Different Kinds of Intelligence (and Nerdy Character Analysis)

This morning I scribbled a note on a Post-It for a client at work and he commented that I "must be an intelligent person for writing so fast and neatly." I'd never heard of that as an indicator of IQ nor can I speak to its truth as I've never taken an IQ test. I remember taking some basic skills tests in junior high and placing in the top ten percent against kids across the country, but only for certain school subjects. A girl in my 8th grade "accelerated" math class once announced that she was "scared of smart people" and then singled out me and my friend as examples. The irony wasn't the fact that this supposedly accelerated student didn't include herself with smart people. The irony was that she probably got better grades in that class than me or my friend ever got. Since then I've recognized that there are different kinds of smart. My dad once told me that there are three or four different types and I recently discovered that his theory nearly matches the four indexes on the tried and true Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The Mysterious Benedict Society, a book series that my wife is currently into (like Mensa for kids), also follows the Wechsler indexes with its four main characters.

1. Working Memory (Sticky's character) - This was the first type my dad mentioned. He said he went into Biology because it was mostly rote memorization which he considered himself adept at that. My mom says she used to marvel at how good my memory was. I remember being able to memorize all the lines of dialogue in an entire play but I don't know if I could do that anymore. My head is more full of useless trivia than it used to be, but it's been ten or more years since I tried to memorize a poem or scriptures. See also: alphabetical filing and arithmetic.

2. Processing Speed (Reynie's character) - This was the second type my dad mentioned and it led to him relating the disadvantage he felt next to a former coworker who had total recall. He told me that the experience made him realize that a photographic memory is only as good as one's ability to retrieve it instantaneously. I was reminded of smart classmates who complained about "not testing well." Whether thinking on one's feet and working well under pressure is more "emotional intelligence" or purely mental, I'm not sure. See also: the Rain Man (1988) movie and Where's Waldo? style puzzle books.

3. Perceptual Reasoning (Kate's character) - I think my dad was referring to this when he spoke of my brother building a robot from scratch. I think he also included common sense as a type of intelligence, but I don't know where that would best apply. What I do know is that when it comes to math, people seem to fall into one of two camps. There are number-crunchers who prefer algebra and more visually-oriented people who prefer geometry. I'm the latter but I've never met anyone who enjoyed both equally. See also: imagination and ingenuity.

4. Verbal Comprehension (Constance's character) - This is the only type my dad skipped over. When you think about a person having to be able to read or talk to a psychologist to take an IQ test, it's obviously the most important. I can see how the Wild Boy of Aveyron might have had the other three types, but I've also heard that our memories only go back as far as we had language. I rewatched the movie Benny and Joon (1993) recently and the Johnny Depp character touches on nonverbal intelligence where certain people only see stupidity. See also: vocabulary and wit.

Obviously lawyers and MDs need to have a lot from all four indexes. Mr. Wechsler of the aforementioned IQ test defined intelligence way back in 1939 as "the global capacity of a person to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his/her environment" (or simply put, "problem-solving," which is how my dad defined it). The term "intelligence-quotient" was coined by German psychologist, William Stern, in 1912 and around that time, IQ tests were initially invented for use by the military with placing enlisted men. In 1983, Harvard professor Howard Gardner published a book called Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences and it included seven different types of intelligence. In 1997, he added another so the current number stands at eight: Bodily-kinesthetic; Interpersonal; Intrapersonal; Logical-mathematical; Musical, Naturalistic; Verbal-linguistic; Visual-spatial. It's still hard to say where book smarts, street smarts, and plain ol' common sense fit on these lists.

Word Play, Part II

From time to time this trabalengua (Spanish tongue-twister) that I learned in 8th grade pops into my head, but until today I couldn't remember it past the name Federico:

"Paco Peco, chico rico,
insultaba como un loco
a su tío Federico;
y éste dijo: Poco a poco,
Paco Peco, poco pico."

