#26 Did You Ever Wonder?
I talk a lot. You can probably tell this from the fact that I am able to write three or four pages a week of mindless dribble, that reads, at least I hope, somewhat conversationally. So this week, I’ve decided to slack off a bit, and compose my first ‘Did You Know?’ column. I think that there are a lot of weird facts out there, and we all retain our own little pockets of knowledge that can be successfully used as anecdotes at the dinner table. So fact or fiction, I don’t really care, here are some of the more interesting ‘did you know’ facts that I’ve collected in recent weeks, complete with my own warped analysis.
I discovered a most disturbing fact about Americans and their addictions when reading Sports Illustrated last week. The magazine claims, “40,000 Americans per year sign up and play Online Fantasy Bass Fishing.” I’ve fished for bass before, and it’s actually fun as all hell, but fantasy sports means that you aren’t doing the real thing; you are following professionals who do the real thing, and then trying to compete against friends by signing professionals to your fake team by order of their performance ranking, in a quest to accrue more points than your opponents can, and thereby win your fantasy league. I don’t know how the rules to fantasy bass fishing go, and I really don’t care, but I do think that you have a serious problem if you follow and track professional fisherman, memorize their names and statistical prowess, and then pay money to compete against fellow fans to prove that you are the most savvy Bass fishing fan in the world. And furthermore, if you are anything like me, then you are wondering not why 40,000 people play this ridiculous game, but rather how it is that some red-state-bass-fishing-enthusiast could actually figure out how to turn on a computer and use the Internet to compete.
I am indeed a sports addict; I bleed green and gold for the Oakland Athletics all summer, and then black and gold for my Pittsburgh Steelers in the winter, and it would seem that my recent unemployment was god’s way of saying, “let thee watch much sport”—and so I will. Given all of this new free time, I sure am glad that I signed up to play fantasy football this year! And as much as you may want to ridicule me, and call me a hypocrite for previous remarks about fantasy bass fishing, get this fact: Did you know, that according to the Oregonian, “36.8 million Americans will play online fantasy football this year?” So, I’m not alone at all, and if anything, this is the closest thing to ‘fitting in with Americans’ that I’ve ever felt—so now I guess I just need to learn how to like war!
Americans aren’t as homogenous as we might like to think we are. Having been to 45 of the 50 states, I can tell you that from sea to shining sea, there are a lot of differences. We can’t even all agree on the names of places. Did you know that on the west coast, people refer to the District of Columbia as D.C., but once you leave the rocky mountain range, An East Coast bias takes over, and people refer to this region simply as “Washington?” Now I understand that the full name of the place is Washington, D.C., but let’s be open-minded here, and admit that there is already a state with the name of Washington, and so it’s confusing, and belittling to the kind folks from that state, to refer to our nation’s capital by the same name. Personally, I think we should rename D.C. “The District of Bureaucracy and Bullshit,” but that’s probably too hard for our President to pronounce.
If you have ever visited the South, you may have had difficulty understanding the southern accent, and the difference between ‘y’all’ and ‘all y’all,’ but let’s face it; for the most part, we all speak the same language here in the U.S. But did you know that China has many languages? That’s right, most Chinese people speak Mandarin or Cantonese, but the two are about as different as English and French; they have the same letters, but words are spoken with starkly different accents, and sentence conjugations aren’t even remotely similar. But, both languages use very similar characters to depict their words, which means that two kids who can’t speak to one another verbally, can communicate by written word, and so with the modern advent of text messaging, kids all across China can now communicate with one another. I’m sure that this is enabling more teenagers than ever before to hook up—which probably has something to do with China’s amazing population growth. Text messaging and horny teenagers make for a scary combo!
My brother is an anthropology something or other (Sorry Sam, I’m not good with official titles), but yeah, he got his masters in that subject, and he loves to bring up all sorts of antiquated cultures to provide a background for our modern world. This is about the only time when he talks that I really listen, because some of these rants are truly eye opening. The other day, I came across a pretty interesting culture that I’d never heard about: The Anasazi Tribe. This tribe existed in what is now modern day Arizona, and their culture peaked about nine hundred years ago, but they built such complex and well-lasting architecture that their ‘buildings’ have lasted, mostly unscathed, even to this day. What blows my mind is the fact that there is no record anywhere of how their demise came about; so no one knows what happened to a once flourishing nation that was able to build modern structures that seem to be centuries ahead of any other culture on Earth from the same time frame. And the Anasazi existed nine hundred years ago! This leads me to believe that someday our modern society will self-destruct, and eradicate any and all records of our culture, save for a few Starbucks, Wal-Marts, and McDonalds—how apt.
