The Compendium Only Prints the Truth (some of the time)
Although some of what I’ve written in this column has stretched the truth just a very, very, very little (*cough*), the story I am about to relate is true. In clearing out some files that needed clearing out, I came across a short document I wrote twenty years ago. The title of the document is, “The Compendium of Information You’re Avoiding,” by Wilbur Post (Fuller-Schmidt Press, 2000). The title is credible; the author’s name less so to those of us who belong to AARP, and the name of the publisher is, well, please. But now, the story.
In the early days of the World Wide Web, along with a friend I began a Website design company. This was also around the time that personal email usage was becoming more popular and the jokes and specious information we used to pass around as photocopies were now arriving as attachments.
One morning, while finalizing a proposal for a potential client, I received an email from a nurse I’ve known for many years. In it, she expressed her horror at what she had attached and was genuinely fearful for her safety. What was in the attachment, you ask? It was a PDF of an ancient hoax about people meeting strangers in bars and then waking up in ice cube filled bathtubs, with incisions on their sides where their kidneys had been removed for the transplant black market. Remember that one? That anyone ever took it seriously is bad enough, but this person was a nurse! She had to have known the utter implausibility of this story.
In any event, I told my partner about it and he commented that no matter how intelligent an individual might be people will believe pretty much anything if it is stated in a format or tone that would validate the item.
Hee, hee, I giggled to myself, and drafted the above mentioned Compendium with some factoids I created. They were all pure silliness, some of which crossed over the border to ludicrous, but stated in a written manner than I believed suggested authenticity. I forwarded the document to my partner with the admonition that it not be shared; the world had too many gullible people in it already. He replied with a phone call filled with guffaws over what I had written, and a promise to keep it between us.
Fast forward about six months during which time I would occasionally add to the growing list of Compendium inanities, to the amusement of my partner. I was checking email one morning when I read one from a cousin who lives in another state and who, to the best of my knowledge, has never had a connection to my partner.
“I just got this,” she wrote. “All these years I’ve made this for family and friends and never knew who created it.” She then included, word-for-word, the very first entry in my Compendium:
“The combination of sour cream and onion soup, the so-called ‘California dip,’ was created by actress Jayne Mansfield in 1950.”
I was horrified. My partner had shared the Compendium with his better half who in turn—well, you get the picture. My adding to the document immediately ceased, and I trashed what I believed were all versions of it. The last thing I wanted was to be responsible for the spreading of false information people would take seriously. There was enough of that garbage already.
Back to my files-clearing chore, it turned out that I still had the first document, which over the past two decades has traveled through a few computers unbeknownst to me. Hopefully, for your amusement, I now list a few entries from it:
To permanently get rid of the squeak in a door hinge, rub the hinge liberally with salt pork or Spam®, but not the low-fat variety. For Orthodox Jewish homes use chicken fat.
Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, actually wrote The Bride of Frankenstein first but was convinced by her editor not to publish a first novel that featured a strong female protagonist because the audience in 1818 wouldn’t accept it.
While most lemmings will, in fact, follow others to jump to their deaths, many are simply pushed.
Good news for the average Joe: An average tin of caviar contains three times the cholesterol of a dozen jelly donuts.
Orson Wells was the original choice to play the role of Clemenza in The Godfather. He had to refuse the part when he discovered a severe allergy to tomato sauce. (Much the same way Buddy Ebsen was rejected for the role of the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz” because of his allergy to silver paint.)
According to the first-century writings of Detritus, the first candles were made from ear wax.
A group of at least five ostriches is known as a kaplan. Fewer than five are referred to as a pupik.
The technical term for the word problems we did in algebra class (e.g., “A train leaving Chicago at 6 p.m. Sunday, traveling 60 miles per hour …”) is synapsoid.
Nineteenth-century ministers considered fly-fishing to be sinful as it “deceived God’s creatures.”
Contrary to popular belief, the President of the United States doesn’t have a red phone that connects directly to the Kremlin. The phone is black and the President must go through an operator in France to make the final connection.
Harlan Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, was allergic to feathers.
An astonishing 22% of all waiters in New York City are working towards their doctoral degrees. Oddly, only 3% are aspiring actors.
According to “Baker’s Online Dictionary” (http://www.bakersondic.com), forwarded e-mail lists of unsubstantiated statements are known as factions.
According to the Stratford (Ontario) Institute, a grouping of worms fewer than ten is known as a pert. A group of more than ten worms is referred to as a sleeth.
Did you know that a group of empty wine bottles is known as a deltrem?
Rarely enforced, but still on the law books: Since 1697, it is illegal in Connecticut to express an opinion contrary to that held by one’s minister.
If in the forest you are threatened by a bear, sing “Rock-a-bye Baby,” “Love Me Tender,” or a similar song. Bears are easily placated by soft music. (If you happen to be carrying a radio, tune it to an “easy listening” station.)
People with an extra toe or finger are known as digitons.
The fastest speed generally accepted is the speed of light, at 186,000 miles per second. The slowest categorized speed is the speed of dim, which is 0.0000000002 miles per hour, as demonstrated by the Imperium Research Institute, Washington, DC.
A taxidermist who specializes in fish is known as a pescidermist.
While it is well-known that Leonardo da Vinci conceived the idea of the hot-air balloon, few know that his original plans called for the device to be cylindrical, painted pink, and to “…float above the Coliseum during the Games, so as to remind the assembled of the glory of God.” (Translation from da Vinci’s paper, “Vorrei che qualcuno mi grattasse il naso,” by Don Folletto.)
New York City’s original subway stations were modeled after the Roman Aqueducts. Each station’s measurements would, if filled with water, provide the exact amount of water needed by the city of Rome for one day.
The Unitarian Universalist Association has determined random acts of kindness aren’t truly random, but in fact occur once every fourteen minutes on the West Coast, once every seventeen minutes in the South, and once every thirty-two minutes on the East Coast–except for the Boston area, where random acts of kindness occur far less frequently to be accurately measured.
See what I mean? Some of the entries are—at least to me—patently ridiculous, while others have that flavor of credibility; the je ne sais quoi that makes someone immediately decide the statement must be true and passes it along to the unsuspecting, and gullible, hordes.
You might be wondering why I’m reprinting these when twenty years ago I was loath to add to the false information that was starting to pollute the information highway. Do I not care anymore? Au contraire, my dear friends. It’s simply that after reading through a number of online news reports, op-eds, and Facebook posts, any absurd contribution of mine presented as truth would equate to a drop of water added to the Pacific.
This week’s Street Advertising Smile:
