# What's your most esoteric or arcane hobby or interest? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 13, 2006, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563 "2006-08-13T16:40:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![anu-la1979](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@anu-la1979](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anu-la1979)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/81 "2006-08-15T21:07:15Z")
I make cheese. ---
**Author:** ![Dijon\_Warlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a9a28c/32.png) [@Dijon\_Warlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dijon_Warlock)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/82 "2006-08-15T22:39:15Z")
[QUOTE=brujaja] Amazing! I never thought about expressing decimal numbers in binary! Wouldn’t pi take an awful lot of places? [/QUOTE] Well…(you can see this coming, right?) since pi is an infinite decimal anyway, then…yes. 🙂 **shamrock227** : You _finally_ have mail. Thanks for waiting. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2006, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/83 "2006-08-15T22:50:48Z")
[QUOTE=anu-la1979] I make cheese. [/QUOTE] on purpose or by accident? (and what sorts of cheese?) ---
**Author:** ![Ruffian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/71e660/32.png) [@Ruffian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruffian)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/84 "2006-08-16T05:50:10Z")
When I was a preteen/early teenager, I [showed model horses](http://www.iowahorsecouncil.org/Horse%20Fair/mh.htm). I’d take my plastic herd to [live shows, where it’s rather like a comic book convention](http://www.flickr.com/photos/appaloosa/sets/72057594062627237/), or I’d [take photos much like these](http://www.bhranch.com/model/arabian.htm) and enter them in “photo shows.” The pics would be mailed off to the show coordinator by a certain date, then the pics would be judged like live horses in various classes (breed, color, gender, brand of model, whether they were original finish or remade/repainted, etc). The best was when my SASE would come home super-thick. That meant we’d won lots of ribbons. 🙂 Nowadays I have the real thing…much more satisfying, if hairier, sweatier, and poopier. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/85 "2006-08-16T13:37:46Z")
[QUOTE=anu-la1979] I make cheese. [/QUOTE] Who cuts it? ---
**Author:** ![Archergal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Archergal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Archergal)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/86 "2006-08-16T14:19:59Z")
Probably the most arcane stuff I’ve done (though not recently), was throwing darts with [atlatls](http://www.worldatlatl.org/) and [flintknapping](http://www.flintknapping.com/) . I’m really bad at the flintknapping, but I’m one of the few women I know who have even _tried_ it. I’ve got a bucket full of tools and rock waiting patiently for the day I sit down to make smaller rocks out of bigger rocks. ---
**Author:** ![Aangelica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Aangelica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aangelica)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/87 "2006-08-16T14:26:11Z")
**Dijon Warlock** , if you’d like, I can provide information where you can obtain a cookbook produced as a fund-raising booster for a hospital in rural Alaska. My email is in my profile 😃 ---
**Author:** ![anu-la1979](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@anu-la1979](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anu-la1979)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/88 "2006-08-16T16:40:23Z")
**Bippy** …I actually set out to make it. So far I’ve made lebnah, queso/paneer, chevre and feta. My next attempt will probably be a goat’s milk fresh mozzarella. Ultimately I hope to make a goat’s milk blue but I’d probably have to get some specialised equipment or move back East and have access to cool basements and garages. I haven’t had time for it recently and I want to upgrade to tablet rennet since all the recipes are keyed to that kind. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/89 "2006-08-16T17:20:17Z")
I once saw a guy on a local news channel. he had one of the strangest hobbies ever-he actually collected old fire hydrants. Since he lived out in the woods, he had plenty of room…but seeing how heavy these things are, they didn’t get picked up a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/90 "2006-08-16T19:14:06Z")
I don’t have anything too arcane - bellydancing is pretty big nowadays. I used to collect miniature liquor bottles, but the charm went out of that when the made it legal to sell them in liquor stores in TX - before you had to get them from an airline or from another state. I’ve also collected liqueur glasses. I now collect rubber stamps - a hobby enabled partly by my job at a craft store chain! What I want to know, is what is PI in base 12? or base 3? ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/91 "2006-08-16T19:40:51Z")
