So here we are, my first blog entry under the name Anomalous Data.  You might ask yourself, “Why that name?”

     Well, it’s because I’ve noticed that of all the things I find interesting in this world, and there are quite a laundry list of them, the things I find MOST interesting MOST of the time are the things that don’t quite add up.

     We’ve all heard the stories about the guys who slip in the shower, hit their head, and are killed instantly, right?  And a fair number of us have heard the stories about the guy who jumps from an airplane and his shoot fails to open.  He plummets to earth, breaks every bone in his body, and survives…right?

     Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but what the fuck is up with that?

     If you put all of the falling-in-the-shower mishaps that have occurred over the course of human history where humans and showers have co-existed into a graph, and compared it to the relative damage caused by such and incident, you would most likely find that generally, a bump on the head and wounded pride was the standard injury.

     Most of the data points would cluster around a mid-line of minor bruising, and generally thin as we approached lines described as broken wrists, or fractured hips.

     Killed instantly by head wound would, most likely, be represented by a slight peppering of lonely-looking dots out on the outer fringe of the graph.

     A researcher investigating shower-related injuries, no doubt funded by your hard-earned tax money, would look at this graph, draw one solid line through the middle of the thickest portion of dots, and then two additional lines, one roughly following the top end of the mass of dots, and another roughly following the lower edge of the dot-mass, and pretty much conclude that the “killed instantly by head wound” dots are something known as “statistically insignificant”.

     They are rare and random and pattern-less enough to be useless for the purposes of scientific investigation.  The conditions under which they occur are so difficult to reproduce, the sampling of occurrences so small, that they are impossible to predict or derive any substantial measure of scientific value from them.

     They don’t fit with the rest of the information.  They don’t make any kind of useful sense, so they are thrown out.  They are: Anomalous Data.

     They also make the best stories.

     The office grapevine doesn’t repeatedly re-circulate the tale of how Frank slipped in the shower and bruised his arm.  No, but the guy that is killed instantly becomes an urban legend.

     Oprah doesn’t have survivors of jumps from airplanes where the chute opened.  No, she does the 10 minute spot on the guy who survived the chute NOT opening.

     So, here I am…not a scientist, not a researcher, but instead…a storyteller.  More than that, I am a story-gatherer.  I am drawn to good stories like a moth to a flame.  Tell me a good story, and even my ADD ass will sit still for hours.

     I LIVE and BREATH anomalous data, people.  It is my kryptonite.  I am powerless before it, yet it feeds and nourishes me too.  Strange but true.

     There are many things about me that are Anomalous.  For one thing, I am a girl gamer-geek, a science fiction fan, and I am a hopeless fan-girl for the band Rush.  Statistically, I have to be a guy.  A scrawny guy with a hollow chest who lives with his mother…not a decidedly chesty suburban mother of two children with a successful 16-year marriage.

     Over the years, I’ve had numerous “experts” armed with statistics tell me what my life was going to be like.  Teachers who told me I would never amount to anything, guidance councilors who told me I wouldn’t amount to anything, pastors who told me I was destined for hell, and there was nothing I could do about it…

     Yet here I am, happy, healthy, and tremendously well-adjusted when you compare me to the disastrous outcomes predicted for me.  Some might take issue with the well-adjusted claim, and I won’t argue with them…but this IS my blog, and if I say I am well-adjusted, then in my little world right here I am.  Deal with it….OK?

     The people who I actually hang out with?  Statistically insignificant.  Anomalous datum, every single one of them.  They don’t fit molds, they don’t make sense, and most of the time, most people toss them out of their minds when they can't sort them into a nice, comfortable bin  in their mind that lies somewhere between the two lines that define normal.

     And let me tell you people, they have the best stories.  Seriously.  You should come to one of my parties sometime.

     But here’s the rub, and here’s where maybe I make you a little uncomfortable and make you back out the door.

     I guarantee you, that if I talked to you long enough, you would eventually sift out into some category where you also qualify as anomalous data.  Maybe you walked when you were seven months old, or you were the first person to survive a kind of cancer that had previously been 100% fatal, or maybe you kicked your heroin addiction through faith-healing, maybe you have an IQ that only dogs can hear…I don’t know…but it’s in there somewhere, and when I talk and listen to people, THAT is often the pay-dirt that I am waiting for.

     Everyone, everywhere is a little weird.  I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in that. 

     The assertion that science has mapped everything out, or will soon…the idea that everything can be explained, that there is no room for the miraculous or disastrous or just plain ridiculous bothers me greatly, because for some reason that is the stuff that makes me feel alive.  It gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, anyone can escape their fate.  The crank addict can quit, the abused child can grow up to be a great parent.  The guy who has had five disastrous marriages can finally break his behavior pattern, and make number six work and be happy, and make his partner happy.

     Anomalous data is hope…but more than that…it’s entertainment.

     All of the stuff that falls between two standard deviations from the mean is the stuff that causes me to sleep-walk through life.  OK, I see it, I’ve seen it before, I’ve got it, let’s move on already.

     It’s the occasional blip…the “huh?” moments that happen just often enough to convince me that it’s worth staying awake and paying attention.

     Now, I know that I am an Anomalous Datum….but I wonder…I can’t be the only one…right?

     So I figure I’ll bring you all these blips whenever I encounter them…just in case  I’m not as anomalous as I think I am.