TripDoctor and Pompelmous, I definitely relate. I'm not a big consumer, but I definitely go through phases. Some of them are so odd or involve so much obsession that I keep them completely to myself for the sake of not being the butt of jokes. Each phase lasts anywhere from 2 weeks to a few months, where I'll think about my object of obsession as randomly and often as sex, if not more. I'll want to read and learn all I can about it, and I'll filter the whole rest of my world through the thing I'm obsessed with. I'll connect it in my mind to things it has nothing to do with at all. And then, one day, I'll just decide I don't enjoy it anymore.
Some of my past phases were fairly normal: dinosaurs, computers, chemistry, trains, world geography, pot growing, collecting old American coins, golf.
Others were not necessarily odd, but not exactly common or fitting for a person of my background: Jerry Springer, Phil Collins, Ren and Stimpy, tarot cards, traditional Japanese culture, Freemasonry, the science of city planning, learning and preparing large and frequent amounts of ethnic foods to which I have no ethnic connection.
But some were decidedly strange: poplar trees, old clocks with the word "Regulator" on them, New York license plates, Adolf Hitler's life, chewing gum varieties, and strangest of all, the word "the".
I'm pretty sure I don't need a second opinion about my Asperger's