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January 30, 2008 |
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Human Beings Are Born Mad
FOUND by Shawn McCarthy
in Winnipeg, Canada
This crazy dwarf used to come into the coffee shop I worked in and leave these tucked under his mug, inside the napkin holder, in potted plants... all over the place.
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If You Absolutely... January 06, 2007 |
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
He's right.
I don't believe little people like to be called dwarfs any longer. It's "little people" now.
its awful quiet, what, nobody can relate to writing notes like this? oh wait, its not sappy enough.
i think there is a crazy dwarf inside of all of us that needs coffee
And don't forget: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle!
8-)
Lulu, how do you know it wasn't a dwarf? (mythical humanoid with magical powers)
I'd say this note was obviously left by Grumpy.
Oh. and I agree with Steve.
regardless of his size, his mental health and his concern for the planet, leaving bits of paper behind is littering and is not really helping the planet.
Hmmm... Yep, Steve, *I* too have a crazy dwarf inside that NEEDS CAWFFEE too!!
And Night -- around here, it's FOUR 'R's - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle -- and ROT! (no, that's not an insult, it has to do with composting to make fresh new good dirt, lol).
In my early not-quite-adult days, I became acquainted with -uh- the wonders of -uh- herbal remedies? (Hey, I graduated high school in 1967 only one hour away from San Francisco.... Seemed a natural thing to me!!)
Anyway, at that time I developed a theory that's really related to the "found" here -- but goes in a VERY different direction.
So, this theory went: "When we're born, we are all open, happy, receptive, full of wonder. As we grow, they 'civilize' us. SO, when we become adults, we have to smoke pot to return to our original pristeen state." (or something like that...)
Of course, the quality of smoke at that time was only slightly more intoxicating than alfalfa would be..
Oh no!! spam protection now involves higher math!! Well, I guess it's not very high...
this is funny ...
I got the entire image... little man sits down, mutters to himself, scribbles on a piece of paper, or napkin. Orders his coffee, conspicuously pats his mouth with the napkin, drops it on the table. Mutters some more, takes his coffee to go.
Wanders out the door, muttering some more, and enters the coffee shop a few blocks over.
But then, maybe it's just funny cause it's one in the morning.
... Nah, it's funny.
We need to sustain that which sustains us... Sounds like a quote right out of my environmental textbook, but it's so true. If we don't, we're screwed. He may be crazy, but at least what he's mumblin' makes sense.
Does the message imply that we're all born mad because babies tend to cry when they're born? Mad as in angry?
Or Mad as in insane? Stark raving mad?
Camelia, my "blinding flash of insight" at about 20 years of age was something very similar to what you mentioned. I think it's one of those Universal Truths.
I was originally thinking:
how about planet earth... yes!
us...maybe not so much.
but then i re-read the note.
it's lovely.
we take too much for granted.
yes. it's true.
Are we born mad as hatters or mad as angry?
If Grumpy (I'm assuming "crazy inner dwarf" knows the guy) means mad as a hatter, then, yes, I've chosen to stay that way.
If Grumpy meant mad as angry, then, no, I've calmed down, do the FIVE Rs (we've fogrotten "Ride your bicycle") and belong to that harmless group of "grumpy old men" (includes dwarves, elves, pixies and other forgotten creatures) that are no longer angry but generally grumpy.
I'll go back to sustaining, shall I?
Miigan:
You're completely right. I submitted this about 2-3 years ago, but I can still picture the scene and you've got it dead-on.
Sounds to me like he can't stay on topic. Either we're mad and we choose to stay that way or we need to "save" the earth.
Of course, I am of the belief that we can't break the earth so maybe we ought to just focus on what we can change...ourselves.
Just think of me as an anti-enviro, anti-co-dependent wacko!
Ahhhhhhhhh........have another coffee to go!
Nonetheless, it's true about our Mother Earth.
His method might have been a little wacky but his message was true.
He's was just trying to get his message out in a way that people would notice.
I bet he never dreamed this many people would read it.
"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..." -kerouac
Dwarf, Schmwarf. This kind of guerilla environmentalism is not carried out by dwarfs (dwarves?), or "little people", or whatever they want to be called. No.
This is clearly the work of an average (ie typical, non-dwarf) coffee drinker disguised as a dwarf (for God-only-knows what reason), just trying to get out the good message.
nothing quite like an angry dwarf. once upon a time, when i lived at the beach, we had an entire fishing pier owned and operated by a family of dawrves...nothing against dwarves in general, but they were cranky all the time. (and i saw them most daily- good god- hope it wasn't seeing me that made them cranky! paranoid thought. sorry, born mad)... anyhoo, hurricane floyd zapped the end of the pier (earth getting back at angry dwarves?) and they couldn't fix it... now it's torn down and condos... sad. wonder what happened to them? wonder if this is one of them?
oh good dog. spam protection is a: math
b: related to the mayan end-of-world-scariness.
