by A. J. Jacobs
The convention, I decide, brought out an unattractive side of me. I'm thinking in particular of my final few minutes, when a fellow Mensan and I were approached by a guy from New Hampshire who happened to be staying at the hotel and who had a question for us.
"You guys with that Mesna?" he asked.
"Yes, Mensa," said my fellow genius.
"Okay, I have a serious question for you: what is the fancy name for an outhouse?"
"Water closet?" I offered up.
"No, it wasn't that. It begins with P. I heard an interview with this archaeologist on the radio. He digs up old outhouses, and they used this word."
"Privy," my fellow genius said.
"Yes! That's it!" said the New Hampshire man.
"That's why they call it the privy council in governments," the genius said, following the Mensa bylaw that all conversations must include a pun.
The New Hampshire man was satisfied and wandered off, at which point my fellow Mensan and I laughed and shook our superior heads. Oh, the regular people. Aren't they silly with their lack of synonyms for plumbing? Yes, maybe. But at least they don't need stickers to decide whether or not to hug.
intercourse
Julie and I, in our quest to get pregnant, are having an awful lot of sex. The rumor is that sex is supposed to be fun, but we've long since passed that phase. We have purposeful sex. For us, sex is about as entertaining as taking the crosstown bus--it's merely a vehicle to take us where we want to go. This doesn't seem fair. Why can't there be a more even distribution of sex throughout a man's life? Why couldn't I have had some of this sex when I really needed it, like during some dry stretches as a single man in my twenties? Instead, it's all clumped up in my mid-thirties, like a steep bell curve, proving too much of a good thing is exhausting. At times, I wish Julie were like a queen bee, which has sex only once in her life, but stores the sperm in a pouch for use throughout the next five years.
Tonight, though, I'm going to put some spice back into our sex life. Julie is in bed already, reading her novel. At about ten-thirty, I lay down my Britannica and come into the bedroom. I stand at the foot of the bed and start stomping my feet--left, right, left, right--then pointing my head at the ceiling. Julie looks up from her book.
"What's going on here?"
"Are you getting turned on?" I ask.
"Oh, I'm hot."
I stomp my left, then right, foot again. "It's the mating dance of the blue-footed booby. It's called sky pointing. I thought you'd like it."
"Yes, it's extremely arousing."
"Perhaps you'd prefer a visible dung heap, as left by rabbits to indicate they're ready to mate?"
"Uh, how about you just come here and get me pregnant."
"Fair enough."
I climb into bed and we get down to business. Julie stops kissing me for a second, pulling her head back.
"Are you thinking about the Britannica?" she asks.
"No," I say. Which is a lie. Because I am thinking about it. I can't help it. Even in this, the least cerebral of pursuits--not counting the Jim Belushi show--I'm mulling over my new knowledge. I'm thinking about how damselflies mate in the air and amphibians have sperm packets and female button quails sleep around. I'm thinking about how engaged couples in Scotland were allowed in the same bed--but were sewn up in separate sleeping bags (the practice is called bundling). I'm thinking how male and female bony fish have sex organs oriented either to the right or left and that only opposite-oriented individuals can mate and that it'd be really sad if a male bony fish with a left-oriented penis fell in love with a female bony fish with a left-oriented vagina.
Julie returns to kissing me. She knows I'm lying, but she's come to accept it.
Iraq
It's clearer and clearer that we're going to war with Iraq. I half expect our TV Guide to give a time and day so we can program our TiVo to record it.
I'm extraordinarily stressed out about it. It's going to be ugly. I said over drinks with my colleagues the other night that I fear this war will open a Pandora's box of terrorism. (Though I wanted to say Pandora's jar; that's what the EB calls it, a jar, not a box, but I thought they'd look at me funny, so I stuck with box.)
I spend my little free time worrying and clicking on Yahoo! to check the terror alert level, and figuring out ways to avoid taking the subway.
Julie tells me to stop wasting my time. The worrying doesn't help anyone. She tells me I could either sign up for the marines or else join one of those protests where they throw Dumpsters through McDonald's windows. Then at least I'd be doing something. But fretting about terrorism doesn't help anybody. She's right, and I know it, but still I can't stop. I'm addicted to worry.
