I'm Weird and I Like it

I call people Weird a decent amount. Most of the time, they take it as a mild insult, when in fact, I'm basically giving them the highest praise I have ever thought of. Weird to me means you are more different than most people in the world...more than one standard deviation away from the average person. And in the words of the immortal George Carlin, "Think about how stupid the average person is!" Weird, to me, means you are inherently interesting. Think about how boring the same thing is. Look at a row of black dots.



Which one drew your eye? The WEIRD one, that's which one. The WEIRD dot is specifically red because this post turned out to be about a couple of red-heads; one i know and one I'd like to.

I weed people out based on this WEIRD criteria. You might call it judging or persecution, but we all do it, we discern people who make us feel happy about ourselves and we call them our friends. One of my favorite, usually unconscious, tactics for this is saying something off the wall when I first meet someone. If they run with it, they are probably a kindred spirit. If they look at me like I have 4 heads...we probably aren't going to get along. Speaking of that, wouldn't it be really cool if I had 4 heads?!

I met one of my favorite people in the world that way. She's an energetic little Red-headed actress who used to live next door to me. I sat next to her on the bus one day and tried to think about what to say to her. Give me a break, I get nervous about what I say to stunningly beautiful women. My friend, who happened to be her roommate as well, happened to have left me a voicemail I hadn't checked yet, and, as I listened to it, a thought occurred to me. (since the roommate herself was, shall we say, WEIRD)

I turned to her as the voicemail ended and blinked twice and promptly asked her "Is your roommate on crack?!" She burst out into a laugh that, although hearing it for the first time, I automatically knew I would grow to absolutely love hearing (at one point, I likened it to a dying hyena and it stuck) and that this girl was a kindred spirit in this world.

The other red-head is someone I want to know. We frequent the same gym. Being that we are both very intense when we work out, we haven't really talked at all even though we have been there at the same time probably over 20 times. Which also leads me to another issue...

Headphones are the death of conversation; especially at the gym! How are we supposed to have simple human interaction (with anyone, not just the opposite sex) when everyone at the gym has headphones stuffed in their ears?! It's enough to drive you crazy.

Anyway, while we've traded smiles, said hello, traded all that non-distinct human interaction that has replaced small talk in our culture of iPhones, iPads, iPods, iPlanes, iPranks, iPizza, and iPeople. But after my shoulders and legs workout this morning, my roommate and I added what I like to call Nightmare Cardio to the routine, which is a nightmarish combination of timed running, timed pushups, and timed abs. It kills you. I could barely stand after it. I was hoping I saw her leaving, because if I had, I would have been able to say one of my patented weirdo lines I thought of this morning.

"Do you, by any chance, have a katana I could borrow?" After gauging her reaction, I would have explained that I wanted to kill myself, but I always told myself that if I committed suicide, I'd have to do it in a flashy way, so that people could make fun of me and have a laugh after I'm dead. I figure if someone can't take that kind of oddity and run with the joke, they probably won't enjoy my company and vice versa. Alas, I didn't see her as I left. But there's always next week. And when it comes to me, always another weird, rambling, nonsensical thought to verbalize.

Backwards and Forwards...Everything You Know is Wrong

I never really claim to know anything. This might sound weird to anyone who knows me, because I speak very confidently, even on topics that I am just conjecturing about. It makes people think I am absolutely sure of what I am saying. In reality, I just speak extemporaneously with a great deal of vigor. I get excited when I philosophize. In any case, I actively try to refrain from being absolutely sure of anything.

There is a great reason for this and it ties in to one of my favorite pastimes: Thinking about the things we absolutely "know" at this point in history as a human race and guessing which ones our descendents will laugh hysterically at us for believing in such an obvious falsehood. What is the current equivalent of our ancestors believing that the Earth was flat? How about the equivalent of our ancestors believing disease passed from person to person by smell?

That is the Forward example of that kind of philosophy. What I'm currently thinking about is how it applies Backward. It makes me think about history and what we "know" about what happened in our past. We take the stories we've heard in books as gospel, but in all honesty, there is no way that any of that actually happened.

The way I think about it is simple: with the advent of the internet, we have a ridiculous amount of angles and media of events that happen live...and yet, we still can't figure out what actually happened! If you talk to five different people, that were all present at the event, then watched video coverage of the event, followed by 2 hours of analysis by experts and viewers' reactions...then asked them to recount what happened, guess how many variations of that simple event you would get.

Now picture 200 years ago, and history being written. Just try and tell me that what they wrote was anywhere near what actually happened. It makes me wonder what actually happened, and some of the funniest things I've ever thought of have been alternative realities to historically famous events.

A Battle with Nature

As I workout in the gym, I realize that there are machines that just don't let men win. It makes me understand the concept of "Curves" the gym only for women so that they don't feel like they are being stared at while working out. The worst part of it is when it is not an isolated incident either. I go to the gym at the same time every single weekday morning, so I see the exact same people every day. I don't want to be a creep; I try not to look. I generally succeed in this venture, I'm there to work out, not make women feel uncomfortable. But sometimes, the situation just isn't gonna let men win. As evidenced by the situation I found myself in as I ranted to my friend on the way back from the gym one morning.

"I try not to look! But man, when I finish the mason twists on the inclined bench, my eyes are pretty much rolling around inside my head and I walk (see: stagger) around to recover before the next set. My eyes fly around the gym in exhaustion. When they come across a girl that is doing certain exercises, they just naturally stop."

"C'mon! I'm trying not to look, but that is simply a war against nature! And man, a battle against nature is simply one I'm not going to win!"