors. But one guy that lives down the road from us - the NOSY NEIGHBOR - drops by every so often. It's like he's a ghost and all of the sudden appears out of nowhere! He has scared me on several different occasions. If anyone needs to know anything, he has all the neighborhood gossip! Which isn't a good thing, because we live out of town in the country! LOL!

We used to live in a two-flat house, also known as a duplex. Our upstairs neighbors were a young couple with one child and one on the way. She stayed home with the kids, he worked for UPS. I came home one day to find my house surrounded by police, UPS trucks and the Interstate commerce commission. It seems that my neighbor had been stealing packages from UPS the entire time. He stole enough things to fill a semi trailer. He got caught because he decided to steal the wrong package, one that had been setup to have ink explode all over the person who opened it.

We have the nosy (nosey?) neighbor across the street kitty corner. He knows everything. We had to get new blinds because once he commented on a movie we'd watched the night before - yikes! It's half good, half bad. We know that if someone robbed our house he'd have all the info!!

I honestly don't know who pays Jim to hold signs and yell things. I don't think I'd do it even if I got paid, I'd be too embarrassed!!

When my kids were very little, we lived across the street from what we called The Screaming Lady. She lived with her little, old, one-armed husband and they kept an immaculate yard. She would pull huge chunks of hair out of her head which left her with some interesting bald spots. She would be outside trimming the bushes and screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs the entire time. Another neighbor worked for a furnace repairs company and said The Screaming Lady called to have them remove the leprechauns from her chimney where they were allegedly eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She was like the harbinger of spring for us. Some people looked for robins. We'd always report to each other whenever we first heard the dulcet tones of The Screaming Lady's amazing string of obscenities. I know now that she was most likely schizophrenic.

I don't have any odd neighbors now, but growing up we had a lady who lived across the street from us. She would always hide behind her curtains and watch what was going on outside. She was a major gossip too and would tell anyone who would listen what she saw so-and-so doing yesterday. Like Cathy points out, the only positive thing about having someone like that watching you is that if something bad happened, they would have all the details. I mean who needs a burgler alarm when you can have a personal one that lives and breathes, lol.

Wow...I lead a pretty boring life compared to all of you. Maybe we should move to a place more interesting!! The closest I have to a wacky neighbor is our two neighbors on each side of us seem to compete to who cuts their grass the most. I swear that they each cut their grass 3 times a week in the summer to my husband's once every 2 weeks. Our grass isn't long (due to the heat and lack of rain) but it looks like it is due to the two of them. Can you tell that they are both retired and must be looking for ways to get out of the house?

If I had the time I'd add a couple of stories about wacko neighbors.. man one was trying to get into my house (I called 911).. long story. The other one was some kind of wacky Aussie dude who stood outside at all hours screaming obscenities into a phone. He apparently was into drugs, etc. The cops would always have an unmarked car outside on the other side of the road watching the house. Talk about creepy. (Much more to these stories..) lol..

In case you didn't see it, I posted an article about how I got a prank call from a friend pretending to be the crazy neighbor!! I had only posted this article 20 minutes before the call so I just about died.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976877608

LOL!!!

Hilarious! You guys really had some pretty crazy neighbors! lol