tres bizarre

Remember how I said that my life is sorta like an independent film sometimes? Last night was a prime example. Our regular tech aide, Jorge, was off for the evening seeing a concert he should have abandoned his wife for and taken me to. In his place was Ryan. Many things can be said about Ryan, but the underlying theme is that he's stupid, clueless, but a hard worker and reasonably sweet guy deep down. Anyway, Ryan and I went to take the garbage out sometime between 10:30 and 11 and we heard what sounded suspiciously like a drum circle. Considering that we work in a dull business park in a dull business area of town, it seemed unlikely. Especially considering that the place is almost totally abandoned at that hour excepting us and an occasional psycho working late. We stopped and listened, trying to hear what rational sound it could be, but to no avail. It just sounded like a drum circle. Ryan was ready to finish his smoke-arette and go back in, but I wanted to investigate. Off we went into the wilds of said business park, following the sounds of the drums. Several buildings down and to the right the sounds came to a head. We turned the corner and our jaws dropped. There were perhaps 20 people grouped together, many of them dancing and twirling with...fire. They had little torch kinda things, kevlar sleeve type things, batons, and chains with tennis balls attached that were, of course, in flames. They danced to the sound of the drums, and as we watched several reached down with their accoutrement and lit the ground on fire. Trails of yellow then blue flames burned and then eventually fizzled out. We watched and wondered if we had stumbled across some freaky weird ritual, and you know? That's essentially correct. A big, stupid guy in a brush fire turnout coat came walking up to us, and I remember wondering if he was going to try to sacrifice us to their freaky fire gods. Thankfully or not, he did not. He came up and explained that they were just a bunch of people who got together every Wednesday night and did their little fire dancing thing. They had to rotate locations because as you can imagine the local authorities weren't exactly ardent supporters. I was rather entertained by the whole thing, who wouldn't be? It isn't every day that a bunch of pyro whack-jobs inhabit the back lots of your place of employment late at night. I went and got Craig, and we sat in disbelief as psycho fireman explained how inexpensive of a hobby it really was, and so much fun! I think he was trying to recruit us. And as if this weren't enough, he was smitten with me. Yes, gentle readers, it's time to take out the long list of fuck-ups, losers, and malefactors that love me and tack another name on. He gave me his card (oh please) and said I should email him. In fact he told me this like 17,000 times. And then he told me another 12,000 times that if I made him cookies he'd come back with his herd o' loons the following week. I'll just bet he will. Yep. Cookies. Wooooow.

Aside from scary weird fireman guy who looked suspiciously as though he had a dungeon/torture chamber built into his basement, it was pretty damned cool. I mean really, could anything be more random? Picture it: you spend your day enmeshed in western medicine, and lets face it, that can be weird enough. Then, at the end of the night you stroll out to dispose of the biohazard garbage. All of a sudden you turn a corner and find...that! I mean, perhaps I'm sheltered, but I don't think most people ever see something like that, let alone purely by chance! But what do I know?