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Mr Rogers - Source: ONE News -
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Oddness has its consolations. This has been the case as long as there were rebels, outsiders and weirdoes. They defined themselves by what they weren't.
Oh, sure, it was negative, a terrible price was paid, but at least you weren't one of them. By them, I mean the conformists, the normals, the doughy suburban hordes.
Well, guess what, oh, self-appointed oddity? They're you, every single one of them. Difference is the new normal. Are you shocked? Where then is the refuge of the strange? Is it -gasp!- regularity?
Perhaps both the usual and the unusual are two sides of the same coin. It's invigorating how closely they live. Why, they're practically neighbours. That's proved by our first video, which features US child's TV icon Mr. Rogers set to autotune.
This has been done - at the behest of Mr Rogers' old broadcaster, PBS - by an organisation called 'The Symphony of Science'. The SoS has a mission to deliver science and philosophy in musical form. You should support this piece of admirable, necessary whimsy here.
What I love about this clip is that a safe, gentle figure like the cardigan-wearing Mr Rogers becomes - by the application of autotune - as alien as Mars.
Our next video is based on strangers holding hands with strangers . Kid (in this case Utah student Andrew Hales) has a pal with a camera. Kid walks around all day trying to grasp strangers' hands. Kid tells us something about longing, and the human condition.
I wonder what would happen were this performed in New Zealand? Possibly a knuckle sandwich would be fetched forthwith. The distances between Americans seem wider, but the definition of what is personal space in their megapolises is more compacted. They're invadable.
As if to make our point of the nearness of oddness, I offer this
video titled
'Dead snake found in Water Tank'
. The point here is that what looks strange and repulsive often
actually is. Be safe, kids.