Weird

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

At Liberty con, I was put — for the second time — on a panel called The New Weird. This put me in a mood, since the last time I was on it, no one could define the New Weird. Which in my mind is a failed marketing tag, and the equivalent of “New Wave without without the flashes of brilliance conferred by LSD.”

So I might have been a wee bit rude off the gate. Look, truly, part of this is that I was barely holding together with ducttape with Helena in ICU. (Her having died hasn’t made things easier. I feel like I’ve been cored like an apple. It’s not just Helena, but since Jan there have been two (human) deaths, one serious human illness with high likelihood of death close family (treatment proceeds), one serious human disease that will be fatal in a friend (RES’s beloved), and an awful lot of other things that wore on the nerves and heart. Never mind. I will recover, eventually. But as with physical injury, it is harder to recover with age.) And part of it was that I naturally have a sneering disdain for conscious attempts Pour Epater Les Bourgeois.

I see nothing wrong with shocking or surprising normal society, if that’s the story you want to tell or need to tell. I do see something wrong — scandal and abomination — in trying to distort a story in order to be shocked or “weird.”

Not that, mind you, I have anything against weird. I prefer Odd, but let’s face it: I — and probably most of you reading this — are by definition weird. It’s just I’m old weird. I’m weird because I approach life at an unusual — some would say abolished — angle.

Now do I know why? No. I don’t do it on purpose. Okay, so ADD explains some of it, as it apparently comes with other effects, but … well, mostly I’m just Odd.

This used to be why we gravitated to Science Fiction. It had weird, in heaps and buckets and whorls.

Mind you I read other things — and write everything — but I gravitate towards science fiction and fantasy as my place in the world, partly because … It’s all weirdos in here. In fact, I might sometimes ping too normal for this genre. Well, not when writing. But in my everyday life. I mean, until you hear us talk, we look like a nice, completely normal family.

But it’s the place where you can unironically and without explaining say things like “In a parallel universe, this would have happened” and no one bats an eye.

For those of you used to it, let me tell you it’s not normal. You try dropping that casually at your block party and best case scenario you’re going to be explaining what you meant for hours, and after that they’ll call you “The sciency dude in 1708” or perhaps “The crazy guy in 1708.”

Being Weird — Odd — means never having to think about how to epater the normals. They find us bizarre and sometimes absurd.

If you have to think about it, stop trying and go do something normal like Romance.

In fact on an earlier panel there was this …. lady. There was nothing absolutely wrong with her and she was trying to be nice and well, make noises to signal she was on our side. However, my reaction to her — instinctive — was low grade hostility, and I was amused when the two hun-women in attendance revealed they felt the same. You see, she would have been perfectly at home at RWA. Nothing against RWA, mind you, but they are way more normal and well adjusted than us weirdos. So, her tribal identification was wrong, and it was driving us all nuts. She probably wasn’t even aware of it.

But if you shock (and sometimes appall) people without meaning to, because you let your mind wonder? We’ll embrace you. Welcome home. You’re one of us. We even used to be pretty tolerant on the political thing. (And most people who aren’t aren’t us weirdos, either. They’re poseurs, thinking they’re shocking us. US!)

Now, we weirdos are (rightly?) reviled by all right thinking people. We stick out like a bur on the saddle. Humans like to think in stereotypes. It makes life easier. Suddenly finding a nail that not only won’t be pounded down but keeps changing into a fluffy duck and yelling cuckoo is … unnerving for the human system.

Of course that’s our value too.

Being social apes, humans tend to fall into patterns of group think. And when group think is leading the group over the cliff, it takes a weirdo to yell “Stop” and turn around and run the other way.

(As we saw during the Covid bs, I’m the weirdo for this job.)

And weird artists are important too. We can turn reality around in our minds and show a facet no one else has seen yet. And sometimes, sometimes, those are important for perceiving the whole.

But don’t call us new weird. We’re old weird. We’re the guy who knapped flint into a new shape, because the idea wouldn’t leave him alone; we’re the woman who wove a basket because grabbing fish with her hands was tiresome; we’re the grannies who made up stories of those things that maybe are and maybe aren’t in the dark; we’re the weirdos who set off in a small band to that place over the ridge, because there must be a better way to live.

We’re old, old weird. It only looks new if you are so beaten down by government schools and media signaling that you think weird you have to wear the right clothes the right way to be a good person.

Meanwhile we weirdos will find new ways to weird. Weirdly.

