fur coats and feather dusters

as a resident of our nation's capital and someone who takes public transportation to work every day, i pretty much expect to encounter some pretty wierd shit on the metro. sometimes it's something as benign as someone next to me eating bbq pork rinds at 8:15 in the morning, other times you get really lucky and some crazy person is sreaming at her fellow passengers because they let the cats out of her purse and now she will never be able to find her way home. and then there are the times when some guy walks on to your car and you think, oh my heavens, i must have been a very good girl today and the gods have decided to reward me, cause he is standing there, with his chest all puffed out with pride, wearing a full length fur coat that looks like fozzie bear and the cowardly lion had a baby and he went out into the woods and killed it himself and made the fanciest most amazing techincolor fur coat he could come up with. seriously. musicals have been created around coats less stunning than this one. i'm thinking, surely this man must know that he is indeed a man, and therefore has no business wearing such flippery. had there been a woman inside this muppet costume of a coat, i would not have looked twice (except maybe i would have said "shun! shuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!! under my breath or at least in my head), but no no, this was an otherwise completely normal looking man in a red sweater and a pair of dark brown cordoroys. i'm always amazed at men that think it's ok for them to weath a fur coat like it's just totally ordinary and no one should think anything of it other than how damn fine he looks in it. knock, knock. who's there? normal. normal who? EXACTLY. this could only compare with the woman i saw a few months ago on the metro, who was wearing, and i am not lying, a feather duster in her head where a ponytail should be. again, like it was TOTALLY NORMAL. i wonder if she worked as a housekeeper and figured she would save herself the time and trouble and just go on and attach that thing to her head...or maybe she was thinking, gee, this feather duster is looking a lot better than my raggedy ass ponytail, i'm gonna put it in my head and i will be fancy as a circus pony, oh yes i will! if i have to spend 20 minutes every day getting to work and 20 minutes retreating home every day, i thank the lord in heaven above for blessing me with the crazies, cause they are way more entertaining than the newspaper will ever be.