PROCRASTINATOR DIATRIBE: WEIRD FOR WEIRD'S SAKE! BY DR. TWILITE How many of you think you're unusual? Of course you do. Who doesn't? Weirdness isn't a curse, nor is it a prize, a badge of honor that lords us over the dull masses. It is a duty, a calling and divine inheritance. We cling to our difference, lest we fade into the banality that has already consumed much of our generation. We must learn to be weird CORRECTLY! There is good weird and bad weird. Therefore this article will serve not only curious du11ards, but the freaks and flakes as well. Let's go, step-by-step, through the rules of weird-for-weird's-sake and build a better scene for us all to rage in, a scene free of both banality and obnoxiousness. RULE ONE: BE WEIRD FOR WEIRD'S SAKE. Unusual behavior shouldn't be a pretension acquired to garner attention. If you're bland, a scary fashion accessory won't help you. It might be the trigger you need to set you off, but it won't be the bullet. If you want to get the ball flying, your heart must be in the right place. Anyone can get their navel pierced, what's important, what matters is the political importance attached to the target. Body piercing, tattooing and hair dying is important as a ritual, rite of passage, physical mainifestation of psychological change, whatever. If you're truly weird, pierced navels and purple. hair matter little; it's the glint in the eye that speaks everything. If we say you have "the look", with your dreads, Doc Martens and ridiculously baggy pants. If that tattoo is going to make you feel gorgeous or exciting, if it will stir up trouble, anger your parents and shock the system, by all means get it; but if you just want to be different and are afraid, deep down, that you're not, save your money and your skin. Weirdness must be developed from within before it is manifested without. A really weird person doesn't need long hair, tattoos, body-pierces, or anything else to alienate the normals. A truly weird person is weird for weird's sake, not to get attention. If a person is truly ready, the tattoo will manifest itself through the legitimate metaphysical channels. A genuine freak understands that personality flows from within, not vice versa. Dangerous thinking is liberation. Bizarre behavior is its own reward. If any other reward is earned, the act logically ceases to be weird. To do something when It will benefit you in no way whatsoever, and to do it for this very reason, is the essence of art-EXCEPT in the following all- too common instances. -- WHEN IT ANNOYS OTHER WEIRD PEOPLE. The line between weird and obnoxious is a mile thick but most of the drunken clods who cross it are blind enough to hop the distance in record time. Perhaps they are still trapped 1n their shell of normality and can't admit it, bat for some reason, when liquored up and confused by emotion, they tend to go ridiculous lengths to prove the extent of their liberation. Seeing an attractive person of the opposite sex, they make lewd passes designed to fail. Seeing people dancing, they feel obliged to dance as well; and they prove so drunkenly inept at this that the dancing going on all around them is forced to abate, and an uncomfortable air unsettles the mood. The real dancers' beers become endangered, and they all stand there, watching and shaking their heads, until the dullard-in-dancer's-dress grows bored, dizzy and dry, finally going back to the bar, as out of sync with the music and the other dancers as he was in the beginning. These poor saps confuse ecstatic spirituality with petty destructiveness and boorish manners. They are loud talkers and rarely let the softer speakers get a word in. The are so full of themselves that there is no room for anything else and those around them are compelled to freeze, like mannequins whose only purpose is to listen, nod and laugh approvingly. I have, myself, known what fun such self- absorbed obnoxiousness can be. However, I have always lived to regret it. The fact is, when you step on other cool people's buzzes, you step on your own. WHEN INJURY OR DEATH IS TOO STRONGLY COURTED. Driving weird is unacceptable, for example. Acting weird towards a policeman who has pulled you over is, similarly, not advisable. It is the curse of the weird that so much weird behavior winds up in accidental injury, death or incarceration. weirdness and good judgment too rarely go hand-in- hand. au can be weird and still wear your seatbelt. You don't have to dance along the edge of a rooftop at dawn, drunk out of your mind, to impress us. The fear that we feel watching you make a fool of yourself is neither liberating nor fun. We're afraid we'll have to call an ambulance, spend sobering hours in the hospital lounge and later tell our friends at you're in traction. The damage you would bring upon yourself would taint all of our future weird behavior with its repercussions. It might be weeks until we start acting like freaks again. We might even be shocked into settling down. Similarly, over-indulging in drugs or alcohol, far beyond the levels you're used to isn't brave at all, but silly. Pacing and tolerance-awareness are your best tools for l enjoying a wild night