davidd's A DOLL A DAY 2023

[davidd]

Did she get a freshwater bath?

Yes.

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31 January - A Doll A Day 2023:

How To Be Weird

Taking photographs of little plastic statues of half-naked mermaids in front of the book one recently read and then posting those images online in public forums was, somewhat surprisingly, not one of the suggestions in Eric G. Wilson's How to be Weird: an off-kilter guide to living a one-of-a-kind life (2023, Penguin Books).

Among the 99 "lessons" featured in the book, only one was doll or toy related: "Lesson 39: Consider a Victorian Doll."

Rather than actually doing anything with a doll, Victorian or otherwise, Professor Wilson's suggestion (Eric G. Wilson is a university professor of English at Wake Forest University in North Carolina) is to consider a "thought ex-periment" –– imagine you are a Victorian porcelain doll who has grown weary of your existence in an elderly collector's guest room.

Stereotype muchly, me-thinks? The pretentious son-of-a-sea-biscuit, or should I specify "highly educated white male East coast professional in his mid-fifties," takes great pains in other "lessons" to present himself as culturally and socially sensitive, even decrying the portrayal of non-American and non-European cultures as "exotic" in 19th-century Cabinets of Curiosities, but he thinks nothing of promoting a long-held stereotype about doll collectors.

The "thought ex-periment" involves considering three options for the Victorian doll: remain as you are, become a puppet on strings who knows who is controlling you, or become an automaton who has freedom of movement but who is programmed to exist in a constant state of fear that every action might be wrong. Journal your thought processes as you consider the options.

Consider the options! Journal about it! Truly off-kilter, that is!

Dammit, dude! How about you take your Victorian porcelain doll to the local history museum, take a photo of her (or him, if you can find a "him" Victorian porcelain doll) with each Victorian-era exhibit, and then "imagine" your dolly friend's reaction to seeing their normal, everyday life enshrined in a museum and "curated" to present it in a "culturally sensitive social context." Post your photos and your commentary -- I mean your doll's commentary -- on Instagram so everybody can see it. Jiminy Christmas, privately journalled thought ex-periments? Who do you think your readers are, a bunch of twelve year old girls?

(Yeah, now I'm stereotyping 12 year old girls -- who are far less likely to keep a diary these days -- because it's not 1959 anymore -- and far more likely to post every single thing they do online... but not on Instagram, because that's for old people, so probably on TikTok or some site or app I've never even heard of.)

In a "lesson" on creating your own made-up words (that's weird?), the author smugly references various made-up words from literature -- prominently featuring examples from "non-white" authors, of course, because after all, he's culturally, socially, and racially on point -- but he left out ætetaurian by Michael Chabon, so I got to feel all smug and superior because ætetaurian is way better than the examples he used. Nor did he mention possibly the most widely-known made-up word: supercalifragilisticex-pialidocious.

The closest suggestion among the 99 offered in this book to doing anything overtly weird in public -- hang on to your hats, this is really out there -- is to paint cryptic or nonsensical phrases or sentences on rocks and surreptitiously leave them in the yards of your neighbors.

That's edgy stuff, that is.

Although it's not really "public" because you're being surreptitious and trying not to be seen doing your weird rock thing. Like, if you're weird in the forest and nobody is around to see your weirdness, are you truly weird?

Most of the suggestions are "thought ex-periments" -- imagine something and then write down how you feel about it. In your journal.

I wonder if the journal should have a cute little padlock on it?

Because seriously, another suggestion is: write the name of somebody you dislike or had issues with in the past in the center of a sheet of paper and then... doodle around it.

You wouldn't want anyone to see that, so the journal had darned well better have a lock on it!

The author claims you can make ink by soaking copper pennies in vinegar for a few weeks. I wouldn't exactly categorize that as being weird, but it sounds kinda cool, so I had to look it up.

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/h...-inkmaking

https://leahmccloskeyart.com/2021/02/02/...oxide-ink/

I don't know if pennies would work. They won't work for our Canadian friends or our English friends because pennies aren't a thing there anymore. (So much for your multi-cultural sensitivity, Professor Pretenti-pants!) Pennies in America are mostly zinc with a thin copper coating, so I don't know if there's enough copper in a penny to make ink. You'd probably have better luck with an old copper pipe elbow, if you can find one. But I digress.

The one -- out of 99, the one -- suggestion in the book that I thought was actually kind of weird was to go stand on a window ledge high above the street, or on a rooftop, or on the edge of a cliff, and see if you felt an urge to jump.

I kinda was feeling an urge to jump off a window ledge after reading this book and seeing how prosaic were most of the suggestions for "living a one-of-a-kind life." Are people really and truly as constrained by social norms as this book would suggest? Are the options to either be a raving lunatic living in your own feces on a street corner or to be exactly like everyone else in a world where it is radical to -- gasp! -- imagine everyone around you is a robot! Write down how you would feel!

I did find something WEIRDly coincidental about this book. Last week I learned a new-to-me word on The Dal House doll forum, a word I had never seen or heard or read before: petrichore.

The word petrichore appears in How To Be Weird.

That... was weird.