Tag Archives: freak magnet

stranger than fiction

Despite recent posting evidence to the contrary, I’m the last person to suggest that life is anything like the movies. Nevertheless, I must describe the events of today because even I thought them a little too cleverly and conveniently plotted.

I ventured out of doors today (which is, in itself, newsworthy since I have been sick) and met a friend at the local coffeeshop.

We hadn’t chatted in a while and I was going to tell her of the NaNoWriMo novel I’m trying to work on when I feel well enough to write. Then I was going to write a little.

Before I could even tell her title or premise, this random guy joined our conversation. Even when we very aggressively ignored him, even moving to a more distant table, he continued to leer and just generally be creepy. It was appropriate, though, in it’s own way, as I was trying to tell my friend about Freak Magnet, my novel in progress, and about the phenomenon of, well, attracting freaks. I was clearly exhibiting my natural freak magnetism, so she got the gist quite quickly.

Inn passing, I also mentioned how I am The Finder of Lost Dogs. The novel isn’t autobiographical, but freak magnetism and lost dogs are important to the plot.

So after we chatted, I spent a little time writing. Specifically, I finished the chapter started yesterday: about a fire at a place rather like Gatorland. Later, she and I walked home.

A dog came bounding down the sidewalk and greeted me like a lost littermate. Fortunately, his owner wasn’t far away, so we didn’t have to go through the prolonged ritual that includes the catching of the dog and the reading of the tag and the calling the owner. (I keep a leash in my purse, very handy in these situations).

Then I returned home to catch up on the news. Needless to say, the headline concerning today’s massive fire at Gatorland caught my eye.

I never go to movie theatres because most movie theater seats don’t play well with my arthritis, plus the whole adventure usually just wears me out for days afterwars, but I may have to try and see Stranger than Fiction, because, well, things just have been.

On the other hand, I’d probably just end up sitting behind someone who would converse, loudly, with their invisible friends throughout the entire movie.

Or, possibly, the woman who sat next to me during The Matrix, but that’s a story for another day…

norwegians, the yellow bellied sapsucker, and, of course, a deer

A couple of days ago I had plans to attend an early evening meeting and then stop by the Hirshhorn for cocktails and a gander at the Gyroscope show. I took the Metro, so you already know that I’m about to tell you that wackiness ensued.

I ended up playing tourguide to a Norwegian soccer team. I think they were a soccer team. Their English was only slightly better than my Norwegian (read: nonexistent) so it’s entirely possible they were just telling me they like to kick small dogs. They kept saying the word soccer a lot, so I’m going to go with my original assumption – my friends in highschool were Norwegian and used the term soccer instead of football so I think it’s a safe guess. But I digress…

To make a long story short, I took them to Natural History to see the Spirit of Ancient Colombian Gold exhibit (splendid), the hall of mammals (we took a group picture with the taxidermied deer), and, of course, the yellow-bellied sapsucker (to prove there really was such a thing).

As an aside, may I just say that the new(ish) Hall of Mammals resembles the interior of an REI store. It’s really rather, well, wrong.

There’s an exhibit of photos of Norway in the hallway leading to Baird Auditorium. It looks very cold in Norway. My new friends were very keen on the idea of migrating to La Florida until they saw the bizarre little display case just representing the Everglades. The case is just before the entrance to the insect zoo and it shows a small gator and 4 snakes in a space that is maybe 15 square feet. I tried explaining that snakes are not herd animals like reindeer, but that seemed only to frighten them further as for a while they thought I was explaining that we eat the snakes just like they eat reindeer.

I left my new friends at the Museum and went to my Artomatic meeting, expecting to never see them again since I was fairly certain my explanation of the Hirshhorn’s evening programs was lost in the (lack of) translation.

Amazingly, we were reunited at the Hirshhorn to consume lovely rum drinks and view the Gyroscope exhibit, which was also quite good. You have to watch out for the combination of intoxicants and works by Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, and Willem de Kooning as that way lies really strange dreams. If you have even the slightest interest in Contemporary and Modern art and you haven’t seen this show you should scurry down there and check it out. And if you don’t have any interest, you should go anyway. It’ll be good for you.

hell, other people

I’ve been doing crazy amounts of stuff that have been keeping me running around like, well, the crazy-woman I am. I don’t have the stomach for community organizing, I’ve learned (read: enduring threats and learning what overt racism exists in dc-metro area). I prefer being knee-deep in artomatic organizing, which is hard work but lots of fun. And much less scary.