out; they shouldn't be what you're rebelling against or trying to transcend. This is sound advice I remind myself of all the time, and still forget the minute my buzz is on. The hardest thing for a hedonist to master is self-discipline. If the hedonist can, raging continues. If they can't, the alternatives are tragic: jail, rehab, the morgue, or... normality. -- WHEN IT'S NOT POSITIVE! Anybody can be weird in a bad way. Just grab a weapon and start swinging! Pat drugs in the puppy's food, tell misogynistic stories at parties, sulk in the corner, refuse to participate, talk about factory farming at the dinner table (my favorite). In this all too grim world, your excess evil is not needed. Wrap your weird energy in positive light. Instead of pouring a beer on your friend's head, offer him a funnel See how confused they are at this sudden out of place act of generosity. Spontaneous gifts and compliments are so seldom given amongst our socially skewed generation that they actually have good shock value. You'll freak someone out a lot more by bringing them flowers then you will by dumping live roaches in their bed. Roaches they know how to deal with, but flowers? Watch them stammer out amazed thank- yous, watch their face turn red as they fumble around for a vase; have a good laugh at their expense. Next time you're at a party, befriend some lonely soul in the corner whom you'd never normally notice, given that you know every one else there and they know no one. Such a bizarre act will benefit everyone in ways you cannot foresee. Remember: you can catch more flies with sugar than with arsenic, and the truly weird person likes to catch lots of flies. RULE TWO: FIGHT NORMALITY WITH BOTH FISTS OPEN. When the bizarre and unusual ceases it's fight, normality and inertia settle in. Like death, they are both always victorious. Keeping our lives nonsensical is a daily battle. Weary of the endless days on the root lines, we start to fantasize about the simple life we left behind. We think of mom waiting for us back home, apple pie in the oven, stern lecture about "getting serious" waiting to drop from pop's lips, and we want to quit the fight and get back in time for a slice and some guilt. Buffeted by a harsh climate of uncertainty, death-cognizance and poorly defined peer relationships, we retreat from the front, get a thirty year pass and spend the rest of our lives recovering from the little bedroom mom kept just so. We turn our backs on the fight and flee to rest, rehabilitation, to responsibility and respect for restriction. We find solace in the stupid sitcoms and game shows, their very stupidity a comfort after all the painful evolving we've done. Our overstretched souls are soothed by supermarket tabloids. Our lives are willfully forgotten and we live Roseanne Barr's or Julia Roberts' instead. We pull a reverse Peter Pan, refusing to stay young. Instead of living in fire, we sit in the living room, soaking in television water until our burns heal. RULE THREE: KNOW THE SCRIPTURES AND KEEP'EM HOLY. The guides to successful weirdness are everywhere. Thank God, for without them, we would be an army without ammunition. Luckily, we have a rich body of transcendentally bizarre works to suffuse us with inspiration and motivation. The classic seers of weird for weird's sake are the Marx Brothers; any of their first seven films is a text in using irreverence as a way to enlightenment. Jack Kerouac understands that, and he's up there with them. On our own current front we have the Mexican Mud Band, whose antics and songs are apt illustrators for weird-for-weird's sake humor. Other patron saints of the bizarre include: Sun Ra, (early) Woody Allen, William S. Burroughs, Camille Paglia, Lao Tze, Chucklehead, Zippy the Pinhead, Shakespeare, W.C. fields, Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, James Joyce, Tom Waits, Carl Jung, Stanley Kubrick, Hieronymous Bosch, Aldous Huxley, Frank Zappa, Bela Lugosi, Nicholas Cage, Lou Reed, W.B. Yeats, Robin Williams, H.R. Giger, Peter Breugel, Bob Dylan, the Marquis de Sade, Cary Grant, George Clinton, Ed Wood, Jr., Dav1d Lynch and, of course, Sigmund Freud. They have all helped us keep the door slightly ajar in the darkroom of the unconscious, enabling the Less perceptive to get more than just a prostrating glimpse into the great unknown. Not only that, but through their attitudes and humor, they instruct us how to cope with the burden of seeing "too much", for life is scary without the security blanket of normality around us. In opening oar eyes to transcendental beauty, we also open our eyes to the ever-present horror and death that we normally shut out. These great explorers of the psyche can teach you how to laugh at the cosmic joke. They've proven that what doesn't make any sense is really all that does. By attaching importance to meaninglessness, they liberate the mind. They confront the horrifying void of ultimate reality and crack jokes. They supply us with the courage to come face-to-face with the scariest sight of all, ourselves, and laugh in our own face. Thus, in keeping ourselves surrounded by their work, we keep the ever present normality at bay. Stay weird.