Rants and Articles.
Obsessionositism.
I do not suffer from obsessive behavior. I do not suffer from obsessive behavior. I do not suffer from obsessive behavior. I do not suffer from obsessive behavior. I do not suffer from obsessive behavior.
I didn’t copy/paste that.
Ok. Now that’s out of the way: I do have a few quirks and oddities that sometimes bug me. Here’s a (neatly marked up in standards-compliant code) far from comprehensive list:
- When I’m driving I repeatedly reach for the handbrake and remove it, even though I know it is not engaged (This doesn’t look so weird now that I drive a standard with the handbrake next to the shift stick, but when I had a Dart-K I kept reaching under the dashboard repeatedly for no apparent reason, to the utter confusion of friends and family).
- When riding on the passenger seat of a car, I wiggle my pinky toe whenever we pass a lamppost.
- When I’m with friends at a bar, I surrepticiously remove the lighters from the table and return them to their exact same position later, after having detached the longish security stickers they have on one side.
- Sometimes I avoid stepping on the lines on the floor (I used to do this long before it became cool — Damn you, Jack Nicholson!).
- I absolutely, positively must always straighten the teeth of the forks I get at restaurants so that they’re all plumb and evenly spaced (Don’t look at me like that! someone’s got to safeguard the karmic balance of the universe, ok?).
- People who keep the protective plastic covers on their cellphone screens drive me berserk. That goes double for the ones that allow the little ear of the plastic to get wrinkly and worn out, and still refuse to remove them. I’m getting chills just writing this down. This also applies (on a somewhat lower level) to those who keep the bright red/yellow/blue demo stickers on their camera/laptop/VCR, and those who put plastic covers over their furniture. Whenever I see this kind of thing I get a sudden rush of blood to the head, start foaming at the mouth and try to gouge people’s eyes out (Just kidding. I don’t actually foam at the mouth)
So, that’s it for me. What about you? What are your little quirks/oddities? Share.
And remember: they’re not bugs. They’re features.
— sergio on July 06, 2004 
Comments
I’m compulsive about keeping my DVDs/CDs in thier cases. Every disk in my apartment goes directly from it’s own case to the appropriate player, where it remains until the time comes to put it back in it’s case.
My roommate doesn’t understand the need, here. *makes strangling motions in the air*
I keep counting seconds until a minute is reached and then look at my watch to see if I catch the changing of the minute….
I got pretty good at it actually… but it became obsesive….
that’s why I don’t use a watch anymore…
I have to agree with your last pet peeve Sergio…it drives me nuts too! I try and remove it if I can.
To that I should add that the espresso beans can should be in the same exact location in the fridge, files at work have to be color coded and the lab notebooks organized in chronological order…hmm…maybe I should stop there…
Personally, I cannot stand it when there are two pieces of music—however quiet—within earshot of wherever I am. Once, on an airplane, the people sitting on either side of me were listening to their headphones, and mine were broken. I seem to remember opera-something to my left, and some hip-hoppish-stuff to my right. There was very nearly blood.
I totally understand what you mean reverendz3n. I’m extremely anal about that myself. My roomates tend to leave DVD’s out of the case on top of the DVD player and it drives me insane. I also have to keep all my CD’s and DVD’s in alphabetical order on their respective shelves. That’s another thing they don’t seem to understand.
Another little “feature” that I have is that when I’m at a pub drinking a bottle of beer, I have to have the label facing toward me. I guess that’s just something I picked up from working as a bartender for a number of years. You’re always supposed to serve the bottle with the label facing the customer. One other thing as well. I can’t stand it when people pick at the label on their bottles, drives me insane! I know, I’m crazy :P.
I totally understand what you mean reverendz3n. I’m extremely anal about that myself. My roomates tend to leave DVD’s out of the case on top of the DVD player and it drives me insane. I also have to keep all my CD’s and DVD’s in alphabetical order on their respective shelves. That’s another thing they don’t seem to understand.
Another little “feature” that I have is that when I’m at a pub drinking a bottle of beer, I have to have the label facing toward me. I guess that’s just something I picked up from working as a bartender for a number of years. You’re always supposed to serve the bottle with the label facing the customer. One other thing as well. I can’t stand it when people pick at the label on their bottles, drives me insane! I know, I’m crazy :P.
