Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Strange

Journal Of Tanzanian Meat Sciences

benzenedream — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:49:06 -0800

I'm looking for strange magazines to give as gift subscriptions. Ideas? Ideally these magazines would be moderately-priced and worth reading as an insight into other fields, even if the reader has no deep interest in the topic. Trade journals and academic publications are fine. I'm not interested in magazines that are trying to be outrageous in and of themselves.

Maybe she just needs a crazy straw...

nevercalm — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:25:48 -0800

Not really worried, more just curious about my cat and how she's been drinking water...she dips her paw and then licks the water from it, repeatedly. My cat Smudge is a real doll, and like many cats, totally fascinated by water. She's there every time fresh water is poured into the dish, trying to drink out of the jug and then spending some quality time with the bowl. Taking a bath? She's right on the edge of the tub, with that "how do you DO THAT????" look on her face.

As of late, she's developed a strange habit...she seems to exclusively drink by dipping her paw in her water dish and then licking up everything she can get. She then repeats this until, presumably, she's had her fill.

She's done a version of this since she was a kitten, but we always interpreted it as "finding the surface," trying to figure out where the water is in the dish so she didn't submerge her nose. For the past month or so now, she's pretty much only using the paw.

Anyone had a similar experience? She's pretty normal otherwise, so I'm not thinking this is something to worry about....but it's a pretty strange little quirk. Is she just another weird cat, or what?

What version is this Pod?

Mountain Goatse — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:42:20 -0800

What is this? (Can|Should|How do) I eat it? So, I got a whole bagful of these from someone who grew them. They were not able to tell me what it is, but said it was edible. Here's what I do know:

1. Grows on a vine.
2. Stem leaks a milky white fluid.
3. Doesn't smell like anything in particular.

My google-fu has proven quite weak in this case. What is this thing?

Odd blogs, please?

qldaddy — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:56:19 -0800

Mefites, please show me the oddest blogs you have ever seen? I am going to be leading a discussion at work and as part of that discussion, I would like to show some examples of odd or eccentric blogs. You know, when you hit the “next blog” button and something pops up and you think “Why would anyone spend any time putting that up of the web?” Like scans of tractor catalogs from the 70s or pictures of home-made clay models of imaginary beetles (I actually saw that once and have not been able to find it again). In English would be best, but I’ll take other languages if the intent and weirdness is universal.

Thanks

You found WHAT in your drawer?

MaryDellamorte — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:54:22 -0800

Inspired by this question and this comment, I'm curious to know about other things of this nature. Occurances that, to an outsider, seem completely crazy but are common in daily life in certain places in the world.

At last, I will be able to drink in America.

sarahj — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:43:51 -0800

How can I throw an epic 21st birthday party? I'm turning 21 soon. I just recently moved into a house with a bunch of my friends on our campus and I'd like to throw a party. What can I do to show the people a good time? A great punch recipe? Crazy decorations? A weird theme? My housemates have pretty mainstream taste (in terms of pop music, college frat parties, etc) but I'd also be inviting another group of friends who have more offbeat taste (obscure music, artsy films and stuff) - I'd definitely want my party to be more "offbeat"!

I think I could probably get around 20-30 people I know (friends, neighbors, acquaintances) to show up for sure (most likely not all at the same time) but there would probably be more if people bring friends and friends-of-friends and such. I'm willing to spend about $100-$200 max myself on booze and miscellaneous party items, but I'd rather have it go pretty far rather than, say, renting a huge foam machine or getting a DJ or something. Cheap beer will most likely be bought for college-style drinking games, and some nicer beer or champagne for close friends. I'm just not sure what else to do! Is there anything anyone's had/done at a birthday (or other!) party that made you say "wow, sweet!"? What can I do to make my party awesome (with a touch of strange)?

I need to be less odd. How?

Anonymous — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:47:35 -0800

I want to stop being seen as odd or eccentric. What can I do? All my life, I've felt like the odd man out. I seem to have trouble connecting with people and picking up on social cues. I'll often say things that are taken as offensive and not understand why.

Recently, I've become aware that most people at my work think of me as being extremely odd. I do have some odd behaviors. For example:
- I have a habit of answering my phone in a different way each time.
- Sometimes I speak in an overly formal way (i.e. I won't say "Yeah", I'll say "Why yes")
- Strange questions will come to mind (i.e. Someone says that a special prosecutor was appointed in a case and I ask "Was he wearing a black cowboy hat?")

I want to be more normal, for lack of a better word. It's tough being the odd man out all the time. Everyone around seems to get along and interact, but when I say something, it's as if the room has stopped.

