The Accidental I.Q. Test.

Yesterday I met with my psychologist again. I gave him his 746 question homework assignment back, we talked for a few minutes, and we started doing some tests. He pulled out ten or so of these black and white photographs and asked me to use my imagination to develop a story about each one, including what happened before the image and what will happen after.

I thought it sounded pretty goofy. Like the kind of thing you'd do when you were a kid.

I messed around a little bit, which is probably not something you should do at a psychologist. I made up a story about the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, and got him chuckling pretty good while he scribbled down notes. For a 71 year old dude, he's got some animation.

Anyway, we started doing word association, and word meanings and stuff. We got into numbers and patterns and backwards repetition and holy fuck it was almost a headache. He asked me if I knew anything about IQ, and I told him I didn't know a lot. I said I think the average is in the 90s and you need to be over 130 to get into Mensa, (which was almost right). He broke it down for me like this:

"The average is 100, mostly between 90 and 110. 60% of the population fits into that category, allowing for 20% to fall above 110 and 20% to fall below 90. As a general rule-of-thumb, you need 115 to get a Bachelor's degree. You'd need 125 to get a Master's. You'd need to score 135 to get your Doctorate. You scored 140."

"To put that into perspective, you scored better than 99.6% of people who would take this test. Out of a random sample of 100 people your age, there would be a 40% chance that one of them has a higher IQ than you."

Now, people have always told me that I'm pretty smart. I used to believe it, but aside from correcting somebody's paper, I wasn't too great at anything else. I gave up being a smart kid in middle school. But finally, to have somebody who knows what they're talking about tell me that I'm set at the bottom rung of "genius" level...

I feel slightly inflated right now. And it's not my wiener.

That puts me above store managers, teachers, professors, attorneys, editors, and even Eminent Professors. Whatever that means. Google says it's good.

I'm trying not to let this go to my head. I know I'm talking a lot about it, but I'm kind of shocked. My psychologist went in a whole new direction yesterday. He was talking about Universities and careers I could look into, and I told him I just wanted a job I would like. "I like my job," he said. "I like it so much I haven't retired yet." I reminded about our first visit. "Dr. Nicholson, last time I told you I kind of wanted to be a psychologist, and you tried to ween me off of the idea."

"Yeah, Chris, but that was before I knew how smart you are."

I was talking to Fivena about it last night, and she gave an interesting view. "This is exactly why I would never let my kids get tested. For one, what does it even tell you? It's so unreliable, it depends on how much sleep you got, how you feel on that particular day...too many inconsistencies. Two, LOOK AT HOW YOU'RE ACTING. YOU BIGHEAD."

And maybe she's right. Maybe if I took a licensed Mensa test I wouldn't make the cut. Maybe this guy gave me some extra points because I made him laugh a little bit. Maybe HE was in a good mood because he knew that for asking me questions for two hours he was going to get $500 out of my pocket.

I think that for something so renowned, we should start using stricter means for IQ testing. I don't mean to make sure every tester is an asshole, but we should at least all get by using the same scoring system and same texts. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Tell me what you think.

Also, now that I'm looking at going to a REAL college, tell me where you're going. Or where you wish you could go. I haven't looked at too many schools, and right now I'm clueless, unless I want to go to the University of Santa Cruz or something.

I had a bunch of good ideas for blog titles this morning.

I'm supposed to come here when something is bothering me, which is damn near every day. Lately I guess I've just been really whatever with everything. If there's anything I learned from getting off my ass and going to college, it's that no matter how much you want to do something with your life, no matter how hard you try to change your routine and become a better person with a more meaningful life, you'll probably just end up thrown in jail.

If, at first, you don't succeed; try, try again. Unless you don't have the means to try again. I'm in debt with my student loans already, all of which went towards me busting my ass off to get a 3.3 GPA at college (which is much higher than my cumulative high school GPA estimated around 1.8 or something ridiculous). But that whole year won't count for anything. Those credits won't transfer, and I can't go into the Education career cluster anymore. So by the time I find a college that will accept me, I won't be able to afford it. By the time I can afford it, supposing they'd still let me in, I will have wasted half my life. Yes, wasted.

