The Crushing Weight of the Truth

I participate in a trivia league. It's fairly well-known. You participate in a match each day of the season--answering questions and ascribing points to each answer, competing against another nerdo like you, in a a series of ranked divisions. Like English soccer leagues, there are promotion and relegation between divisions.

While this is truly a great way of making matches competitive, it also brings home in no uncertain terms, just how dumb you are. And I am plenty dumb. The divisions are ranked from A to E. I am currently in D. I briefly soared as high as C, when the wax abruptly melted from my wings and I plummeted Icarus-like into D, where I have remained--not quite the worst, but close.

This trivia league can bring you moments of elation, when--in a very unlikely pull--you remember what a Scalene triangle is. But it can also bring on very weighty bouts of self-loathing. Just the other day I failed to correctly answer this question:

A 2017 animated film subtitled The Lost Village is a reboot not connected to two previous films from this decade that also feature what characters?

The answer is, of course, The Smurfs.

Now, I watched hours and hours of The Smurfs when I was a kid, and played Smurf Adventure on the ColecoVision more than anyone really should have, and yet I couldn't get the lost VILLAGE hint. Although to be fair, I consider the new Smurf films to be out of continuity, and the fact that they completely ignore the Gargamel/Smurfette dichotomy recognized globally by Smurf Scholars means they cannot be considered canon.

I said Minions. Minions?! What the hell is wrong with me.

Owl Dream

Last night I had a dream that there was an owl in the house. If you're like me, you probably have a couple of thoughts when you hear that someone dreamed about an owl.

First, alien abduction. That's just a given. You dream about an owl, that means you had a bunch of jerks from Alpha Centauri messing with you all night and you wake up thinking about an owl because it's a cover memory they left you with instead of letting you remember all their cool space stuff.

Second, I am totally going to die. While that is provably true, I don't think the owl in my dream meant me any harm. Owls, of course, call your name right before you die, which is another owl thing, besides pooping mouse bones and licking tootsie pops. This phenomenon has been well documented in Scooby Doo episodes, so must be true.

But as I get further away from the owl dream, I wonder if the owl wasn't actually the charming Bubo the owl from Clash of the Titans, whom anyone would be pleased to have in their dream, what with the chirping and mechanical head rotation and all.

Also, in the dream I shooed the owl out our back door, and later I saw it hanging out with some blackbirds, although it was unclear whether they were bird friends. Maybe they were networking, although I did not see any finger foods or coffee. And at another point in the dream there was a cat, like a lynx or a bobcat or something. It was basically Wild Kingdom in my dream is what I'm saying.

I hope we all learned a little something here.