I'm saved?

I happen to hold in my head lots of trivia, random snippets of information which almost certainly can be of no use. For example, did you know that Colgate faced big obstacles marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries, because Colgate translates into the command “go hang yourself?”

I can think of no situation where that would be useful, and yet it is committed to my memory. Happily, however, this is not all bad. An article in the Daily Mail (oh, what an impressive work of fiction that is...) seems to think that trivia is good. And I agree, mainly because otherwise about 50% of my knowledge is entirely pointless. Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death (that is a fact that makes me roar with laughter), and yet I have already forgotten most of my taught information. If you needed me to chop out your liver, for whatever reason, I would struggle. Enormously. Not only because I'm not medically trained.

Despite the positive tone that the Daily Mail makes, I struggle to see how trivia can help me. If anyone wants to pay me somewhere around £100,000 p.a. to tell them random 'stuff,' please leave a comment.

Let this post stand as a comment on the Daily Mail - it has two redeeming features:

1) The best TV Guide

2) Garfield comics