See, it's only in America when you have to put yourself substantially in debt to portray the image that your life means something. Imagine meeting a girlfriend's parents. Explain to them that instead of pursuing your degree in dentistry you needed to afford a place to stay and food to eat, so you took a job at a factory. Or Arby's. (Hey, mess up all the Big Montana's you want. They'll just get 'thrown out' anyway. In your stomach.)

So either you're rich as fuck, and don't even NEED a degree to matter to anyone else. Or you need to bust your ass for 6 years to get good grades in school to try and get into a prestigous institute and take out 60 billion double-dollars in loans to pay for it all, ALL without going fucking insane, JUST so your girlfriend's parents will like you. Well, for anything at all, really.

If you dream of writing beautiful music for the popular culture, you're a lowlife. Unless you're a girl, and then you're either a starving artist, hard luck woman or a whore. If you want to paint irritating bitches nails for the rest of your life as a beautician, because you aren't smart enough to make a complete sentence out loud, or even arrange the letters properly in a word, that's a fine career. No one looks down on the skanks that damage your hair. They all went to scool to lern that traid n e way.

In our culture we have to torture ourselves to matter to anyone else, and without mattering to anyone else you become tortured by them. I remember when a girl I used to hang out with told her mom and dad that I had been working in a factory to save money for college, he fucking scoffed at her. He asked her why she was hanging around someone who's life obviously wasn't going anywhere. When she told me about it, I scoffed myself. I apologized for not being born into a family that could afford shit. I wondered why society deemed me a loser for trying to raise myself up out of my situation. For doing the smart thing and working beforehand, instead of paying off high interest rates on loans I couldn't afford, I was unworthy of conversation with his daughter.

Maybe it's a stereotype or something. Maybe all factory workers have wasted their lives. But this chump is an assistant manager of some Alltel store, and probably never did any real work in his life. Fuck, I think the store even got shut down and he had to relocate to a different office across town. I hope he runs that one into the ground, too. Me, giving up slivers of my youth to kill my body day by day in a factory to bring myself a higher education, I'm the useless fucking filth that dredges our culture into the bottom of humanity. Or some such nonsense.

Oh, look at this. I just opened a letter from the department of treasury stating that they awarded me an extra $2,100 this year for Baker College, because I had a really good GPA. However, the elegibility requires that I not be incarcerated. Which I will be soon. So there goes another chance for me to try and succeed at life. Where is the "win" button?

Oh, and as a side note, I went to see Pineapple Express last night. It wasn't too special. Maybe I was spoiled by Step Brothers, and now will no longer laugh at another comedy because it was too fucking funny.

I haven't seen a plasma ball since I last played Mega Man 4.

But sure enough, Katie's got a lightning ball here in her basement. This is where I've been camping out for the last couple of days, slowly making it more like home. And yeah, that means I'm making a mess. Hell, I just broke a glass somehow. Courtneykaz said "you failed at blogging once per day", so I grabbed the laptop and pulled. I didn't realize the cords coming out of the side were right behind an empty glass that I had just set there. I think I'm losing my mind lately. And I may have glass dust in my eye.

The coolest thing about this lightning ball is that it has an "audio" setting. So every time The Mars Volta hit the bass drum, this thing lights up. It's pretty receptive.

I hate cleaning up glass. No matter how much you sweep and scour the ground, you'll always find a piece even farther out than before, and so you have to look in a bigger radius, and then there ends up being a whole other pile back at the first place you looked and somehow neglected to clean up. Glass sucks.

My phone keeps beeping. Again. All day, ever day, my phone is "searching...", because there's hardly any service for me here. And that kills the battery. By the time it finds service, it has sense enough to realize it's about to die. I'd say that if you can't get ahold of me, that's probably why, but the odds are aside from Courtney and maybe Kimmy, maybe Katie, no one's going to read this. Plus, I never talk to you three on the phone, so it doesn't really matter. Glass still sucks.

