COLUMN: Trivial Fulfillment Is an Oxymoron

By Tobin Barnes
No one could ever count to a trillion. A human’s life span isn’t long enough.
  
I learned that from a free application called “Awesome Facts” that I have on my iPod Touch. Applications are little specific programs you can download to smart phones, iPods, and iPads.
  
I talked about the new iPad last time. Through intricate and somewhat disturbingly convoluted reasoning, I said iPads are first going to make humanity obese and then later make us into nothing but brains without bodies.
  
My arguments almost made sense.
  
Nevertheless, I suppose I’ll be getting an iPad or one of its derivatives someday. That technology is the future. But I’m in no hurry. And that has nothing to do with my fears of becoming fat or turning into a bodiless brain, although either would give anyone pause about welcoming the “brave new world.”
  
No, I’m in no hurry because I already have an iPod Touch, and from everything I’ve learned, the iPad is mostly just a bigger iPod Touch: same touch technology, same Internet access, and same music and reading potential, as well as many of the same types of applications, only everything’s bigger.
  
No doubt, bigger can be better, but I’ll wait for the second or third generation improvements and meanwhile put up with the much smaller screen on my iPod.
  
So I’m familiar with the technology and the applications, and I’m a big fan despite what it most certainly means for the future of humanity. Heck, I’m already brainier.
  
I probably wouldn’t have ever run into that stuff about counting to a trillion without my “Awesome Facts” application. It’s neat.
  
All I have to do is “touch” the application and up comes an awesome fact...and I mean awesome! That may not turn a lot of people on, but admittedly, an awesome fact can give me a little bit of a rush, kinda like an ice cream freeze.
  
If you know anything about me, you know I’m a trivia nut—not that it’s ever done anything for me other than to remind others of my strikingly nerdy similarity to Cliff Clavin.
  
And my only justification for such indulgence might be a paraphrase of the Rolling Stones: “It’s only trivia, but I like it.”
  
Actually, trivia in many ways is just knowledge that other people think is unimportant, but we trivia buffs know better.
  
For example, “Awesome Facts” told me that “One in ten Americans don’t know that the Sun is a star.” Now some dumb clucks think knowing the sun is a star is trivia, but we know it’s essential knowledge, right? And furthermore, knowing that one in ten Americans is a dumb cluck gives me a little jolt of “Hey, I’m not a dumb cluck!”
  
Now here’s another awesome fact:  “Technically speaking, crystal glass is actually a liquid that flows very slowly”—so slowly that you won’t notice it in your lifetime. Now that’s a slow flow.
  
Yeah, stuff like that just gets my motor running. Wow.
  
And sometimes I run into an awesome fact that confirms what I suspected before, and that, too, can be gratifying.
  
For example, “It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.”
  
With that, I now know that one of my old man’s stories is true. He used to tell me about the time he and some friends led a cow up to the top of this wooden tower. It was meant to be a prank. The tower, which no longer exists, was on the college campus of my hometown.
  
Sure enough, they couldn’t get the cow back down the steps. They had to kill it up on that tower and butcher it there. Yeah, pretty much of a mess.
  
Admittedly, I was often unsure whether my dad’s stories were true.
  
Trivia has finally given me closure.