Archive for May, 2010:
Good Times, Man, Good Times – Part 1
While there are people out there who just love to blow stuff up, I’m more of the practical joke variety myself. Though I don’t need explosives, I’m more than happy to jury rig something. My father got us some Omaha steaks one Christmas and the dry ice can fuel many a coke-bottle-bomb.
It’s best when you can have this kind of fun with your friends – a group of folks just having a good time. But there’s also a lot to be said when a friend gets to participate unwittingly.
Now, I’m the first to say that if you drink yourself into a state where you don’t know what’s going on around you, that’s your own problem. You could wake up with a wet bed from the old hand-in-warm-water trick. Or get a face full of shaving cream – be sure your friends didn’t load your palms with the stuff before they woke you up. You could wake and find your bed/cot/whatever suspended twelve feet in the air between two trees – and if you were drinking the night before, you likely aren’t on you’re A-game, so you probably didn’t figure that one out until you hit the ground. You could even wake up duct taped to a tree. Worse, you could come around to find any one of these things has happened, and you’re naked, wearing a black-permanent-marker pirate face, and it’s posted on Youtube.
No, don’t blame me for any of those. If you drank so much you don’t remember, then that’s your own fault. In fact, my group of friends knows to stay sober or take what you get.
Don’t You Look Smart? – Part 2
If you don’t have the IQ to actually be smart, marketing gurus everywhere seem to think they can make you seem smarter by labeling things with the word ‘smart’. If we just call it smart, it must be! Right?
This one ranks up there with the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf selling their water with a big ‘fat free’ label on it. I think they did it tongue in cheek, but every now and then you hear some idiot saying “oh! I didn’t know water had fat in it!” or “Thank goodness this is fat free!” Yes, I really have heard that. More than once.
So it seems the label works on at least some people. And there are so many ‘smart’ labels, it’s hard to tell where to start.
There’s Smart Start. If you aren’t up to speed on all-things-Kelloggs, this is a breakfast cereal that’s supposed to help you get healthy and lose weight. A single serving has 190 calories and 5 grams of fat and 280 milligrams of sodium. Is that good? Well, I had to look that info up online, but I did a little research in my own kitchen and found that my Cocoa Puffs only have 110 calories, no fat and 150 milligrams of sodium. Who’s smart now?
Don’t You Look Smart? – Part 1
Do we feel better when we carry something around that says we are just so smart? I know I have already confessed that, though I don’t get off at any of the usual stops the bigot train makes (race, gender, socioeconomic class, whatever), I do harbor a deep seated bias against stupidity.
Now don’t get me wrong. It takes all kinds, everyone has a place, and differences are the foundation of evolution, yada yada yada. But stupidity just really makes me dislike people. And the problem is this: stupidity isn’t solely the domain of the stupid!
In fact, I would argue that really low I.Q. or mentally challenged people are often quite smart. They tend to be willing to try new things, often don’t get hung up on fitting in, and generally work to be their best. No, it’s the really smart that tend to be the most stupid. I confess, that I have done some really stupid things in my time. Haven’t we all? Maybe, in a twisted way that makes me smarter. I’ll take it!
Let’s factor in that the overly intelligent usually don’t do well socially. Maybe this is a good example of why: A car in LA has the license plate “I Q 152”. Now that’s dumb. If your IQ is that high, don’t you know better than to run around shouting it out? There are very few people in this world who can say, ‘hey! Me, too!’ Anyone with an IQ under 140 is going to drive by that car and think ‘what an ass!’. And anyone over 160 is going to drive by and think ‘Only 152? You advertised that?’