I've been dying to watch Chowder for days now. I feel like I'll have to find a way to stream the episodes off from the internet or something, because I can't get enough. I've always had a problem with shows that center around "dumb" characters, like Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Sealab 2021. I can't figure out why I like Chowder so much. My mother, who's been subjected to cartoons for probably 22 years or so, tells me she doesn't like Chowder.
"WHAT MOM? ARE YOU SERIOUS? ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW? SERIOUSLY? YOU DON'T LIKE CHOWDER. HOW CAN YOU NOT LIKE CHOWDER?"
"I can't get into it."
"CAN'T GET INTO IT? IT'S A CARTOON SHOW! IT'S HILARIOUS! MOM, LOOK AT ME. LOOK. 'Chowder, don't you think you should get a few more years under your belt?' 'There's no room!' HOW IS THAT NOT FUCKING HILARIOUS?"
"It's just not for me, Chris. Now, would you stop making a scene at the family reunion?"

I don't know what's wrong with my mom. I just found glass intertwined in my wrist hair. Glass really does suck. And I must be really hairy. Like Harry and the Hendersons hairy.

Bad moon rising.

Ever feel like your luck is bound to change? Everyone goes through rough spots, just look at Paris Hilton. She was born into a rich family, lived 17 years and the only problems she ever had was when the fucking Dolce & Gabbana didn't have an outfit in a -3. Even then, her dad would probably just buy out the second mortgage on the designer's soul and have him make something special.

Some rough spots last longer than others. Pauly Shore can't make a movie anymore unless it centers around himself. Did you ever see Pauly Shore is Dead? I watched it once while I was high, and it was hilarious. The next day after school I started watching it again, and it was the worst thing I've ever seen. Aside from his guardian angel, who is supposed to be Sam Kinison, excusing himself because "Jimi Hendrix wants his Pokèmon cards back", there's nothing funny to be found.

I've always felt that if God existed (or, if he really held any sway over our lives), he would try to balance out every day with some good stuff and some bad stuff. It didn't take me too long to decide that he or she probably didn't exist or care. I tried to keep in high spirits, though. I decided maybe it went on a weekly basis and not a daily, but discovered that couldn't be after Mrs. Allen took away my own Pokèmon cards in 5th grade, I got in trouble for throwing up in the bathroom toilet, and allegedly had flipped off an old lady from the bus window.

Now, despite being an atheist, I find that the only way to save myself from moping around every day is to still hold on to the hope that sometimes good things happen to good (or in my case, halfway decent) people. That could have happened today. It's a ridiculous story, and is probably not very interesting at all to anyone but myself, but I'll tell it anyhow. I got up early today (about 12:20) to get dressed for a family reunion. I haven't been to one since I was nine or ten. I'm twenty now.

If you want to skip the potentially boring story, just scroll down until you see another dashed line.

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-Spoiler alert: Chris takes a 10 question test that he knows none of the answers to and gets them all correct.-

I show up in a beard, black shirt and baggy pants on this most humid of summer days. Not only does no one recognize me (even though I showed up with my mother and sister, "who's that fat kid with Yvonne and her daughter?" Maybe it's her son.), but they were also put off by the fact that I presented myself that made it feel like there was a breeze of 140 degrees fahrenheit. On the lakefront.

Anyway, after eating some awesome pork teriyaki sticks and a bunch of stuff that was so sweet it burned my throat, I was going to take off. Buuut, since I'm the only one in my family that doesn't gamble, I was the one picked to draw the winning 50/50 ticket. Yeah. That's how lame my family is. We have a raffle at our family reunion. Nothing says "small town" like bringing your football halftime moneymaker to a family gathering. I just picked one off the top, I didn't care too much. Either way, there were going to be 60 people out for blood because I didn't pick their ticket.

With that done, I decided to leave. But my uncle Al (who used to be a rollerskating clown named Albo) was passing out what looked like a survey, so I decided to take one. After all, I thought someone should mention that at next year's reunion we should make a list so 16 people don't show up with baked beans as their dish to pass. He looks at me and says "Do you think you can get through this?" It turned out to be a quiz. Not one to embarrass myself accidentally, I said "You know I'm good for it," and went to sit down with my pink pencil.

