Oh,
did you not get the memo? All titles are Greek letters now. Greek
letters are cool.
The
reason for the sigma in the title of this post is shockingly
unrelated to Zero Escape. Rather, it is a reference to standard
deviation, a concept of dubious relevance to the subject
matter of this post. Really, I just thought it'd be a hoot if I kept
putting Greek letters in my titles. And then everyone would be all
like "Havoc, why are you doing that, that's so weird!" And
I'd be all like "Haha, you know me, I'm totally a free spirit".
Remember this. You will be tested on it.
Rather
recently, a friend of mine dealt a serious wound to my honor, one
that, as a gentleman, I could not allow. She called into question my
weirdness. And no, she isn't my content manager, surprising as that
might be. She even had the nerve to imply that she and our mutual
friend (Who is also a girl. I'm sure your disbelief is all kinds of
unsuspended right now, but please bear with me.) are weirder than me.
This led me to challenge her, attempting to prove that I was the more
unusual. However, I was easily bested, and as any gentleman would, I
admitted defeat when I knew victory was unattainable. I may be
eccentric, but I'm no parabola (This joke relies on you knowing that
a parabola is an ellipse with an eccentricity of 1, the maximum
possible. Conic sections). I've still a ways to go before I reach the
tier of sympathizing with necrophiliacs.
Despite
that juicy bit of slander I just made public, (or is it libel? You'd think I'd have learned by now, but I always have to ask the judge which it is this time.) I still have a chance
against the other one. So I shall lay bare all the things that I
think make me weird here, and let you, the disinterested reader, be
the judge. In an effort to not be an unsalvageable asshole, I'd
rather not say any of the "weird" things my opponent lays
claim to, but believe me when I say they're pretty tame-sauce. And
not just because that helps me win. I totally believe that I could
win this, even if the judges were aware of my opponent's habit of
tenderly embracing doors and whispering sweet nothings into their
hinges whenever she opens them. (FULL DISCLOSURE: That was a joke.
That's not a thing. Please don't get angry with me. I'm being so
sincere right now.)
 |
| Don't worry, baby. It's just me and you. Nothing will ever come between us. |
Well,
I guess I'll just list these out, in no particular order. You had
better not think these are in a particular order, because you'd be
wrong, and that would make me sad. While this list is by no means
exhaustive, it is quite extensive, as you might expect. This is
actually
my longest post to date, so if you've got somewhere to be, or any
will to better yourself, you might want to skip this one out.
I
play D&D. Kind of. Sometimes. I've briefly mentioned my
incompetent DM before, (might as well stand for Dumb Motherf– Well,
you get the idea.) and he is the primary source of my hesitation to
say that I play D&D. Honestly, D&D by itself isn't terribly
weird. OK, yes it kind of is. Of all the nerdy hobbies, it's one of
the few that has gained very little mainstream acceptance, despite
how pretty rad it is. But like a Porky Pig made of antimatter, that's
not all, folks! You see, for me, D&D is kind of like Pokemon. I
have more fun thinking about it than actually playing it, and it's
mostly because of the people I play with (In the case of Pokemon,
it's "People who are better than me"). Most of the
enjoyment I derive from D&D comes from making characters.
Choosing stats and class and race are part of it, yes, but the real
thrill comes from the backstory. I get a thrill out of creating
characters with intricately crafted pasts, dreams, and motivations,
despite the knowledge that I will likely never use them. And I think
that's pretty weird.
Sometimes
I just look at the sky. I can't really say when it began. Pretty
recently. Can't really say why. Certainly a weeaboo thing, so some
time in the last year. As an aside, I'd just like to say that I have
no idea how "Weeaboo" is spelled, so I may vary it wildly.
The sky is a pretty big thing in Japan, it would seem, so it could be
from any number of things. Rin, my not-waifu according to the same
friend that prompted this post, is a strong contender, since she is
the sky. And, honestly, the fact that I read (played? I really don't
know what verb is used with visual novels) that whole thing (You
know. The one with the boobs but it's totally not all about boobs I
swear you guys.) is a testament to my weirdness, in my opinion.
 |
| Mai Waifu |
I might just give actual dollars to anyone who can explain the joke in that picture in the comments. It's a stretch, but I believe in you guys.
This one isn't really weird, it's more
just unfathomably stupid and sad. Seriously, don't read this on the
day of your wedding. If you start crying, it could give off the wrong
messages. Because I commute to school by public transportation, I
often do a lot of blog-writing there, because what else am I going to
do? Schoolwork? (I think it's interesting to note that my word
processor tries to autocomplete “school” to “schoolgirls”.
