As you probably know, the stuff that people auction on eBay can sometimes be awfully weird. Now an intrepid coder has produced a program that calculates precisely how weird an individual auction is. He calls is “The eBay Strangeness Score Generator”. The methodology, as Gizmodo describes it, is thus:

It’s a fascinating piece of code using high-level algorithms and math to prove that the post length and number of uppercase characters can be used to measure the total insanity of any eBay post.

Gizmodo ran the code on a couple of sample eBay entries, and it indeed seemed to produce accurate results. The auction for “EXTRA LARGE HOBO BIG GREEN PURSE BAG RING NEW” — which is pictured above, and of which the poster brags, “LOOK LIKE A MILLION DOLLARS WITH THIS TRENDY BAG” — received a healthy Strangeness Score of 1,273.

(Thanks to Gizmodo for this one!)