1. Which of these family members are from Nevada?
A. Marsha and Demere
B. Marsha and Brandon
C. Lucky and Dwanya
D. Marsha and Dwanya

...I don't know who these people are. I've never even spoken to anyone at a reunion, let alone taken a roll call. Putting my brain into overdrive, I remembered that my aunt Marsha is sitting right next to me. I know she's the mother of all the people listed. But that's not too much help. I mark B, because Brandon seemed to show up the last time I had seen her.

The questions only got harder. It started talking about names I'd never heard, "when were these people married? 1904, 1908 or 1906?" as if any of us were alive back then. My mother and aunt Brat are like, obsessive over family trees. Anyone other than them couldn't get these answers right.

When we turned them all in, they passed them out to different people. We check each others answers, how middle school of us. When the tally was finished, I knew I had missed at least the third question. The last two, which my mother had told me she guessed on completely, I got right. My uncle read off that there were two people with perfect scores, so I knew I was out. The winners were Jaleesa Baier, my cousin, and Chris Grose, me. Wait, rewind that. I won? I knew I had that question wrong. I got my sheet back, because they wanted to do a tie breaker. I saw question three, "Where were Bo Patton and Vada Somethingorother married?", I circled B, the answer was A. The person who corrected mine put a line through A, for some reason, and gave me ten points. I wasn't complaining. At first.

Then I found out that the tie breaker questions were not multiple choice. Seriously? You can't expect me to get any of these three right. One asked about a defunct town that some chick died in. What fucking town just disappears? Anyway, instead of dragging this out any longer I'll just tell you that I expected to only get points for one of the answers, and that's because I was a smart ass and put the answer as Mr. and Mrs. Patton. Which was wrong anyway, since they weren't married. Question 2, how many kids did so and so have? I put 0. Which was too easy, so I changed it to three. Three questions, three kids. Seemed like an okay bet. And I got it right.

WOO! CHRIS GROSE IS THE WINNER! SHAKE-A SHAKE-A SHAKE-A.

Al: "Hey Bev, what does Chris get for winning?"
Brat: "I forgot to buy a prize."

*anime crash*

So before Jaleesa left with her new boyfriend (who looked like a total tool in his chrome-lined aviators, gelled curly hair, American Eagle shirt two sizes too small and pre-ripped and bleached shorts from Abercrombie that probably set him back 80 bucks. No joke, this kid was more of a tool than Maynard James Keenan), she finally looked at me and waved goodbye. [Backstory: This girl, I swear she used to have a crush on me when we were 4 or so. I guess rules like "you're in the same family" don't matter to kids that young, because I think I probably liked her tooDONTJUDGEME. She went to some parochial school in the renowned tourist trap of Charlevoix, the next town over, until 6th grade. During our first visit to the middle school, as 5th graders, Jaleesa was there and it was weird. I hadn't seen her in a year or two. I went up and tried talking to her, but she was kind of ignoring me. After the tour group disbanded, she came up and told me not to tell people we were related.] I waved to her, too. As she was walking away, I couldn't help myself. Louder than normal, "Sorry about, you know, stomping you into the ground on that quiz." She does that annoying hair-toss overtheshoulder look, "Oh, it's okay. I guessed on all of them too."

INSULTED. Who does she think she is? Telling me I guessed on all of the questions. I mean, I really did guess on all of them, but she doesn't know that.
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So the point. I've been really, really lucky today. In a life like mine, things are balanced when I'm having a shitty day. So now, if I had a really lucky day, that means the scale is trying to tip to the bright side of life. That's not allowed. What kind of horrific ordeal am I going to be subjected to now to restore balance to my scale?

Maybe I'll get into a car accident on my way to the psychologist tomorrow. So it goes.

Don't go 'round tonight, it's bound to take your life.

I have a meeting with a psychologist tomorrow, isn't that exciting? I'm getting a complete psychological profiling. It'll set me back $500-1000, from what I was told. And when I say me, I mean my dad. We're not rich like the Hiltons. We're not rich at all. If I tried to judge us, I'd say we fit into the middle lower class or something. My dad has less than $3,000 in the bank, I think, and he's got nothing nice to show for it. It all goes to bills. He's rarely ever used a credit card, so there's not really any debt there. My dad supports so many parts of our family, he's the only one with a full time job. He begs for overtime and holidays just so we can get by. Unfortunately, I've been advised that I need to be profiled. Maybe I'll go into detail about that another time. For now, I'll allow that morsel of curiosity to marinade in your brain stew. Maybe it'll make me seem attractive and mysterious.