160 thoughts on “Weird”

  1. Then there are the people who “act Weird” in order to “shock the norms” and then “wonder why the norms don’t like them”. :sad:

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    1. Meanwhile, those of us who are actually weird tend to roll our eyes, pat them on the head, and say things like, “Oh, bless your heart. I guess that was kind of shocking … back in when James here first did it in 1953.”

      Liked by 1 person

      1. You know, years ago, C and I saw Margaret Cho’s comedy routine, and I said, “Well, I see it’s supposed to be funny by being shocking, but really it’s just like what [a friend of ours] says all the time.”

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Or we roll our eyes at their hubris. Most of my life the byword was “different is dead”.

        Don’t care what arcane contortions you put your form, figure, and art into.

        If you are not trying to figure out how to pass, you’re just a spoiled aristo.

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    2. Like that song, “Signs”?

      Took me years to figure out it wasn’t supposed to be illustrating why they didn’t want a “long haired hippy-freak.”

      Figure out what they value, show them you are at least willing to respect it, and at least some will give you a chance.

      …aaand that guy figured out what they cared about JUST so he could be nasty about it. /harumph

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  2. Was that in the “trad vs paranormal” romance panel? I wanted to go to that one but didn’t arrive in time.

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  5. One of the catchphrases in our house is “there isn’t a universe that contains your mother doing/lifting/moving x when there’s one of you around to do/lift/move it.”

    We often get odd looks when it’s said where muggles can hear us

    Liked by 2 people

  7. The weird going mainstream was the worst thing that could have happened.

    Once upon a time the Addams Family were just some offbeat eccentrics who wanted to be left alone to do their own thing.

    Now the whole WORLD is the Addams Family.

    And it sucks.

    It sucks so bad.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. No, Not at all. The Addams have a warm and loving marriage, kids that respect their elders, are hospitable and polite to guests, and believe in true love, the rule of law, and unrelenting violence inflicted on those who harm their loved ones.

      Seriously, the world being the Addams Family would be far more tolerable than the… ugh we’ve got out there.

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      1. They took all the surface elements, then, and none of the depth or goodness.

        I think John C. Wright has called such people “blind cutpurses” – they take the surface trappings but not the coin inside.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. C and I have thought for years that of all the sitcom families of the fifties and sixties, the Addamses had the happiest and healthiest marriage—the one that made being married look like someone that you might actually look forward to.

        Liked by 4 people

        2. On the bright side, I have seen memes not only observing that but urging people to realize that’s what to strive for.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. The world is not The Addams Family. The world is pretending to be the Addams family to demonstrate how cool and non-conformist they are, after getting Gomez and his clan cancelled everywhere for trivial reasons.

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      1. My point exactly.

        I miss the times when the things I liked were niche and fringe and didn’t convey status. They meant something then, and the people involved were people who loved it.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. The Addams family consists of a loving and supportive married couple, raising their children, loving and supporting them. The whole world like that?

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  8. Weird is holy. We’re artists and artisans and people who make things and imagine things. We’re the ones who go down into the depths and retrieve things and bring them back into the light.

    Yeah, Life is weird. That’s what I do.

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  10. Old Weird is when you’re the one the villagers talk about, and the Village Elders jump in to say, “Yeah, we’d banish him for blasphemy/witchcraft, but about twice a year he ends up coming up with an absolutely brilliant solution to problems we can’t solve. So you’re NOT getting the angry mob together. Just leave him alone. He’s not hurting anyone in his workshop.”

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    1. Cunning folk. The rigid types say that you’re the worst because the ones who curse people do not draw them in; it’s the ones who cure that do.

      Also, cunning folk had to own books or no one would believe they were cunning.

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  11. I have to say that I used to regularly have the experience of talking about what I thought, and having people say that I was obviously making that up to yank their chains, because nobody really thought whatever I was saying. It doesn’t happen much any more, because I’ve taught myself to say mundane things. But that sort of conversation isn’t really satisfying for very long.

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  12. See, being a classicist, I would have assumed they meant “weird” in the way of “Weird Tales”, i.e. “all the stories the general fiction pulps won’t print due to content, not quality”.

    And then I would have monologued about how Weird Tales splintered into three genres — fantasy, science fiction, and horror — and how in French pulp, instead of splitting, they rather coalesced into le fantastique, which is far less blood and gore and much more mood and atmosphere.

