WEIRD, ISN’T IT?

            Hey, have you seen these weird milk jugs?

 See the bulge? I bought this a few days ago.

             I’ve noticed these weird niches on the bottoms of wine bottles; it makes for easy stacking but have you noticed these “indents and swells” on milk jugs? The first thought is, Oh No… my milk has gone bad and the container is swollen. But that’s not the case at all. Some ‘package merchandising designer’ out there apparently decided that plastic milk containers should fit into each other when they are side by side on the shelves. It’s such a weird sight, but maybe it’ll just be ‘one of those things’ we will take for granted if it catches on… There’s an indent on one side; a swell on the other. Kind of like… a male AND female milk jug. Now think: Do you think the word “outspoken” is weird? I do, because I think a counterpoint word should exist; specifically, the word: ‘inspoken.’ Maybe this made-up word will slip into the vernacular someday. Words, like milk jug designs, come and go and some catch on and some are just silly. One thing that never changes is that everything changes, right? I was watching a Twilight Zone (black and white) episode recently (because I DVR them) and I couldn’t help but note how times have changed! It seemed weird (something taken in stride back then)-a doctor walking down a hospital corridor puffing away on a cigarette. The episode was about a traumatized young girl who did not speak. The doctors were baffled. One of them remarked,

“I just don’t understand why she doesn’t talk… I mean, it’s not like she’s deaf, dumb, or retarded. She’s perfectly normal in all other respects.”

Wow. That’s when I got to thinking of words and the power they have. And I decided that inspoken should be a real word. The girl in the show had an internal dialogue. Thus my term: she was very inspoken. It’s weird that no one has thought of it before now.

Here’s something random and kinda weird, that illustrates the smoking thing:

I got this photo booth picture online. It makes me smile for some weird reason. A Grandma takes a grandchild into a photo booth for a keepsake photo. Lovely pic! If anyone knows who to credit for the photo let me know. Weird! We take it for granted now but not so long ago smoking was everywhere!

            The topic of this blog is “weird” but understand this: I think the word weird is flawed, misunderstood and also most of the time it’s describing something interesting. Take this bear for example:

He’s been reclining there on a ledge in my bathroom for over a year. Interestingly enough, sometimes my housemate will find the bear with his arm in a sling or I will find him wearing a shower cap (sorry, can’t find that photo)… The bear mysteriously crosses his legs too. He reclines with his hands crossed behind his neck. I have no idea how this bear manages to move around so much (wink wink). Truth is, I like funny bathrooms. My mother used to keep a plaque in her bathroom which had a saying about a jogger whose thighs caught fire from rubbing together whenever she exercised. Every time my mother went for a pee, I’d hear her cracking up in there. Her plaque-joke got her funny bone every time!

I keep a cork board next to the toilet with tacked on puns, weird comics, magazine clippings; whatever amuses me. I stole the following “bathroom humor”  idea from the movie Taxi Driver… In the movie there is a shot of a lightswitch adorned with the phrase “You turn me on!”

I love a pun. That’s my much used lightswitch in the photo. I’ve got to redo the phrase. Seems the letter Y is missing…

So anyway for the last 10 years or so, I’ve had this phrase on my bathroom lightswitch. It’s done by cutting out magazine letters and mod-podging them to the switchplate. It needs refreshing though! The words are getting illegible. (It never fails to amuse me.)

A “weird” tree I visit a few times a year: Isn’t it spectacular?

My father used to make up weird words. For example he always called Elvis: “Pelvis Parsley.” He made up a name for our state’s (then) governor too. Her real name was Ella T. Grasso. He referred to the poor woman as “Ella Asso.” (There’s a street named after her in New Haven so she must’ve done something right though, huh?) Anyway words are one of my pet topics. I know a few people who absolutely murder the English language and I stifle myself not  to go Grammar Police on them. After all, there are worse things a person can be than a “mispronouncer” or a “bad speller.” I’m intellectually aware of that fact and yet (maybe it’s weird but)- I secretly wish people would learn to differentiate between

too,

to,

and two!

I don’t love people any less (and neither do I love them more so) for not knowing the difference, but still I cringe. Words satisfy my weird. I’m presently trudging through a book set in the deep south. The word holler keeps coming up. It’s amusing me to no end. Because I am not from the south, that word is not part of my every day language.  In the south it can  mean a ‘hollow’ or valley. Maybe people were saying ‘hollow’ for so long in their thick southern drawl that it sounded like holler and eventually holler actually became a word. It’s sort of like when people pronounce window as ‘win-der’ or yellow as ‘yella.’ I have been coming across the word hella in modern stories these days.  It seems to be a new word. As in: He’s got hella good manners. That’s slang.

(From the site   http://pulptastic.com/16-flowers-that-look-like-something-else/ ) : Check out these actual flowers that oddly look like something else:

The Monkey Face Orchid

The Naked Man Orchid

The Hooker’s Lips (or eh, Psychotria Elata)

The Hooker’s Lips (or eh, Psychotria Elata)

This is my favorite below(Antirrhinum) Snap Dragon Seed Pod

Nature is weird, isn’t it? In a good way.

Actual sand under 250x magnification:

I could go on and on with this topic! Looks like a second blog on this topic is forthcoming. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this:

weird (adjective) suggesting something supernatural; uncanny.

weird (noun) a person’s destiny.

weird (verb) induce a sense of disbelief or alienation in someone.

So, in summation, I propose to you that weirdness makes life interesting. I claim the noun definition above by the way… 

From the site http://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/08/cherry-blossom-stones-natural-wonder.html :

In the Japanese city of Kameoka, which lies just over the western mountains of Kyoto city, an intriguing geological oddity is found. It’s a small subhexagonal-shaped stone of fine-grained muscovite mica hosted on a type of metamorphic rock called Hornfels. When cracked open, their internal cross-sections look like tiny golden-pink flowers. They are called “cherry blossom stones”, after the revered flower of Japan and one of the most recognized icons of the country.

 

            “These flower patterns weren’t always made of mica,” explains Science Alert. “They started their existence as a complex matrix of six prism-shaped crystal deposits of a magnesium-iron-aluminium composite called cordierite, radiating out from a single dumbbell-shaped crystal made from a magnesium-aluminium-silicate composite called indialite in the centre.”

It’s weird (but weirdly true) that someone weird like me could have bits in all the following books:

And also, I can’t leave out this weird redesigned book:

 

I just sorted some chow mein chinese noodles and pulled out the long bits and curly ones. While snacking, one should amuse one’s self. That is blurry, isn’t it? Onward: I’ve used this following quote before but it’s worth another mention:

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

Dr. Seuss

(FYI the word weird was used 26 times in this blog (including in the title) and if you go back and actually count and confirm how many times the word weird was used, then that is just weird, which brings the total up to 29. Which adds up to 11, (9+2) and 11 is a great number. One of my favorites. 



P.S.  I found that other bear picture. I went to Boston last year. Left this bear home. Imagine my surprise when I went into the hotel bathroom and saw this guy. He packed himself in my suitcase. Tricky bear! One more:



Go check your milk jug and get back to me.