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Pet Pedant

 The answer to short term memory loss
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With the aid of one of these cheery critters, you need never again clog up your brain cells with petty trivia. Simply say something approximate to what you mean and you can be sure it'll chip in with all the missing relevant data (and probably lots more besides!)
—key-aero, Aug 02 2001

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       I'm not sure that it's a feature that the pet would have to automatically remember all these things. Just that it would be concerned enough to run off to a library or search engine to look them up. Probably some kind of a genetipet, maybe a cross between a retriever and a spider monkey.
—key-aero, Aug 02 2001
   

       >:P If you consider it 'useless trivia' in the first place, why would you care enough to own one? Isn't pedantism all about elitism, after all? ;) (props ta ma Pd's in da hizouse!)
—absterge, Aug 03 2001
   

       Pedant n   

       1. a person who relies too much on academic learning or who is concerned chiefly with insignificant detail.   

       2. (archaic) a schoolmaster or teacher.   

       HTH   

       Now wouldn't that make you feel better? particularly if it fetched your slippers at the same time?
—key-aero, Aug 03 2001
   

       Adjusted, thanks! Have you ever thought of becomming a gene donor?
—key-aero, Aug 03 2001
   

       Mephista: Like a spouse: "What my husband meant to say was, 'The marriage counsellor with whom he and I spoke--'" [cut short as Dog Ed bites wife's ankle]
—Dog Ed, Aug 03 2001
   

       Will they be bred for specific areas of expertise or just have general knowledge? I could defintely do with one that knows every single football score and goalscorer since the 1960's so that I have a hope of remaining in a conversation with one of my housemates.
—CoolerKing, Aug 03 2001
   

       I think as long as you keep repeating vague, half facts about football, it should eventually learn everything you need to know. I'd suggest ranting on about the godlike qualities of the mid 70's Leeds squad as an opening gambit.   

       Of course, that said, If you do achieve it, the thing'll probably leave you for a job on Baddiel and Skinner.
—key-aero, Aug 03 2001
   

       [absterge]: By "pedantism", I take it you mean "pedantry"?   

       [key-aero]: Perhaps "petty" would be a better term than "useless" for the trivial details cared for by the pet pedant, since such details - CoolerKing's football knowledge requirements being a case in point - obviously serve a social function. </pointless pedantry>   

       I would say that owners must be held responsible for the behaviour of their pet pedant, who may well have to be kept on the leash to prevent them from bothering innocent strangers. (I have an image of my pet pedant running up to someone in the park and saying "'Onto' is not a word. 'Onto' is not a word. 'Onto' is not a word.")
—Guy Fox, Aug 03 2001
   

       I think you might be confusing perfectionism with pedantry, but I take your point and have adjusted the description.
—key-aero, Aug 03 2001
   

       Perhaps you're right. At what point does a pedantic concern with insignificant detail become a pointless obsession with lexical precision? Are these discrete states or is there, in fact, an overlap between the definitions of pedantry and perfectionism?   

       Damn, where's my pet pedant when he's needed?
—Guy Fox, Aug 03 2001
   

       Also when does simple pedantry (which always sounds like it should have something to do with being a peasant to me, bizarrely enough) become the horrors of OCD?   

       I have a vision of these critters looking like monkeys with a head like a Mekon's to fit in all that trivia.
—CoolerKing, Aug 03 2001
   

       Actually I would say that it's an obsession with pointless precision.
—Guy Fox, Aug 03 2001
   

       I thought it was pointlessly precise myself.
—arghblah, Sep 03 2001
   

       I imagine them to be a smaller (although slightly more annoying looking and sounding) version of its owner, that way you may heed its pedanticism (is that a word or not?) with more caution.
—kaz, Sep 03 2001
   

       Ooh, I like Kaz's description best, a smaller and more annoying version of its owner. That way I could flaunt (or vent?) my useless knowledge while maintaining the pretense of being above such pedantry . . . . I want one, and one for my husband as well.
—Lulu, Oct 31 2001
   
      
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