Tomorrow, I will of course pause to light a candle for imprisoned freedom fighter Martha Stewart.

In the meantime, in lieu of more interesting content, here’s a roundup of some of the more entertaining random encounters with strangers from the last few weeks:

ladies room, lemur lounge, 3 weeks ago
drunk woman: “That vampire look really works for you.”

Metro train, last week
young woman: “You look like a goth Marilyn Monroe!”
(stranger still, others agreed)

Sephora, Pentagon city mall, sometime in the last few weeks
woman with lipgloss tester in her hand: “Does this smell like pee?”

coffee shop, today
woman with sandwich in her hand: “Do you think this will give me gas later?”
(which reminded me of the time Husband and I were checking out books at the library and the librarian randomly announced to Husband, “I love brocoli, but it gives me gas.”)

Today’s lesson: You can work from home, but you can never escape.

freak magnet

About 10 minutes into my journey, I (and everyone else on the bus) discovered that the bus had the wrong route number on it. We discovered this when the driver made an unexpected turn and started heading the wrong way. This was okay with me, since I most sincerely wanted off that particular bus. The woman behind me was crying and telling me that she needed a lock of my hair because I radiated such love and peace.

She kept trying to take a lock of my hair. This is freaky, even to me.

She said she wanted it for some sort of love and protection spell. Now, the anthropologist in me says, “I’m sure there was no harm in humoring her.” Nevertheless, as much as I claim not to believe in whatever it was she was doing – I have to admit I didn’t let her have my hair because the paranoid part of my brain kept saying, “Don’t let her have the hair. She could put a spell on you. And it might not be good.”*

I got off the bus and she stayed and all was right with the world. Until the woman on the next bus decided my diet was deficient in salmon.

By the time I fled that bus, I had a bag full of salmon recipes – from old can labels she had stashed in her powerbook carrying case.

I still don’t get the attraction. I know me, and I wouldn’t walk up to me and start talking to me if I wasn’t me. I just don’t get it.

mystery of my freak magnetism solved. sort of.

In the event you were unaware of this small fact, let me be the first to tell you that I am a very powerful freak-magnet. (What this says about you as a reader, I leave to your own interpretation).

I vowed recently to ask the next person who approached me to explain what drew them to me. I was determined to get someone who had randomly told me a deep dark secret, asked for my autograph, put a curse on me, asked me to marry them, or otherwise seemed to be drawn to me for no apparant reason to explain this whole thing to me.

I’m generally non-confrontational, however, so I was 3 freaks into today before I finally got up the nerve to ask. Since I was engaged in the conversation, I couldn’t take notes, but this is roughly how it went down:

Cutefreakboy approached me outside a coffeeshop and began making random smalltalk.

Cutefreakboy:
(Random smalltalk).

Me:
(Random smalltalk in return).

Cutefreakboy:
(More random smalltalk).

Me:
(Something noncommital).

Cutefreakboy:
You’re really cool.

Me:
Um. Thank you.

Cutefreakboy:
Do you know Kara?

Me:
Not that I know of. Do I know you from somplace?

Cutefreakboy:
No. I just thought you might know her.
She’s cool too.

(long silence, but it is apparent he’s never going away)

Me:
Can I ask you a question?

Cutefreakboy:
Sure.

Me:
No offense, but what made you come up and start
talking to me?

Cutefreakboy:
What do you mean?

Me:
Did you think you knew me? Do you like talking to strangers?
Why of all the people milling around here did you approach me?

(I was more polite than that, but that was the gist)

Cutefreakboy:
(leaning in, earnestly)
The truth is, it’s your aura.

Me:
Pardon?

Cutefreakboy:
You have good energy. It attracted me.

Me:
Good energy?

Cutefreakboy:
Yeah. You have a strong yellow aura.

Me:
Yellow?

Cutefreakboy:
Like the Buddha.

Me:
Like the Buddha?

Cutefreakboy:
Only the most enlightened people have yellow auras like yours.

(I ponder this for a moment and then politely ask another question).

Me:
Are you high?

Cutefreakboy:
Yeah. (Looks around) How did you know?

Me:
It’s your aura.

plucked from the ashes of the punkprincess.com archives, reposted 02-28-07