Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Confessions of a Trivia Hoarder.






Life, as I had known it, changed on September 4th, 1998. I am a trivia freak, and information hoarder, a minutiaeholic. Nothing is too insignificant for me to attempt to remember. At one time my favorite author was Fred L.Worth. He wrote trivia books. Did you know that a golf ball has 336 dimples? The shortest verse in the bible? Jesus wept. Gerald R. Ford's name is really Leslie King. "SOMEBODY STOP ME!!!!"

What, you may ask, is the significance of September 4, 1998.
Google was founded that day. I have not been the same since. This is like a drunk waking up in a brewery. One google is too much, fifty million googles; not enough.
Information is my drug of choice. Don't get me wrong, I won't turn down a Molson's on a hot summer day as long as I have my computer nearby. Did you know Molson's has a brewery on Notre Dame in Montreal? Hmmm, I may have to google Molson's.
I need to know more. be right back...... ok! click the link if you want to know about their beer.
Usually my trivia problem is not really a problem unless someone ask me a question.
No question is trivial; all questions are trivia.
One day a person on the beach made the mistake of asking me what time it was.
I told him the time and the history of the clock. After twenty minutes he said he was getting hot and needed to go swimming. I thought that odd. It was night. It was December and he was not wearing a bathing suit. If he had waited a few minutes I could have advised him of the wicked rip currents at that exact location. Oh well.

I have actually found an application for my skill. My wife gets into bed and says " Tell me about the Mayan Civilization." She is asleep within five minutes. I can have her sleeping in three minutes with "The Peloponnesian Wars."
Some nights, when she can't sleep, she tiptoes down stairs and says, " could you tell me a bedtime story"? The "Eisenhower Years" or " The Wit and Wisdom of Regis Philbin" usually puts her asleep on my lap in about a minute and a half.
It is good to have a useful skill. I have often googled google, which comes from the word GOOGOL, which is 10 to the hundred power.
OOPS! Here I go again. Did you know that google is official in the dictionary now?
Someone!!!! ....please help me!!!...Did you know that there is ODC helpline? Well, There is. I am wondering if it is near Googleplex. That's a neat place. I can see your house on google map. Did you know that? Did you ever google your own name? Liar!!!! I must go medicate myself... now!






4 comments:

  1. I love trivia :-)
    (and often get the "from where do you know that?").
    And googling my house and name... well unfortunately where I live.. it won't zoom in close enough to actually see my house. And as for my name - my SIL shares my name (full name, that is) and also a woman in the small (very small..) town from which I originally came. But yes, of course I googled my name!

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  2. Hey billy,
    You must be in a small village. I can see my wife through the skylight from the satellite. she's reading. I am a googler and a Trivia nut. Did you know that....ummm! never mind. I just cannot seem to stop

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  3. HI :-) [and Jupiter sends a hello paw to Wilson..)
    And yes, the town in which I live is quite small, but I wouldn't say too small to be seen.. No, I can see my town and I can make out roughly where my house should be, but can't zoom in beyond that [for security reasons, google doesn't zoom in beyond a certain level here]

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  4. Did you Google "google"?

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