When walking home from breakfast this morning, I noticed all of the truly strange things around me. Being a college town, this is the perfect place to experiment with weird food, habits and people and of course, I wanted to share them with you! Follow this walking tour in order to see some of the strangest sights in uptown Athens. I challenge you to go explore your own town to see what strange things you can find!
View Strangest Places in Athens in a larger map
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Strange Strangers
Possibly one of the weirdest people I know is my dear friend and roommate, Shelby West. Shelby is one of those people who you meet and just think she is nuts--and I mean this in the best possible way, I love Shelby more than anything because she keeps me sane (ironic, right?) But because Shelby is so strange, strange things just seem to happen to her. Now she is just a chip off the old block, making her mom an equally strange specimen. The two of them together can only produce strange and hilarious stories, so here is a real gem from the last time they were together in Athens. Oh the things that happen when you meet strangers...
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Weird Wedding Slideshow!
Well readers, I know you are excited because, as promised, I have a slideshow that gives representation to my last post. We love weddings in America- we love to eat huge amounts of food, dress up, get drunk and dance badly- so really, what's not to love about a wedding? No one knows where these traditions come from, or why we all do them, but we do them none the less. Holding other people's babies? Check. Dancing with people you don't want to dance with? Check. Color-coordinating family members? Check. Check out the pictures that explain better than I, what makes weddings so strange.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Weird Weddings
Alright, who hasn't been to a crazy, strange, weird wedding? The very idea of weddings is kind of bizarre if you think about it. A bunch of people getting together to celebrate two people who have chosen to sign a document together, mash up all their money and spend every single day waking up to that person for the rest of their lives! So sure, what better way to celebrate than to get dressed up, watch a five-minute ceremony (unless your Catholic, then it's an hour--that's a whole other post..), then get smashed, shovel cake into your mouth and dance to Shout! (A little bit softer now! A little bit softer now!). Don't get me wrong, I love weddings! I plan on having one myself and doin all sorts of weird stuff at it. I am lucky enough to be going to my cousin Laurie's wedding in Dallas this weekend, and let me tell you, I am beyond excited to see how Texas does weddings. But before we get into a whole other conversation of weird, lets take a moment to examine the strange, strange traditions of the American wedding...
1. Wedding Cake ahh the wedding cake. The scrumptious centerpiece that brides are willing for fork over thousands of dollars for. Talk about a strange tradition! Why on earth do we spend incredible amounts of money on something that is going to be cut up, distributed to a bunch of people- half of which we probably don't even know, and then gone forever? And those creepy cake toppers? Ahh and lets not forget about that creepy top layer that the bride and groom will save forever getting crusty in their freezer because they'll forget to eat it their first anniversary...and second...and third...Essentially, the wedding cake is a hungry monster in which to throw money into. If you paid me a couple thousand dollars, I would be your wedding cake, frosting and all!
2. Tossing the flowers Please, let me gather all my lady friends and have them wait with baited breath while I proceed to blindly pummel them with my hugely expensive flower arrangement! I mean, who doesn't want to get smacked across the faces with some calla lilies and then have some creepy guy take a garter off your leg with his teeth? Eww, enough said.
3. Ushers Ok come on...I can find my seat by myself, you're only here because the bride and groom forgot to put you in the wedding party. Bride or grooms side? Forget it, I'm parkin in the aisle.
4. Open Bars Truly the creme de la creme of a fancy wedding- only a very loving (and loaded) bride and groom will provide you with this service. They're trying to thank you for sitting through their boring ceremony by gettin ya sauced enough to do the funky chicken and other awkward, forced community dances...do yourself a favor- once you hit the bar, stay there.
5. Honeymoon Because after I've spent thousands of dollars on a wedding, all I want to do is shovel out more money to go lay on a beach...ahhh, isn't it relaxing to think about your savings washing away like the tides? Why is it that we feel we deserve a vacation after a wedding? You sat on your butt planning for like two years, so now you get a trip? Huh? I've been in college working my butt off for four years, do I get a trip? No, I get to move back in with my parents...
I could go on and on, but I will spare you dear readers. Weddings are tons of fun, maybe because of the dancing, definitely because of the drinking, and sometimes because of the people you meet- but weddings are always weird. Strange traditions never die, and I am pleased to tell you that I will be posting a slideshow of all the strange and lovely things I experience this weekend at my cousin's wedding...get excited, I'll be hunting for strange.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Why do we love strange?
As I read over my last post, a question occurred to me…why is it that we love strange? Peoplelove to hear weird stories, strange facts and obscure gossip- just look at tabloid sales, they practically fly off the rack! And I don’t know about you, but my favorite page in the newspaper is News of the Odd.
