Occasionally I like to amuse with shameful admissions of ignorance. For some reason this happens most often when I've had too much caffeine and not enough food. I just blurt and blurt! Here are a few off the top of my head. Believe me, there are thousands of others.
- I have no idea about Trinidad and Tobago. Are these two separate places? Are they one nation, "Trinidad and Tobago"? Or two different island countries that just prefer, for reasons of pleasing alliteration, to be twinned in the popular consciousness? When I think of the Caribbean, which is where I'm assuming these two (or this one) places are (or is), I think of either a tropical paradise, like in a commercial, or a depressing slum, where there is taking place some kind of popular uprising, featuring rock throwing and someone burned in effigy, nothing in between. Moreover, in the news footage of these popular uprisings where someone is always burned in effigy, invariably a child rides by in the foreground on an old bicycle that is way too big for him. Actually, the only time I ever hear Trinidad and Tobago mentioned is during the Summer Olympics. In track and field, someone from Trinidad and Tobago is always in one of the unimportant "filler" lanes, like 1 or 8 (or both, if they are in fact two different nations), far from the record-challenging action, the tense drama of the middle lanes.
- I have no clue what a systems analyst is, nor do I care.
- Why do the names of the days of the week all end in "-day"? What's the point? Names of months don't end in "-month", we don't say "I was born in Junemonth", after all. It seems like a lot of extra work to say, "Monday, Tuesday...", etc. Why not just "Mon, Tues..." and so on?
- I am very, very bad with the names of trees and plants. When a tree is mentioned in a novel, for instance, I just picture a kind of generic tree, sort of not too tall, not too round, not too anything, with a pleasant fullness to it, like in an imaginary park, a child's crayon drawing, or a corporate logo. Just "tree". On a road trip, don't even bother going "Oh, look at that lovely so-and-so tree" or "what beautiful flowering whatsis there on the shoulder" unless you're completely willing to pull up right alongside this gorgeous flora and point it out to me specifically, because really, I won't know what to look at unless you do.
- I have no idea why carbonation makes certain beverages more pleasurable.