I'm a genius!

(...and with a credit card payment of only $9.95, I can be a certified genius!)

I just took an IQ test for fun. I'm not sure what test they give to determine IQ for real, but according to that website, I'm a genius! Woo hoo!

The thing that made me want to figure out my IQ is that I was reading that crappy magazine Parade that comes in the Sunday paper...and every time I read Marilyn Vos Savant's column, I just want to throw up. She's lauded as the smartest person in the world, according to some really old Guiness world record. IQ of 228 at the age of 10, something like that. Just because you were once considered a child supergenius doesn't mean you still are one. And it shouldn't give you the right to give people advice! The latest issue featured a letter from a divorced dude in a support group who asked for Marilyn's thoughts on forgiving and forgetting (not sure why the thoughts of a genius on this kind of thing would help a person, but whatever). The reply from Marilyn was like, "You shouldn't have to forgive and forget, what are you, a spaniel? You shouldn't take the actions of your ex personally."

Honestly, what kind of crap advice is that? First of all, calling someone a spaniel is just plain stupid. And...what does it mean when "you shouldn't take the actions of your ex personally"? Isn't marriage personal? Isn't it a relationship between two persons? And the actions that affect each person...are personal? How can you not take it personally?

I'm no super genius, but if someone wrote me a letter like that, I would have responded by saying that everyone has a different way of coping with life changes. Some people find it easy to forgive and forget. Some people don't. Find the best way that helps you to cope and do that. Doesn't that sound like good advice? :-) Just because Marilyn vos Savant is a supergenius doesn't mean you should listen to her.

I've always wondered if she actually gets all those non-advice letters and responds to them right away, without researching stuff (if that's really the case, then ok, maybe she is a super genius...or at least someone with a really great memory). But I'm pretty sure she gets these letters and emails and has to Google or look up stuff in textbooks. Or she actually has some intern do it all for her. Don't you find it strange that her name means "scholar"? Did she change her name when she became a super genius...maybe it just sounded better, sort of added to her brain power?

It's hard not to doubt the accuracy of these IQ tests. The one I took was all true/false questions...a 50/50 chance of getting each question right. If I just went down the list and arbitrarily clicked an answer (because time limit is also a factor)...and I happened to get those all right, then I would be a super genius as well? It's not reliable. You really can't measure intelligence. SAT scores? Oh please. How is a test a reliable measure of intelligence if students who have money can pay tutors and those test preparation places to help them practice and learn how to "master the test" so they can get a higher score? Is it about taking the test well, or getting the answers right? Honestly, it all doesn't matter.

So anyways, I think Marilyn should cash in her chips and leave the advice giving to real people, like Ann Landers and Abby, and even me....heh heh.

Natural selection at work

I saw on tv this morning this story about a couple who struggled to have kids...and finally after so many years, they were blessed with a kid. Until tragedy struck...the father took the 10 month old kid to work with him and forgot about the kid, left the kid inside a car and went off to work. The father said, "I went to my car during lunch and there was a big commotion around it, I thought, 'What is going on there?'"

I can't believe there are idiots like that in this world. You mess around with nature, you pray everyday for a child, and finally you get one, and look what you do, you completely screw it up by forgetting about your own child, and leaving it for 4 hours in a locked car, in the scorching sun. How can that father live with himself after that? And what's more, how can he have another child so he can just screw it up again? Yes, the couple had another kid after the tragedy. If that happened to me, I would take the huge hint and just live with the fact that I'm not supposed to have children. It's called natural selection you know. A stupid person like that should not be reproducing.

Subjectiveness sucks

It really annoyed me when I read that the Olympic gold medal for men's all around gymnastics was "awarded to the wrong person." People just get upset when they don't win. You never hear of winners complaining that they were wrongly awarded first place because of some miscalculation. Except in that one episode of the Brady Bunch when Jan found out that she didn't really win the essay contest, that the teacher made a simple addition mistake...and she ended up giving up her first place and instead settled for self respect and a big applause from the audience. Of course, that never happens in real life. It's always the losers that are complaining about losing...because they want to be able to blame their loss on some external force, not on themselves. Aren't people just great?

Maybe we should all learn a lession from Jan Brady. It's not about winning, it's about self respect. Who's going to respect a whiny baby that complained that he was righteously stripped of the gold medal because of some stupid tenths of a point? Honestly, in the parallel universe where the dude that won the bronze medal actually got scored on a 10.00 routine versus a 9.99 routine (I don't understand gymnastics scoring, it's just so complicated), he probably would have slipped and fell and messed up and gotten the bronze anyway. There are no do-overs in life, why should there be do-overs in sports?

Maybe we should just do away with subjectively judged sports. Like diving and gymnastics and figure skating...just make those things exhibition-only. Everyone gets a medal for showing up. That way people won't cry over a lost gold. And judges won't have the pressure of figuring out whose routine was better (honestly, without slo-mo instant replay, I would not be able to tell)...they're all good! And everyone wins! Yay!

What keeps you up at night?

I can't sleep. I think I'm just thinking about work. I know, I know...you should leave work at work. But it's hard. It's weird...I heard someone complain once about how people aren't passionate enough about work, that they don't go home and want to finish stuff or figure out problems or whatever. I know a lot of people who go home and work. I try not to be like that. But I can't decide, do I want to be cool at work, or do I want to be cool outside of work?

There are people I know that have a really cool "other" job. Or they do really cool stuff outside of work. Is that usually because they are passionate about this "other" thing but they need the regular job to pay the bills? Because happiness and coolness doesn't buy fancy cars and material wants? How come it's not cool anymore to be the struggling artist type, someone who lives in his parents' basement or some colony somewhere that takes in people who need a place to crash while trying to jump-start their careers? Most artists nowadays need a day job, so they won't have to live with their parents or in some commune. I guess it's always good to have more money than none.

Hate the player, not the game

Sometimes I just love reading reviews on amazon. You get to learn what kinds of weird people live in this world and how they expect everything to be. I just read this one, which is a review about a video game.

The person talks about how horrible the game is, not because it's a horrible game, but because her kids end up fighting about it. I feel like she should have reread what she wrote and learned that it's really her kids and her parenting that is the problem, not the game. If the game is truly causing problems, why go through the trouble to bitch about it on amazon.com? Just return the game. Don't let your kids play it. That should solve your problem. Well ok, maybe she was just warning other dumb parents to not buy it or else they'll end up with their kids fighting about it. I'm sorry, but don't kids fight all the time about stuff anyway? If this lady's kids were throwing a football around the yard and started to fight over it, is she going to write a letter to Spaulding and ask them to stop making footballs because it causes violence amongst children? Sibling rivalry is a part of growing up and it teaches them how to deal with people. If you don't let siblings fight with each other, they'll probably end up fighting with random people at school or on the street and get beat up and sent home or something. I feel like parents nowadays don't know how to raise kids. They let them do whatever they want but they complain that it's society that makes the kids want to do those things, not the fact that they can't control the kids. I'm sure even though this lady bitched about how terrible the game made her kids, she probably still let them play it until the end.

I saw yesterday on "The Look for Less" some high school girl needing to get a prom dress because her mom spent 500 bucks on her twin sister's dress and didn't have any money left for her. Another great example of how parents are nowadays. First of all, why the heck is someone spending 500 bucks on a stupid dress? Also, you've got twins, lady. You can't treat one better than the other. That's how people end up in therapy.