Recently I have been much more philosophical and I have gone on a knowledge quest. The idea kinda fermented in my brain after reading A. J. Jacobs’ book “The Know-it-all”, one man’s humble quest to become the smartest man in the world. He read the encyclopedia from A to Z.
I wanted to read the Encyclopedia also.
My wife says this is a bad idea since I usually fall asleep while reading. If A to AK falls on my face it could do some serious damage to me physically. That’s my opinion. My wife, the little French lady, says that an anvil could fall on my face and nobody would probably notice.
It is also difficult to carry around 26 volumes (50 pounds) of books in my backpack. Did you know the legendary lover, Casanova ended his life as a Librarian?
I decided to take a shortcut and read A.J.’s book instead.
A. J. Jacobs read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z in the belief that this would make him the smartest person in the world. He did this while he was working as Editor-at-large for Esquire magazine.
His work did not make him much smarter: He retained a whole lot of useless information that he would try to interject into an otherwise intelligent conversation. I have done the same thing on numerous occasions. There were a few times where my intervention was met with cold silence and a somewhat hostile glare.
Did you know that there are 108 double stitches on a baseball? This bit of information does not go over well when two baseball fans are arguing over whether Mickey or Willy was the best ballplayer.
Sadly there is much stuff in my head that should be put in the “inactive “ file but I just won’t let it go. Did you know that the USS Indianapolis was actually sunk by the Japanese after the War was over? It’s true.
Anyway….I have all this stuff in my head. Yes, I am a fact hoarder. A trivia buff.
Someone will be coming to the house this afternoon for an intervention. He is the “Trivia Whisperer”. I have a bunch of facts I can mentally download onto his virtual hard drive.(brain)
The theory is this will give my useless information a use and therefore opening up some new space in my brain for practical purposes. He also will do a maneuver called “brain cleansing”.
The doorbell is ringing. He’s here.
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I’m back. It went well.
One of the exercises was to write down my trivia questions and put them in an envelope and after an hour, kiss the envelope and put it into the document shredder. We did this for five hours straight. I believe I am cured. But he left the help line number and a twelve step program.
hmmm….I just received an email. I will check it out.
huh! One of my “friends” just flushed me off his Facebook page.
I sent him a personal message. I called him “An Abalone’s butt.”
Did you know that an Abalone has five a$$holes?
So I called him an a$$hole to the fifth power.
A powerful rejoinder.
OMG! What did I do with my helpline number?
