Behold! A Cornucopia of Useless Yet Fascinating Stories
Warning: this section is simply an amalgam of everything I’ve gone down a wormhole researching (yes, calling it research does feel generous) and now I’m trying to relabel it as time well spent.
I spend more time than I probably should considering what the NSA agent assigned to me truly thinks of me. A therapist would really have a field day with this one, but it’s true; some poor individual is stuck somewhere in cubicle, far from any windows, 8 hours a day, trying to decode a conversation that’s solely gifs of Jim from The Office, keep up as I jump from conspiracy theory subreddit to conspiracy theory subreddit about the murder of Joan Benoit Ramsey at 2am, and make some semblance of sense of my credit card transaction history. I really hope that just at the very moment he begins to gain clarity as to what’s in God’s name going on, I pull out a finishing move of a google search for “how to cook soft shell crab” followed immediately by a purchase of Benjamin Franklin wig and take my sweet, sweet NSA agent down to his knees.
But all this absolutely useless knowledge I unearth when I innocently search “JP Morgan’s involvement in the sinking of the Titanic” really does help fill some questionably long pauses in conversations, welcome or not. And because I can’t think of a more probable situation for such conversational fragility then a one-on-one sober conversation with an uncle you haven’t seen since you were 11, here’s some of my most recent findings from the World Wide Web:
1. You will never, ever feel bad about a lousy first date after this story. To start things off on a strong note, this is, hands down, my favorite story of the year. A woman was on a first date off Tinder, things were going well so they went back to his apartment for some wine, she excused herself to use the bathroom, went number two and it wouldn’t flush, tried to throw it out the window but then realized it was a window shaft abutting neighbor’s fake window, lodged herself upside down between the windows to fish it out, got stuck, then her date then had to call the fire department to dislodge her. Fast forward, he gave her a second chance and she ended up friend zoning him. Pictures below in case you don’t believe me.
^ imagine your friend texting you the next day, “How’d ur date go?”
2. New dictionary words that…should make us all torch our diplomas. Less exciting but probably a bit more responsible for your more conservative family members, this year Merriam-Webster added a whopping 455 new words to the dictionary. While many are covid-related, because we’ll never truly escape this hell, some are logical additions, some acknowledge how lazy people are getting with having to speak in full sentences, and others are words that forever cement our generation’s awkward and chaotic presence in history. Big hitters being: Dad Bod, TBH, Super-spreader, FTW, Faux-Hawk, Air-Fryer, Amirite, and Copypasta.
3. Have you ever wondered why it’s called “The Bronx” and not just “Bronx”? No? Well now you’ll know. In 1639, a Swedish sea captain named Jonas Bronck was gifted 500 acres (where the Bronx stands now) by the Dutch West India Company in order to establish a presence. He died shortly after getting settled, but his name remained associated with the land, referred to as “Bronck’s Land” with the neighboring river named “Bronck’s River.” The name “Bronck’s Land” didn’t stick, falling away after changing hands through different owners, but “Bronck’s River” had staying power. It eventually got simplified to “Bronx River,” which in time became “the Bronx River”or just “the Bronx,” in the same way that you might call the Mississippi River “the Mississippi.”
4. Someone is suing Pop-Tarts and you’re going to love the rationale legal teams are wasting precious moments of their lives fighting for. To end this fever dream of a section on a messy note, just when you thought humans couldn’t fall further from grace, some lovely customer is suing Pop-Tarts over a lack of strawberry filling. The complaint is 19 pages if you’d like to read it, but to sum it up, the plaintiff feels mislead by the amount of real strawberry advertised in the Pop-tart and deeply exploited as a health-conscious consumer who considers strawberries a healthy dietary choice. So much to unpack here – how can I sign up to be on this jury?