What really drives me crazy is extraneous stickers on books, CD’s or DVD cases. I have to thank Barnes & Noble and Borders for using easy to peel, non residue leaving price tags. Bless you both! If there is a sticker it has to be removed, period. And not just the sticker, I will sit there and rub the item until there is no evidence whatsoever that there was ever a sticker there. It’s gotten so that I refuse to buy a book from Fry’s Electronics, because they use crappy Avery labels on their books. No matter how careful you are peeling the sticker off the glue always gets left on the book and I have to spend a half hour or more carefully rubbing it off.
i share with you on the cracks in the sidewalk and platic covers. though i sometimes now intentionally step directly on the cracks to show my defiance to the bricks and my compulsion.
i use to work retail, and now sometimes when i’m in stores, i’ll nonchalantly, bring products to the front of the shelf and face them forward. also, in one of my current jobs, whenever i count money, i always make the bills face up the same direction. one more i suppose is that i’ll just start organizing sloppy arranged dvds, cds, cassetes. if i can think of nothing else then usually by color from lightest to darkest.
You know Sergio? I actually have you on film trying to remove the stickers from my camera. It’s actually kind of funny. One of these days I’ll give you a copy of it.
And I think you’re lying. I refuse to believe that you wiggle your pinky when we pass lamposts. I REFUSE!
I can’t stand when someone posts the same thing twice in chat rooms, on IM, on a shoutbox or a comment board or even on a forum… even by accident… it drives me crazy!
I can’t stand when someone posts the same thing twice in chat rooms, on IM, on a shoutbox or a comment board or even on a forum… even by accident… it drives me crazy!
Here is a video of Sergio being an obssesive compulsive..
www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~gmoreno/sergio.mov
The sound is kind of blurry but you can hear the following conversation (in spanish):
Sergio: Wouldn’t you like to remove those stickers from your camera?
Gabo: No..
Sergio: Can I?
Gabo: No
Sergio: Can I?
Gabo: Noo.
Sergio: Can I?
Gabo: Nooo! Nooo!
Sergio: How about if I just remove the little corner of the tag.. would you remove it later?
Gabo: Well.. maybe.
Hi, I have a compuslive obsession to have my closet ordered by Color. All my Shirts then my pants and so on… Another “feature” is when I arrived to an Hotel to stay the first thing I do is put all things into the Room Closet and things that goes into the bath, well they goes into the bath, you understand, doesn’t?…
Actually I used to check the handbrake also.
later/hezkybel
I also do the CD organizing when at Tower Records…and the closet color coding!! No wonder I can’t stand having roomates! They usually stand me just because I cook/bake for them…Oh, yeah, I also have to clean along…I can’t stand having a mess in the kitchen!
Gabo: funny video!
To go along with the stickers on books thing, what about those freakin’ adhesive strips on ‘In Transit’ stickers. That crap is the single most adhesive substance known to man. There is still reside on my windshield 6 months after we purchased the vehicle. Honestly, some days, as I am driving around, I can actually hear the punk from the ‘in transit’ sticker factory laughing at me. I will get that morbid fool.
My most obsesive behavior is that I sleep with like 5 pillows. I have a pillow making contact with nearly 90% of my body. Even on hot nights. Who needs covers? Snuggle up to a nice toasty pillow. I go through pillows like some people go through toothpaste… but I dont share them with my freinds.
Sergio, remember your chemicaly assited ‘Manually remove all microscopic pieces of lint from my carpet’ obssesion?
Man, I had totally forgotten that!
Those were two fun days…
-I brush my teeth 5 times a day. I cannot think well if I don’t feel the mint flavor in my mouth. Hey! that explains a lot… Dammit!
-I also used to not step on the lines of the floor. I even play a game with my friends that is called “El que pisa raya pierde”… I still think I invented it. Nice torture… you can blood easily if you play it with a girl.
-I scratch gently beloved ones heads. Always. Including mine. It’s my weird way to express my wild love and stress. Grrr…
-When climbing stairs, I count the number of steps.
-Involuntarily, I look for letters or bills in the mail box every time I get out of/inside my building. Even when I know there’s nothing new in there.
-I bite the straws until complete dissfigurement. All of them.
My car windscreen MUST BE CLEAN! I can’t stand having to look through crap and it annoys me when I’m a passenger in a car with a dirty windscreen too! :*)
My shirts have to face left, and the hangars must point over to the back of the cupboard.. barmy!
