Have you hugged your weird today?

Have you always been a little bit weird? A little strange? Dressed a little funny and maybe just didn’t fit in with the crowd. Maybe they even made fun of you because you liked purple sneakers or wore green with everything. Or your pre-meal ritual simply frightened them a little. Perhaps, you’re the only who ever laughed at your jokes – because nobody else got them, right? Until maybe purely by accident you bumped into a fellow weirdo and you secretly shared the joy of your weirdness.

Because you know something the non-weird don’t know. Being weird is really fun. And freeing. And those ‘normal’ folk have no idea what they’re missing either.

But this post is for the closet weird among us. Those who shared their weird with no one. Who only let their weird hang out when they’re alone or perhaps with a few close weird-minded friends. And to you closet weirds I say, “Embrace your weirdness.”

Why?

Well because…

• It’s what makes you, you
• It’s easy being the same as everybody else – it’s hard to be yourself
• It might encourage suppressed weirdos to come out of the closet
• It’s fun and makes you and others laugh
• Behaving and doing what’s expected if overrated
• It’s your God-given right

And when you feel alone in your weirdness, just remember there are/were lots of really famous weirdos, like:

• Weird Al Yankowich
• Einstein
• Thoreau
• Picasso
• Robin Williams
• Lily Tomlin
• Annie Oakley
• Dorothy Parker
• Michelangelo
• Shakespeare

I mean why be normal when you could be weird like these guys? Am I right?

How to embrace your weirdness

For those of you who’d like to give weird a try, following are a suggestions on how you might want to take it out for a test drive:

• Spend the day playing nothing but Weird Al Yankowich tunes
• Whatever requests are made of you today at the end of your answer add: “would you like fries with that?”
• Wear two different sneakers to the gym and see if anyone notices, if they do, tell them it’s a new trend
• Go to your favorite coffee place, order a coffee then sit in the dining room having a conversation with the main character in your book – if you aren’t a writer, then have a conversation with the main character of your favorite book
• Start a fund for lost pens or homeless sneakers
• Wear a top hat
• Walk your dog or cat in a stroller
• While riding on the bus sing to yourself intentionally screwing up the lyrics to well known songs (example: another one takes the bus, rather than, another bites the dust)
• Wear a Tu-tu and ballet slippers, or any outfit that makes you feel happy
• Tell people your favorite cause is lint preservation

Here’s a few pictures that might inspire you:

Or anything that strikes your fancy. You may find you really dig your native weird – because between you and me, everybody’s got a little weird in them.

How about you? Do you let your weird hang out or hide it from friends, family and co-workers? What’s your favorite way to be weird? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever done. Get your weird on in the comments – and knock yourself out.

Weird Writer Chick

Secret Writer Behavior

I admit it, I was a Sex in the City junkie. Although I never watched the show while it was on the air, I did start watching it when it went into syndication.  Again and again. One of my favorite episodes is when Carrie laments about losing her SSB – secret single behavior- because she was now living with her boyfriend. SSB is the stuff you love to do when you’re alone.  Whether it’s jacking up the sound system and playing air guitar with Clapton, chowing down on some Hagan Daas, or chatting on Facebook in your undies, SSB is a guilty pleasure. And I think that most of us can identify with the concept, male or female.

I won’t divulge my SSB but I wondered if SSB also extended to other things, like writing for instance. Do you have any secret writing behavior (SWB)? I know I do and it includes things like:

• Cursing all the way through a writing project I hate. Let’s face it, not all your projects are going to be fun or interesting. Many of your projects will be tedious and for clients who are difficult to please. For me, giving in to my angry cussing side makes it easier to get through the pain. I pound on the keyboard and let the cursing rip like I’m a parrot on Thunderbird.

• Talking to my characters. Now this may not be too weird to another writer but when your room mate is in the next room and hears you scolding, cajoling or encouraging people who only exist in your head it’s not easy to explain.

• Acting out the scenes. Yep, that’s right. If I am trying to write a scene where the character is doing something a little weird, I literally put myself in that situation and see what it’s like. For example, a current story I’m writing involves a character who is blind, so I practiced walking up and down the hallway with my eyes closed. Another thing I wouldn’t want my room mate to see or have to give an explanation for.

• Writing naked. Sometimes you just have to let it all hang out to get those writing juices flowing, right? Okay seriously, am I the only one?

• Getting into character. If I am writing a character who has an accent, affliction or some other unusual characteristic, I become them. Whether it’s a southern drawl, a Midwestern twang or a bow legged stance – if I have to don a cowboy hat and do the two step to get it right, I’m game.