So what’s going on here? Why do we feel this way? Well, I have a couple theories…
1. Nothing interesting ever seems to happen to me. My life is so boring, I have to reach out to other sources to find strangeness. Every once in a while I’ll get a good nugget of strange in my life, so I always share it with other pe
ople to make up for the lack of strangeness in their lives. I like to think they would do the same for me.
photo courtesy chalboardmanifesto.com
2. We are nosy. Oh come on, you know you are. We love knowing what’s going on in other people’s lives and what crazy things happen to them. This goes along with the first theory- we’re just too boring to be entertaining all the time.
photo courtesy atrandomcomics.com
3. It didn’t really happen unless you share it. This is so true! Unless you tell everyone about your strange story, it will fall into a vortex of if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it really happen? We just seem to need our experiences validated.
photo courtesy cartoonstock.com
4. We love to laugh. This one may be most powerful of all. We just cannot resist the opportunity to have a good laugh! When we can all laugh together, it strengthens our friendships and even our love, so why not share a strange and embarrassing story at your own expense in order to fall more in love with your friends.
photo courtesy myself and my best friend, Jenna
I don’t know what it is about strange, but it seems to bring people together. Whether it’s sharing the story to make your friends laugh, or it was just so strange you need to say it just to know that it actually existed, we all must continue to share our strangeness. Because without it, well, life would just be less fun.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Your apartment....is on fire!
Well readers, I promised you my own strange story, so here it is.
I live in a crappy apartment that is basically above a bar. Being a college town, it is always impossibly loud at night, and if by some act of God, the bars are quiet, my crappy neighbors throw ragers just to spite me. On this particular night, it had been hellishly loud outside. Once I finally got to sleep, I thought I had smooth sailing until morning.
Alas, my neighbors are idiot.
At about 3 in the morning, I awake to loud beeping. In my half-sleep state I look around my room- I look at my phone, at my alarm clock, at my computer- anything that could be making noise. Nothing in my room is making the heinous sound. Our fire alarm is often prone to be very sensitive to anything (I mean anything- you say the word eggs and the alarm goes off), so I thought maybe our alarm was going off. I run out to the living room to complete darkness and no alarm. I go back into my room and have an internal debate.
Should I go check on the neighbors? Could they possibly have an alarm going off and not hear it? Should I just wait it out?
Finally, the angel on my shoulder prompts me to throw on some pants and flip flops and run upstairs. Now we kind of knew the girls upstairs because we were currently inhabiting their old apartment (which they were not pleased about). The second I open the door to the hallways upstairs, it is silent and I can tell the alarm is not coming from that floor. I book it down two floors, to the apartment below mine.
Jackpot. My ears are practically bleeding from the piercing sound.
I pound and pound on the door. Nothing. I pound harder. Still nothing. I try to door knob. The idiots left it open- thank God in this case, as they may have gotten a little toasty in there.
I run into the living room/kitchen, immediately consumed with smoke as I enter. I cover my face with my old t-shirt and run directly to the stove. I check all 4 stove tops, they are all off. I look at the control panel...
The oven is on at 400 degrees.
I turn off the oven and open the oven door to plumes of smoke billowing out. After my hacking coughs subside and the smoke dies down a little, I see some unidentifiable lump of black AND A DISHTOWEL!!! I cannot believe the stupidity of these people.
At this exact moment the entire apartment complex's fire alarm begins to sound and a bumbling drunk girl tumbles out of her room in nothing but her underwear.
"Wh-what's goin on?" (her)
"YOUR APARTMENT...IS ON FIRE!!" (me)
She scurries back into her room.
I run upstairs to my apartment to evacuate my roommates, one of which is sleeping at her boyfriends house.
Within twenty minutes everyone is outside watching the apartment complex not burning down. Naked idiot girl is no where to be found.
Being the weekend, no one was working that could come turn off the alarm, so we had to wait for the apartment maintenance crew to show up. After about 40 minutes, we realized that the fire department was not coming- we were all under the impression that they were alerted immediately when the complex fire alam went off...no no no, we had to call them ourselves (thanks Cornwell...rip us off AND kill us). About ten minutes later the fire department shows up. They want to talk to me to hear all the details of the story. They tell me that all the girls from the apartment had ran away, not wanting to take the blame- but one of them had left her naked boyfriend passed out in her bed to be consumed by smoke...so romantic.
About an hour later, we all finally make out way back to our beds. The next morning as I recount my story to everyone, our roommate-the one who we thought was sleeping at her boyfriends- stumbles out of her room, having slept through the whole thing.
Now what did we learn from this encounter?