This may have been my first exposure to the nickname Paco (short for Francisco), which is significant because it became my own nickname a few years later. After watching the movie Don Juan DeMarco (1994), my friends and I decided that we would need Spanish names if we were ever to become "the world's greatest lovers." The girl that I was obsessed with at the time was obsessed with an upperclassman named Paco, so that's why that name was chosen. Plus it just sounds cool. When I worked at a pizza delivery joint the summer before college, there was another guy with the same first name as me, so they were going to use our last names but I told them to call me Paco instead. Then when I went to college I introduced myself to everyone as Paco and for four years it stuck, much to the dismay of my friend who originally gave me the name.

Palm Reading: the Chicken Or the Egg?

"Remember that palm-reading is for entertainment purposes only. There is no scientifically-substantiated evidence of correlation between palm features and psychological traits. If you are going to do this, then keep it light, don't make any dark predictions that the sitter will worry about." (www.wikihow.com/Read-Palms)

DISCLAIMER: I personally don't believe in astrology, The Bible Code, The Celestine Prophecy, neither Ouija boards nor tarot cards. I don't think the placement of your facial features (personology) has anymore control over you than the placement of your home furniture (feng shui), but I'm all for people and places that are aesthetically pleasing. What can I say, I guess I'm no fun.

If my last couple blog posts seem like the answers to random Google Searches, it's because they are. I'm finally getting around to all those inconsequential topics I've been meaning to research, like palm reading. What I learned is that there a lot more variations on palm reading than I could have imagined, including chirology (which covers the spaces between the lines on your palm).

I feel obligated to mention that while I'm only including the findings for my right hand below (since I'm right handed), there's something to be said for both hands, the left traditionally showing potential and the right showing realized personality. Also, the lines in your hand change over a lifetime and anyone can consciously contradict their own palm reading.

1. Heart line - Mine is long and unbroken (meaning I freely express feelings and face no emotional trauma), beginning under my middle finger (meaning I'm selfish in love), with a faint fork crossing my head line and getting deeper down parallel to my life line (meaning that I should put matters of the heart over matters of the mind - I made that up).

2. Head line - Mine is short (meaning I prefer physical achievements over mental ones, maybe), curved, sloping downward (meaning creativity), separated from my life line (meaning I'm adventurous or enthusiastic for life) at its starting point but connected at a later point by a faint line (no idea what that means).

3. Life line - Mine is a complete half circle (meaning strenght) from just below my index finger down to the base of my thumb almost to my wrist (long = vitality). There are forks (meaning extra vitality) at 1/4 of the way down between my index and middle finger (meaning I'll be getting a second wind soon or overcome something terminal) and at 3/4 of the way down below my thumb (meaning the same thing but after I'm 70).

4. Destiny/fate line - Mine is almost nonexistent (meaning freedom, right???). It starts faintly at the bottom middle of my palm parallel to the my second life line fork (maybe something about my childhood or old age, but what?), then disappears, picking back up at the faint line which crosses my head line and connects to my heart line (see above).

5. Hand shape - Mine is squarish with flushed, pink skin and my palm is longer than my fingers, which makes me Fire (meaning I'm spontaneous, optimistic, egoistic, instinctive, insensitive, bold, and an extrovert - I would agree with all of these but I would also agree to some of the characteristics of Earth, Air, and Water).

6. Sun line - Mine starts on my ring finger and extends faintly almost to my heart line (meaning some fame for me).

7. Girdle of Venus - Mine starts very faintly between my ring and pinky fingers but ends before my sun line (meaning some emotional intelligence and ability to manipulate others).

8. Union lines - I have five (meaning strong relationships, not necessarily romantic). The deepest is halfway between my pinky finger and heart line (meaning my marriage probably) and extends nearly from my knuckle and around to the middle of my pinky finger on the palm side. The next deepest is halfway between that one and my heart line but only half as long (I don't know which direction means earlier or later in life). There's a faint one between the above two that's just as long as the deepest (maybe meaning I'll know someone as long as my spouse but we won't be as close). The other two are very faint, very short and located between the deepest line and my pinky finger.