[QUOTE=Zeldar] Please forgive this mini-hijack to a thread I started, but in your research and classification and analysis of humor, have the professionals in your field ever satisfactorily addressed the issue of the “X-number Basic Jokes”? [/QUOTE] Well, first let me say that I specialize in verbal humor, so what I say doesn’t cover visual gags. At a very basic level, there is only one joke. You take two incompatible scripts (say, religion and sex) and juxtapose them. Ha. Ha. Sometimes the opposing scripts become off-puttingly generalized, such as expected vs. unexpected or reality vs. unreality. Also, there is a major caveat to the theory: the presence of a script juxtaposition indicates only the possibility that humor exists. Sometimes there are oppositions that aren’t funny to certain people at certain times. Read about all this in Raskin 1985. On another level, there is the logical mechanism of the joke, which is the way in which the script juxtaposition is resolved by the audience. Attardo et. al. claims to have discovered _all_ of the logical mechanisms, and published a paper about it about a year ago–I haven’t read it, so I can’t give you the cite. I think that in the end there were well under a hundred ways to resolve a joke. What is troubling is the Raskin, Attardo & Ruch study in which volunteers were able to identify all aspects of the joke except the LM… and yet, the LM defines the essence of the joke. All jokes with the same LM are basically the same joke (for example, the “how many Xs does it take to change a lightbulb? Five, one to hold the lightbulb and four to turn the table he’s standing on”, is a Figure-Ground Reversal mechanism–and all jokes with this mechanism can be said to be the same joke). ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/92 "2006-08-16T19:47:07Z")
Here’s my current “collection” of unusual (mostly recumbent) bicycles: [Rohorn F’lowroller](http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b157/rohorn/fl4.jpg) (lowrider/chopper) [Vision R-82](http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b86/kkobayashi1/2006-06-18-18h04m45.jpg) (recumbent tandem) [Challenge Fujin-SL](http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b86/kkobayashi1/2006-08-05-12h39m48.jpg) (lowracer) [RANS Zenetik](http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b86/kkobayashi1/2006-08-03-18h25m00-1.jpg) (crank-forward bike) [Catrike Pocket](http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b86/kkobayashi1/2005-11-30-15h18m31.jpg) (recumbent tricycle with fairing & trailer) [Bacchetta Cafe](http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b86/kkobayashi1/2006-03-19-11h02m15.jpg) (recumbent bike) And a [Pedersen](http://www.pedersenbicycles.com/) on order. I don’t really consider it to be a “collection” though - I just like to try different bikes, and keep several on hand because they’re suited to different uses. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/93 "2006-08-16T21:50:04Z")
[QUOTE=Dead Cat] I spend nearly every weekend in summer playing top-level croquet. Anyone else? [/QUOTE] This is worthy of an “Ask the Top-Level Croquet Player” thread. I didn’t know there was such a thing! ---
**Author:** ![Agrippina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Agrippina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agrippina)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2006, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/94 "2006-08-16T23:17:05Z")
[QUOTE=cmkeller] **Aggripina** , do you have any interest in Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series? I once wrote a document detailing the chronology of all of Kinsey’s stories (which include eight short stories in addition to the better-known alphabetical novels). [/QUOTE] No, I’ve never read them before. I’ll have to look into them after I finish my current chronology-project. ---
**Author:** ![MrJackboots](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MrJackboots](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrJackboots)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/95 "2006-08-17T02:20:59Z")
I carved fishing lures for a while, mostly wooden crankbaits, but I’ve wired up spinnerbaits and tied a couple flies. Been meaning to try it again. I collected computer viruses for a good five years. There are a bazillion of them, so I collected ones that were groundbreaking or that had really cool extra features - Word.Concept, for example, or the first JPG-library exploit, or one that erased your FAT, kept a copy in memory, and had a little slot-machine minigame that let you gamble for your data. Lost them all when I accidentally started one up and had to nuke the hard drive I kept them on. I still have a few, though - Blaster, Sasser, and the JPG-exploit. I’m pretty sure I have a copy of Concept around here somewhere - _that_ one was historic. ---
