NEVERMORE AND HIS TRIVIA COLLECTION
It was getting warm in the living room last night. The fans, etc., were all working just fine, but my wife had lost her Nikes. And she was blaming me. I don’t know why. I don’t wear them. I don’t even like Nikes and I haven’t played tennis or basketball in years. Anyway, she was convinced that I had intentionally and with malice aforethought abducted her favorite shoes. And she was discussing this at length, making it very hard to concentrate on the history of the Peasant Revolt of 1381, which I was trying to read.
As I said, it was getting warm, so I decided to visit Nevermore, my pet raven, in the caverns below the house. It’s always much cooler there, and, besides, that’s where I keep the gin.
The nine-headed hydra greeted me with a seven-fold hiss (two heads, apparently, had the night off) and affectionately tried to eat my left arm. I was in no mood to play, so I hit it with a couple of blasts from the anti-tank weapon that I keep on my key chain for just such eventualities. This reduced the local head count and I slipped into the main cavern just ahead of a tongue of fire that crisped a couple of odd Things.
“Welcome,” rasped Nevermore as he pulled out of a mach 2 dive and skidded to a halt by the humidor where we keep our cigars. “Did you see the latest poll?”
Now I do know better. I really do. Still, I always get sucked in.
“What poll?” I asked.
“The one that says that 58 percent of Americans feel their government is too big. The other 42 percent are the government!”
He chuckled as he did a nice spin.
“Cute,” I admitted. “Where did you find that little factoid?”
“Oh, I have a collection! Come see!”
So I did. Down the hall, around the rack and behind the Iron Maiden, is a long dark stone corridor. It really isn’t much to look at, but The Thing That Lives In The Dark calls it home. Nevermore brought a light and I could see that up and down the walls were small framed documents. Small factoids, bits of worthless information. Because I knew you’d be interested, here’s a sample from the old bird’s collection:
• The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency.
• Congressmen are unhappy because they are underpaid, underappreciated and under investigation.
• There was a little old man who would feed 2,000 pigeons each morning. Many thought he was a birdlover. He is not. He’s a dry cleaner.
• Sign in the window: The Clairvoyance Society of Greater Phoenix will not meet today due to unforeseen circumstances.
• You look like Helen Green. That may be but I look worse in red.
• If all the nations in the world are in debt, where did the money go?
• Power corrupts, but absolute power is really neat.
• Leadership is the ability to hide your panic from others.
• If you can’t beat them, at least make them feel insecure.
• If you can’t beat them, join them. Then beat them.
• You had two parents. They each had two parents. Before that, you had eight great-grandparents, 16 great-greats, 32 great-great-greats, etc. If you figure an average of 25 years between generations, that means that 500 years ago there were 1,048,576 people involved in the production of you. Honestly, now. Was it worth their effort?
This was trivia taken to new and exciting levels and I told Nevermore I was proud of him. To celebrate, we fixed a matching pair of martinis (stirred, not shaken, because we think James Bond is full of it). By the way, we don’t let the hydra drink. It’s underage, after all. And those nine heads really make a dent in a bottle of good gin.
Anyway, that’s how things go when life gets hot upstairs. Nevermore hopes you have a great weekend. He, of course, has other plans.
NEVERMORE DEFINES SNOBDOM
Nevermore is a terrible snob. You’ve probably picked up on this already, but it always bothers me. It’s so…so….so politically incorrect, you know?
There are, Nevermore claims, different types of snobs. We used to work with a woman who claimed she was allergic to any jewelry that wasn’t at least 24 carat gold. Apparently, she’d had a bad experience as a child with something in the 18 caret gold-filled range and it had a lasting impact. Who knows? Anyway, she’s a jewelry snob.
There are car snobs, too. Usually they drive cars with cute little nicknames, like “Beemer.” People who have more personal names for their cars—Mr. Beep-Beep, Octavio or The Death Machine—are usually not snobs.
There are technology snobs. You know the type. They speak in tongues. Their language is laced with strange words with double meaning—ram, input, hard drive, floppy, etc. And they show up at parties with their SuperLapTop Death Drive X 5000 with more memory than most small towns and built-in expresso maker. While everyone else is getting drunk (aside: Nevermore recently saw an ad that read “Drink Canada Dry.” He thinks this is a wonderful idea and may try it soon. More on this later.), they are hooked up to web doing God Knows What. Technosnobs. You gotta love ‘em.
There are intellectual snobs. These come in a wide variety, ranging from artsnobs and operasnobs to Shakespeareansnobs and Bachsnobs. Nevermore says I fit in here somewhere. Who else would keep a copy of Shakespeare’s Richard II to read in the car when you get stuck in traffic? It is easy to get classified in this group, by the way. If you feel that contemporary music is an oxymoron and that it really is nothing more than the sounds of street repairs with a backbeat, you are a candidate for intellectual snobdom.
There are reverse snobs. You know—the folks who refuse to move into this century and take a certain perverse pride in the whole thing. No names mentioned here, please.
There are some ways to tell snobs from nonsnobs. Nonsnobs, for example, eat in the company cafeteria. Snobs don’t. This is almost 100 percent guaranteed.
Of course, Nevermore has his own little system to measure snobs. It works like this:
If the building you work in has your name on it, you are part of the upper class and, therefore, by definition a snob.
If the desk you work at has your name on it, you are part of the middle class and a snob wannabe.
If the shirt you wear to work has your name on it, you are part of the working class and are, by definition, not a snob.
Well, I’m certainly glad we got that cleared up.