I think you hit the nail, Lars.
Some cultures think of the "mad" as "touched" and the stories they tell are from another place.
That said, I used to work at a bar and served a regular we called "Chuckles". He used to come in every day and drink coffee, smoke, write notes like this and chuckle to himself. I think he had it figured out if you ask me.
I'm going to go hide notes at work today, methinks.
you gotta love crazy oldish men.
Classic! I can totally picture it!
Sounds to me like this Found is a set of notes for the first draft of a commencement address. Isn't there a dwarf university there in Winnipeg?
What is especially touching ('touched'?) is the anti-American, pro-Canadian last line: "No planet earth! No US!"
Or is that a dwarfish battle cry against both the planet earth and the U.S.?
Or a cause-and-effect thing? [No planet earth will lead to there being no U.S. ??]
I'm confused. Get me a tall - no, excuse me, a short coffee to go.
Little People...Big World. Matt is that you?
That must have been before he met Katie.
He's not crazy he's MAD I tell you MAD! Muhahahahaha!!
tangint hahahahahaha!!
This did nothing for me until I read a crazy dwarf was behind it... There should be more crazy dwarves in the world. At least that's what I think.
Spam protection: What is the opposite of up?
Crazy Dwarf.
I think US means humankind as a whole as if to say without a planet we can't survive. and without us the planet can't survive.
One depends on the other.
Is it just me or has spam protect gotten harder?
Night: Are you in online classes? I swear I posted that phrase like 4 times in my class forums last night!
I wonder what makes the little person leave notes like this at the coffee shop?
new spam protection spell the word 'palindrome' backwards.
Reminds me of Alex Haley's intro to the Autobiography of Malcolm X (is it really an "autobiography" if it's ghost written by a famous author?). Mr Haley said that Mr X often would make notes on napkins as they were talking. Later he picked them up and found them full of "philosophical" one-line musings on race relations etc. They were this same sort of thing.
At least that was his story and he stuck to it.
I am in complete agreement with his message AND his method!
Trying to buy clothes suitable for an adult when you are about 4 ft nothing would make Anyone cranky. Ever try to find grown-woman heels in a size 4? Can't be done. And one does get tired of wearing Mary Janes.
LOVE LOVE LOvE the Dirty Found vids! So good!
I used to hang out at (well, practically live at) a coffee shop which was frequented by a dwarf. It would have been cool if he was angry, because I was pretty pissed off myself back then, and maybe we could have been friends. Unfortunately, he was just annoying and arrogant. In fact, he was such a dick that on a couple of occasions, it took everything I had to keep myself from asking him to show me where the plane was.
There seems to be two, or even three, messages here. At first I thought this note was going to be a comment about the poor service he received, perhaps suggesting to the angry barista that she need not be so angry.
can dwarves have crazy inner dwarves?
Maybe I need more coffee, but what does being mad have to do with saving the planet?
Cars aren't designed for short people, either. According to our state's law, my sister (who is 4'9") should technically be in a booster seat to drive.
On the find: crazy drawf makes it for me, too. I wonder where else he left his messages.
well, Fun in Dysfunction, it seems that the sane people don't seem to be doing a very good job of saving the planet.
Ooooohhh. I knew I needed more coffee. I thought it was mad as in angry. Thanks for clearing that up M.L. Seems to me that this guy is a little, no pun intended, of both.
The vertically-challenged environmentalist sounds like he watched the movie "Rude Awakening":
"In the late 1960s, two hippies are forced to leave their friends as they are wanted by the FBI, who see them as criminals. They hide in the jungle for 20 years, secluded from the outside war. In the late 1980s, they find out that a secret war is about to start in the US and decided to return to New York to tell someone about it. What they find when they return is that all of their fellow hippies have become rich yuppies, like everyone else, and that no one wants to save the world anymore -- they just want to buy it." (IMDB)
Has some awesome lines, like "Where is the outrage?!?" and a fantastic sequence where a tripped-out cheech marin is informed by a fish that the Cuyahoga River caught fire due to the pollution content.
Seems to me this has the makings of a good movie. A short film perhaps.
Orinoco, try finding clothes suitable for an adult when you're 5'2" and on the slim side.