**Author:** ![Taran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Taran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taran)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/96 "2006-08-17T03:33:17Z")
[QUOTE=MrJackboots] …or one that erased your FAT, kept a copy in memory, and had a little slot-machine minigame that let you gamble for your data. [/quote] I almost want to run out and get infected by this one. After backing up from here to fare-the-well, of course. I wonder what the guy who came up with that one did with all his, er, excess creativity, after that? I invent programming languages, then write compilers for them for the Super Nintendo game console. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/97 "2006-08-17T04:26:53Z")
[QUOTE=Sattua] Well, first let me say that I specialize in verbal humor, so what I say doesn’t cover visual gags. At a very basic level, there is only one joke. You take two incompatible scripts (say, religion and sex) and juxtapose them. Ha. Ha. Sometimes the opposing scripts become off-puttingly generalized, such as expected vs. unexpected or reality vs. unreality. Also, there is a major caveat to the theory: the presence of a script juxtaposition indicates only the possibility that humor exists. Sometimes there are oppositions that aren’t funny to certain people at certain times. Read about all this in Raskin 1985. On another level, there is the logical mechanism of the joke, which is the way in which the script juxtaposition is resolved by the audience. Attardo et. al. claims to have discovered _all_ of the logical mechanisms, and published a paper about it about a year ago–I haven’t read it, so I can’t give you the cite. I think that in the end there were well under a hundred ways to resolve a joke. What is troubling is the Raskin, Attardo & Ruch study in which volunteers were able to identify all aspects of the joke except the LM… and yet, the LM defines the essence of the joke. All jokes with the same LM are basically the same joke (for example, the “how many Xs does it take to change a lightbulb? Five, one to hold the lightbulb and four to turn the table he’s standing on”, is a Figure-Ground Reversal mechanism–and all jokes with this mechanism can be said to be the same joke). [/QUOTE] The truth of this was demonstrated on the radio and TV show [_Can You Top This_](http://otrcat.com/canyoutopthis.htm)The comics were able to hold their own because all of them had wide experience and could easily switch their standard jokes to the subject of the joke that the audience sent in for them to try to top. All of them had spent years polishing routines and they knew from experience which versions of a joke went over best. ---
**Author:** ![E.Thorp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@E.Thorp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E.Thorp)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/98 "2006-08-17T05:11:05Z")
My wife and I have been singing **shapenote music** , aka Sacred Harp, since 2004. It’s an early American folk-hymn form that began in New England in the 18th century and then spread all over the colonies; by the time the Civil War was over it was thriving only in the rural South, where it has survived to this day; Northerners rediscovered it around the time of the mid-20th-century folk revival and now it’s gone national again. It’s in four parts, a cappella, with open, haunting harmonies. You don’t need a trained voice to sing it; it’s very democratic and is at its most authentic when sung by amateurs (which is why one lifelong singer has said “I would walk a thousand miles to sing shapenote, but I wouldn’t cross the street to hear it.”). Info galore at [www.fasola.org](http://www.fasola.org), if you’re interested. If there’s a singing near where you live, you are welcome to attend. I think I’ve seen one other shapenote singer on the SDMB, but I can’t remember who. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Bruin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Queen\_Bruin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Bruin)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/99 "2006-08-17T05:23:45Z")
I collect Chick Tracts and Homies figures. The tracts have to be gotten legitimately; that is, I don’t buy them, they have to be left out or given to me. Buying them would be too easy and cheap. I prefer my Homies out of the quarter machine at Wally World. I like Tiki stuff too, but I haven’t made an active hobby of it (yet). I have a few vintage cocktail pieces from my in-laws. I’m trying to get into knitting, though that’s hardly arcane, especially amongst Dopers it would seem. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Cat\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Jones)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563/100 "2006-08-17T12:05:22Z")
**Two Trouts** , that’s just such a lovely idea. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-most-esoteric-or-arcane-hobby-or-interest/368563.md?page=6)