Now I don’t know if any of my SWB really makes me a better writer or enables me to write more effectively but I do know it’s a lot of fun and not stuff I like to do when others around. And maybe that’s why writers like to be alone when they write. They may say that it’s because they need the quiet to focus and concentrate but I’m willing to bet it’s because there is some secret writer behavior going on too.

How about you, what is your secret writer behavior? Has any non-writer caught you in the act? Tell me about it in the comments.

Writer Chick

Copyright 2012

It’s a Sign of the Times

By and large, I find signs a bit insulting. They seem to infer we don’t have the brains God gave us. On the other hand, some of us don’t have the brains God us so… Further still, some signs are just too funny not to highlight and these are a few of those.

WC

Hope you got a chuckle out of these, I know I did. 🙂

You Think You’re Having a Bad Day?

Ah, Monday morning – don’t you love it? The freeway is jammed, your coffee machine decided to go on the fritz and Starbuck’s has a line out the door. What could be worse?

There…now don’t you feel better? 😉 If you’re bored and want to be entertained check this out. Hehe.

WC

Tips, tricks and little known facts

My friend Jenny sent me this very informative list. I pass it on to you in case you can use the info or at least to get a chuckle:

THINGS TO KNOW
1. Budweiser beer conditions the hair.
2. Pam cooking spray will dry finger nail polish
3. Cool whip will condition your hair in 15 minutes
4. Mayonnaise will KILL LICE, it will also condition your hair
5. Elmer’s Glue – paint on your face, allow it to dry, peel off and see the dead skin and blackheads if any
6. Shiny Hair – use brewed Lipton Tea
7. Sunburn – empty a large size Nestea into your bath water
8. Minor burn – Colgate or Crest toothpaste
9. Burn your tongue? Put sugar on it!
10. Arthritis WD-40 Spray and rub in, kill insect stings too
11. Bee stings – meat tenderizer
12. Chigger bite – Preparation H
13. Puffy eyes – Preparation H
14. Paper cut – crazy glue or Chap Stick (glue is used instead of sutures at most hospitals)
15. Stinky feet – Jello!
16. Athletes feet – cornstarch
17. Fungus on toenails or fingernails – Vicks vapor rub
18. Kool aid to clean dishwasher pipes. Just put in the detergent section and run a cycle, it will also clean a toilet. (Wow, and we drink this stuff)
19. Kool Aid can be used as a dye in paint also Kool Aid in Dannon plain yogurt as a finger paint, your kids will love it and it won’t hurt them if they eat it!
20. Peanut butter – will get scratches out of CD’s! Wipe off with a coffee filter paper
21. Sticking bicycle chain – Pam no-stick cooking spray
22. Pam will also remove paint, and grease from your hands!? Keep a can in your garage for your hubby
23. Peanut butter will remove ink from the face of dolls
24. When the doll clothes are hard to put on, sprinkle with corn starch and watch them slide on
25. Heavy dandruff – pour on the vinegar!
26. Body paint – Crisco mixed with food coloring. Heat the Crisco in the microwave, pour in to an empty film container and mix with the food color of your choice!
27. Tie Dye T-shirt – mix a solution of Kool Aid in a container, tie a rubber band around a section of the T-shirt and soak
28. Preserving a newspaper clipping – large bottle of club soda and cup of milk of magnesia , soak for 20 min. and let dry, will last for many years!
29. A Slinky will hold toast and CD’s!
30. To keep goggles and glasses from fogging, coat with Colgate toothpaste
31. Wine stains, pour on the Morton salt and watch it absorb into the salt.
32. To remove wax – Take a paper towel and iron it over the wax stain, it will absorb into the towel.
33. Remove labels off glassware etc. rub with Peanut butter !
34. Baked on food – fill container with water, get a Bounce paper softener and the static from the Bounce towel will cause the baked on food to adhere to it.
35. Crayon on the wall – Colgate toothpaste and brush it!
36. Dirty grout – Listerine
37. Stains on clothes – Colgate
38. Grass stains – Karo Syrup
39. Grease Stains – Coca Cola , it will also remove grease stains from the driveway overnight.. We know it will take corrosion from car batteries!
40. Fleas in your carpet 20 Mule Team Borax – sprinkle and let stand for 24 hours. Maybe this will work if you get them back again.
41. To keep FRESH FLOWERS longer Add a little Clorox! , or 2 Bayer aspirin, or just use 7-up instead of water.
42. When you go to buy bread in the grocery store, have you ever wondered which is the freshest, so you ‘squeeze’ for freshness or softness Did you know that bread is delivered fresh to the stores five days a week Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has a different color twist tie. They are:
Monday = Blue, Tuesday = Green, Thursday = Red Friday = White and Saturday = Yellow. *yellow*
So if today was Thursday, you would want red twist tie; not white which is Fridays (almost a week old)! The colors go alphabetically by color Blue – Green – Red – White – yellow , Monday through Saturday. Very easy to remember. I thought this was interesting. I looked in the grocery store and the bread wrappers DO have different twist ties, and even the ones with the plastic clips have different colors. You learn something new everyday! Enjoy fresh bread when you buy bread with the right color on the day you are shopping.