    Because I am weird.

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    1. You ARE weird. I, OTOH, am merely cuckoopants, with high hopes of someday being Classically Weird, but there is much study yet to do. I don’t even grow my own veggies yet, let alone any cool herbs. We homeschooled, and eschewed the Coof jab, and don’t use credit cards, but I have a sense that the bar is set much higher than that.

      Weirdness as aspiration feels…weird.

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          2. cousin in BOTH sides of the family

            And what’s wrong with that?

            My mother’s sister married my father’s brother, so I have double cousins.

            They are cousins because their mother is my mother’s sister and they are cousins because their father is my father’s brother. :wink:

            Liked by 2 people

              1. Well, it could have been more interesting.

                At the time that the two Howard brothers were dating two of the Huggins sisters, there was another Huggins sister “available”.

                One of the sisters made a comment about “too bad there wasn’t another Howard brother”.

                Then without discussing it, Dad and his brother started talking about a (fictional) third Howard brother that “they didn’t talk about”. :lol:

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        1. Quick! The Wee Free Irish drank some Dragon Beer! It’ll kill him if we don’t get it out of him! [Very Very Weird Dragon Grin]

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  14. I’m not creative, but I don’t fit with Normies either. Kinda sucks, but I’d rather not fit than fit.

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  15. We are the day dreamers, those who create the illusions for others to escape their own reality, if but for only a moment. We provide insanity so that others don’t lose their own sanity. Of course we are weird, we can’t hep it. We are weird because the monster we feed is weird and demands weird. I stand before you, the knight in tarnished dented armor, barring only quill and ink, and a shield of impenetrable weird. Yet the dragons are slain and the damsel rescued. It’s not my fault the damsel’s name is Reginald, I didn’t name her, blame the king.

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    2. One of the two stories I sold involved a handsome prince held captive by his wicked stepmother in a tower guarded by a ferocious….dragonfly.
      He was rescued by a warrior named James (her dad wanted a boy), using her wits and her knowledge of pheromones.
      I’m weird.

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        1. The rights reverted, though I’d have to pull out my copy of the anthology and re-type it, as it was written pre-computer.
          The illustrator put her in totally impractical armor, btw. I want my midsection armored, thank you very much.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. Don’t know. It’s in a trade paperback from the late 70s/early 80s. I don’t have it with me.

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  16. As somebody who has listened to Dr. Demento for decades and tends to sing along with the songs in the car (to the dismay of my wife and a certain definition of ‘sing’), I consider weird to be normal, because normal is boring.

    Grats on Libertycon. Wish I could have attended this year, but my normal boring job has me chained down for boring money, which I need to be weird. Next year for sure!

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    1. Dead skunks and dead puppies (no, not those Puppies); what’s not to like about Dr. D?

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  17. I’m not certain that I am truly weird – but my daughter says that I am a stealth nerd. I look prim and grandmotherly and respectable and all … but it’s just an outer semblance and camouflage.

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    2. As long as you don’t say “frack”, “frell”, or mention “flux capacitors” when shown a Delorean, your Normie cosplay will remain impenetrable.

      I got busted by saying ‘frack’ in an appliance store once. I said it, and some girl nearby laughed and said “Did you say frack? I love that show.”

      We are -everywhere- Normies. You’ll never get us all. >:D

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      2. “Oh, frack!” is my expletive of choice. And in my small stash of mementos is a real license plate that reads FLGRCRB. ;-)

        Liked by 1 person

  18. What these “people” consider shocking is what I did for fun in the ’90s and ’00s. And often better than the “commercial” counterparts.

    I was a nerd and geek when we were still feral, not “hipsters with worst fashion sense” that seems to be the norm.
    My response to most consensual adult relationships is “meh, you do you and don’t get in the way of me being me.”
    And yet we have people that can only seem to find any way to get attention by throwing wet feces against the wall and calling it “modern art.”

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  19. So, the wife just pointed out that we’ve been reading this blog for somewhere around ten years now (at least).
    I don’t read many blogs. Other writers may be interesting, but this is Home.
    And not just because of our Beautiful Space Princess, (Be she ever so Evil).
    The Huns and Hoydens draw me back as well.
    It was wild to discover a group that didn’t just accept me, (Read as tolerate). But a people that I understood.
    That is Magical. That is what so many protagonists in our stories are looking for. That is what we yearn for, even when we can’t put it in words.
    That is Home.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. and it’s why I can’t shutter this place, even when I’m going through hell with a hole in my galoshes.
      I need you too.
      And this year has been hell in family deaths, near fatal illnesses, etc. Poor little Helena’s sudden passing was just the topping on it.