Yeah I forgot about my habit of tidying shelves in stores . . . but only in the ones that I used to work at! All the other stores are on thier own.
Ok, the ones I remember now, some are repeated:
1. All clothes hangers must face the same. If you do this when you hang clothes to dry, you can pick them up in one giant bunch and transfer to your closet in one movement.
2. Change on my bedside table is piled, ordered by height.
3. Kill the pedestrians with the dead bug: When riding shotgun in a car, move my eyes/head in such a way that dead bug on windshield ‘hit’ pedestrians on the head. Must keep on target for a count of three. (Time it takes the mind missile to acquire a target).
4. When outdoors, check shoes THREE times before putting them on.
5. When smoking unfiltereds, try to leave all roaches the same size.
6. ‘Did I stash my stash after I smoked?’ Go and check. ‘Did I check properly if I stashed my stash after I smoked?’ Go and check again. ‘Last time I checked, did I stash my stash again after checking, or did i leave it out?’. Go check again. ‘Man, all this running up and down the stairs makes me want a toke.’
7. When boarding a bus, everytime someone brushes against me while standing in a bus, before I sit down, three blocks before my stop, when I stand up, when the door opens, and when I finally leave the bus, I must check, by feel and sight, my keys, wallet, cellphone, money, documents, backpack and hair.
8. The one I really really love: Put cereal in bowl. Put THREE ice cubes on top of cereal, piled as closely as possible. Make TWO really really tiny holes on opossite sides of evaporated (carnation) milk can. Very slowly pour milk on icecubes. Make sure you maximize the contact area between thin stream of milk and ice cubes. The idea is to completely dissolve the 3 ice cubes before you are out of milk. If done right, you get the best combination of superchilled reach creamy velvety milk and cereal that is just softenning on the outside but still crunchy in the inside. Prep time: 25-35 minutes, eating time: 1 minute.
9. The one obssesion thak makes me want to see a shrink: Checking OC’s ‘COMIC: Latest Issue’ link.
I find it amusing that even though this whole thread is about obsessions, the GoogleAds are showing links to CSS related sites.
Tells a lot about what Google thinks of CSS developers…
That’s a funny post. I feel myself identified with the pinky finger and floor lines things, but also when i’m stepping in a chess-board like stamped floor i only walk over mosaics that are the same colour from the first squared i’ve stepped in. Until now, i tought was insane. Well maybe we are
I bite the hairs on my arms when Im bored.
I get a strange but pleasant, almost sexual, feeling when stanting in a public place and having someone nearby slowly much down a bag of potato chips or similar snack.
I also have this weird obsession on killing comic writers who never write new comics.
By the way, the word “stanting” was really “standing” in my previous comment… and “much” was really “munch”.
These damn linux keyboards! Its all linux’s fault..I HATE LINUX!!!
Did I mention my obsession about hating linux?
hehehe, its funny that many of us have our own obssesions:
* I share the one that the DVD boxes must be aligned and facing the right way
* Hanged shirts on the closset must all face to my left
* Factory protective stickers and demo stickers MUST be removed,
* I tend to remove the beers bottle stickers too
* When my beard grows, i brush it with my fingers several times a day
* many times a day a compulsive urge to check my nose for if there is a bugger comming out without warning. I often get to see other people looking at my strangely while I touch my nose, checking.
* start menu Items MUST be categorized, and software directories categorized. I used to organize others people computers until i got into a fight with a friend about that.
* Same with burned CDs, all must be categorized, my cds often have a name for every app, driver, game or tool it contains, marked with a fine marker.
* Drinkign glasses must be very clean from inside and outside. If i go to others people house and get a glass of water and it isnt very clean (like with a finger print) I try to touch the least possible with my lips, feeling disgust as i drink.
Thinking it twice, I do the beard brushiing and nose check many times an hour. …. Must look good… clean… mmmgh..
I constantly counts my teeth with my tongue.
My thing: when I visit my favourite bookstore (no stickers there) I replace the books on the right stack and straighten them even out, so it’s a nice cubical pile. Straight lines please. People come up to me and ask me if I work there and if I can help them find a book. You know what, I usually can..
I wonder if the majority of the population is this obsessive, or if there is something about the particular cross-section of Overcaffeinated’s readership.