Not that that's weird or anything...) Obviously, any reasonable
person would do this writing in a word processor, as I implied,
because that's what they do. They process words, and mine need all
the processing they can get before they can be deemed presentable.
But I've never much cared for present-ability, so I made the
questionable decision to type my manifesto directly into the blogger
window. I mean, having to copy and paste from a word processor to the
internet would be lame. Well, public transportation doesn't have
Wi-fi on it for some reason, so there was no way for me to save my
progress. So if my laptop were to hypothetically pull a surprise
reboot on me, it's pretty likely that all my work would be erased. I
know of this likelihood, because that's exactly what happened. So
I just want you to remember that for every joke that made the cut,
there was a treasure trove of comedy gold cruelly taken by my harpy
of a laptop. Thanks to it, you'll never know about the wicked rap battle I participated in, or how I managed to use the hilariously incongruous phrase "go-getter" while rapping.
While
Anti-Porky has likely been annihilated by now, that's still not all,
folks! There's one more unusual aspect of D&D that I feel I could
stand to mention. I've actually referred to it earlier on this blog,
as a testament to my "nerdiness", but because weirdness is
integral (get it? like math) to nerdiness, I figure it would be
appropriate here as well. You see, once upon a time, I was watching
an anime, and I found myself empathizing with one of the characters.
Except it wasn't me. It was my D&D character, whom I wasn't even
role-playing at the time. But I'm just kidding with you. That wasn't
true at all. It actually happened twice. And I suppose that, because
the subject of shared feeling was a burning hatred towards humanity,
I myself also empathized. The second instance involved friendship, so
I needn't tell you that my ego was quite silent on the matter.
 |
| Xyphlan the Dragonborn Cleric sheds a tear on your behalf. |
This
next one is kind of risky, as it leaves open the possibility for
people to obtain personal information about me. However, if you're
Dan Browning my blog in an effort to know more about me, I'm sure
that the shame you must feel is harsher than any punishment that
could possibly be levied by a court of law. Sometimes, when I'm
bored, I type various first names into an anagram
generator,
along with my last name. The ones that result in good anagrams are
saved, so I can use them to name my children if I ever have them. As
you've probably guessed by now, I have a real thing for readying
myself for situations that I know won't happen. "Be Prepared"
and all that. I have several good ones, but I fear that if I give
multiple away, they could be used to reverse engineer my last name,
which could result in crimes being leveled against my person. But if
I ever do have a son, I'll likely name him in such a way that his
first and last name will be an anagram of "Craven Dick Fire",
which is the best anagram for a name since, well Havoc Mantis.
In
high school, I played in concert band. The Bb clarinet was my
instrument of choice. Every year, over the summer, we went on a "band
tour", where we basically just went on a field trip for a couple
of days. Every once in a while, about every four years, we went on a
really big trip, one to a faraway location that actually involved
playing as a band, since that's what we were. For my big band tour, I
went to Hawaii, to play in honor of the 70th anniversary of Pearl
Harbor. While that's all well and good, what's relevant to this post
is that some time the year before, my band director had a fundraiser
where we were selling Hawaiian Leis. She also gave one to each of the
band members at a football game (we were a marching band as well).
She told us to hold on to them over the weekend, so I tied it to my
clarinet case. Monday came, and she forgot about it. The week passed.
Nothing. Days, weeks, months went by, and she said nothing. When we
went on band tour, (funny story: I slept in an airport) nothing. I
kept that lei tied to my clarinet for probably two whole years. And I
probably would have visited her on her deathbed, asking what it was
that she wanted me to do with that lei, were it not for the time that
I accidentally left it on the aforementioned public transportation,
and I found it removed when the case was recovered. I'd just like to
take this opportunity to give a shout out to all the commuters who
boldly and compassionately ignored the posters telling them to report
suspicious packages. You're all real life-savers. That line about sarcastically congratulating commuters is basically the only thing keeping this dreadfully dull paragraph from being cut.
Aw,
to hell with it. I guess Katawa Shoujo is the new thing for me to
bring up at even the slightest prompting. But every instance helps my
case, I feel, because, well... it's pretty weird. Anyway, I started
running awhile back. Like following a schedule, and habitually
running, just for the sake of running. And it was because of KS.
This, in and of itself, is kind of weird, I feel, but what's even
weirder is what didn't motivate me to do the same. One of the
required merit badges for the Eagle Scout rank is the Personal
Fitness merit badge, which requires, among other things, that the
recipient be personally fit. This includes working out and stuff, I
guess. But I didn't, really. I still weaseled my way into becoming an
Eagle Scout, because it seriously isn't that hard, but really think
about that. I was motivated to work out by doing it for some
imaginary "her", but the highest honor in all of Boy
Scouting was not a sufficient incentive. Aren't those priorities a
little... weird?