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          1. Apparently the Left and the Muslims are recreating our BLM summer by rioting over the police shooting of a 17-year-old Muslim kid with a police record.
            According to various Twitter posts, there’s been a library burning, a shopping center torched and cops assaulted in several French cities. I read a long article from the “RAIR Foundation” saying various left-wing French politicians and celebrities jumped on the, “justice for Nael,” bandwagon before the derails of his record came out. It al, sounds depressingly familiar.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I’d say ‘Nael’ got justice. The Left making martyrs and heroes out of criminal scum is definitely the wrong sort of weird.

              Does the French Army still patrol Paris in squads of 4, in armor, with submachine guns, because of all the ‘peaceful Moslems’?

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              1. French Army still patrol Paris in squads of 4, in armor, with submachine guns,
                …………………

                They actually get guns? I thought Europe was civilized. /sarcasm off JIC

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          2. The cops ventilated some kid because he was trying to escape a checkpoint. And also trying to run them over, if the video is any indication. He’s got them up against a wall with his car. There is no city in the USA or Canada where they wouldn’t have shot him, IMHO.

            The kid’s mother is running around leading riots against the police for four days now. She looks surprisingly gleeful for a woman who just lost a son, going by the videos. I guess she’s happy he got his 47 virgins.

            Yesterday, Day Four of the carbecue escapades, the French Police unions issued a statement saying they were “at war with vermin,” which is not something you generally see in a police communication. They also said that if the government doesn’t stop screwing around, the police are going to stay home.

            The rioters, as in the USA commemorations for St. George of Fentanyl, are punishing the main sources of the social oppression oppressing the oppressed in France: retail stores.

            In some towns, after three days of assholes randomly burning shit in their town, the “local youths” have shown up in the streets (in surprisingly small numbers so far) to contest with the “disaffected youths.” But they’re not very effective, because all they have is baseball bats.

            I opined elsewhere that there’s never a rooftop Korean around when you need one. There’s a reason for that, of course. You can only have rooftop Koreans in America.

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            1. You can only have rooftop Koreans in America.
              ……………..

              True. Also general citizens also have to access to legal rifles (handguns, legal or otherwise, are worthless when on rooftops). Again, in general, only in America.

              Liked by 1 person

        2. I’m seeing articles in various sources (anything from Gab to ABC, with CNN and the Grauniad), but Insty and CTH haven’t mentioned it. Maybe tomorrow.

          A worthwhile search is “June 2023 france riots”. If the stories are correct, they saw the St. George of Minneapolis riots and said “hold my fentanyl”. Looks ugly, and the report that Macron was hanging out with Elton John as things went pear shaped is priceless.

          One link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12249113/France-rocked-night-riots-Violent-clashes-break-Paris-execution-boy.html

          Liked by 1 person

      2. Hey, we try to give back, too. Here you can rant, and vent, and we will nod sagely and say, “Yup, you’re right, that’s rotten and unfair and we get where you’re coming from. You’ve got support from folks who care about you.”

        You seem to be going through a time of suckage, that’s all.

        Liked by 1 person

                  2. Been dealing with -that- black stormfront for a couple of decades.

                    No magic words. I will always listen. It is survivable, if you won’t quit.

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                  3. Sometimes sitting down and crying is what you need to do. It’s not selfish. It’s not unproductive. It’s not slacking, dithering, or abandoning responsibilities. The only problem, I think, is when sitting down and crying is all you do forever.

                    Take your time. You will get through this. Talk to friends when you can. Chances are, you’re not the only one hurting. And a burden shared is a burden lessened, or something very like.

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  20. I am reflecting on (mumble) decades of not fitting in anywhere, and of being odd even for pods of geeks.

    …

    (Satisfied smirk)

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  21. The new weird is the old normal: Polite, well-groomed, well-dressed, table manners, taking hat off inside, etc… Each one alone will get you noticed. Put them all together and people think you’re an alien.

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  22. I deny it.

    I’m perfectly normal.

    It’s everyone who lives like the people you see on TV that are weird.

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  23. I was wierd when wierd wasn’t cool. Still am when it still isn’t. I’m the kind of guy who will text from a hospital bed just to talk to my own kind.

