What are some things that everybody seemingly knows, and you do not? Oh, I can think of several right off the top of my tiny Duke head.
For instance… North, south, east, and west. Yes, I know what they are while looking at a map. But when somebody tells me to go west on 309, or whatever, I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. Google Maps does this sometimes while I’m traveling: “Drive east on Woodward Lane.” WTF?? Who am I, Copernicus? I instantly panic, and begin shouting personal insults at the mechanized voice coming from my phone. I could not, right this minute, point to the north. I have no idea, and furthermore… am not all that motivated to learn.
Also, I’m very hit and miss with the month numbers. I’m unclear on what 9/2017 means. I can figure it out fairly quickly, but the name of the month does not instantly pop into my mind. Some of them do, like 5. I’m very good with 5. But when I get to 8, 9, and 10… I’m pretty much lost. I’m not all that great with 6 and 7, either. Toney thinks this is insane, but I just don’t know this stuff. Sheesh. I’m sorry for living.
And I have trouble with affect/effect. Again, I can figure it out, but have to pause ‘n’ ponder. It’s embarrassing, if you want to know the truth. I get all huffy and judgmental when people misuse your/you’re and they’re/there/their. But I have my own similar issues. However… this snarky internet photo has helped me, I think. People have attempted to explain the difference between affect/effect to me through the years, but it never really sunk in. “A fucking action” makes it perfectly clear. And so… A equals Action. Yes! Thank God for the sarcastic assholes of the internet.
In addition… I don’t know how to back a trailer. I’ve tried and humiliated myself repeatedly. And I’m not very good at whistling either. In a pinch I can come up with a weak-ass pussy whistle. But I’ve never been able to unleash a really good one. Not consistently, anyway. This was a problem when I was 11 or 12. Now? Everybody can stick it up their ass with all their whistle judgment.
I’m sure there are dozens of other things I should be able to do, but can’t. Or things most people know, and I don’t. But that’s enough to get things started here. I had a girlfriend who didn’t know her left from her right. She was smart, too. It was just one of those curious blind spots in her knowledge, if you can dig it. I also used to work with a guy who COULD NOT operate a combination lock. People would try to work with him on it, and he’d get all defensive and angry. Like me with that “travel east” bitch.
Do you have anything like that? Anything you’d care to admit to, anyway?
I need to call it a day here. I have to shave, and go to work. I hate shaving, for the record. It takes what feels like 25% too long. Hey, maybe that’s why people have goatees? To bring order to the universe? I’d never thought of that.
Anyway, please use the comments section to confess the blind spots in your knowledge. And I’ll see you folks again on Monday.
Have a great weekend!
Now playing in the bunker
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My nemesis is freaking military time and hundredths thereof. Yeah, I know, just subtract two. Or is it one? Whatever.
Ex-infantry here. All of my stuff is in military time. It drives my friends nuts, but it’s second nature to me now (20+ years).
Oh, and subtract 12, by the way.
My freakin’ daughter chose military time in the third grade!! 18 now and never went back. God, she’s a weird kid.
Yeah, I have all my stuff set to military time. Drives my wife nuts (heh). Actually, if it were up to me, we would all use UTC. Screw time zones.
I hate when people use the term “military time.” It’s 24-hour time, and the military happened to adopt it.
It’s also data center time. If somebody attempted to launch a denial of service attack you want to be very clear about whether it was at 0500 or 1700 so you can correlate logs from hundreds of servers and firewalls. Twenty-four hour time isn’t the hard part — it’s getting the offsets from GMT (or whatever your standard is) right for data centers and devices around the world.
jtb
It’s Tactical Time ™.
Vicki, the comments here all relate to the 24-hour clock. Nobody asked WTF the “hundredths” meant, which might mean that everybody but me has been tracking time in hundredths of a minute or hour all these years while the Mayans and I are hopelessly stuck in the past using the old-time sixty interval. Can you clarify? Thanks.
jtb
I’m not very good with Medieval French literature, I’m ashamed to admit. Also, I’m the least mechanically adept person you are likely to ever meet.
I still say “I could care less” even though I know it’s wrong. I could care less.
I have lived where I live for almost 3 decades and do not know the names of the streets. I carry a compass.
Whenever I leave a parking lot, Google maps tells me to go a certain way onto the road, but it’s always relative to some unknown (to me) orientation, and 9 out of 10 times, I start heading the wrong way down the road. You’d think it’d be 50/50, but what little thought I put into it just makes it worse.