I am currently in therapy for this, but my question is whether any of you know of any other resources and techniques I could employ to curb my oddness and eccentricity.

If it matters, I'm a man. I've also set up a throwaway e-mail at weirdodude1@gmail.com

My dog may need a shrink!

Mrs. Smith — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:32:14 -0800

Our dog is suddenly afraid of something and won't leave our side... Recently--maybe for 3 months now--our dog will go through periods of time when she seems to be totally afraid and won't leave our side. She even scratched on our door in the middle of the night one night, which she's never ever done before, so we would open the door for her.

She is 9 years old, a lab/retriever mix. She hasn't had any sudden things happen to her that might have scared her. She is a house dog and only goes outside in our fenced yard. She is treated like one of the family and we show her affection daily.

Any ideas why she's suddenly so freaked out?

Oriental artefact filter

lungtaworld — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 08:44:49 -0800

Asking for a friend who bought this (two pix here) at a yard sale for 50 cents. What is it? It is approx 7 3/4" square and 1/2" deep, has a magnetic compass in the center and two spirit levels at right angles to each other in one corner.
Comes in a bright red plastic case with flaps and cover. Appears to be made of lacquered wood (red on the front and and black on the back). Red monofilament line crosses and appears to hold the disk.

Mystery dust.

prefpara — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:29:11 -0800

A mysterious gray film/residue is appearing on all of the plastic in my apartment. What is going on? It's on the ice cube trays, the tupperware, the coffee maker, my printer, the dishwasher, etc. It's all over a plastic grocery bag that has been lying in the living room for only two days (close-up). My roommate and I have never seen anything like it before. Is it mutant dust of some kind?

If anyone can identify this substance, we would love to confirm that it is not going to kill us.

Trippy music is my favorite

One Second Before Awakening — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:42:17 -0800

Recommend me some good, extremely psychedelic rock. I'm a huge fan of a certain sort of rock music that goes so far out into experimental, weird territory that it sometimes just barely qualifies as rock music at all. It's music that takes the concept and techniques of psychedelia to an extreme. Often various non-rock influences will be mixed in (most commonly musique concrète) to give the music a special texture or vibe. I don't mind if the music is difficult or avant-garde.

I dig interesting and lush production, but I don't mind standard or even poor production. I also dig really varied, interesting instrumentation.

Bands that express the qualities I'm looking for:
White Noise
The Olivia Tremor Control (and much of Elephant 6)
Analog Birds
Pram (especially the song "The Owl Service," which isn't on youtube)
"Tomorrow Never Knows" by the Beatles
Porcupine Tree (especially songs like "Drown With Me" and "Stars Die"
Brain Eno's album "Another Green World," especially the song St. Elmo's Fire
Boards of Canada(though they're not really rock)

And to a lesser extent:
Phideaux
Radiohead's album "Kid A"
dredg's album "el cielo"

My cats know I'm made of meat!!

Mutant — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:32:01 -0800

Potentially gross question about two cats that like the taste of human flesh. So Mrs Mutant & I adopted two kittens last February.

Black, female, affectionate, playful, keep the rodents at bay, all good cat stuff.

One small concern: both cats like the taste of my flesh.

Mrs Mutant & I both like to use our MacBooks while chilling before sleep. Perhaps three months ago we noticed that both kittens, while lying on our bed with us, would for long periods of time sniff my toes (it gets grosser).

Then we noticed (well, I noticed) a few nights later that each would try to nibble on my toe flesh. Repeatedly. Not trying to bite off chunks of flesh, but careful, small cautious nibbles of the flesh. Seems like they both pay the most attention to the space in between my toes, but each will bite and nibble and lick (warned you it was gross, but there is worse) my feet for as long as I let them.

Very insistent, very focused on my toes, I've been woken up by their behaviour.

So what's up?

I've been around cats most of my life. I've never seen this before. About the only possible thing I can think of is my time working in the Sub Saharan African jungles; I caught more than one nasty bug and did at one time have some (colourful and thus cool) fungus growing on my toes.

But the fungi have long been evicted as I took the cure (which made me pretty sick as well) so I'm not sure if fungus is a viable hypothesis.

Any ideas? Oh yeh, both cats like my toe nail clippings. So much so they come running when I unzip the manicure kit. Now I've gotta clip my nails behind closed doors, otherwise they push each other out of the way in an effort to consume my clippings (final grossness).

As they get larger do I have to be even more concerned? Or is there a simple explanation beyond, "secretly in their primal hearts, your cats know you are made of meat" ?

