some alleged weirdness

saw this meme on the polymath's blog, who'd stolen it from fairlycloudy, who'd stolen it from faye's extra dirty mind. felt compelled to do it even if i have other stuff to do. my brain needs a bit of downtime after three days of learning how to teach "the areneow way" (more on that some udder time).

so i'm supposed to write 6 weird things about myself. but here's my caveat: if you step back far enough to see the bigger picture, every little thing that everyone does can arguably seem weird.

1) i'm constantly talking to myself in my head, bitching about stuff, remembering stuff, planning stuff, wondering about what stuff i want to eat, read, cook. but mostly i try to remember stuff, and remembering for me is pretty much equal to reliving it. and if i happen to remember something i did or said that was particularly stupid, i find myself humming, clearing my throat or making some sudden nonsense sound. it's like a reflex. so if you see me sitting quietly (or being borderline autistic) for a long time, just listening to the yakking voice in my head, and then i suddenly make a weird sound or start humming, you know that's my way of kicking myself inside my head.

2) i like picking at my dead skin cells. if i feel one tiny hangnail on one finger, i rip it off (which occasionally results in a bloody little mess) and look at the nail beds on my other fingers to see if i have other little hangnails to rip out. sometimes when i get too lazy to give myself a foot spa, all the walking i do results in some miniature flaps of dead skin curling up from my sole. they seem to follow the tiny contours of my footprints (as opposed to fingerprints, although that weird peeling has happened on the inside of my right thumb). so i pick at em. i leave my hair alone (ie, i don't pluck them out) but i constantly fiddle with it.

3) when my dog wants to hump my leg (or sometimes, my head), i let her. and i take videos of her in action, sometimes with early U2 songs in the background. imagine this: close up of a small furry white dog, panting and humping a leg, while Bono sings "Sunday Bloody Sunday."

4) i always feel compelled to finish whatever food is in front of me. growing up, my titas always made me feel guilty about the biafra babies in africa and the starving children of negros. i used to get away with it but now it's made me kinda fat. sometimes this devolves into mindless eating--i can finish a huge bag of chips without realizing it because i get kinda hypnotized by the rhythm of chewing and the nice crunchy sounds made by teeth crushing dehyrated fried potatoes.

5) i hate it when things are not in their proper places, or not aligned, or somehow look asymmetrical. when this happens in my kitchen (usually when papa or the maid is around), it just drives my nuts. there is always a logical reason when i deliberately place an object at a specific location or position it in a certain way. and i really hate when people don't realize the implications of my arrangements and mess everything up. uhm, this is a disease, no?

6) i feel truly depressed and subhuman when i'm hungry. and i mean depressed in a wallowing-in-self pity kind of way. but the moment i eat something to end the hunger pangs, it feels so good everything feels right with the world and i'm thankful i can't do cartwheels because that would be very embarrassing. imagine doing cartwheels in front of the fishball vendor. sheesh.