My oddities.

Shiny tagged me to do this. I usually greet chain letters/emails/recipes with a wrathful binning, but since this one carries no threat and is instead a mere interesting exercise, I'm going along with it.

So:

Ten Weird Things about Adair

1. Capitalized prepositions hurt me. (That's why "about" is lowercase in the title; when not the first or last word of a title, a preposition of any length should be lowercase.) There's part of me that will never understand why people didn't absorb this rule in English class or don't care about getting it right.

2. I count words and have a weird system for doing so. This is going to make me sound absolutely batshit, I know, but here's how it all works:

When people speak, I count their words off on my fingers. Not always, but often. (When I was little and developed this habit, it was all the time.) I don't move my hands at all while doing this, just mentally assign the words to a digit and carry on conversation as though nothing else were happening. I don't just count off, though. It goes like this:

Counting the ten fingers:
Left pinkie, right pinkie; left thumb, right thumb; left ring, right ring, left pointer, right pointer, left middle, right middle -- from the outside in with the left going first.

Counting the spaces between:
Left between pinkie and ring, right between pinkie and ring; left between thumb and pointer, right between thumb and pointer. And so on, again working outside-in, left to right.

Unifying the hands:
Each hand gets a word of unification (left then right), and one word to unify them both. If this third, unifying word does not end a sentence, the unification does not happen at all. Instead, a cycle of 10 (and, if needed, 8) begins again. Unification can happen after any 10 or 8, but not any other time. When unification happens, I can start over or set it all aside.

And so, I love sentences of 13 and 21 words a lot.

3. When I was little, I had weird shoelace issues. I hated -- still kinda do -- the way the end of a lace will flap against your shoe after a bow is tied. So I would pull it in right against the knot. Since I also hated my shoes being loose, this meant that there would then be a hell of a lot of string in the bows -- bringing the annoying flop issue back into play. And so I would not just double-knot my laces, but stack knots on top of knots, all of them so tight as to render the knot superstructure immobile. When I went over my friend Christina Leonard's house to play and had to take my shoes off, it took forever.

4. Despite the crazy-train obsessiveness one would think is associated with habits like those detailed in #2 and #3, I am incredibly messy.

5. I hate Paul McCartney. It's atavistic and almost violent. Every time I hear his voice, all I can think is "BULLSHIT!" There is no life story associated with this, nothing about his personal history or any event in my life that makes this so. I've tried to like his work because everyone assumes that everyone else likes the Beatles and Paul, and it would make my life easier if I did. But whenever I hear his work, I am possessed with a certainty that he is where authenticity goes to die. And so I have no use for the Beatles' records, but get along famously with the Lennon solo albums and am friendly enough with George Harrison's solo work. Hell, even Ringo's put out a fun song or two. But Paul McCartney? HATE. HATE. HATE.

6. My left thumb is shorter than my right thumb. Dunno why. It looks like it didn't cook long enough or something -- the top phalange just stops short, nail bed included.

7. I remember lyrics to songs really well. This is an asset come karaoke time.

8. I hate coffee.

9. I love Mother Goose liverwurst. No substitutes. All other kinds -- peh. Good luck finding the good stuff, though.

10. I am very streaky. I'll want the same food for a long time, paint in the same color/style for a long time, listen to the same few songs for a long time. And then my fixation will wear down to a gentle affection.

The people I tag will be tagged in private, as I am fairly sure none of them will go for this. I don't need my pull dismissed publicly.

Posted by Adair at February 13, 2008 8:32 PM

Posted to Crrrap!