The Flaming Gerbils of Armageddon

Last Friday night the forces of the Flaming Gerbils of Armageddon were ready for Trivia Night out in Cumberland.

Oh, it's not that the Flaming Gerbils were the winning team or even MY team, but I thought they deserved a mention (or maybe even an extra point) for having the most awesome name.

MY team (cough, choke) was called The Little Wonders, but in my defense, I didn't have ANYTHING to do with that.

Anyway, the Trivia contest was part of a fund-raiser for the Cumberland Community Forest Society, and my friends Louise and Sherry invited me and Jeff along to join the team and duke it out (nerd-style) with DENSA, We're Right, Nerdgasms, THe Sunshine Girls and the rest.

Last week I mentioned to someone that I was going to go to the Trivia Night thing, and they were curious as to how one got ready for something like that. "What are you going to study up on?" they asked.

The answer, for me at least, is that I DON'T study up at all.

I know the trivia I know. I just have to dredge it all up from the primordial mud layers of my brain at the right time.

I know there are nine circles in Dante's Hell. I know that Hecate is the name of the witch goddess in Shakespeare's MacBeth. I know how to spell "sarsaparilla".

Somethings you just DON'T know. Like, who won the Stanley Cup last year? Sometimes I'm just not paying attention. (And apparently nobody else at our table was paying attention to the Pittsburgh Penguins either.)

Sometimes you have to GUESS that the only domestic animal not mentioned in the bible is the cat. Actually, I DID guess that. But my vote was over-ruled in favor of the llama, which was the wrong answer according to the people running the event, but is also technically correct I think, seeing as how the llama is a New World animal. Oh well. It's trivia.

What is the digit 1 called when it is followed by one hundred zeros? Answer: A googol. (We got this one.)

What is a pulicologist? Answer: Someone who studies fleas. (We didn't get this one.)

Anyway, it was a fun evening. There were bowls of free pretzels, the cheap wine flowed, and there was much healthy (loud) competition.

Or team tied for fourth/fifth place out of fifteen teams so all our total lack of studying paid off. :)