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      1. Virtual flowers. My legs and almost my whole voluntary muscle system gave out on me Tuesday. Probably not a stroke, more a combination of heart & kidney issues. So far I’m responding well, looking at post-acute nursing & rehab. Plus getting help for the complicated social & psych issues that got me to this point.

        Liked by 1 person

        3. If you can type coherent comments you’ll most likely pull through. Eat your Wheaties, do what the nice PT lady says, don’t worry about a bunch of shit you can’t do anything about.

          Carry on.

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          1. Rumor hath it that “nice” and “PT lady” is a contradiction in terms. They and nurse are members of the medical bureaucracy whose compunctions about torturing you for your own good have been trained out of them. I’m contemplating the virtues of crankiness and defiance versus meek cooperation. But still in hospital for weekend. Condition improving but slowly.

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            1. There’s a reason they call them “physical terrorists.” (Sort of like Jack Russel terriorists, in many ways.)

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            2. I have reveled in the appellation “physical terrorist” lo these many years. I was the happy son of a bitch who came twice a day to make Grandma get out of bed. Grandma hated it, bitched at me, stood and walked while bitching at me. Like a freakin’ miracle, watching these busted old women get up and walk. Amazing. Best thing ever.

              Just remember, there’s good pain and bad pain. When you stand up, and you don’t want to do it but you -can- do it, that’s good. Keep going. It sucks, but at least you won’t die. If you lie there, you -will- die. Bed rest kills people. That’s why they’re making you walk.

              When you suddenly experience something excruciating, that’s bad. Don’t do that one again.

              The PT, unless he or she is an -idiot- (thankfully pretty rare, really) knows the difference.

              Important safety tip on defiance and crankiness; it isn’t like the old days anymore. If you tell them to leave you alone, they will. Take it from me, you do not want that.

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  26. My hubby once said he never knew what to say around my family ( he’s a very social being, so I was surprised).

    “It’s like being sucked into a pod of alien beings.” He said.
    And I guess that’s what it would be like to someone from a family who never talks about anything interesting at all. Just gossip about the neighbors. Which is how it is being around his family. Extremely nice and boring people. He is the odd only one who would have gotten a letter from Hogwarts in his bunch of muggles for sure; not a one of whom would have found a wizard and 13 dwarves on their doorstep. He’s as mystified as Bilbo about why he felt compelled to go on an adventure that might lead to death, or worse. But he married me anyway. And this dragon hasn’t killed him yet.

    And not a single one of his family would have gotten those references.

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  27. I’m a bad person to invite to a funeral. My view of death isn’t quite normal, for any culture, and I tend to suffer from either total silence, or foot-in-mouth disease. Only time I ever refused an order, by ignoring it, was when I didn’t go to a funeral in Okinawa for a grand parent of one of the women who worked for me, that the Chief told me to go to. Article 15 or a summary court I can handle; causing an international incident would have been too much.

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    1. Once upon a time, as a PFC, told my First Sergeant I was unwilling to share a cell with him because he was married and would get lonely first.

      Only time I ever saw the man boggled.

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  29. Yeah… I am the low key guy everyone in the office thinks is “normal” and then they stop by and see my computer screen saver showing a fade from the flight deck of the space shuttle to a Borg cube and I’m on the phone coaching someone on proper grammar and style for a letter to a foreign official. Then there was the time somebody needed to cut open a package sealed up with really strong plastic tape and I whip out an original Fairbairn Sykes Commando Knife from my desk drawer.

    I’ve also had posted in my office over the years Hunter S. Thompson’s famous quote, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!” When others in my office (government) had to fill out forms and needed some “justification prose” they would ask me for ideas and I would rattle off a bureaucratic sting of smart sounding gobblydegook and it was always approved. A lot of the time I didn’t “fit in” but was also somebody everyone wanted to have come along. Being retired now lets me be quietly odd and nobody cares.

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  30. Huh, adding my old e-mail back to my Gravitar seems to have re-enabled my Icon, but I’ll still end up with notifications going to my old address which dies tonight….

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  32. I asked my brother in law once, if a man goes back in time and becomes his own father, where did the male genes come from?

    He said I made his brain cramp. I take that as a compliment.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Odd family trees are not a Heinlein monopoly, here’s one without the time travel element.
      https://allpoetry.com/I%27m-My-Own-Grandpa

      In real life, one of our sons is married to the aunt of his cousin’s wife (the boys are the same age, but widely-spaced female siblings can facilitate that sort of thing).
      Said Cousin did NOT appreciate Son calling him Nephew.