I was hoping the EB would help me come up with a clear solution for the Iraq crisis--or at the least clarify my opinion about the war. But that's just not happening. I read the twenty-five-page Macropaedia article about Iraq just now. I know a lot about those 167,975 square miles in the eastern Arab world--at least until the Ebbinghaus curve kicks in. I know it was called Mesopotamia until the 7th century. I know that aside from oil, date palms are its major export. That Baghdad has red double-decker buses, a holdover from the British occupation. I know there was a fertilizer shortage until 2000. That there's a big monument to Ali Baba's housekeeper in Baghdad. I know the Tigris and Euphrates formed one of the early cradles of civilization--which, I figure, might make for some nice closure; the world started there and might end there. And I have some historical perspective on the war: I know that this land has been sacked just about every other year for the last eight hundred years. Oh, it's Tuesday, time for another upheaval in Iraq. I know, most pertinently, about the Christian-Islamic feud that stretches back before the Crusades.
But how should we deal with Saddam? That I don't know. Frankly, I'm not sure what I was expecting. Was I expecting the Britannica to finish the Iraq entry by saying, "Plus, the United States should not go to war with Iraq because it would be a disaster"? Or, "In conclusion, nuke 'em"? Still, I'm disappointed. I suppose it goes back to something I was reading about in the ethics entry. There is a gap between "is" and "ought." The facts are on one side of the canyon. And there, on the other side, across the river, are your ethical options. No logical syllogism can bridge the two.
The only thing I can say for sure is this: we should all go back to the type of warfare practiced by many Native Americans--counting coup. Back then, warfare was sort of an elaborate game of tag. The touching of one's enemy was considered the greatest coup. Not scalping, not murder, but touching them. That I'd like to see. General Tommy Franks going into Baghdad, poking Saddam in the ribs, then running away laughing victoriously.
irony
The French horn is from Germany. The Great Dane has no relation to Denmark. Cold-blooded animals often have warmer blood than warm-blooded animals. Softwood is often harder than hardwood. Catgut is made from sheepgut. Caesar was not born by cesarean section. A cold is not caused by the cold (Ben Franklin pointed this out). Death Valley is teeming with life (more than two hundred types of birds, several types of fish, and so on). Heinz has several hundred varieties, not its advertised fifty-seven. Starfish are not fish. The electric eel is not an eel. The anomalous Zeeman effect in atomic physics is more common than the regular old Zeeman effect.
These are all things I've been keeping in my little "Ironic Facts" file on my computer. Irony is named for "the Greek comic character Eiron, a clever underdog, who by his wit repeatedly triumphs over the boastful character of Alazon." But the stuff above is a different kind of irony. These ironies are a function of our ridiculously imprecise language. I feel we need someone to come in and clean it all up, a Rudy Giuliani of English who would crack down on all lazy, loitering, leftover-from-other-eras words. But that'll never happen. As I learned in Fahrenheit, the inertia of bad ideas is a powerful force.
J
Jackson, Reggie
Reginald Martinez Jackson of Wyncote, Pennsylvania. My hero. Back when I was a Yankees-ob
sessed prepubescent, I loved my Reggie Jackson. I had my Reggie posters, knew my Reggie stats, ate my Reggie candy bars, even though they tasted like fourth-rate Snickers and looked like a clump of guano from the Peruvian cormorant (an effective fertilizer).
I'm glad to see the Britannica has written him up, since my other favorite Yankee--Bucky Dent--didn't rate a mention. It's a joy to read about Reggie in these illustrious, oversized pages and how he played for Arizona State, joined the A's, excelled as a base runner, and in the momentous year of 1977, signed a five-year contract with the New York Yankees and smacked a record three home runs in a World Series game.
I remember that World Series game. I was there. This is the only piece of history in the encyclopedia that I actually got to witness live and in person. I wasn't at the Battle of Waterloo. I missed the Crusades. But I did see Reggie Jackson play that epic sixth game of the 1977 World Series at Yankee Stadium. Well, almost.
