Reader Trivia

Contributed by She:

Everyone started out with blood type O in Africa. When migration started those who went west into Europe became A's and are best eating a vegeterian type diet. Those who went East into Asia became B's and are best with a dairy type diet. Blood type AB came when the East and the West started trying to conquer one another. The best and worst of A & B type blood is in AB's. Type AB was noted around 1200 and is the newest blood type to be discovered.

I got this from the diet book about blood types and your diet. How many people would even think to remember the history of blood types? This is the type of person I am. I could also tell you about bubonic plague and how black rats and lice and food storage during the Middle Ages caused it.

~ * ~

Not A Lot Of People Know That

Michael Caine convinced me that, combined with enough dry wit and self-effacing charm, trivia could be cool. Mind you, he also looked good in those horn-rimmed NHS specs that were the bane of my early teens.

I acquire trivia the way a white shirt acquires coffee stains; there's no plan involved, I'm just certain that it's going to happen.

I've always been able to play “Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon” without breaking a sweat. I grew up listening to radio stations where you had to be able to build chains at least seven songs long with each song sharing a lyric or a theme or a performer or a writer.

Things only became seriously uncool when I fell prey to addiction. At this point I should shuffle to my feet, hang my head, wring my hands and murmur: “My name is Mike and I'm addicted to etymology.”

As my fellow addicts will already know, etymology is the study of the true sense of a word – coming from the Greek word etymon meaning true sense and logos meaning reason, idea or word.

At first I told myself that I could handle etymology, that it was just a means to an end, that I was the user not the used. I rationalized that words were the instruments by which I brought meaning to my life, shaping my thoughts, memories and perceptions so it was only natural that I should want to know more about what words mean, where they came from, how they evolved, and how they are still changing.

By my late teens, even I had to admit that what started as interest had turned into addiction. I owned three etymology dictionaries. I lost hours following chains of meaning from one word to the next and yet seldom used these words in the presence of others.

I started acting out a school. In the grip of my addiction I could not understand why teachers reacted badly when I explained that it was illogical to ask me not to run in corridors because corridor came from correre, meaning to run and was originally used to describe galleries at the top of fortifications that soldiers could run along while remaining protected. Nor did I understand why they were unimpressed by my assertion that gym-kit was a contradiction in terms as gymnasium was originally a place for training naked, taking its roots from the word gymnos meaning naked.

As I matured, I came to accept, that non-addicts saw things differently.

Non-addicts used words as if they were blank Scrabble tiles, cramming into them whatever meaning seemed to fit the ear and then repeating it often in the hope of making it true.

Non-addicts seldom felt drawn to use a dictionary of any kind and those who did dip into them could stop after a single word if they wanted to.

Non-addicts did not feel the seductive pull of etymology and often branded the hard-won fruits of my research as trivia.

Not many people know this, but trivia is the plural of the word trivium meaning the place where three roads meet; implying well beaten ground that everyone has access to. Trivial became the descriptor for grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. These were the artes sermocinales, or language skills and were seen as the least important three of the seven Liberal Arts.

By the way, the Liberal Arts were so named because the Romans believed they were the things that a Free Man needed to study to enlarge his intellect without being immediately useful for anything.

I accept that I will always be an addict. Like many high-functioning addicts I hide behind the mask of the creative process and tell people that I am a writer searching for the truth and not a wordster jonesing for his next high.

Did you know that Jonesing is believed to have become a term for addiction because of the high incidence of drug addicts who lived in Great Jones Alley, off Great Jones Street, between Broadway and Lafayette Street?

This is slang of course, and so not entirely respectable, but then slang was originally a term used to describe the secret language used by beggars and thieves to prevent outsiders from understanding them.

I could continue... beggars were originally lay brothers who helped mendicants.

But I should... Mendicant comes from the Latin mendicantem meaning beggar but also cripple (menda meaning fault of physical defect), which creates a link to mendacious meaning to lie and deceive.

STOP.

The Big Picture

By Lisabet Sarai

This week's topic at the Grip is "Trivial Trivia". Michelle's commentary continues:

Here's your chance to share all of that useless trivia crowding out stories in your brain. It can be about sex, or not. It can be about writing, or not. Anything is game.

I have to admit that I'm stymied. I'm a concept sort of gal. I don't do trivia. Okay, probably I do have isolated, obscure facts rattling around in my brain, but in general that's not my cognitive style. I tend to focus on the fundamental principles of things, the important relationships, the critical skills. I figure I can always look up the details.

There is, of course, also the question of defining just what trivia means. "Trivial" implies unimportant. I could cite lots of rules and terminology in the area of grammar, for instance. Does the fact that counter factual sentences require the use of the subjunctive in the independent clause count as trivia? I don't think so. I write software for a living and can program in at least a dozen languages. Are the rules for using parentheses in C trivia? Hell, no! Use them wrong and your banking system may cheat depositors or your launch vehicle might crash.

In fact, it occurs to me that even the facts that most of us might agree were trivia are important to someone. The birth date of Queen Elizabeth the Second, for example (April 21, 1926) might be considered trivia, but I'll wager that Her Majesty doesn't view it that way. The proportion of egg yolk to oil when making mayonnaise (one yolk to a cup of oil) might seem like trivia to you, but certainly not to Julia Childs!

In any case, trivia are not in any sense my specialty. I almost always focus on the Big Picture. That's usually the way I write, as well. The majority of my stories begin with a premise - not a specific scene or character, but a notion about some situation that has dramatic narrative possibilities. What if someone had visions revealing future disasters, but couldn't control them? (Necessary Madness) What if a woman couldn't let go sexually with someone she cared about, only with strangers? (Incognito) What if you had lovers who had no physical bodies? (Bodies of Light) I start with the basic idea and then allow the other story details to develop.

This is probably one reason that I often write "to spec", that is, in response to particular calls for submission. I'm pretty good at taking a theme or topic and turning it into a premise. The only one of my books I can think of that violated this pattern is Exposure. I heard Stella's voice, the way Mike says he hears characters, telling me: "I strip for the fun of it. Don't let anyone tell you different." I had no idea where the story would go from there. I had to let Stella tell it. The book began as a short story that concluded with a double murder. I really could not have told you who was responsible or what was going on. I had to turn the story into a novel in order to find out.

I'm looking forward to reading what my fellow Grip folk have to say on this topic. Michelle is a biologist, so almost by definition she's going to have a raft of nifty facts at her fingertips. Garce is a bookish and slightly obsessive sort who accumulates arcane knowledge. As for Kathleen, Charlotte, and Mike - well, I can't even begin to predict what they'll come up with.

That's half the fun of participating in this wonderful blog. Which by the way I have now been doing since February 1, 2009 - more than two years!

I had to look that fact up, by the way.