Well, that was weird...

So a good friend of mine came down to Bozeman for a day to visit her boyfriend and move some stuff into her new house, in preparation for the beginning of fall term.

She wanted to get together, so we decided to go to a coffee shop (Wild Joe's, if anybody's interested. Very good!) that we had made somewhat of a ritual out of visiting these past couple semesters.

After we get our drinks, we sat down at our usual spot (the only table I can fit my legs under without knocking over, as it turns out). There was a scruffy-looking dude sitting at the table next to us, and at some point he joins our conversation.

It starts out normally enough; he says he has a doctorate in biochem, doing some research on hydrogenase (do I need an article in front of that? Are there different kinds of hydrogenase(es)?), which could potentially lead to more efficient and highly automatic production of hydrogen by algae. Interesting stuff, especially for someone like me who is very much into the alternative energy scene.

The Dude then starts talking about how he used to be profiled a lot because of the long hair he used to have (I have long hair, so that's how that thread started); he then continues to talk about how he used to be randomly beat up and incarcerated by the police in California because we has a peace activist and "on the list."

Continuing with the conversation, it turns out that he's the failed product of a govrenment conspiracy to create supersoldiers; he knows this because when he was a little kid, he had to have a tooth replaced and his old man volunteered him for the project (the same father who, coincidentally, took him and his little brother UFO hunting when they were little kids. And they saw UFOs, apparently). When they drilled to put the new tooth in, they went in further than they needed to so that they could use the false tooth as an antenna to beam ELF (extremely low-frequency) radio waves into his brain to control him, because his family has a genetic predisposition towards higher iron retention than the rest of humanity; interestingly enough, this blood-borne magnetic anomaly also makes him a beacon for UFOs and ghosts, so needless to say he's been on the government list for a long time.

I think he was just fucking with us; my caption above doesn't do full justice to the depth, breadth and bizarre nature of his monologue. He managed a very high level of detail, and the more bizarre thing about the whole deal was that he seemed fairly knowledgeable about his supposed area of expertise; as far as I could tell, knowing what little b-chem and o-chem that I do, he wasn't making shit up.

How do you extract yourself from a conversation like that? My friend and I were basically stuck there listening to him for at least an hour; how do you politely remove yourself from discourse with a crazy person without being bitten or shanked or yelled at? I guess my social skills in that area are sorely lacking.