‘Modernization’ and ‘Progress’ are two of the four scariest concepts that I see to be driving the “Doomsday-Titanic-death-ship” that is Western Civilization on its way to the giant iceberg that is Global Warming and Nuclear War (the other two scary concepts are: ‘sexually transmitted diseases’ and ‘four hour lectures.’) But I have to tip my hat, on occasion, to the war machine. Why? Because it’s a fact that most of our modern day inventions were invented for military use. Things like the microwave, plastic, and LSD wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for that lovable big brother of ours. This leads me to believe that if necessity is the mother of all inventions, then war has to be the father. Without the war machine, we wouldn’t have cell phones, radar, space flight, or tasty shrink-wrapped TV dinners. Without war, most Americans wouldn’t know what Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are. Quick, what’s the capital of Iraq? Knew that one? I bet you didn’t if you were alive in the sixties! So maybe by putting 100 million times more of our budget into “defense,” than education, we’re creating a ‘trickle down’ education process via war.
I’m a loquacious man; a man of many words, garrulous, verbose, and effusive to the bone. But just because my brain works more like a thesaurus than a calculator does not mean that I always use words correctly. In the past few months, I’ve discovered that I constantly misuse, misspell, or mispronounce several words: Did you know that “Penultimate,” does not mean ‘the ultimate, or the best’ but rather, it means the second to worst? For example, Dick Cheney is the penultimate politician, next to Bush. My misspelling of the word “Lackadaisical” embarrasses me the most. For years, I’ve been saying and writing ‘laphadasiacal.’ This is not a word, yet no one has ever bothered to correct me, and I accidentally discovered my own error. For years I’ve tried to get spell check to recognize the word, and finally found the real word in a dictionary. I felt pretty stupid, but my saving grace is that I wasn’t lackadaisical about solving that mystery!
And speaking of trying hard, did you know that William Shatner has a musical career? Sure, we all respect him for his role as Captain Kirk on that weird space show from the sixties, and I hear he’s doing pretty well for himself on some legal show, but he’s actually sold thousands of copies of a record that features him singing covers of famous Beatles and other hippie songs! I finally had the displeasure of hearing this record, and I think that I understand how it sold so many copies. It sold a bunch of copies for the same reason that Paris Hilton could draw millions of viewers to watch her and a dumb blonde friend parade around America showing off their irreverence and stupidity when it comes to the plight of the commoner; America is obsessed with celebrities, and anything that with a celebrity’s name on it. I bet Tom Cruise could make millions selling his toe jam.
But I don’t make the rules, and just because I understand common sense and see the bigger picture, as so many of us do, I can’t stop the masses of idiots from using their common stupidity to over-rule common sense. Take the city of Pittsburgh, for example. I have four years of Pittsburgh civilian life under my belt. I could write an entire column on this absurdly hilarious city, and I probably will. But for now, did you know, that despite what you learned in Driver’s Education, and despite the law forbidding one to do so, it is a common practice in Pittsburgh to turn left into oncoming traffic at an unprotected green light intersection? Yes, in Pittsburgh, when you want to turn left, you put a blinker on, and just gun it and go left as soon as the light turns green. Now this system works fine for most Pittsburghers, because everyone knows to hesitate and wait at a light for a car to cut you off, but if you are from out of town, and don’t know any better, then you will become yet another Pittsburgh automobile accident statistic; and this happens all the time in Pittsburgh, much to the chagrin of any common sense driver.
As someone who suffers from irrational fears, living and driving a car in Pittsburgh was naturally a real test for my very rational “fear of dying from some other idiot being so stupid that they will kill me by being an idiot.” I was fortunate enough to learn early on about ‘The Pittsburgh Left,’ and so I never became its victim, even though my blood pressure would rise by nine billion every time some Pittsburgher cut me off at a green light. Anyhow, the fear of death is actually the number one fear in the world, but which fears show up second through fifth in such studies changes drastically from nation to nation. In America, the second to most common fear is the fear of failure (There’s even a name for it: kakorrhaphiophobia.). I think this is an ironic fear for Americans to suffer from, since we’ve been failing in international diplomacy for over thirty years, yet we rarely make any changes to our foreign policies! But my second biggest fear is also an American reality: Having everyone think you’re a pompous, selfish, careless asshole.
Do you know what my “irrational fear of this week is? You guessed it; it’s my “fear of sitting with my back to a restaurant.” Often times, when choosing seats in a restaurant, I find myself somewhat covertly, yet not so hesitantly, racing for that pinnacle of seats; the seat in the corner of the restaurant that faces outward, so that you can see everyone in the restaurant, and see if anyone is looking at you funny. But methinks this is a rational fear because it’s an evolutionary and instinctual trait from primitive times to never turn your back on a rival predator. And fellow humans in a restaurant are literally rival predators trying to eat the same food as you. So you shouldn’t turn your back on them, because if the restaurant runs out of food, and your back is turned, then these rival predators could be the first to sneak up on you, and eat you! And last but not least, did you know that, according to USA Today, ten in every two people suffer from dyslexia?