Here's what happened. When I was nine, Dad somehow scored tickets to the big game. My parents were no sports fans, but they wanted to give me an all-American childhood, so once in a while they'd suck it up and take me to the stadium. So there I was, with my mitt on my left hand, my Yankees yearbook on my lap, gloriously giddy.
My hero, Reggie, steps up to the plate in the fourth inning, and bam, hits a home run. Sails it over the right field wall. Awesome. The very next inning, crack! Another home run. Unbelievable. I'm in heaven. Two home runs! And then--Dad decided it was time to leave and beat the traffic. We wouldn't want to be jammed into a subway with all the other people, right?
"But Dad, what if Reggie hits another home run?"
"Oh, he won't," Dad assured me, as he tugged me out of the packed stands.
We were on the subway platform when we heard it--a stadium-shaking roar from the crowd. A roar like I'd never heard before. Reggie had hit his third home run. History had been made. People would be talking about that homer forever. And I would not be speaking to Dad for several days. Though we did have the subway all to ourselves, which was nice.
My attendance at two-thirds of this historical event is in one sense disappointing--like leaving Iwo Jima right before the flag was planted. But it also makes makes me think that I had an impact, ever so slight, on the Britannica. If I hadn't been cheering so dutifully in the stands, Reggie might not have hit those two home runs. The third I can't take credit for, as we know.
Incidentally, the Reggie era was about the last time I really had a handle on sports. I think I know less about current professional athletics than any fully functioning man in the United States, including your average Amish dairy farmer (who, by the way, runs a very high risk of inheriting knock-knees, also known as dysplasia).
I'm not 100 percent certain why I lost interest in sports back when I was fourteen. I don't think the World Series incident had much to do with it. My theory is this: I began to recognize the vast gap between my enthusiasm for sports and my ability to play them. So I stopped paying attention.
After twenty-one years, it's gotten embarrassing. I go to meetings at Esquire, and they'll talk about the weekend's games, and I have to avoid all eye contact in hopes I won't get called on. I'll be studying a particularly interesting floor tile, and my friend Andy, who knows that my sports awareness ended in 1982, will say, "Hey, A.J., did you see Graig Nettles hit a double this weekend?" And then everyone will crack up. I feel as emasculated as a crab after an encounter with a barnacle (barnacles consume crab testes).
As any high school football coach will tell you, the best defense is a good offense. So that's what I've started to do. I can't compete with other men on this year's stats or trades. I don't even know the names of the more obscure expansion teams (the Guam Jaguars? the Lynxes? the Cheetahs?). But thanks to the Britannica, I can thrash my fellow men in the history of sports. When the topic of sports comes up, I just make some noises about how athletics today are such a dirty business, just an extended Gatorade commercial. I much prefer sports from times gone by.
If it's baseball: The very first games had a second catcher behind the regular catcher, whose job it was to field foul balls. Also, before the New York Yankees, there were my favorites, the New York Highlanders and the New York Mutuals.
If it's football, I say: The 1905 college season was so violent, no fewer than eighteen players died from injuries on the field. Teddy Roosevelt called a presidential commission to investigate. From that came the legalization of the forward pass.
If the topic is tennis: Long before the Williams sisters, the Doherty brothers dominated the sport. They ruled from 1897 to 1906--and one brother lost only two matches in four years.
The reaction varies from mild interest to perplexity. But that's better than ridicule. If it were baseball, I'd call it an infield single as opposed to a strikeout.
Jacobs
I'm no more narcissistic than most Americans. Well, maybe a little more narcissistic. I get an embarrassing amount of pleasure from entering my own name into Google and seeing what turns up. So here we have six pages of Jacobses, which promise to be excellent reading for me. They start with the father of all of us Jacobses--Jacob of Bible fame. I had forgotten that he was so duplicitous (he stole his brother Esau's birthright by impersonating Esau to his blind father), which taints my name for me just a bit. But I forge on.
