In Their Time: In 3,500 A.D. people’s fear of death finally went away. Then it was possible to transfer one’s soul into a computer program. Most people waited until they were about to die or die of bordeom before they said goodbye to their physical bodies.
Once in the computer program the person could then place themselves into anything. Such as a robot, a can opener, a vacuum cleaner, etc, the sky was the limit.
Our Weirdo: Frazom the Taxi didn’t have the best life before he went into the computer program. Frazom felt that he was picked on and mocked. Really he wasn’t, but his psychological disorder made him super paranoid about stuff like that.
Regrettably psychological disorders come with you when you go into the computer program. Frazom had himself put into a taxi and every passenger would get the ride of their life.
Frazom the taxi almost always got in an accident or drove on the sidewalk or drove on the wrong side of the road. This was Frazom’s way of getting back at the people who “wronged” him in life. One reporter was quoted as saying, “At least he had a hobby.”
In Their Time: In the 1500s Swiss alchemist Paracelsus coined the term “Gnome,” but really the word “Gnome” had been around for a millenium. In the 1500s Europeans began to litter their lawns with gnomes. In the late 1940s the gnomes began cropping up in lawns in the United States after troops returned home from WWII after having seen gnomes in Eurpean lawns that we didn’t blow up.
Our Weirdo: Frondelac the Gnome and all the other gnomes had kept themselves secret from us humans by purposefly hiding from us. But Frondelac loved attention and the attention of his people wasn’t enough. Frondelac showed himself to Paracelsus and other people in Switzerland. The other gnomes were aghast and put a death warrant out on Frondelac’s head, but crafty Frondelac started making lawn gnomes to hide his tracks from him people. To this day Frondelac hasn’t been found by his fellow gnomes.
Arrluk the Eskimo
In Their Time: The Eskimos live in the wintery far Northern reaches of North America. They are a hearty people that enjoy living in cold temperatures where they can get more than their fair share of whale blubber and perpetual frozen noses.
The Eskimos don’t like older people, so they put the older members of their tribe on an ice flow that is going out to sea. The old person takes a ride out to sea from which they will never return.
Our Weirdo: Arrluk the Eskimo at an early age realized that he could talk to animals. It was a good thing too, because he had a hard time talking with people. They thought he was odd and the more Arrluk hung out with animals the more odd they thought he was. This went on for years until the old Arrluk was put out to sea.
Little did the village realize that Arrluk was not destined to die on his ice flow. Arrluk hitched a ride with a killer whale that took Arrluk to sunny Florida where he found that he was not the only old person that had been cast off from their tribe. But the older Floridians found Arrluk to be odd as well since the Eskimo kept wearing his winter fur coat in 90 degree weather.
Meara the Mudwoman
In Their Time: The Vikings had their hay day in the 8th century up until the 11th century. It was pretty cold in Scandinavia, so the Vikings, like migrating birds, went somewhere warmer in winter. And since the Vikings were somewhere that wasn’t their home and they didn’t have good manners the Vikings took whatever they wanted, including beautiful women.
Our Weirdo: Meara the Mudwoman lived on the coast of Ireland, and like all the villagers who lived along the coast, she feared Viking attacks. Meara’s village was small and had trouble defending itself from strong winds, let alone a pack of greedy Vikings.
Meara knew the power of fear and she got the idea to cover herself in mud to scare the Vikings away. They thought Meara was some kind of monster and Meara’s village was never sucessfully attacked in her lifetime.
Chuma the Mummy
In Thier Time: The anciet Egyptians had a bizarre way of decorating their homes. They made mummies out of their loved ones. It would spruce the place up, the family could see their passed on family member, and the family saved a lot of money on decoration costs. But then the mummy would inevitably start to smell something alwful and the family would have to bury the mummy, or if you were a rich family, build a pyramid for the person’s eternal slumber.
Our Weirdo: Chuma the Mummy wasn’t a mummy, but he pretended to be one. He didn’t have a fascination with death, but Chuma did have a fascination with money. At first he pretended to be a mummy to scare his friends, but then he realized that people would go running every time they saw him stumbling about. So Chuma went to a bank, and to his delight, everyone ran, leaving the money up for grabs.
Forwin of the Monster
In Their Time: The Middle Ages people would fight, to the death, over the smallest things, such as arguments over who ate the last piece of cheese, for giving someone the stink eye, or for asking if they farted.
But a person didn’t only have to worry about the neighbors they loved and loathed, one also had to worry about neighbors that could breeze into your village or castle with an army of their armored buddies who were all packing their favorite sword.
Our Weirdo: Forwin of the Monster.
Forwin was a sculptor. His mother constantly complained that he would never make any money making art all day, but as luck would have it one of the kings advisors saw what Forwin could do.
The rest is history. Forwin would go on to create the Moat Monster that would scare away any army from daring to approach their castle. And little did those wanna-be-invading armies know that the Moat Monster was nothing more than a ship adorned with Forwin’s scary art.
Chinue the Cook
In Their Time: From 1500 to the 1800s 17 million Africans were forced into slavery and were taken to the Americas and not on cruise ships. Once the slaves arrived in the Americas they were sold or traded for goods such as alcohol and tobacco.
The slave traders took the Africans and shipped them to the Americas, because they didn’t want to use their ship for fishing. The plantation owners bought the slaves, because the plantation owners were too lazy to work their own fields.
Our Weirdo: Chinue the Cook, lived on the Ivory coast and ran a restaurant in her village; however, not everyone liked Chinue’s cooking. Chinue was a person who didn’t take kindly to criticism.
With the promise of dessert, Chinue would then lure the complaning customers to where the slave traders were waiting to take the customers away.
After the complainers had all left the village Chinue’s restaurant was a complete success and she was beloved for her dishes.
Scopas the Spartan
In Their Time: From 650 BC to 371 BC Sparta was the best at picking on weaker nations in the olive infested country of Greece. These Spartans were so good at war, because they were so bad to their children. If a kid wanted to become a citizen of Sparta he had to undertake the Agoge which was their miliatry training program. Though the Agoge wasn’t all teaching how to kill spiders, the children were also taught dancing, singing, and the all-important art of dinner party small talk.
For Sparta the art of war was a big deal and losing in battle, or worse, dying, wasn’t encouraged for the would-be social climber.
Our Weirdo: Scopas the Spartan got super scared at the thought of being stabbed to death, but he had to go into battle. He tried faking all sorts of illnesses, but no one really bought his excuses, so Scopas had to fight.
Scopas’ mother didn’t raise no dummy though. Scopas had three techniques to surving a battle:
1) Scream, “Look at that behind you,” to distract a would-be attacker.
2) Pull down his pants to make a foe hesitate and then Scopas would stab the attacker. This wasn’t Scopas’ favorite technique as it made him kind of cold and he just got done spending all that time sharpening his sword.
3) Scopas’ favorite technique. Playing dead. An enemy solider usually preferred to attack Spartans that were standing and swinging a sword. This technique worked even better if Scopas didn’t get caught covering himself up with a dead body. Smelly, yes. Effective way to stay alive, yes.
