Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with weird

A weird Iowa weed

sararah — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:13:41 -0800

What is this weird plant? Flower closeup, here's another shot.

More details: growing wild (I'm pretty sure it is a weed of some sort) in a back yard in central Iowa. Quite prolific -- they seem to be popping up all over the yard. They can get quite huge, with some of them growing 4-5 feet tall with the main stalk being several inches thick. The "berries" seem to bloom into weird flowers.

What is this backyard oddity? Is it dangerous? Should we try to get rid of it?

Thanks!

Allergy/EyeballFilter: What's the same in Japan, Italy and Austria?

sirion — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:56:47 -0800

Allergy Brainstorm Time: What could I possibly have an allergic reaction to in my EYE in Italy, Austria and Japan? I've been battling follicular conjunctivitis (aka a version of pink eye) for 2+ months now and seeing pretty good doctors and what not, and it seems that the only possibility remaining is a case of allergic conjunctivitis.

Now what's weird is that I've never really had difficulties with allergies, and I've had this now for 1 month in Italy, 1 month in Austria, and now, after 2 weeks totally clear in Japan (the first 10 days were spent tapering off of Hydrocortisone drops), I'm suddenly getting symptoms again. Wtf?

So, what could I either be bringing with me to all of these places, or what is the same in all of these places? Are japanese dust mites the same as european dust mites? Is Japanese pollen the same as European? The only toiletries I've brought with me are shaving supplies (every 3 days), toothpaste and preservative free artificial tears (didn't start using those again until the symptoms started coming back yesterday).

Also, if anyone has been diagnosed with allergic/follicular conjunctivitis and it turned out to be something else, please lemme know. The other extremely weird thing with the diagnosis is that my fiancee has had similar, but lesser symptoms on and off during the same period.

Disclaimer: I know you are not my doctor, but hell, I'm in Japan and I have some doubts as to whether I'm going to find a *very good* ophthalmologist to solve a *very weird, non-standard presentation* of an eye problem AND speak English.

I just hope this isn't a memory from real life...

naju — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:35:52 -0800

I have a vague memory of a dialogue between two people about bulimia. Is it from a movie, a tv show, or a strange dream? This is a short memory I have that's been kind of haunting me for the past few days. It must've seen it recently. Two people are sitting and talking really casually, at a party, almost like they're bored. They're both talking about having to vomit to stay thin, maybe comparing strategies, almost like it's a given that this is the only established way of becoming thin. But it seems like the dialogue is NOT played for drama, or for laughs. It's just really tossed off, and lasts only a few seconds, before the movie (or dream?) shifts to something else completely. I can't remember whether the people talking are male or female.

The only movie I've seen recently that I can think of it being would be Pineapple Express but this seems very wrong for a stoner comedy. Now that I think of it, I also saw part of the movie Thirteen on Lifetime a couple weeks ago. Could that be it? Any other ideas?

What is this strange building?

BuddhaInABucket — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:43:12 -0800

What the heck is this building? It's in Los Angeles near where the 101 and 5 freeways meet.

Is this it for this year's tomato crop?

crinklebat — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:09:06 -0800

What is wrong with my tomatoes? I'm growing Early Girls in a pot with some manner of enriched soil on my front porch in Palo Alto, CA. They get sun probably 8 hours of the day and are watered both by sprinklers and also by me, watering from a can. I have not been as consistent as I could have been with watering and because the sprinklers come on at 1am, I'm not certain how thoroughly this plant gets watered. However, it's a huge plant.

A couple of weeks ago I started noticing small yellow spots on the leaves but didn't think much of it, because I was getting dozens of green tomatoes and was too excited to worry.

We got one ripe tomato last week, which was delicious. Today I picked our second ripe tomato...which is worrisome.

It's not like any pictures I can find online. Basically, the blossom end has a bunch of faint black or brown specks, and it didn't ripen. So I have a red tomato with a green and black/brown bottom. I cut it open and it smelled a little off, but I have an overactive imagination so who knows how accurate that is; it's green on the inside corresponding to the green bottom on the outside. I haven't tasted it...yet.