What the Flickr?

pjern — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:34:15 -0800

I have a picture on Flickr that has suddenly been getting daily hits in the hundreds. I tracked it down via stats to this page. So, what the heck? They are linking to a photo of mine, on every page load, but not displaying it? What's up with that?

Is s(he)

a) an incompetent webmaster, in which case I'm going to watch my hit counts inflate and laugh?

b) getting some kind of nefarious advantage by linking to my picture for some kind of SEO-spammy reason, in which case I'm going to resent being used, and try to do something about it.

c) some third reason I can't fathom, but you might?

Help me find a fun, quick activity to start our management retreat

never used baby shoes — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:21:16 -0800

Off-the-wall, get the day started with a smile activity for a small retreat. My agency's management team is doing a small-scale retreat tomorrow. My boss just came in and asked if I could come up with some type of activity to get the day started that would be fun and different. Some considerations and information that may or may not be pertinent:

-I can't go with the usual "getting to know you icebreakers" because we all already know each other and work together.

-The purpose of the day is to shift through the issues facing the organization and each part of it, and then start developing some plans for approaching them. The morning will be spent with each of us giving a brief presentation on 3 challenges/opportunities we are seeing in front of us at the moment. It would be nice from my perspective if the activity somehow lead naturally into that discussion, but it is not necessary.

-There are seven of us. We range in age from late 20s to the 50s. One male, six female.

-"off the wall" and "fun" were the words she used when she asked me to come up with this. She somewhat suggested bringing her "That was easy" button (the one from Staples, where when you press it, it says "That was easy") and asking us to come up with what we would like our version of that button to say. Not a bad idea, but I suspect we'd all go with very similar answers (and a few of us would stick with the "That was easy").

Help me Hivemind!

Voices you either love or hate...

grumblebee — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:26:33 -0800

I like singers with strange voices. I don't like novelty songs (e.g. Betty Boop) and I don't like "songs" that are so avant-garde that they're basically noise (e.g. someone screaming into a microphone). So I'm not looking for strange music. I'm looking for traditional (melodic) music sung by singers with non-traditional singing voices. Examples of what I like: Joanna Newsom, Leon Redbone, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Elaine Stritch. This is obviously a matter of personal taste and interpretation, but I want to find singers with a lot of eccentric character -- not singers that are just putting on a weird act.

Strange Places in Paris

Julnyes — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:41:07 -0800

What odd things are there to do in Paris? I will (hopefully) be in Paris for a few days in the beginning of May and I am looking for something truly odd to do there.

Is there anything in Paris similar to The Museum of Jurassic Technology ? That place was a highlight of my trip to Los Angeles.

I looked into the sewer tour and the catacombs, but they just weren’t doing it for me. Thanks for any suggestions.

Albany: Florida Of The North!

Sticherbeast — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:16:15 -0800

Defining Upstate New York as "anything within the state further north than Westchester," what documented bizarre historical events - large or small - have transpired in Upstate New York since the late 19th century or so? This is for a strange little artistic project I'm working on set in Upstate New York - we'd like to weave real life strangeness into our fictional universe. Those of you who have lived around Schenectady or so know that Upstate can attract some dismally weird happenings. For example, there's the case in 1973 of mysterious twirling documents mentioning "normalized extinction" and "incomplete Davis-Greenstein orientation" falling from the sky into a hayfield in North Greenbush, or the time a few years ago in Schenectady when a house exploded with cockroaches (I read about this in the New York Times in about 2004 or so, but I can't remember when exactly).

Surely there's weirdness in NE PA?

killerinsideme — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:45:33 -0800

Some weekend this January or maybe February my boyfriend and I will be making our way from our home in Philly to Stroudsburg, PA to partake in some indoor go-karting activities (as a belated Xmas gift for him), and to get the hell out of town to a destination other than relatives. It's a bit of a hike and, like I said, we need to get out of the city for a bit. If we tried to make a weekend of it, is there some offbeat stuff we could do as we make our way along 476N to Allentown, 78E past Bethlehem to Easton, and 209N to Stroudsburg (and back)? I mean goofy museums, odd shopping, strange places to stay, weird photo ops. I saw a billboard for an Unclaimed Freight store and I'm checking roadsideamerica.com, but I'm not coming up with much as you can see and any help would be greatly appreciated.

"people dying, children crying - look, fingernails in your back..."

trinarian — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 10:46:27 -0800

Help identify a strange and creepy children's song from my past that seems ungoogleable. I have a very distinct memory of coming back from YMCA summer camp with my older sister. As we were driving away, my she starts singing a song she learned that day with the kids her age. I remember the tune and some of the words, and it was creepy as hell to a seven year old. My mother made her stop singing it, I think she did the whole thing for me another time, but now she's forgotten anything of it.