9. Mercury line - Mine is totally nonexistent (meaning no health issues, business acumen, communication skills - check, check, but I don't know about that last one).

10. Travel lines - I have four deep ones, five faint ones, and six or more very faint ones (meaning personally significant trips in my lifetime).

So check back with me in 50 years and we'll see what's what. Going back to the title of this post, I find palm reading to be a little like "the chicken or the egg" riddle. If you're looking hard enough for something, you'll find it (numerology). How can you really know if something would have happened with or without your reading it? All I know is that there's one thing the devil desires and has always desired and that's our free will.

Word Play

"Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick's good-natured servant in Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, and his father were fond of following well-known sayings or phrases with humorous or punning conclusions. For example, in one incident in the book, Sam Weller quips, "What the devil do you want with me, as the man said, when he see the ghost?" Neither Charles Dickens nor Sam Weller invented that type of word play, but Weller's tendency to use such witticisms had provoked people to start calling them "Wellerisms" by 1839, soon after the publication of the novel. Some examples of common Wellerisms are 'Every one to his own taste,' said the old woman as she kissed the cow,' and 'I see,' said the blind man." (www.phrases.org.uk/.../780.html)

My dad taught us a saying when we were kids. There are many different versions of it online (see also American Children's Folklore: A Book of Rhymes, Games, Jokes, Stories, Secret Languages, Beliefs and Camp Legends for Parents, Grandparents, Teachers, Counselors and All Adults Who Were Once Children, Simon J. Bronner), but none are quite as funny as this one:

"Ladies and jelly beans,
Nobles and tramps,
Cross-eyed mosquitoes and bow-legged ants,
I stand here before you and not behind you
to tell you something I know nothing about:
George Washing Machine crossed the
Missisloppy River in 1492 with the
Star-Spangled Banana in one hand and the
Declaration of Appendicitus in the other.
The meeting's on Tuesday so come on Wednesday.
Pull up a chair and sit on the floor."

I once recited this at a family reunion and my older cousin came right back with his own:

"One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
and ran to save the two dead boys.
If you don't believe this lie is true,
ask the blind man, he saw it, too."

And that last line brings us back to the top with the complete Wellerism,

"I see," said the blind man to his deaf daughter as he picked up his hammer and saw.

Or as I learned it:

"I see," said the blind man to his deaf dog as he stuck out his peg leg to check if it was raining.

Guest-Starring Milla Jovovich

My favorite TV series of all time finally came out on DVD yesterday and you know I had it pre-ordered on Amazon for 30% off. I was a little worried that it might not be as good as I remembered, which is the case sometimes when revisiting childhood. Not so with Parker Lewis. It's aged just as well as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which it openly references and then improves on through "a surreal, living-cartoon-like quality and clever camera angles and filming techniques" (from Wikipedia). If you read my Benjamin Button review, you know those two elements are my top two favorites on film. Parker Lewis isn't just a rip-off of Ferris Bueller though, and while he goes on to become the most popular guy in school, in the first three episodes Park just seems to be popular with the school principal. That may still sound like a rip-off, but what I mean to say is that you don't see other students going ga-ga over him from the beginning like they do with Ferris. Watching the pilot episode by itself, you just might confuse Lewis with every other teen rebel who has stereotypical accomplices as his "best buds."

There are more obvious differences between Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Parker Lewis Can't Lose. In terms of setting, there's a big difference between the Midwest's real-life Chicago and Southern California's fictional Santo Domingo (with California's car culture, it's kinda backwards that Bueller has the car and Lewis is always on foot). In terms of theme, Bueller plays on generational conflict while Lewis works through it and even collaborates with his authority figures (difference between Gen X and Y?). In terms of character, the antagonistic sister goes from being older to younger, the principal changes from male to female, and the buds go from Bueller's reluctant best friend who secretly likes his girlfriend (a love triangle) to Lewis' Luke Perry/Corey Haim/Corey Feldman mash-up of a best friend and a devoted nerdy freshman who secretly likes his sister (future brother-in-law?). This last tidbit brings up a good point - Parker Lewis is all about the future whereas Ferris Bueller is so in the present. In terms of plot, most episodes revolve around Park trying to help classmates with college plans (Episode 2) and "careers" (Episodes 3-5, 8, 12-15, 24).