The spots look like the pictures I've found online of bacterial speck, but I haven't seen anything that says bacterial speck can be confined to only the very tip of the tomato, nor that it would inhibit ripening there. What would make sense to be on the blossom end is blossom end rot, but this looks nothing like pictures I can find of blossom end rot. On inspecting the plant it looks like a lot of the green tomatoes have various degrees of the same speckling. I'm wondering if I need to pull these tomatoes off or if this is something I can correct with watering or fertilizers.

If you think you might be able to help if you had a picture, let me know and I'll find a place to put one, or email one to you.

I feel lost/unintelligent sometimes.

isoman2kx — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:41:48 -0800

I feel lost/unintelligent a lot of the time. So I'm reading a sci-fi book (Woken Furies by Richard Morgan), and I'm about 3/4's of the way through when I realize I haven't been paying a great detail of attention to the book at all. Gradually as I read on I start to forget the characters at the beginning of the book that would be very helpful to remember for the plot towards the end of the book. I suddenly felt very dumb and depressed.

This is happening to me a lot lately it seems (feeling dumb and depressed that is). My history is too long to go into detail, if anyone wants to spare a quick glance at my post history you can piece my life together. Anxiety, depression, feelings of worthlessness, feelings of being unintelligent, etc. You know the deal.

The book is a microcosm of my life it seems. Like, I can't explain it. I feel like sometimes I'm making progress with my life. I'm 22 and by all standards, I've been given a good life. I didn't say I've lived what I would consider a great life so far, but I've been given all the opportunities to excel and it seems like... well... I haven't. There are times where I just feel overwhelmingly inferior to everyone.

Part of this inferiority resutls from not being 100% certain if I've had ADD for years now or if it's been a declined mental state typically associated with depression masquerading as someone with ADD. Yet, I feel like I can't concentrate on a lot of things that require intelligent thought. I feel like if someone's telling me something like for a set of instructions that I'm just mindlessly mumbling "uh huh, yeah, oh ok i see" and you know what? I don't see. I don't understand what the hell people are saying to me half the time because it seems like I physically can't retain it. I feel like certain gears in my head capable of intelligent thought just don't fucking work and it's frustrating. I feel like I can't even do simple things like read a book because heaven forbid they have a plot and I'm too dumb to follow a plot with more than 1 character. I've tried ADD medication but it seems that ADD medications don't bond too well with my anxiety as naturally all ADD medications are stimulants. Stimulants for a person with anxiety/depression = bad. (or for me they do). So I've been taken off them.

Where am I going with this? the hell if I know. I just want to feel intelligent. I want to feel happier because I'm intelligent. I've never been a bad student, but I've always felt stupid and I can't explain why. You might say well for someone that claims he feels like he's mentally on the level of 5 year olds at the age of 22 and writes out his problems so well, I don't see why you feel this way. Well, that's just it. That's the only thing I feel confident in doing. Describing my damn problems in long, drawn-out paragraphs.

For what it's worth I'm on Lexapro right now and I do see a psychologist (not psychiatrist, I'm kinda doing the general practioner for medicine and the psychologist for the talk stuff). Yet, these feelings of being stupid and incapable of following anything higher than what a 5th grader is capable of... seem to always stay with me. I guess to sum up my master's thesis above, I feel like I'm literally someone that's been dealt a faulty brain incapable of helping me become someone successful in this world. Does that make sense to anyone? Please say someone can make sense of this post. Lord knows I can't :(.

-Travis

IntarWebz is NUTZ

LilBucner — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:16:05 -0800

Ghost in the Machine-filter: My speakers seem to be picking up someone's conversation. I am using a Logitech 2.1 surround set of speakers on my less than 1-year-old, Windows Vista Dell PC. Speakers have always held up excellently. Over the past few days, I have been having internet connectivity problems. (I run a WEP-enabled wireless network from a 3-year-old Linksys modem/router gateway with comcast broadband.) Perhaps not coincidentally, I have started to hear an audible hum from my speaker system, like static or electrical interference. Recently the speakers have started picking up on someone's radio/cell phone conversations. The conversations continued to be broadcast even after the computer was powered down (but speakers' power was still on). I have tried unplugging the speakers but to no avail.

