Clint Bolin collected rocks. That, in itself, isn't weird. However, Bolin made it weird by hoarding massive amounts of rocks of absolutely no value. He also collected chunks of concrete and slabs of cement.
When he vacated his Long Beach apartment in 1975, he left behind 60,000 pounds of rocks, all neatly boxed. There were about 600 rock boxes, each weighing over 100 lbs.
Strangely, no one had ever seen him carrying any of these boxes in. And he was only a frail man, weighing about 150 lbs. Plus, he had only lived in the apartment for four months. So how he managed to accumulate so many boxes of rocks in his apartment remains a mystery.
I haven't been able to find any sources that describe what became of him after he made headlines in 1975. It's as if he disappeared into thin air.
Any technology that privileges the pleasures of production over the value and/or significance of the product can be a hedonizing technology. One would intuitively suppose that some technologies would resist hedonizing—coal mining and air traffic control, for example, and ironing and darning among domestic activities—but one would be wrong. All of these work algorithms have their counterparts among hedonized activites.
Translation: what is work for some, is a pleasure activity for others.
You can check out the website of the coal-mining hobbyists at undergroundminers.com.
It wasn't the subject of this book that made it weird, but instead when it was published: in 1968, at the height of the war in Vietnam. Not a time when a lot of people were going to Vietnam for bird-watching.
The British author, Philip Wildash, didn't even mention the war, except to obliquely refer to it in the first sentence by saying, "Vietnamese ornithology has long been rather neglected."
Written by Dave Fougner and published in 1972. Recently back in print. Available from Amazon.
Dave Fougner is six-foot-two, plays tennis, raises horses and shows them, teaches fifth and sixth grades at Steele Lane School, has real estate and air plane pilot licenses, is married and has a family. His hobby? Knitting!... Dave, a big, genial, friendly man of 28 says, "I like to knit in bed watching television."
Jennifer, his blonde wife, and Christa, their three-year-old, sat in on the interview at the Fougner (pronounced foe-gner) home on Loch Haven Drive. Jennifer laughed and added, "I don't knit."
On a marble table near me (the couple also collects antique furniture, refinishing it when they have some free time) lay a copy of Dave's book, "The Manly Art of Knitting," a picture of him astride Jennifer's beautiful registered Palomino quarter horse, Fore's Dandy, on the cover. You have to look twice before you realize that he's knitting atop the horse...
"One reason I wrote the book was to encourage men to try knitting. There's a doctor in town who knits. It's amazing how many men do but are afraid to admit it..."
And knitting was primarily a man's job before the Industrial Revolution, he said. "Knitting was an art. An apprentice knitter served six years."
Back in 1975, eleven-year-old Mark Harman of England made headlines by becoming a practitioner of the art of lying on a bed of nails. He was reported to have been taught by an "expert" and practiced by lying on the bed for half an hour each day.
I guess it's definitely not a typical hobby for a boy his age. I can't find any follow-up stories about him, so don't know if he continued the hobby later in life.
Butch Baker of Four Oaks, North Carolina began making a paper chain in 1979. The chain is now 23-miles long, weighs 2300 pounds, and takes up much of his living room. And he’s still working on it. (He knows it's length because he's been measuring it as he makes it.)
The problem is, Butch is 78 and doesn't know what will happen to the chain when he dies.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.