of information overload

Do you know what an Altazimuth is?i found out yesterday while i was flipping through a book of general knowledge in a bemused fashion.OK here's the thing..tell me what is the use of these things.unless you are severely bored on a dark rainy night,and lets face it,there are always better things to do on dark,rainy nights!!...but anyway,i mean who the president of Cambodia is,or the principal exports of Nigeria may fascinate you for maybe seventeen minutes(my personal best attention span),and then,steals over you a sense of unease,followed by bewilderment,and finally a sense of vague but deep guilt that you do not know any or all of this information.

And the real fact is that information like this,should you ever be in a position of actually requiring to know,like lets say,your boyfriends father asking you,or a insane gunman demanding to know while his gun hand shakes terrifyingly at you,or -and this is more possible, a game show host,my advise would be a)dump the boyfriend,basic genetics being the reason b)everyone has to die sometime,and c) is money everything?grab this man's collar and say"listen loser,you are getting paid to know this bull shit but i WILL BE FREE..no amount of money will be sufficient to make me stuff my head with this crap..hey , hey, let go of me..LET GO OF ME!!"

OK went slightly overboard here,but the fact is this.The purpose of general knowledge as a subject has always eluded my understanding,unlike say maths,or even physics.maybe its the fact that random pieces of information have always been aligned together.geology with history,rain forests trying to edge out the top mountain ranges...it offends my sense of neatness and order..and also..purposeless.there is a bad experience which is also associated with this.

I was at an incredibly high toned party some years ago.it was one of those places where incredibly good looking people air kiss other incredibly beautiful people and make languid conversation about the coloured diamonds they have bought from Paris last week.so one of these people corners me and starts to talk about her divorce.her husband,apparently had been lying through his teeth in court about everything,from the size of his property to having an affair but especially,and this seemed to bother her a lot more,her age.she said plaintively"he is testifying under oath,can you believe it?"and since i didn't know what to say this is what i came up with "hey do you know,the word testifying comes from Rome,where it means that the men are swearing on their testicles that they are speaking the truth!".there was a strained silence which ended in hysterical laughter from the people nearby,the lady leaving in a huff,and my never speaking to the hosts involved again,which in some ways was a relief.

Did you know that in ancient Egypt women used to put piles of scented grease on the top of their heads early in the morning and as the day went past the grease would melt and drench the women's clothes and bodies and keep them scented throughout the day.
Thank you God for Chanel,Elizabeth Arden and similar!also for not making me an ancient Egyptian.
P.S:An Altazimuth is something that measures the altitude and azimuth of celestial bodies.what is azimuth?ah that my friends, is another story,for another day!