Comcast is due at my house tomorrow, but won't deal with any problems unless the equipment belongs to them. I live in Fishtown, Philadelphia, PA, USA. My computer's wireless card detects several neighbors' home networks.

Anyone want to to try to tackle this one? I would like to be able to resume listening to music and watching episodes of Futurama on this computer.

*BONUS* (somewhat OT) question: I have an ISO file of Call of Duty 4. I would like to burn to DVD but the capacity on the DVD is a mere 4.7 GB, while the ISO file is 6.5 GB. I can predict the obvious answer. Problem is, industry standard seems to be 4.7 GB for DVD-Rs. Any advice on this one?

Did I write a title? Yes.... but did I? Yeah. Let me make sure one more time....yep!

nitsuj — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:08:13 -0800

How can I stop second guessing myself? I constantly second guess myself on stupid stuff. For instance:

-I'm at the airport, and I check my boarding pass to see that it says my plane takes off at 5:00 PM. Five minutes later, I check again just to be sure. And then another five minutes a check again, because you know what if I was wrong the first time?
-I'm in the car, pulling out of a driveway. I look left, then right, then left again to be sure, then -- why the hell not? -- I'll check right one more time, then left again, then go.
-Etc.

I never really second guess myself on bigger decisions, it's always these small, pointless things.

Is this some form of OCD or similar thing? What can I do to trust myself in these situations more?

Roadtrip in the square states. Weird attractions?

unknowncommand — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:02:33 -0800

At the end of July, my sister and I will be taking a roadtrip from Denver to southern Kansas, though we hope to explore some of the square states nearby. We have 7 days. We like really weird and/or traditional and/or "outsider" attractions, and we will be scouring Roadside America for suggestions. Do you have any personal recommendations? Some examples of the stuff we like include the World's Tallest File Cabinet in Burlington, VT, the Orange Show in Houston, TX, the Wigwam Motel in San Bernadino, and the Camera Obscura in Santa Monica, CA. Piggyback question (sorry!) is what sort of odd or delicious foods available only in these states...

Please help identify this childhood book.

0.0.0 — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:58:27 -0800

Please help identify this childhood book. I'm 90% sure it was english, otherwise it could have been written in spanish. The book was wider than tall, probably 15" by 10", very colourful but dark and weird at the same time. The only page i remember is one where s the main character is walking through a cave or forest and all these very interesting animals/creatures looking at him. (I think there's also page with just eyes surrounding him in the dark). The creatures are oddly drawn and very interesting and it was scary if anything. I believe this was a hand-me-down but eitherway I had it late 80's early 90's. I know the details are vague but i'm just hoping someone out there can bring me to peace. Thankyou

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.

There's ectoplasm in my front yard!

pjern — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:47:15 -0800

What do you suppose caused this effect? I was taking time exposures during a storm tonight, trying to get some lightning shots, and this very weird effect appeared in exactly one frame out of perhaps 200. I was thinking it might be distant lightning behind the clouds, but notice the red color sort of seems to obscure part of the eaves of the yellow house across the street. Salient data: I was shooting in an easterly direction from inside my garage (away from the city and all the horrible orange streetlights- I live on the very edge of the city) into a basically dark section of sky. The garage lights were out. Other shots where the clouds were lit internally by lightning showed a more normal purplish-blue color. The color has not been enhanced in any way- that's exactly how the Nikon View software rendered it. I did use Photoshop, but only to clone out a sensorbunny.

Any ideas?

I haz a weird movie memory.

ninazer0 — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:09:52 -0800

Help me locate a weird 80's sci-fi movie with almost no info. I don't remember much of the movie for....various reasons. However, I'd very much like to find it again and fill in the blanks.