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      1. I have two aunts that do not appreciate hubby calling them aunt. They are 3 years younger than him (20 months older than I am). My uncles, their husbands, are 6 and 8 years older than I am.

        When we got married, my new nieces and nephews were surprised that their grandparents were as old as my grandparents. They were speechless when I told them that I had 6 aunts and uncles the same age, or younger, than their mom (oldest child). Plus 3 were younger than their older uncle. Hubby is 5 years younger than his next sibling. He is 5 years older than I am.

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  33. Back when my then-soon-to-be-fiancé met my brother for about an hour, then we had to run out and do something or other so my mom asked my brother what she thought of him.
    “He’s perfect for her. They’re the king and queen of geek.”

    This, from the kid who once sent me on an hour long drive to the nearest city to buy him the Warcraft war chest collection, was absolutely perfect. ^.^

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    1. My SIL after meeting me, when I was 17 and Dan 18, dragged us to a football game, during which Dan and I talked physics, mathematics and philosophy.
      Four years later when we got married, she said snidely “I always knew you’d end up together. No one else would have either of you.”
      Meh. Well, she and her 6? 7? 8? However many marriages she’s admitting to these days can shove right off.

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      1. I am reminded of the football player where the media was winding up to be loudly scandalized about how he had five or six kids, and then folks started counting… he was kind of a slacker, for raw number of kids.

        The difference is, all of his were with his wife, after they got married, instead of with five or six “girlfriends.”

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        1. Scandalized gasp All with the same wife! How … how … radically retro. (We will not mention the paternal very-distant cousin who had 11. With the same wife. By the late 1980s.)

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  34. I always forget that you’re Also a friend of RES’s wife. I remember her first meeting her about 30 years ago. She is one who speaks (same listens) to children as intelligent beings, worth speaking and listening to. Then at 18 she was dumbfounded to realize I wasn’t Exactly Sure I could pick John Wayne out of a lineup. (I grew up without tv) So she invited me over for a weekly lunch ‘n’ movies date to watch classic movies (and a sprinkling of tv episodes/mini series) and eat homemade gourmet vegetarian lunch. And we kept it up for about 7 years!

    I came home from a 10 day roadtrip with a excellent headcold, otherwise I’d have gone to see her this week. And I head out for another 3 weeks on Monday. Last time I visited her, she was herself, just weak. Not accessing all of her vocab on command, but as brilliant as she is, that still left her with as many words as most smart folks.

    Sending you all the long-distance hugs. Being far from loved ones is one of the hardest things!

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  36. I’m Weird (or is it wyrd?). I am supposed to be “taking it easy” for the next few days (post-minor-surgery, to keep it minor) and I finished a novella and got a chunk of the next book done. Oops. In my defense, the book really wants to get written.

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  37. My weirdness is … weird. Most times you’d see me, I’d look so square I’d basically be a tesseract. The fact that I might use the word “tesseract” in a normal conversational sentence, or smirk knowingly at an appearance of the number 42, or talk about the limitations of the Three Laws of Robotics in the context of modern AI programs, gives the game away.

    But then, I don’t fit in with the Odds either. My private joke about SF cons was that I was being a nonconformist by not conforming with the nonconformists. Maybe there’s a sub-group of fandom where I can fit in, except I’d clash with something different there, and …

    I’d said my weirdness is in being a minority of one, except we’re all a minority of one in some way, which makes it not weird at all.

    I need to lie down.

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    1. But then, I don’t fit in with the Odds either. My private joke about SF cons was that I was being a nonconformist by not conforming with the nonconformists. Maybe there’s a sub-group of fandom where I can fit in, except I’d clash with something different there, and …
      I’d said my weirdness is in being a minority of one, except we’re all a minority of one in some way, which makes it not weird at all.
      I need to lie down.

      So, you fit like family, not like fashion.

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    2. > being a nonconformist by not conforming with the nonconformists.

      I watched a video of an orchestra doing covers of classic rock. They were all dressed casual, in black pants and black T-shirts.

      Except the drummer, who was wearing a very nice three-piece suit. His jacket was hanging to the side as he played in a long-sleeved shirt and a vest. And he was wearing arm garters; something that mostly went away a century ago.

      Drummers gotta be different.

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