For my new (and awesome) job, I needed to acquire some "business casual" attire. By the fifth day of fruitless searches for pants that fit, I was not only frustrated, but irate at the clothing companies for refusing to acknowledge that smaller adult men exist.
The kids' department is always among my first stops, and even that was all dead ends until my incredibly patient girlfriend pushed me to take one last look. Thanks to her, I finally found some acceptable pants there, but still had to have them hemmed at $20 each.
Then came shoes...but that's a whole other story.
*immediately purchases "Rude Awakening"*
Flargy, there's a men's clothing store in Milwaukee called Napolean's Taylor.
Flargy,
Your comment reminded me of an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show entitled "Toulouse-Lautrec Is One of My Favorite Artists." Mary has a date with a very short visiting author, and at one point he remarks that he was late meeting her because he had to get an emblem removed from his jacket.
Mary: That store has a great men's department!
Eric: Really? I wouldn't know. I got this in the boys...
Mary: Oh... Well. That's a swell looking jacket! Why did you get the emblem taken off?
Eric: It was a ducky.
I hope that napkin was made 100% post-consumer content and that the angry little man's coffee wasn't in a styrofoam to-go cup.
@Flargy - you're getting ripped off at 10 dollars a leg to get your pants hemmed. Reaaaalllly ripped. Not to rub it in, but next time, call around to a few tailors or even dry cleaners. You shouldn't have to pay more than 5 dollars a leg, and that's just rediculous. Can't your patient girlfriend sew. I thought that was a prerequisite for patient women... the ability to hand sew hems on clothing.
I'm personally mad, and I'd do it on my machine in less than a minute for you, and I wouldn't even charge you.
We're all mad here...
Flargy and Needing Coffee's comments remind me of very poignant episode of Taxi in which the character "Louie " (Danny Devito) relates an experience buying clothes in the "Husky" section of the children's department. That episode really added a depth to Lou Depalma, who was usually characterized as miserly, grouchy, insensitive jerk.
I, too, am of very small stature (5' on a good day). Things are always too high for me to reach, like at the grocery store or getting supplies at work. Even amusement park rides are a bit of problem - the headrest is too tall and and safety bar is too loose.
However, I love being small! The benefits outweigh the issues for me. I drive a teeny tiny car with great gas mileage and all my pictures, mirrors, etc in my house are hung at my eye level.
I like short guys...I like it when they climb up me and then slide down like I'm a fireman's pole.
I find short guys to be more sensitive which is the opposite of the "short man syndrome" theory.
You guys can shop on line. There are tons of "short men clothing" sites (Google it). They seem to have prices that match a nicer men's store.
This guy does NOT represent the Lollypop Guild!
No more for the little man, he's had enough. We're not born mad, we're born frightened. The Earth doesn't need to be sustained, she can sustain herself. She was just fine before we came along and she will be fine after we're gone.
Funny you should mention that, Nadine. Two jobs ago, I needed jeans (which I never wear in real life). After listening to me bitch about trying to find the right size, my mother found the solution: Levi's youth "husky" jeans. That's when I learned that when you're in a bind, little-fat-kid pants might just come along and save the day.
Brain Problem, thanks for the tip, although a couple people told me that's the standard price around these parts (New Haven County, CT).
CuriousKat, that's a brilliant name for a store. I've always argued that if there are all these "big & tall" stores, there should be at least one "small & short" store in every city. Might Napolean's Tailor be a franchise organization?
Terrie, the earth will not "be fine" if we destroy it before we leave. The ocean cannot regenerate itself after all the crap that has been dumped into it. If all the nutrients are leached from the soil by intensive agriculture, with its pesticides, herbicides and suicides, and the water table has been poisoned, the earth will not "be fine."
Can you say "half life"?
Just to join in...
My ex was 5'1" and had the hardest time finding clothes... He used to have to go into either the boys or the woman's dept. (Woman's trousers didn't really fit, but gap has come out with "boyfriend" jeans which were a saving grace.)
I have a similar problem being a 6' tall, 126 pound woman: i need to order most of my clothes on-line, which doubles the cost. Shopping is impossibly frustrating and I need to plan waaaay in advance on the off chance that I might need something like a dress or a pair of trousers, since I can't just dash out the night before.
mad like crazy, or mad like angry? both work!
Reminds me of Dr. Bronner in a way.
I'm 5'1" and my hubby's 5'2". When we worked together the others we were working with called us "the Little Leprechauns".. fun.
It's always tough to find him clothes and shoes; there should DEFINITELY be a "Big & Tall, Short & Small" store. It's great when you can find stuff for him in the young men's department because the price is significantly lower.