The Tragedy of Bad Intentions

I’ve had a most surreal experience in the last few weeks (I seem to be making a habit of that, lately, eh?). So odd, in fact, that I have designated it as one of my top ten weird experiences of all time.

About a month ago, I was hired to work for an accountant as her assistant. Actually, I was classified as ‘outside services’ so she wouldn’t have to cover the payroll taxes. I didn’t mind that much, since I’ve done it before and it gives me flexibility. The problem was that she wanted to treat me as an employee (read indentured servant) when it came to her stuff.

I so desperately needed the work that I did my best to please her, and do things that she needed done in the best way I knew how. I’m relatively intelligent and have a pretty good battery of skills so she made haste in taking advantage of all I could do – which wasn’t really fair since many of the things she asked of me really didn’t fall in with the pay scale and job description. But it was a five minute commute, she promised to raise the rate in a few weeks and occasionally she bought me lunch. What could be so bad?

It turned out that she was very difficult to work with – very critical, nothing seemed to please her and she had this uncanny ability to make me feel like I was to make her my number one priority. Even to the point of when the big fire was happening out here, she expected me to put her first and help her evacuate because she was worried about the fire, when I lived literally a mile down the road and was at least in as much danger of losing home, possessions and possibly worse. After that snafu, she dispensed of any social niceties and became pretty freaking snarly. Despite the fact that after I’d brought back roomie and his truck to help her evac over the fire scare, once I’d determined my home was okay and my pets and possessions safe. Nope, that grudge wasn’t going anywhere, it was there to stay.

As the next several days wore on, things became more and more tense and literally everything I did was wrong to her. I couldn’t get a darn thing done because she interupted me every five minutes to criticize me for one thing or another. When I got home that night I was pretty riled, so I wrote her an email trying to appeal to her sense of reason and to explain that I couldn’t work under these conditions and wanting to figure it out. What entailed was a flurry of increasingly nasty emails from her. No matter how much I tried to reason with her, she just came back with insults and denigrations.

Still, I was hopeful I could somehow talk her off the ledge and get her to regain some semblance of rationality, so I continued emailing back and forth trying to get her to calm down. She then indicated she expected me to work on Labor Day, which was pretty much my breaking point and I told her I didn’t work holidays and had no idea she would expect that – her response was that I should have told her that and should have expected that she would have expected that. Long story short, I told her I didn’t want to continue working for her. I offered to come in the week after Labor Day to finish out the week if she needed that. I didn’t hear back from her so I sent her my final invoice and promptly got another job.

She sent me one email querying something on the invoice I sent her, which was a typo, that I corrected and resent the invoice. This I took to mean she was planning to pay the invoice and it was over.

But….no…. Days passed and no word, no check. Nothing. I emailed her and she didn’t respond at all. It’s no secret I’ve been pretty broke and though she didn’t owe me that much money, I needed it so I continued to email her asking about it. Out of friendship, roomie even went over there to try to collect the check and she went ballistic on him.
I told him to forget about it and I’d figure it out later.

Then I got a flurry of emails, each nastier than the one before. Again filled with insults and angst. Accusing me of all manner of things and I started to wonder if she’d confused me with a boyfriend who had broken up with her. The insults were so personal and vicious that it was as though I’d known her for years rather than 3-4 weeks. As though I’d killed a family member of hers or something. And all indications were that she had no intention of paying me, though she never said. She simply just kept lobbing over the bombs.

Today, the check came in the mail (after another nasty email this morning), it had been written three days ago and mailed yesterday. And I had to scratch my head. If it had already been written and mailed why didn’t she just say so and leave it at that? Why would she continue with the nasty emails, trying to taunt me and doubt I was getting paid when in fact, it was already done? Honestly, it almost knocked me off my feet.