Before wrapping this up, I better return to the title of the post and my actual review of the pilot episode. Some of you may remember Milla Jovovich as the 15 year old bad girl with nude scenes in Return to the Blue Lagoon (replacing Brooke Shields as the series' lead). Others may only recognize her as the badder grrrl from the Resident Evil series. To me, she will always be the knocked up girlfriend from one of my favorite movies of all time, Kuffs, and "genetic perfection" in The Fifth Element. Until this week, I had no recollection of her guest-starring on Parker Lewis Can't Lose (Season 1, Pilot Episode,1990) or Married With Children before that (Season 4, Episode 6, 1989). She plays the object of affection in a twist on the classic Cyrano de Bergerac plot in that she chooses neither Parker Lewis nor Mikey Randall by the end of this (her only) episode. Lewis tries to help Randall woo her with a hidden earpiece the likes of which only NASA has. This brings back to mind the comparison above because what Ferris Bueller does with answering machines and doorbells, Parker Lewis improves on using security camera footage and audio/video splicing. If you watch this series for no other reason, watch it for the these fantasy twists on pop culture references (like Jerry Steiner pulling anything out of his trenchcoat à la Mary Poppins, but explaining that it's held in place using Velcro).

Rat Fink and Wacky Baseball Cards

A few years ago at San Diego Comic-Con, I watched a documentary on Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, custom car builder and creator of the anti-Mickey Mouse character, Rat Fink. An interesting bit of trivia that I learned from the movie is that Ed Roth converted to Mormonism in the '70s and he settled in the same quaint farm town where I got married. My wife didn't get as much as I did from the movie, and that's okay, it may just be a guy thing. I'm adding this DVD (pictured) to my wish list on the right sidebar below. As kids, my middle brother and I owned T-shirts and model kits with Rat Fink on them. In the '80s, this counterculture art was probably an influence for the posters which covered my bedroom wall, skateboarders wearing gas masks over green spiky hair with nuclear warning symbols on their clothes. Of course, it was all to bother parents but I personally liked the cartoonish look mixed with hot rod detailing and monster mania - animated yet refined yet horrific. I've referred to Rat Fink before (see my 9/17/08 post) to make a connection between my first comic book purchase and a recent book I saw called The Original Art of Basil Wolverton. It turns out there's also a connection between that comic and the monster card pictured below. Not only were they released the same year, which I never realized until now, but their style and content are similar as well.

Back before my middle brother and I got paper routes, the only money we could scrape together came from doing odd jobs around the house for nickels and dimes. The only things we could buy with that change were individually wrapped candies and maybe some baseball cards. I marvel to think that our parents trusted us to walk roughly five or six blocks to buy junk at the nearest little gas station, by ourselves, at the tender age of seven or eight. Granted, it was a different era, but I can't imagine my son even walking across the street to our neighborhood grocery store alone. I'm babbling here, but my point is that this gas station carried Awesome! All-Stars Stickers & Bubble Gum (pictured) and Baseball's Greatest Grossouts (both 1988 by Leaf). It was a natural extension from Rat Fink and it preceded my brother's foray into real baseball card collecting.