It was called something like "Living on the Edge" or "Life in the Tubes" and was a sci-fi comedy. People were living in a futuristic subterranean suburbia. It was all done in a very "just regular folks" sort of style. Kids come home from school and mom prepares a snack, which is some sort of toad creature pushed through a grid so that it pops out in slices. One of the kids is playing a sling-shot/target shooting game in his bedroom and has picked parasites off the family pet to use as missiles, with a very messy result.

I'm sorry, but the plot (if it had one) completely escapes me. I recall that Mom was upset because the "tubes" had stopped working and she sent the two kids with a bucket to the engineer for some gloopy stuff for dinner. The kids didn't want to go because they were scared of the engineer.

It was made in the late 70's or early 80's. I believe it was a US movie, or possibly Canadian.

That's all I've got. Does this ring any bells for anyone???

Oh my god it burns -- but not in the right place...

Anonymous — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:54:31 -0800

My tongue tingles when I have the urge to urinate. Is this normal? Really folks, this is a serious question. I'm a relatively healthy woman in my early 20's and I've been experiencing this phenomenon for as long as I can remember. I asked a doctor about this once many years ago and my concerns were more or less blown off. I haven't really wanted to bring it up again for fear of seeming like a hypochondriac. Is there something horribly wrong with my nervous system or is this within the range of normal?

What's the Origin/Artist's Name of "Weird Puppet Being Held While Woman Gets Milk Poured On Her Head"

Zampa — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:57:22 -0800

Could someone name the artist who created http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/4508/strangeza8.jpg, and the other images in the series? I know it was part of an art photography piece, but I can't recall the artist's name, or the link.

Allergic to weird things

zengargoyle — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:30:47 -0800

New to allergies. WTF? I can sleep with a dog. Fine. No problem. A couple of Claritin and I'm fine except....

I'm allergic to carpet! WTF?

Gah! carpet makes my eyes bleed! What's up? My carpet doesn't make my eyes bleed. Concrete room is fine, eat breakfast, go to carpeted room "OW! eyes burn."

Any help? Nothing ever bothered me until one day carpet...

I'm dead-dog tired -- in my dreams.

Avenger — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:25:12 -0800

Sometimes I get utterly, mind-numbingly sleepy and exhausted ... in my dreams. Whats going on? I've asked around and so far I seem to be the only person who experiences exhaustion in his dreams. It goes something like this: About once or twice a week I'll be having a normal dream (.i.e, I'm a naked astronaut piloting a chicken to Mars with Abraham Lincoln as my co-pilot, etc.) but suddenly, maybe 2/3 of the way through the dream, I'll be overcome with total exhaustion within the dream itself. At that point, I'll usually stop what I'm doing and try to find some place to "sleep" (ironically enough) within my dream. I just wont have enough energy for the dream to continue. I can't stress enough that when I feel this way, the urge to "sleep" within my dreams is absolutely overpowering. I also wake up tired and exhausted when I have these little episodes.

I'm not sure if I should be concerned about this, but it seems a little disturbing to me that I should get exhausted at, ostensibly, the very moment that my body and mind are supposed to be recharging. It's also a little psychologically disturbing when my dreams get interrupted by this "Meta-Narcolepsy" (a phrase I coined) -- it makes me feel as if my brain isn't working quite right -- especially since this happens fairly often.

Does anyone else have any suggestions on what this might be, insight on how to avoid it, advice on sleeping better, etc?

Cutting hair with a vacuum cleaner (a device I once saw)

bollockovnikov — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 03:21:38 -0800

Weird vacuum cleaner/haircut extension tube device. I saw it on an infomercial once. I think there's one in Wayne's World. Can I get one in the UK? I am looking for a device that fits on to the end of a vacuum cleaner hose. It has a series of blades inside which cut hair. The length of hair is chosen, the vacuum cleaner is switched on and then the user sucks their hair up the tube, cutting it as they do so.

I saw it on American TV one time. My girlfriend says that there is one in Wayne's World (Garth uses it, I can only vaguely remember the scene).

I live in the UK. Where can I get one? What would I search for on eBay for instance?

Cheers

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.