I mean, what makes a person do something like that? Intentionally rile and taunt another person just for sport? And I thought I should be angry, I should want to throttle her or something but really I just felt sorry for her. I thought her life must be horrible that she would take such pleasure in upsetting another person just for the sake of doing it. That her life must be tragic to derive joy or satisfaction from something like that. And I also thought, I’m glad I’m not her. I have my own demons make no mistake but my life is a cakewalk in comparison – I don’t need to hurt people to feel alive. To wound people to feel empowered. To drama all over someone else’s head to have self-esteem and self-respect.

Hey we all have bad thoughts, bad intentions, want to hurt somebody else because we’re hurting – but most of us, restrain ourselves because know it’s wrong. Maybe she’ll figure it out someday. I hope so. For her sake – because the rest of us will just be getting on with it, while she’s living in her cave of paranoia and resentment.

Weird Chick 9

Welcome back to another Weird Wednesday – our good buddy Grit has decided to join us in our mad weirdness, which is good cuz I’ve got no idea where Weird Mick has gotten to. So be sure to check out Weird Grit and I’m sure he’ll have something quite strange for you.

We’re kicking off with our Weird Video for this week. Who knew monkeys could be drunks like the rest of us?

Moving on to Weird Products:

Who doesn’t need some butt bleach?

  Perhaps you’re craving something tasty? How about some Rocky Mountain Oysters, aka deep fried bull testicles? Yummy!

 

And for those of us who don’t like coffee but need the caffiene, why not some super charged sunflower seeds? You’ll be chomping through the shells on these babies in moments flat.

Our Weird Art takes on the mantle of fashion and art:

Finally, an outfit that hangs itself up. I’m sure this is going to be a killer trend among fashionistas!

And is that art or a giant woman pointing you toward the local Micky Dee’s?

Well, so ends another Weird Wednesday – be sure to check out my partners in crime and oh, really seriously, if you find something weird, send it to me.

Weird Chick

Weird Chick 8

Welcome back to another thrilling and Weird Wednesday. As always, I search the Internet for the weirdest weird I can find and bring it to you to feed your weird fix.

Kicking off with Weird News, this Squirrel seems to have a bit of Lindsay Lohan in him, doncha think? Click the pic for the link to the story.

Weird Art got a run for it’s money with these entries:

 it’s a man, it’s a bird???

 an homage to the king of pop

 and for the pet elephant who has everything…

Our favorites for Weird Products are decidedly blogger friendly:

 I mean what blogger doesn’t need an ass cooler and since it’s a usb connector you don’t even need to find an outlet for it.

 And why not also get the usb air-conditioned shirt for those hot blogging nights. Links to both products can be found by clicking on the pics.

And finally, our Weird Video for the week will have you looking twice.

That’s all for this week – hoping you have a wonderfully weird Wednesday. And be sure to send me any weird you may find yourself, I’ll be sure to add it to the finds.

Weird (Writer) Chick

Weird Chick 7

 

Welcome back to Weird Wednesdays – we’ve had a two week hiatus I have been scouring the Internet for more weird delights for you, so never fear, weird is here.

I had a great story about flying men and the future but the link went dead. Sorry it was a hum dinger… Perhaps this Weird Vid will tickle your fancy:

Weird Art took a decided human turn this week. Gotta love the hair, hey?

 

Our Weird Products are fun too

Cheesecake lollipops, for the discerning palette – available at Amazon of course.

 

Solar sun/moon jars – this is too cool, eh? Here’s the link if you need to buy a few.

 and who doesn’t want the Iamnotapapercup? Made of porcelain and double insulated. Though I have to admit, I won’t be replacing my coffee mugs with one of these any time soon, some people might want the take out look with their coffee? Go figure.

What new papa doesn’t want a pair of man boobs? Although, at least we girls cover em up, put those things away dad!

So, there you have it another day of weird just for you. What about you, seen anything delightfully weird? Send it to me, I’ll be happy to put it up next time.

Weird Chick

Weird Chick 6

Welcome to another Weird Wednesday where I scour the Internet to find the weirdest and wildest stuff I can find.

Starting off with some weird science, click on the pic above to read the top ten unexplained phenom in the known universe.

Our favorite weird product is the Doggie brake-fast bowl – cute huh, a little take on breakfast. Get it? Click the link to get all the juicy details on the pet bowl of the future.

Weird art gets another heads up with these two entries. Kind of makes you feel all whoozy and giddy don’t they?

And finally…our pick for Weird (and tre’s cool) Video of the Week. It’s a honey. Watch it.

So until next week, keep it weird folks.