I'm wondering, though, if I'm the only one whose mental image of Flargy has been altered today. (not in a bad way, of course! We short people rock the world!)
Thanks, Madison in pajamas (@6.18am).
We love you too!!
I think maybe Grumpy had too much caffeine. It appears that he couldn't decide which profound statement to impart on his napkin of wisdom.
Shawn: Are you sure it wasn't Al Gore in disguise? He's pretty crafty.
Yes, the spam questions are getting harder
Mrs. Leprechaun - I love your idea of a "Short and Small" store, but there would def need to be a Short and Stout section. My husband is 5'5" and very stocky. Pants-shopping is almost always a fruitless errand.
Tess - I've always fancied shorter men myself. It started with my attraction for men close to my own eye level, but I also liked to think that the shorter guys were more sensitive. Plus I think it’s hot when a guy is short and totally owns it.
If the crazed dwarf is petite and proud I might consider letting him treat me like a fireman's pole too.
Flargy--not really sure about Napolean's Taylor. I just remember it from when my father shopped there. He was pretty short too but I don't think he ever knew it.
Ice boating looks very dangerous not to mention probably cold. But it sure is a great day for it.
sick in tired, by "fine", I meant "better off"
after reading the backstory, i just keep thinking of that ben folds song 'one angry dwarf and 200 solemn faces.'
stalker, I think you're right.
Someone needs to switch to decaf.
In a way, your posting of the message here has achieved his goal of dissemination. One dwarf can make a difference!
@Flargy... Next time you buy pants, lemme know, I'll hem'em for free.
this more or less a quote from Beckett's Waiting for Godot..."We are all born mad. Some of us remain so." and I see the preceding sentence as related...we need to be responsible for ourselves and all mankind. oh, existentialism.
a new teacher of mine fits this description. He is pretty crazy... also, the handwriting is increadibly similar to his. Did this man by any chance have red hair?
Oooof! We had a terrible server outage today! Sorry to all, it's a drag. If anyone knows of a great internet host, please pass us a note to info [at] foundmagazine.com. We could really use a more reliable site, eh? Onwards!
How did the "little person" get to the coffee shop? Its not like he can drive, his feet wouldn't reach the pedals! Winnipeg,MB in the winter...it would be hazardous for him even to walk, the snowbanks would be twice as high as he is and the likelyhood of the "little person" making it to the coffee shop without being honked at or grazed by an oncoming car would be slim to none.
Maybe this explains why the "little person" is so mad at the world.......
At Stating The Obvious In Midwest
... I had a history teacher who was a dwarf, and she drove. She had special extensions on the pedals in her van, and a higher seat, plus a step stool up so she could get in. It cost a lot of money to get her van all souped up, but it was neat. She drives a scooter around the rest of the time, it's faster and more convienient. Her van is also equipped with the handicap side thingymahopper that raises her scooter right into the back.
vanessa -
Hey, nice catch. I knew it sounded familiar!
Hasn't Shawn McCarthy had a found item posted before?
there you go, Jason: another suggestion. Search feature that allows us to search by Finder name. ??
coo-coo for cocoa puffs !!!
I think that's a Nietsche quote... either that or Sartre, I can't remember. Some philosopher. Except maybe for the last line...
Always the same message on the notes?
OMG! Just out of curiosity is the finder, Shawn, brother to a Shannon by any chance?? Shannon is one of my good friends :) I was just very surprised to see a find from Winnipeg finally, then I looked at the name and was like, "Wait a minute I think I know who you are!" Weird . . .
Anyhoo, I used to ride the city bus with this little person who wore a ball cap and jean jacket. Everytime he'd get on the bus, he'd always mutter to himself, "Everybody's a bastard! You're all a bunch of fucking bastards!" He'd keep repeating the same thing over and over again. This find reminds me of him. I'd always see him at the Macdonald's on Marion St.; I'd point him out to my parents, "That's the 'bastard' guy" LOL.
I understand from this find: everyone is born with inner demons (might he be refering to original sin perhaps??). Some people choose to feed that inner demon while others sustain it in order to remain sane. Everyone has the capability to go mad if they allow themselves to. That's why a Timmy's is much needed in the morning for some of us. (Note: "Timmy's" refers to a Tim Horton's coffee for anyone wondering wtf I'm talking about).
I don't agree with this statement. I don't think that people are born mad, in fact I think quite the opposite. We are born happy, but then our society around us makes us anger, and it is our task in life to return to that happy state. We are so used to being angry that it becomes natural, but it isn't everyone is natually good natured I think.