I'm not sure if it's a British thing or whether it's just my sense of humour, but I love the way we celebrate the losers, the odd and the plain weird. There are awards ceremonies and websites devoted to it and I find it all compelling, entertaining and yet also oddly comforting.
There's The Darwin Awards for stories of people who get themselves killed in odd ways, thus removing their particular strand of idiocy from the human gene pool.
The Razzies celebrate the worst clunkers in Hollywood movies - this year Sandra Bullock distinguished herself by winning both a Razzie and a Best Actress Oscar in consecutive days, and she attended both ceremonies! Good on you, San!
The Ig Nobels are awarded to the most spurious and pointless examples of improbable scientific research, going to the eponymous "they", as in "they say that x% of dental patients prefer waxed to un-waxed dental floss" This question was addressed by the winner of the 1995 Dentistry Prize, by the way.
Today, I discover the never-less-than-erudite Diagram Prize for the weirdest book title (adult non-fiction only, I think...). This year's winner, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes (which effortlessly combines the gentle art of needle-based stitchery with the hard-core science of advanced geometry) joins a distinguished list of previous winners which includes The Joy of Chickens (1980), Versailles: The View From Sweden (1988), Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (1996), The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais (2008) and the grand-daddy of them all, the first winner, Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (1978).
Roll-on, this year's ceremonies!
Tuesday 20 April 2010
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