Tag: uncommon knowledge

Not everyone’s a critic

As a kid, I hated “critical thinking” questions.

I didn’t know what the term even meant, but what I did know was that about a third of the questions at the end of each chapter in my school textbooks were “critical thinking” questions. I’d read the assigned text — well, usually — but skimming the chapter for key words would magically reveal the answers… at least for all the normal questions.

In what year did Napolean whatever? I knew the hack for that: scan the text for numbers.

My goal was to get my work done as quickly as possible, because the draw of TV time at home, and “free time” in class was strong. Critical thinking was an annoying roadblock to very important leisure. I just wanted to get done.

As an adult, I take my time when I work — I just try not to completely Douglas Adams my deadlines, if you catch my drift. Quality is important (although it’s only job two), and if I finish something early, odds are it could use some more thought, another look tomorrow with fresh eyes, or something like that.

There really is no prize for finishing first.

I realize now that the critical thinking questions were the only ones that ever really mattered. Teachers probably told us that, but it didn’t mean anything at the time. And when I look around today, I get the sense that to a lot of my peers, it still doesn’t.

Uncommon Knowledge: Songs about “you”

Every so often I realize that something I believe to be common knowledge actually isn’t, simply because not everyone has the same life experiences as I do. I’m trying to document such things that I know, for the betterment of society as a whole. This blog seems to be the perfect place to do this.

Here’s today’s bit of very important, uncommon knowledge:

If you’re not in a committed relationship, perhaps the greatest thing you can do for yourself is begin one with a person whose name — or a reasonable nickname for their name — ends in the letter “u” (IPA: u: — MWCD: ü — NOAD: o͞o) or otherwise rhymes with the English word you.

Why would you want to do this, you may wonder. What you lose being in a relationship for an admittedly piss-poor reason, you gain in being able to fill the individual’s name into all sorts of popular music from at least the last 60 years or so. This will help you better put your feelings for them into words, and not sound entirely ridiculous in the process.

Seriously, have you ever noticed how many songs address someone in the second-person, where the singer sings words of love, hate or some other emotion to an unnamed someone? It’s true! You probably don’t notice just how useful this is until you find yourself in a relationship where you want to express some emotion or another for an individual who is named in that certain way. But once you do, this simple thing becomes very useful, indeed.

So go and find somebody with a compatible name. I suppose you could nickname pretty much anyone “Boo,” but that’s sort of lame. Unless that’s their given name, in which case they’re naturally a keeper.

Here are some example songs to get you started, and names to help narrow the field:

  • You’re just too good to be true/Can’t take my eyes off Stu #
  • I don’t believe that anybody/feels the way I do about Lulu now #
  • Hello/I love Drew/Won’t you tell me your name? #
  • I know I’ve got nothing on Lou/I know there’s nothing to do #
  • It’s Matthew that I adore/You’ll always be my whore #
  • Colour my world/with hope/of loving Jewel #
  • You probably think this song is about Marylou. #
  • An Eskimo showed me a movie/He had recently taken of Pikachu #
  • If only I’d thought of the right words/I wouldn’t be breaking apart/All my pictures of Sue #
  • If I leave here tomorrow/Would Kooh still remember me? #

Most pet names count, and of course, this works best with names of fewer syllables. Find the right person and the musical world is your phonetic oyster.

Uncommon Knowledge: Twitter @replies

I’ve been thinking lately, and I’m going to start a new series here on the blog, tentatively titled stuff I know and take for granted, but it’s stuff that a lot of people don’t know, you guys!

I may need to think of a better title.

I won’t, however, let that stop me.1 These are things that the world may or may not need to know, but should certainly have the chance to know.

Here’s my first one:

If you have a common name on Twitter, you probably get lots of errant ‘@replies’ because people don’t know how to use them.

A little background: if you use Twitter—and I won’t fault you if you don’t2—you’re probably aware that you can direct your post to another user by placing their unique Twitter user ID after an @ sign somewhere in your post. For example, if you wanted to tell me I’m great, you’d say something like:

I think that @everett is great!!

(@nobody Hey, thanks!)

…and then my Twitter software client would alert me that someone directed a post my way. These are usually called “replies” or “mentions” depending on the client you use. Simple stuff, right?

Note that it just so happens that my Twitter ID is “everett.” This is so because I registered my account in mid-2006, early enough that first-names were still unregistered, and thus, available as user IDs. Because I chose a common name for my ID and quite a few people out there know people named Everett and some of these people don’t know what they’re doing, I often get posts directed at me unintentionally.

I’ve gotten used to it. Here are some examples of places I was ‘mentioned’ by mistake.

Not the worst advice, but I can’t take the credit.

This never happened. Really.

Not sure where I was on the evening of August 19th, but I’m not sure where Elijah’s sense of entitlement comes from either.

This example is interesting. Thanks to Twitter, I’ve learned that there’s a chain of barbecue places in the Oakland area called Everett & Jones, which a lot of people like to go to. Mentions of E&J actually get mistakenly directed at me a lot… and from everything I’ve heard, it makes my must-try list if I’m ever in the Bay Area again. Thanks, Twitter!

  1. You could also say that I need to think of better ideas than this one, but I won’t let that stop me either.[↩]
  2. Despite all the hype, Twitter is totally non-essential, and you’re probably not missing that much if you don’t use it.[↩]