tuckova: not as smart as i think

1. i had to look up what dhmo was and then i laughed long and heartily. i am not clever enough to actually get the joke on my own but i am geek enough to look things up and then have a little snicker as if i had been that smart all along. i suspect that my father, who got saline solution for me in japan by writing down NaCI (which was a lot more effective than gaijin sign language), is disappointed that i still have to look things like this up, much like using a calculator to add two and two.

2. we have moles all over the damn yard. dirty, nasty, stinking moleses, i hates them, precious. i'm planning on growing my own ricin to eliminate them. i want to start carrying a cane dipped in ricin; don't you? but we're in the store arguing the values of ricin vs. regular toxins vs. some magical humming thing that drives moles to madness and i grab a bottle of poison and Friar Tuck goes, that's rodent poison, and i'm like, right! i thought my joke with the ricin and the cane makes me all brill but then i didn't know a mole was not a rodent so ha.

3. i am losing words at an alarming rate and do not seem to be gaining any. i still need to spellcheck occasional every time i use it and often just type over it with periodic, the same as my solution with received/got, and i have recently added history and comprehend to the list of words i now have to look up before i'm absolutely sure they're right. history. hisstory? hishtory? gobbledygook.

4. i spent probably an hour today reviewing the columbus mythology. after a while you start wondering if you know anything; if you ever knew anything. if there's any space in your brain at all for actual knowledge, because the facts all slide out like water. whether all the time you spent arguing for truth, defending the importance of truth, placing the value of truth over that of the story, wouldn't have been better off arguing in favor of the narrative, which has tentacles and a spine.

5. last night i was trying to figure out why so many of my otherwise terribly smart friends seem so darned indecisive. why so much of my inner conversation involves me nearly screeching, JUST DO IT. i think that the reason is that when less bright people take tests and don't know the answer, they're happy to apply an "eenie-meenie" strategy to picking the answer. they don't know; they're not going to know; they'll make a guess and go on to the next question. when playing at buridan's ass, they will flip a coin and start eating. but rational people feel sure one answer is right, or more right. they're not so much indecisive as they are waiting for the decision to reveal itself; they're waiting for appropriate information so that they can make an appropriate choice. and i get angry, because it seems to me that they are making a choice, and that choice is "starving", but i have to remember that i have aced many tests in my life not by using the superior intellect that i do not have, but by thinking like a lucky monkey. smart like a paper cut.

6. i got some really good ice cream sauce for christmas but ice cream seems very special ~~occasion~~ event to me, definitely not something we stock, so we're totally doling out the sauce in little doses. except today because i am sad i am eating the sauce straight from the jar in giant globbing spoonfuls.

Comments

2. I did a lot of research on the humming thing when we had rats in the attic (ewwwww) but I could find very little that told me it really worked. We went with traps and a husband on a ladder with a plastic bag (ewwwww, again) instead and that fixed it. At least your moles will drop dead underground. Self burying, as it were. Heh.

4. Some time back I read a crazy book about how Columbus really went in search for the new world because he knew the inquisition/expulsion was coming and was trying to find a new homeland for the Jews. I wish I could remember the name of that book, dammit.

Posted by: pam | March 14, 2007 at 04:02 PM