1. Do not be an idiot.
2. Do not cook when you are drunk.
3. Do not cook dish towels.
4. Check to make sure your roommates are where they are supposed to be.
5. Call the fire department- they will not come rescue you on their own.
6. Wake up your naked boyfriend when your apartment is on fire.
7. People are strange.
Until next time...keep bein strange
I live in a crappy apartment that is basically above a bar. Being a college town, it is always impossibly loud at night, and if by some act of God, the bars are quiet, my crappy neighbors throw ragers just to spite me. On this particular night, it had been hellishly loud outside. Once I finally got to sleep, I thought I had smooth sailing until morning.
Alas, my neighbors are idiot.
At about 3 in the morning, I awake to loud beeping. In my half-sleep state I look around my room- I look at my phone, at my alarm clock, at my computer- anything that could be making noise. Nothing in my room is making the heinous sound. Our fire alarm is often prone to be very sensitive to anything (I mean anything- you say the word eggs and the alarm goes off), so I thought maybe our alarm was going off. I run out to the living room to complete darkness and no alarm. I go back into my room and have an internal debate.
Should I go check on the neighbors? Could they possibly have an alarm going off and not hear it? Should I just wait it out?
Finally, the angel on my shoulder prompts me to throw on some pants and flip flops and run upstairs. Now we kind of knew the girls upstairs because we were currently inhabiting their old apartment (which they were not pleased about). The second I open the door to the hallways upstairs, it is silent and I can tell the alarm is not coming from that floor. I book it down two floors, to the apartment below mine.
Jackpot. My ears are practically bleeding from the piercing sound.
I pound and pound on the door. Nothing. I pound harder. Still nothing. I try to door knob. The idiots left it open- thank God in this case, as they may have gotten a little toasty in there.
I run into the living room/kitchen, immediately consumed with smoke as I enter. I cover my face with my old t-shirt and run directly to the stove. I check all 4 stove tops, they are all off. I look at the control panel...
The oven is on at 400 degrees.
I turn off the oven and open the oven door to plumes of smoke billowing out. After my hacking coughs subside and the smoke dies down a little, I see some unidentifiable lump of black AND A DISHTOWEL!!! I cannot believe the stupidity of these people.
At this exact moment the entire apartment complex's fire alarm begins to sound and a bumbling drunk girl tumbles out of her room in nothing but her underwear.
"Wh-what's goin on?" (her)
"YOUR APARTMENT...IS ON FIRE!!" (me)
She scurries back into her room.
I run upstairs to my apartment to evacuate my roommates, one of which is sleeping at her boyfriends house.
Within twenty minutes everyone is outside watching the apartment complex not burning down. Naked idiot girl is no where to be found.
Being the weekend, no one was working that could come turn off the alarm, so we had to wait for the apartment maintenance crew to show up. After about 40 minutes, we realized that the fire department was not coming- we were all under the impression that they were alerted immediately when the complex fire alam went off...no no no, we had to call them ourselves (thanks Cornwell...rip us off AND kill us). About ten minutes later the fire department shows up. They want to talk to me to hear all the details of the story. They tell me that all the girls from the apartment had ran away, not wanting to take the blame- but one of them had left her naked boyfriend passed out in her bed to be consumed by smoke...so romantic.
About an hour later, we all finally make out way back to our beds. The next morning as I recount my story to everyone, our roommate-the one who we thought was sleeping at her boyfriends- stumbles out of her room, having slept through the whole thing.
Now what did we learn from this encounter?
1. Do not be an idiot.
2. Do not cook when you are drunk.
3. Do not cook dish towels.
4. Check to make sure your roommates are where they are supposed to be.
5. Call the fire department- they will not come rescue you on their own.
6. Wake up your naked boyfriend when your apartment is on fire.
7. People are strange.
Until next time...keep bein strange
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Strange Me
Why hello there. I'm Veronica. I'm a 22, blonde, college senior-- and I'm strange. Well, isn't everybody? I know what you're thinking- I'm not that strange...am I? Yes. You are. The sooner you admit it, the sooner you can let go and enjoy the strangeness around you. Just walking down the street to class this morning I encountered strangeness. I delightfully waved at weird homeless man who sits on the city's stoop that is the courthouse while he toothlessly grinned back at me. I chattered with strange girl in weather boots on a sunny day of 72 degrees while waiting for the light to change on the street corner. I even called Mom who went on to give me the play-by-play of her "Dining Divas" out-to-dinner crew's latest outing. Thanks to all who participated in providing me with weirdness. You are the reason for this blog. Your stories are gold. And hey, don't think I'm making fun of you- I'm just as guilty of complete strangeness as you. And just to prove it to you, my next post will be my very own strange story. I told you, we've all got strange stories to tell.
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