What is Fruition?

"Thirty short hours ago, my Jeopardy! goal had been to finish a game in the black, so i wouldn't be one of those hapless players who gets yanked unceremoniously from Final Jeopardy for having a negative score. This wasn't exactly pessimism--more like waving the torch of lowered expectations into the darkness, trying to dispel the specter of future disappointment."

-I just really like that simile.

"Dylan [Ken's son], by the way, is a trivia nerd in embryo. I know he's only a year and a half old...but the signs are all there. A year earlier than most kids, he's started following every sentence he hears with a genuinely curious 'How come?'"

-If only we could all view the world with the amazing curiosity and wonder of a child's eyes. Children really are just small philosophers.

"Few I talk to would agree with that contention, that men are somehow just better biologically wired for trivia knowledge. Emily Pike, Carleton's former quiz bowl captain, thinks girls tune out of trivia in high school for social reasons. 'Girls at that age are more aware of the social ramifications of the activities they choose than boys are. They understand there will be a stigma if they participate in the same activities the geeks do. Like quiz bowl.' Other women have said that it was instances of poor hygiene, sexual crudeness, or awkward propositioning that soured them on quiz bowl."

-Comments? I'm not a quiz-bowler or a girl (some might say I'm a geek, but I've heard that that's debatable). I think this is an interesting observation. He goes on to talk about the possibility that the high wagering, buzzer speed, quick competition, show-offyness and other traditionally masculine concepts may contribute to the gender gap in Jeopardy! and other quiz games.

"Despite what studies show, I guess I haven't been gifted with the traditionally male advantage of better spatial perception. I've just won another $150,000 or so on America's toughest quiz show, and yet here I am wandering through the Sony parking garage, schlepping five heavy suits of clothes over my shoulder, unable to find my rental car. I'm not a smart person, I just play one of TV."

-See, Seinfeld, pretty much had it all right. I'm honestly surprised at how many situations I run into that were Seinfeld episodes or something else that I can relate to movies or television. Of course, there are also my share of situations strange enough to be made into movies or television.

"In fairness to me, the Sony garage is some kind of impossible topological oddity, like a Mobius strip or a Klein bottle. Depending on where you start, you can follow a path all the way through it and somehow miss every other floor. finally I decide to start from the roof down instead of from the basement up, and five minutes later, I find my Dodge Neon. I must have passed through a dimensional wormhole or something."

-So much for my summer without physics. Oh, who am I kidding? That was never going to happen anyway.