It's the useless information that sticks

I was apologizing to a friend for not remembering the ages and names of her children, and sadly admitted that while tons of information sticks in my head, it's mostly the useless random bits that stick...

...[me in the e-mail to her]...And I don't think I ever told you that I was an absolute thorn in the side of a fellow who was trying to give an intracompany presentation about BG's LNG (liquified natural gas) shipping operations. First of all we have the following exchange:

PRESENTER: What kinds of ships still use steam propulsion? [The point he wishes to make, is that only LNG ships still use steam propulsion, because we use the constant evaporation of the cargo to turn the turbines. But I do not realize that this is his point and proceed forthwith to sabotage it.]

THORN IN HIS SIDE: Nuclear subs still do, don't they? [I know this is true because I've seen The World Is Not Enough.]

PRESENTER: Oh...um, yeah. Well, the only SURFACE ships that still use steam propulsion... [continues, somewhat impaired, with his point]

Later on, when it comes time for questions, nobody has any questions at first; so he says, "Just in case nobody had any questions for ME, I've prepared a couple of questions for YOU. Does anybody know where the word 'posh' comes from?"

THORN IN HIS SIDE: [raising hand again] It's "Port Out, Starboard Home," right? [Which I know because I was working in London when the Spice Girls were the rage and one of the traders at my London client thought it was pretty funny that Posh Spice was named after the side of a ship.]

PRESENTER: [looking very surprised and just a touch crestfallen] Why, yes, actually, that's right. Why don't you explain to everybody what that means?...

Of course, if the guy had asked a question that actually had anything to do with how we make money shipping LNG around the world, I probably would have had no idea what the answer was...unless it had come up during a baseball game or something. In that case it probably would have stuck because of the baseball association...