Came across an account of an odd hobby this afternoon. I have to wonder, what drives a person to undertake such an odd endeavor?
I suppose in many ways it's no different from people who create huge spheres of collected string or rubber bands, although I've always found such activities to be somewhat mystifying. And even they could be said (if one stretches a bit) to be of some general value, given that their composition allows their creators to perpetually reorganize their kitchen drawers, tame stacks of old National Geographics, and control the proliferating wires that seem to pervade everyday life these days. Their ponytails will stay tightly tied, their packages will be neatly bound, and their children will have endless hours of fun playing cat's cradle and shooting rubber bands at the neighbor's cat.
But paint? What can one do with a big ball of paint? If being labeled a record-breaking oddity is the goal, then perhaps this qualifies, but the appeal escapes me. 18,000 coats of paint...my arthritic hands ache at the thought alone. Do you suppose it's all the same color? Was it purchased specifically for the task, or was this merely a way to dispose of excess pigment without dumping it into a landfill? Whose baseball was sacrificed to the cause, and why on earth did someone ever think to paint it in the first place?
People get crazier by the day. Next, they'll probably be obsessing about how many red M&Ms are produced in a year, or cataloguing all the occurrences of the word "frell" in Farscape.
Um. Never mind...
Posted at March 15, 2004 04:14 PM in Wonderings