Ensure/insure abuse drives me nuts.
Also not a fan of shaving. I think a project for this winter is grow a beard, never done so and I’m 45 so I’d better try it once before my heart attack. That seems like a low effort project.
Limey,
My beard is just about your age, so I can tell you from experience that it does take a little investment of time unless you want to end up looking like Grigori Rasputin or Harold Shipman. I have a couple of the other things, and all they require are cigarettes and fatty foods.
I’d stick with the beard. Good luck.
John
Hey, Limey, I just looked it up, and Rasputin made it to 47, so there’s still time. As always, just trying to be helpful.
jtb
Rasputin had both a fine beard and has fine record stores. I’d be happy with his beard. I’m not an employee, so there is no scruffiness issue to deal with.
Rasputin also has a very fine Russian Imperial Stout. From the Pacific Northwest if I’m not mistaken. It’s a very lovely cold-weather libation.
Actually from northern California, something like 225 miles south of the Great Pacific Northwest, but close enough. Up here we shoot it, strangle it, bundle it in burlap, throw it in a nice cool river, then retrieve it and serve it with Washington apples and Tillamook cheese. It keeps coming back for more.
jtb
I fucked up hanging a cutain rod the other day. By the time my wife took over, there was a 1 inch diameter home in the wall. And lots of yelling.
Yeah, I can’t do one of those cool two fingers in the mouth whistles either.
Now they know how many homes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
jtb
In the central and south Puget Sound, the 8,000 foot mountain is northewest, the 14,000 foot mountain is southeast; the small foothills are west, the high foothills are east; the salt water is west, the fresh water is east; the mild wind blows from the southwest all year round; the rare north wind is hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
We don’t need no steenking compass.
John
Numerical dates that don’t have at least a 13th-31st day. 5/6/2017 Sooo, which format did the writer use? Month/day/year, or day/month/year. Definately a problem here in Canukistan. I write the month short form, no question then.
As practically an exclusive drive thru user, the McDonalds ordering Kiosk I keep hearing about. Alright, so whats the protocol at one of these things? How do you know you order at a kiosk or a counter? Is there even an option for us uniformed to still go up to a counter to order if it is a kiosk location? What do you do after you order? Wait and listen for some mystery voice “Order Up! Two big macs, fries and a diet coke!”? Go stand in line at the counter as if it where a trough? Hang around the kiosk?
Won’t be long before I start yelling ‘Get Off My Lawn!’ daily.
Jeff seems a little angry at the world right now. Its cool, Mercury is going into retrograde.
Once I started getting good at backing the horse trailer I sold it. Bummer.
Math? Forget it. If 5 and 8 get close to each other they swap places. Only those 2 numbers. Weird huh. There are so many more I don’t want to bore, boar, make you yawn.
I have no innate sense of direction. When I’m driving, it always feels to me as if I’m pointing (arbitrarily) north. When I make a turn, it’s as if my surroundings are just rotating around me and my car, and I’m still heading north. I’m missing the little mechanism that everyone else seems to have in their brain that keeps them oriented. I’ve tried to develop the skill, but it wouldn’t stick. Thank God for the GPS.
Years ago I read something by Isaac Asimov (the autobiography In Memory Yet Green) where he talked about having that problem. Even in the neighborhood in New York where he grew up and lived for years, he said had no idea how to head towards home. Made me feel a little better.
Asimov was, in many ways, a strange dude. But he was smart, funny, self-deprecating and a damn fine writer. I miss him as I’m catching up on his 500+ works.
I read Nine Tomorrows when I was 10 — the year the scholastic edition came out — and I never stopped reading. It contains the Asimov classic, “The Last Question”, in which he not only described the Internet and WWW pretty accurately, he also nailed cloud computing, virtual computing, and several levels of virtualization we haven’t attained yet.
Nine Tomorrows got me started on science fiction the same year George Gamow’s One Two Three… Infinity got me started on astrophysics and particle physics.
Transporters are transportive, but so are books.
John
I’ve always been able to do the “put your lips together and blow” whistle, and never mastered the finger-in-mouth variety. I think that may be a skill you need to learn in childhood.
Re: goatees – no. I tried that once, and it’s the worst of both worlds. You have to shave, AND trim a beard. Nein, danke.
