The best way to describe it is sorta SCA applied to the post-civil war 19th century with guns. Real ones. With live ammo. Consequently we don’t duel directly against each other but compete with period correct revolvers, lever action rifles and shotguns in action shooting scenarios for speed and accuracy. In Phoenix a hundred or so folks dressing up as cowboys/cowgirls every weekend to shoot isn’t so weird.
*Strictly speaking I shoot the Frontiesman category with cap and ball pistols but it is shot duelist style, holding and cocking each pistol with only one hand.
I collect Christmas-themed ceramic bells. This wouldn’t be weird except that I don’t celebrate Christmas.
I have been working on a fantasy fiction story called SilverEyes for nine years now and have made an entire avocation planning my darling story’s future. I have designed a book cover, made a “movie trailer” for it (The movie would star Daniel Brocklebank, who was young Merlin in the NBC TV movie, and Natalie Portman.) and just a little while ago I was working on the soundtrack in MIDI.
I must admit that am quite fond of translating sentences and phrases into foreign languages, the more random the better. Comes in handy more alot more often than one might think it would. Also, being a chapstick addict, I collect lib balm and lip gloss as weird as that sounds. One last thing, I love to draw, but I draw maps. Mainly ones of Latin American countries and the Carribean.
I make chain mail armor. I think of it as crocheting with steel.
I’m a LARPer (I play with the IFGS). I’m into it enough that I spend a lot of time making props for other people’s games as well as writing my own. I’m currently building a vacuum table for molding plastics to facilitate the prop-making, and if I could just find my copy of How to Build a Corpse I’d have some interesting houseguests.
I collect disposable chopsticks/wrappers. They usually have the name of the restaurant printed on the outside. So far I have 105 different pair; from China, Japan, Australia, Austria, Dachau Germany, NYC, Florida, Cali., Vancouver BC, and almost everywhere else. I have seven totally different pair from United Airlines alone.
I am pretty sure it is the largest disposable chopstick collection in the world.
But I HAVE to point out that technically what you’re creating there is the low-rent squashed penny. Squished pennies are those 51 cent squished-in-a-machine things. I’ve got loads.
I started with heavy weapons in the SCA. Or as I prefer to call it, “Beating your friends with a club.”
I like the metal on metal elegance of light weapons, though I do sorely miss the large field battles of heavy weapons. That initial crashing sound of the two sides coming together is simply unbelivable unless witnessed firsthand.
I make beaded jewelry. Not bead-stringing or loomwork, but off-loom bead weaving. I know that’s not really so weird, but I don’t personally know anyone else who does it.
Do you do digitizing, or just run what someone else has digitized? My mom just got a Janome embroidery machine (everyone is going to get an embroidered apron or shirt for Christmas this year) and I’ve been trying to do some digitizing, but I don’t like the program Mom got with her machine.
Count me in as another sword-fencer. I took lessons for a couple years. I’m a bit out of practice now, but I still know how to line judge. Anyone know where I could pick up the hobby again? (I’m in Northern Utah.)
As far as my own unique weird little hobbies go–I study human sexual behavior. Reading up on different kinks and fetishes that people have intrigues me.
-Ashley
I do the digitizing. I use a digitizing program called PE-Design, which is a consumer level digitizing program. If you want a truly professional program, you’re looking at around $20,000, so all things considered I’m pretty happy with PE-Design, which was only $850. I also have a nifty program from Husqvarna called PhotoStitch Pro that converts a photograph into an embroidery file.
I too collect boxes, I’m loath to throw the pretty ones away. Or use them at christmas as gift boxes for that matter, there are some really pretty ones out there. I also collect pens, I’ve seen em on the ground and even if they don’t work, they go into a box with other pens that don’t work. But I have a lot of pens… I try to buy most of them, and not walk off with pens that aren’t chained down, but if I like it enough, I’ll ask where they bought it and go buy it myself. I have thousands of pens. My husband thinks I’m insane.
But he collects Avon Cape Cod… I’ll stick with my pens.
I don’t have any weird hobbies, really. Unless you count storyboarding Star Wars fan films, and I don’t think you can.
I do have a friend who used to collect internet porn.
Ah, you think to yourself, that’s not weird, who doesn’t collect internet porn?
No, you misunderstand me: He collects internet porn. i.e. tries to complete sets, seeks out rare hard to find images, stores them in categories, swaps with other collectors. It was a total obsession for him at one point, but now he’s stopped.
That rocks. You have to try getting some of them into Gymboree or Gap Kids, something like that. Ever been to the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia? It was a bit much for me (actually, way too much for me), but I think you might like it.
Turpentine, very cool indeed. I don’t know if you’ve ever attempted a motorized rat, but if you do make them, I’ll pay for the rat, mechanism, your trouble, and shipment to Australia.*
[sub]*Just be sure to write “toy rat” on the customs slip (you wouldn’t really be lying). I know, I know, the Aussie customs officials are humourless bastards. What’s importation of a deceased rodent between friends?[/sub]
I have a couple of weird hobbies I picked up when commuting on foot. I’d pick up about any weird piece of trash with writing on it. One day when I was feeling depressed, I picked a real winner, a discarded pamphlet entitled “50 Things to do on the Worst Day Of Your Life.” It started like
Obtain Death Certificate
Notify Funeral Home
Notify Relatives
By the time I got down to about #40 Notify Insurance Company, I could not stop laughing.
For some odd reason, I noticed lots of discarded playing cards blowing around in the streets. I started collecting single cards as I found them, I had an odd idea that I might eventually accumulate an entire deck of cards, each card from a different deck. I have about 20 cards in a drawer somewhere, no duplicates so far.
But most oddly, I will pick up any round shiny flat object. Any coin, token, piece of plastic, button, etc. I have a jar full of round things. I figured it’s some sort of long-term performance piece.