What can "Das war ja toll!" mean?

kisch mokusch — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:58:14 -0800

Scientific History Filter / Native German Speaker Filter. What did Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard's 1985 exclamation, "Das war ja toll!" mean? Toll was the name given to one of the genes in Drosophila identified by Kathryn Anderson and (Nobel Laureate) Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard in the mid 1980s. According to this review (discovered through wikipedia, of all places), she saw a weird-looking fly larva, and her spontaneous comment was "Das war ja toll!" meaning "That was weird!"

But I can't find a further reference for this, and I thought the translation would be "that was amazing!" (unless spoken sarcastically, which I think can be ruled out) or "that was crazy!" Furthermore, the review says that she saw the fly in 1985, when the mutation was in fact published in 1984 (Nature. 311(5983):223-7), which makes me think the information is poorly sourced.

Does anybody know where this anecdote comes from? I've searched through the web (although not exhaustively), but to no avail :-(

Alternatively, does the "weird" translation for "toll" as quoted fit to any native speakers? Leo says no, but leo doesn't know everything.

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.

Help! A _girl_ likes me!

ArgentCorvid — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:19:20 -0800

Help! A girl likes me! Ok, this isn't your run-of-the-mill, nerd-finding-out-about-girls AskMe.

Background: My upstairs neighbor's daughter, who feeds my cats when I'm away on vacation/business, is crushing hard for me.

What's the problem, you ask? I'm 25. She's 12.

How do I know she has a crush on me? Whenever she sees me, she drops whatever she's doing (playing/talking with friends usually), and runs over to chat me up. She talks to me about her day; She talks about things going on at school; and sometimes she just talks about nothing much at all. Or even creepier, sometimes it seems like she's waiting for me to get home from work. It's SO obvious. I only wish the women my age would show interest in me the way she does, it would make things so much simpler.

While in other circumstances, I would think something like this would be sweet, It's kinda scary thinking about how it could explode into one big clusterfuck of Not Good For Me.

What can I do in a situation like this, and not come out a candidate for the next Dateline pedophile special? Is there a way to say 'not interested' to a girl this age and not have her come out bitter and misanthropic (should I even worry about that)? Even better if I could say it in a way so that she would still be available to watch the cats (as I'm typing, it occurs to me that that may not be a good idea).

Hey, I'm not Trudy! Or Ben!

Happy Dave — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 11:53:28 -0800

Why does my Mac appear to have other people's computer names at the command line? What's up here? I've got a 10 month old Macbook, running Tiger.

I share a web connection with a bunch of people that live in my building. The system is administered by our resident geek, and we have wireless routers throughout, all hooked up to a big 12mb pipe. It's cheap and way fast, so, score. Also, I know most of the other people in the building, and they're cool, so I have no real worries about someone accessing my computer over the air.

However, a few times in the recent past, I've booted up the terminal and seen something weird. When I got this mac, I created a top level account that I called 'Administrator'. Some of the time, when I start Terminal, it says:

Administrators-computer:~ Dave$

'Dave' being the everyday account that I'm in most of the time. However, sometimes when I open terminal, the command prompt has changed to the name of one of my neighbour's computers (I know this because I can see their computer names in the Network folder in Finder).

For example, there is a computer on the network called 'benlaptop', and once or twice when I've logged in, my command prompt looked like:

benlaptop:~ Dave$

At the moment it looks like:

trudy2:~ Dave$

What in the heck is going on here? Is my computer somehow compromised? I've got Firewall turned on.

Why did Hello Kitty become blue?

reenum — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 05:39:44 -0800

When I was a kid, I took a trip once. The whole time, a plush Hello Kitty doll was in the back of the car, bombarded by the sun. It changed color from pink to dark blue. Any explanation for this phenomenon? When I was a kid living in Saudi Arabia, our family went for a picnic to a southern city in the Kingdom. The whole time we were driving, I had my Hello Kitty plush toy in the back of the car, in that area behind the seats. The toy was being bombarded by sun all day.

As we drove, I noticed that the toy had changed colors from a light pink to a sky blue shade. It was this color for a few hours, and then changed back to normal. I tried to recreate this effect in later months, but to no avail.

Is there any explanation for this phenomenon?