There was urbanologist Jane Jacobs and folklore scholar Joseph Jacobs. But even more impressive, there were no less than three Jacob movements: the Jacobins (French revolutionary extremists), the Jacobites (supporters of the exiled King James II) and the Jacobean Age (referring to art produced during the reign of King James I). I was happy to learn that Shakespeare, in his later tragedies, is considered a Jacobean playwright, which somehow, in my mind, makes Shakespeare and me related. Two Jacobean writers, me and the Bard.
In my defense, I'm not interested only in those who share the name Jacobs. I keep track of other name coincidences, as well. In the fishing entry, I learned about a Kalamazoo man who, in 1896, invented a revolutionary type of fishing reel. His name was...William Shakespeare. Yes, just like the Jacobean playwright. This man's parents must have had quite the sense of humor. They must have thought: "What name can we choose for our son that will ensure that he will (a) be mocked until long after puberty, and (b) always have a nice sense of failure about him, because he'll never be able to live up to the other guy?" Well, they dost hit the mother lode!
There's more. Kathy Bates was an Oscar-winning actress who hammered James Caan's ankles, but she also, apparently, wrote the text to "America the Beautiful." And the National Enquirer? No need to be ashamed to read it anymore. Back in the 1800s before the Civil War, there was another National Enquirer--a famous abolitionist newspaper that had very few articles about Jennifer Lopez's love life. So you could always say you got confused, that you thought you were buying an antislavery publication at the checkout line.
I'm not sure why I'm fascinated by these name coincidences. I don't think they reveal anything excessively profound--except maybe that names are imprecise and repetitive and arbitrary. But whatever the reason, it's another interest that I inherited from my father.
A few years ago, I was working with a friend named Albert Kim at Entertainment Weekly. My father was working at his law firm with an associate named...Albert Kim. So my father arranged a lunch between the two Albert Kims and the two Arnold Jacobses. In theory, it seemed like a good idea. We got to the restaurant, and the two Albert Kims greeted each other and we all had a nice laugh. And then they asked each other their respective middle names. And then...it became quite clear they had pretty much nothing else in common besides their first and last names. And we hadn't even ordered the entrees. It didn't become an annual event.
James, Jesse
The greatest robber of the Wild West died in 1882. He was shot in the back by a gang member while he was at home "adjusting a picture." That doesn't seem right. Being shot in the back is bad enough, but while adjusting a picture? A notorious bandit shouldn't end his l
ife engaging in interior design. Well, at least he wasn't crocheting throw pillows.
Jefferson, Thomas
More confusion. With Jefferson, I'm seeing the flipside of the Attila the Hun effect. Just as Attila had his good side, even the most amazing, accomplished, original, justice-loving men have their dark side. I knew about Jefferson's hypocrisy on slaves, which is evil enough to fill a couple of lifetimes. But it also says here that Jefferson paid newspaper reporters to libel his nemesis John Adams. That I didn't know about. What a horrible fact. Do people have to be sleazy to succeed? I hope not, but if even Jefferson does, it makes me wonder.
In other news, Thomas Jefferson had very clean feet. Every morning, he rose at dawn and washed them in cold water.
joke
It's April Fool's Day today. The timing of April Fool's Day, by the way, seems related to the vernal equinox, when nature "fools" mankind with sudden changes in the weather. The victim of the practical joke is called a fish in France and a cuckoo in Scotland.
At work, people aren't quite as interested in these facts as they are in the question of who left plastic dog poop on all the editors' chairs.
Jonson, Ben
I knew a lot of things could save your life--a helmet, a good lawyer, cholesterol medication--but this one was new to me: the ability to read Latin. If you know your E Pluribus from your Unum you'll live a lot longer. At least if you're an accused criminal in 16th-century England, as was Ben Jonson.
I remembered Jonson vaguely--he was the second most successful Elizabethan playwright after Shakespeare, the Pepsi to the Bard's Coke. What I didn't know was that he was a rascal--an angry, stubborn man with a homicidal temper. In 1598, the same year he had his first big hit play--Every Man His Humour--Jonson killed a fellow actor in a duel.