The lyrics I remember was a chorus of, "people dying, children crying" followed right after by a stop of the tune and something like, "look! fingernails in your back." I think this might have been followed by something physical like putting nails to your back. The entire song was describing some kind of war-torn wasteland or nuclear apocalypse.

The tune was something like "dah dahn dah dahn da dahn da dahn - dahn!" for that above chorus.

It was extremely catchy and burned holes in my head with apocalyptic visions - I still remember it 20 years later. I don't think there's anyway they could have made it up, it's too catchy. Anyone else remember this words or know the origins to this?

My cat thinks he's hungry, so he eats drywall

jesirose — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:58:34 -0800

How can I stop my cat from eating everything he finds that is smaller than his head? If he can fit it in his mouth, he'll eat it. Besides stealing any food he can from our plates and any trash bins (including wrappers), he usually eats paper and plastic he finds or steals from us, and of course bugs. But now he's eating drywall, screws, and wood splinters. (We're renovating a bit.) He'll also chew up books and newspaper left out, not to mention electrical cords.

I do my best to pick up anything that could harm him and put it away where he can't get it, but he always seems to find something I missed. If he can't find anything to eat, he'll eat the carpet.

Yes, he puts his face down and chews on the carpet, pulling up the stuff and eating it. There is threadbare carpet in spots he loves.

I know we feed him enough, our vet even told us in the past that we overfed our cats so we have them on a diet of one can of food a day. I can't imagine he's actually so hungry he needs to eat carpet to survive. What the hell is he doing?

Any tips on getting him to eat only "cat food" and not people food and non-food items?

What happened during my nap?

punkfloyd — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:04:49 -0800

Am I losing it? I rarely nap, but on a recent afternoon I nodded off on the couch only to (gently) wake up about an hour later completely disoriented. It was like the whole time/space continuum had collapsed. For about 60 seconds I was in a near panic state not being able to get my bearings. Who am I? How did I get here? What time is it? Where is everybody? Then it sorta passed. I am a reasonably healthy 37 year old guy and get 8 hrs of sleep nightly.

Anybody ever experience this? Did I wake up in the middle of REM sleep? WTF?

Strange noise emanating from woman

Jesco — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:40:06 -0800

I just started dating this woman. She is 36 year old and has coeliac disease (although I don't think that is related to this question). A strange vibrating noise comes from her. The noise sounds almost like a pager set to vibrate or the sound windshield wipers make when moving across a window that is not we enough (only much fainter). The sound is intermittent, yet frequent. I know for a fact that she doesn't carry cell phone or pager and I am pretty sure she does not wear some sort of a medical device. I can't tell where the noise is coming from exactly, but I know is coming from her. I have heard this noise come from her in different locations and at different times. She does not react at all to the noise and can carry on a fluid conversation during the noise. Any ideas?

Looking for a pig in a poke?

Monday — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 10:49:15 -0800

I look out the window while working. Lately, I've seen some strange behavior: people park, get out and circle the cement pig nearby, and they get back in their car. What are they doing? They circle twice, getting in their car between trips. They hold a device (gps?). All the people were white, with two men and two women. The ages ranged from about 8 to 40 or so.

The pig is in front of Ole Times in Warner Robins, GA, if that helps.

The Puzzle of the Puzzle Trade

thelongcon — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 05:04:07 -0800

What does a person mean when they say they want to 'trade puzzles'? Today I saw a sign on an empty shop front beside the bus stop. It said something along the lines of "If you have any puzzles to trade call Alex". So I called the number, a person picked up and I told him I had a puzzle to trade. He asked me how many pieces the puzzle had and I told him 5000 pieces. Things took a stranger turn when he told me he liked puzzles that had 500 to 1000 pieces but he could "only handle up to 1000 pieces or 1001 pieces" and he asked me to tell my friends to call him if they had puzzles of that size. Does anyone know if "500/1000 piece puzzle" means anything or give me some clue to what this guy was talking about? Is he mentally unwell? Is there a puzzle trading society I don't know about? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

What is this mysterious spongy thing in my garden?

chihiro — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:29:51 -0800

What is this strange thing growing in my garden? I had lovely tulips in my garden earlier this spring and they've finished now, but when the weather is warm and humid (as it has been lately), these strange, spongy, slightly rude-looking growths emerge where once there were tulips. I've Googled all manner of keyword combinations, can anyone tell me what these things are? Pictures here.