Food for thought…
argh… whenever i find a site that amuses me i’ll refresh the page at least twice a minute to make sure there is no new content that i might miss… and same for latest comic links and such… *twitch*
Personally, Sergio, I like to think that OC readers are just special.
Sergio… what about scratching your genitalia and smelling your hand?… hehehe
I organize books according to “buddy lists”. Say, if I have a compilation of poems by Alejandra Pizarnik that needs to go on the shelf, I do some research to find out who did she hang out with before she killed herself. If the investigation turns up a name in my precious little library, I place the couple together so they can chit-chat a bit more and engage in some intimate cover-to-cover gossip. In the case of Alejandra Pizarnik, I found out she had befriended Julio Cortazar. My little obsession about “book ganging” lead me to a beautiful letter he wrote for her shortly after her death. There are occasions when the “sorting-out” stories are far more interesting than the contents of the books themselves. At odd times, I’m even able to stack entire tea-parties of off-the-page relationships. If I find a particular author somewhat obnoxious, I don’t hesitate to shove him/her among others that would unquestionably drive him/her nutz, as I enjoy my little personal revenge. It is like playing the Sims in some sort of literary ghetto neighborhood.
I used to neatly wrap all my books in plastic covers and barely open the pages fully, not even, or specially, when I read them. This lead to lots of neck strain. I don’t do that anymore. Another mania I’m glad to be parted with is CD preservation. I would buy any particular album, open up one side of the cellophane wrapper with surgical precision and put special care into not ripping it as I slid the jewel case out. I would then proceed to burn the CD, repack it, rewrap it, reseal it and store it in a very safe place. I slept peacefully as I dreamt of a tower of piled CDs resting as if they had never been opened up before. Why on Earth did I allow myself such sickening behavior? Maybe it allowed me to fantasize about owning a record store. Go figure. Nevertheless, nasty… Now I mp3 the songs, load them into my iPod and use the CDs as coasters for hot tea or cold drinks around my computer desk. As for the wraps… Which wraps? Same with stickers, LCD plastic covers, etc. Got rid of every single one of them. Gee, one look at my sorry, badly scratched iPod screen is testimony that I’m absolutely cured from the newness-preserving-craze that ruled my existence during my college years.
Shirts all have to be facing right, organized by type (polo, t-shirt, long-sleeve t-shirt, short-sleeve button-up, long-sleeve button-up, etc.).
Computer desktop? No more than 1 row of icons on the left. A permanently stray icon would be enough for me to drop web development and dive into the mysterious world of ditch digging.
Bills in the wallet all need to be facing one direction.
Change in the pocket must be less than $1.00.
Asymmetry is not okay. Years before I purchased my house, they replaced the old wood fireplace with a gas one. Due to the size of the new fireplace, it is offset from center. This alone almost disuaded me from buying the house.
I hardly need to say this, but pictures must be precisely parallel to the floor.
Any floating object in my beverage (no matter how small) results in me pouring it out and washing the glass.
My windshield must be perfectly clean. Yours must be, too. Is this too much to ask?
If there is a noticable patch of uncut grass (greater than about 10 strands) amongst cut grass, it must be cut. Now.
Must optimize things. Even my obsessive behaviour must be performed in an optimal manner.
For example, I had a job setting out chairs for trade show presentations. I was told they had to be set in a straight line. “Straight line? Are they kidding? I invented the perfectly straight line.” So I developed the optimal method for setting out chairs in a straight line that, when performed exactly (like there is any other way), results in a perfectly rectilinear grid. “There, not only is each line straight, but the level of straight-osity extends to 2 dimensions. I would have made it 3 dimensions, but you would need to buy brand new chairs.” They let me go. Apparently, getting the chairs on the floor is soooo much more important than making the rows straight. The crazy fools.
I also find myself obsessing about Sergio’s purple ego nipples. If they are nipples on his psyche, how can we be sure of the colour? In fact, how can I be sure that his concept of “colour” matches mine? There must be an absolute truth here somewhere.
Now that I think about it a bit further, does previewing your posts several times count as obsessive, or just really, really, really, really careful?
Okay. Done. Click post now dammit. (Maybe one more preview).
Aww, man; you’d go nuts around one of my friends. She removes the protective plastic from cell phones, digital cameras, and the like. So far so good, right? Then, she goes out and buys that super-heavy-duty PDA screen protectors, cuts them out, and adheres them onto anything with anything resembling an LCD screen.