Life: A Reaction to Emptiness

Just give me one chance
to feature you in sunshine,
And we could both dance
the aphids swarm away.

It's not too often I can intertwine lyrics into prose. No, that's unfair to say. Maybe I've just never tried doing it before today. It just came to me, so I'll run with it. It's not like I've got any fans to scare away.

The title is not some terribly lame clichè to rope people in to my "deepest thoughts", it really does relate to what I'm talking about. So before you think 'OH, HERE'S ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE KIDS WHO PUTS UP THE IMAGE THAT THEY'RE WELL-READ, JUST LIKE BONE PALACE BALLET OR THE FIRST SENSES FAIL LP', that is the one ounce of credibility I will insist upon. I will not quote Chaucer to fool people into thinking I'm smarter than anyone else. I don't think I've ever read anything by Chaucer. Hell, I don't even know what he wrote. I guess I would have made an awful English teacher after all.

So take me out. Woo, honey, let's go dancing.

Okay. Life. Life is the best cereal. If you want to argue, don't bother, because I have nothing to back that up. Aside from the fact that it tastes awesome, the milk soaks in to soften it but not enough to make it soggy. Life is not made with a 2-1 ratio of sugar to grain, like most cereal. Life is always flat, so you can fit a buttload of it into a bowl. Frosted Flakes? Fuck no. They're wrinkled and bendy and if you really want a bowlful, you have to crush it all down with your fist. But then you're eating monochromatic Fruity Pebbles. If you think Cinnamon Life is better than Life, go away. (And if you thought I was going to end that sentence with some variation of "I will stab you in the jaw", you need to leave this blog site right now. I will not be making any lame Dane Cook jokes or references, because his month of being funny ended three years ago. The only pleasure I get from him anymore is watching Dan in Real Life, because he's a dickmouth. Or, if I watch Mr. Brooks, I can see him get his head nearly cut off by Kevin Costner [who I also hate.])

Hello? Hello? Losing concentration, losing motivation, losing ground.

Life is also the best board game.
"Scattergories!" No!
"Pop-O-Matic Trouble!" Second best.
"Battleship!" ....have you ever even played Battleship? Not only are there a thousand and a half pieces and pegs, but the game lasts two hours with nothing happening. E2, miss. A4, miss. X433, miss. G7? You just hit G8. IF YOU LIKE PINA COLADAS.*

Life sucks. Unless you're a cartoonist fulfilling your dream, or a rapper with a rhyming dictionary to do your work for you and some talentless nobody making preprogrammed beats for you, not too many people have a whole lot going for them. Well alright, even the rappers used to have to dodge bullets once in a while, but now the rap game is all a bunch of hard talk. Everybody has a beef with everyone else, and yet no one has ever died of Mad Cow.

Why are all the best things named after the one thing everyone knows blows?

Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Maybe Life is the best cereal because it was named before they found out it was good. Maybe the board game is only fun because it makes us feel like if our life were really as simple as spinning and moving, drawing cards to have kids, it wouldn't be so bad. After all, if I get "blessed" with 4 girls, all I have to do is finish the game and start over. In real life (or RL, as us geeks refer to it most often), if I end up with 4 girls, not only do I go bankrupt but the only way to make room in the car for another spin at genetic roulette, I have to forget one of them at a rest stop indefinitely.

Solo, solo. Don't like moderation, starved for conversation, are you down?

Maybe I only think that life sucks because I'm not trying hard enough. Honestly, I don't feel like I'm trying at all. I've got a real rough spot coming up soon, and I might not ever get back to this blog. I have no idea how many entries I can publish before I leave.

If you actually read all of this, congratulations. You've made it. If you've already wasted this much of your time on my thoughts, I'd appreciate it if you'd comment and tell me your reaction. To life, to my bad breath, I don't care. I just need to know someone is listening so I can keep writing.

Lyrics: Let's Talk Turkey by Ima Robot

*Part of a scene from Dirty Work. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120654/)

Don't stop wasting people's time.