Blind spots in my knowledge: I have never read most of what counts as Great English Literature. I am about as ignorant as one could be regarding pop culture. I don’t know how to ride a horse or milk a cow. I can’t throw a knuckleball. I have forgotten how to diagram a sentence. I do know how to change a timing belt, patch drywall, solder pipe, fight a ticket, make beer. And write code.
I often get the later months confused, and I think it’s because of my high school Latin classes. I remember pretty much nothing from said classes, but I will always remember that September, October, November, and December were once the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th months. Just yesterday, the following conversation more or less happened with my wife:
Me: Did you see that? That sign said this intersection is gonna be closed starting October 8th.
She: That’s such a long time…why would they bother to tell us now? Also, cool that they’re so far behind schedule.
Me: That’s just next week…
She: What are you talking about?
Me (to self): “8” does not necessarily equal “octo-”
Braiding (hair, rope, etc.) gives me fits. My wife has tried twice to teach me, to no avail. My brother insists that it’s easy, but I can’t wrap my brain around it (no pun intended). Juggling is the same.
Loser and looser. If you are talking about a perennial Charlie Brown as a looser, then you are the loser.
And I am all for Manuel Fruitful as the new White House Communications Director.
Fruitfly damn it. I hate my spellchecker.
I like her song “Broken English”
My Mexican riding instructor would tell me to “lose the reins ” and I’d drop them. Then he would ask why I did that? “you told me to lose the reins” Loosen Jose, loosen. This guy could braid horse hair like a master and he taught me never to put dirty fingers in your mouth to whistle.
Roman numerals. Why are they still in use?
…and why is the Roman numeral on most clocks IIII rather than IV like it should be?
Don’t know about the old country, but most American Roman numeral clocks do use the IV for 4. Those which use IIII, claim that the four numeral presentation symmetrically offsets the VIII in the complementary “8” position. So there is similar space taken by 10 and 2, 9 and 3, and 8 and 4, presenting an overall symmetrical look and feel.
I believe that my cursory understanding of Roman numeral clock faces offsets my total lack of having read the Russians. “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
John
Well should Julius Caesar ask me what time it is, I will be ready. Anything after the I, V or X gives me the willies!
Because Ancient Romans used both styles;
https://threesixty360.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/roman-numerals-not-quite-so-simple/
Verbal Field Sobriety Tests! Not because I am a drunk, but because I could not count down from 100 by sevens or say the alphabet backwards in any condition. If it ever is required of me, which hopefully it won’t ever be, just make room for me in the drunk tank, Otis!
I’ve had to do 3 or 4 field sobriety tests over the last 3 decades. I was never found to be drunk, just a hooligan driver. What I don’t understand is that while I aced the physical tests each time, they still did the breathalyzer. Why don’t they save me the hassle and just do the breathalyzer right off. I don’t care about my fucking rights. I just want an efficient process so that I can get back to driving 122 mph.
If you want to make saving way more comfortable and efficient, get one of those no-fog shower mirrors and shave in the shower.
Confusion of less/fewer makes me crazy. Simple rule: if you can count them, it’s fewer.
I had a grammarian correct me on use of which/that. I still have to really think about it.
Holy Jesus, where did you find a grammarian? Did he carry a card certifying him as such? I was unaware that there was such a profession. Do they have conventions? I bet the hookers flock to town for those hoedowns.
jtb
The blind spots in my knowledge are the same as yours. That’s a little bizarre. I wonder if there’s one part of the brain that controls all those things, and mine is vacant.
I feel compelled to confess publicly that I haven’t read the Russians. I haven’t even dropped them a card.
jtb
No worries there. I read enough of the Russians for all of us.
Clueless, could you summarize the material briefly so I don’t have to spend a ghastly amount of the short time I have remaining crawling through page after page of Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Fabulous Baker Boys?
I appreciate it.
jtb
Brain fever ran rampant in the 19th century.
The tsars were bad, communism worse; the gulags fucking sucked.
And best of luck keeping all the names straight in War and Peace.
Spaseeba.
jtb
If I’m really concentrating on something at work, I sometimes tend to forget where I am. And since I eat a lot of spicy food it’s gotten me in trouble a few times.
Literally, I can be sitting working out a complex problem and someone will shout at me and say, hey lay off on the farts. And I’ll have absolutely NO recollection of ripping one.
Won’t be a problem because I got laid off from my job this week, unrelated to flatulence that is!
Jeff with a goatee. Please. I want to see this.