I
listen almost exclusively to soundtracks. I've been doing this for
long enough that I hardly even register it as weird, even though it
likely is. But my musical tastes are just a segue to the real heart
of the matter. But before that, I just need you to listen to this
song really
quick. Now, did that remind you of anything, besides the eternal
darkness that promises to deaden all love and life, only requiring
enough time to make good on its dread purpose? A particular song,
perhaps? If you answered Carly Rae Jepson's "Call
Me Maybe",
then
stop reading this, future-me. Go do whatever it is that you're
procrastinating. If,
however, you are a more reasonable individual, you may notice
something curious: Those songs aren't even kind of similar. At least,
that's what you probably think. But, if you pay really close
attention, you'll find that the part where Carly says “I
threw a wish in the well, don't ask me, I'll never tell.”
is similar to the part in Magia where they sing in some fantasy
language (Hebrew,
maybe?).
I'll have you know, I've taken a semester and a half of music theory.
I know how to spell “appoggiatura”, so I know what I'm talking
about. (NOTE: The only hard and fast rule about spelling
“appahggutura”
is that it has two p's, two g's, and some other letters. This is
music fact.)
I
hate fanning. Loathe it, really. You could even say I abhor it. Hell,
you could say as many verbs as the thesaurus allows you, but I'll
leave that as an exercise for the reader. You know that thing that
people sometimes do when it's hot out, and they have a piece of
paper, and they use it to push air at their face? Whenever I see
someone do that, I feel angry. Perhaps even disgusted. Why do I so
despise the innocuous action of keeping oneself cool? I have
identified two possible contributing factors to this phenomenon. As
anyone who's ever played an instrument will probably tell you,
performing can get hotter than your celebrity crush of choice (I
refuse to acknowledge the attractiveness of people). While you're
playing up a sweat in a ridiculously heavy uniform, you catch a
glimpse of motion out of the corner of your eye. No, it's not the
conductor; he's firmly outside of your field of vision. In the
audience, you see some impudent asshole, fanning himself with the
program, while you can never do the same. He has the audacity to
imply that his temperature is more uncomfortable. But as you glare at
him through sweat-blurred eyes, noting his not-playing-an-instrument
and relative lack of clothing (ahem), he just taunts you with his
ability to keep himself cool. The second contributing factor to my
irrational dislike of manual air conditioning is from Boy Scouts. You
see, at summer camp, there's this thing where all these old white
guys dress up as Native Americans. I know it sounds weird when I put
it like that, because that's exactly what happens, and it is indeed
very much weird. Anyway, all these elder folk have fancy regalia,
which often includes fans, which they put to practical use. But as a
meager underling, I've no fan, so I can take no respite from the
huge-ass bonfire that was built in a summer camp. So, as
before I am put in a situation where I am forced to impotently watch
as other people fan themselves, while I can't. And that really burns
my poffins.
 |
| You think you're better than me? What a smug asshole |
Finally,
we come to the most compelling reason of all: this blog. It's a well
researched fact that all bloggers are insane, a special case of
weird. Actually, the studies involved needed only a few observations
to prove this result by induction, (Which is actually a form of
deduction, because screw you for thinking you know anything) so they
presumably spent their leftover grant money on some dope-ass
gyroscopes. I am no exception to this theorem of insanity (as I just
conveniently verified). In fact, I believe that I may stand out even
among bloggers for my weirdness. I mean, I named two consecutive
posts after Greek letters. I frequently admit to having seen depicted
naked bodies of handicapped persons. On purpose. Through a medium
that I will inevitably link my parents to, as soon as I forget to
exclude them from my Facebook posts. I once stated that libertarians
are opposed to wisdom teeth removal. I've implicated myself in more
crimes than I even know the names for. But here's the real kicker,
the coup de grace: Someone said they were weirder than me, and I
CARED. I cared enough about this accusation to write more than 2500
words defending my position. That's more than one word for every year
since Jesus was kicking around. That's certainly more than I've ever
written for any kind of school paper. Maybe more than all my school
papers combined. And here I am, still going. Because being crazy
isn't like being drunk. If you know you're drunk, that means you're
not drunk (That's how it works... right?) But even if you know you're
crazy, you're still crazy.
But
hey, you're the one who read all those words. Who's crazy now? (Gary
Busey, if my pop culture references are still up to snuff.)
Post Scriptum: I didn't really intend
to have so many recurring themes (Band, Boy Scouts, Disability
Girls). It just kind of happened that way.
Post Post Scriptum: Abbreviations are
for chumps.