I never really got into sports cards, but a year after the monster baseball cards, I got Topps Batman Series 2 movie cards and then a year after that I got the Dick Tracy set. The Topps company made another line of cards that rivaled sports cards, movie cards and even Garbage Pail Kids - Wacky Packages, which parody the packaging of different consumer products like you'd find in a grocery store. They were kinda Pop Art, albeit with a grotesque twist. Who knows what Andy Warhol thought of them? Last year I bought a hardcover book collecting pictures of all the Series 1 through Series 7 (from 1973 and 1974) cards and celebrating the 35th anniversary of Wacky Packages. Up until then, I had always assumed that Wacky Packages were first introduced along with Garbage Pail Kids, but it turns out that the latter was only possible because of the success of the former from the decade prior. Another bit of trivia that I learned from the book is that the creators of Wacky Packages were devotees of MAD magazine (so the comic-card connection comes full circle). In 2004 they started them up again (pictured) and there have been six series since then. I have card sleeves in "the box" (see my 9/11/08 post) protecting all the cards I've managed to save from each of the series mentioned here.

In My Own Little World

Some kids have imaginary friends. All kids play pretend. They may dream of being star athletes, scientific geniuses, or respected everyday heroes (doctors, lawyers, politicians... oh wait, I think I meant firemen). Thanks to video games, I'm not sure if kids still join the adult world of tea parties, Monopoly, or Risk. When I was in 4th grade, I designed an entire planet with different continents, countries and cultures. I drew extensive maps and spent all my school recess time writing the history but also planning the future of this planet. I put myself into it - I may have been leader of the world, because I was the creator, but I was a fellow citizen too.

It all started with G.I. Joe. In 3rd grade, I ran into a classmate after school who was riding his bike past my block to go play G.I. Joes with an upperclassman (4th grade) at our school playground. Up to this point, I had never considered that kids would return to schoolgrounds after class ended for the day. I followed him over and met this "upperclassman" who I should have known through my church, and he had more action figures than anyone I'd known before. He introduced me to another kid (in my same grade but from another class), who was also into G.I. Joe, but even more than that, he was into author J.R.R. Tolkien.

This other kid was always talking about how Tolkien invented languages and drew his own maps when he created his fictional worlds. This kid had some pretty advanced ideas for his own world-building, stuff that incorporated everything from King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table to anime-style robot suits. He prompted me to invent my own world, more contemporary than his and far less mythological. We were in the same class in 4th grade, and we spent both our recesses walking the perimeter of the playground discussing new ideas we had for our "worlds." We would have sleepovers on the weekends and talk nonstop for most of the night. Other times, we would get together to trade comic books and not say a word for hours while reading.

In 5th grade, my friend transferred to private school. He got into conservative talk radio and Christian heavy metal and we talked less about imaginary things. In junior high, I scaled back on my world and it became nothing more than a tropical island with a medieval European-style castle, invisible to passersby, tangible only to those I teleported onto it. It became less a world unto itself and more an escape from the real world which seemed to be taking over my previously contained and controllable existence. My new world (or imaginary place, since it was no longer a full-scale world) was all about slowing things down - a minute in the real world was an hour on mine, an hour in the real world was a couple days on mine, and so forth. When I got into skating, I included skate parks in my castle.

Eventually my friend moved to another town and I only saw him once after that. I tried to get him to talk about the stuff we were into as kids, but he kept bringing the conversation back to girls and driving. Eventually my world disappeared altogether, replaced by a superficial fantasy where I took a dozen or so of my high school friends to Disney World and we would make out on roller coasters and stuff like that. I started collecting annual updates of travel agency brochures to Disney World and I familiarized myself with all the hotels, which came in handy almost a decade later when my wife and I honeymooned there. One childhood dream down, a whole planet of dreams to go.

My Sunday School Teacher Is Not a Socialist

"I even began to feel that contemporary literature and art were these amazing distraction mechanisms, that they didn't really deal with any kind of spiritual dimension of the human existence or even the dangers we were facing as a species." (Daniel Pinchbeck, Interview, June/July 2009)

I had wanted to write weekly posts about the side conversations that my wife and I have during Sunday school, but she no longers talks to me during that time. This is because she's in a different room from me, teaching three and four year olds now. But I can still share the things I hear in Sunday school that have nothing to do with the gospel. Here's three:

"Women in the work force are to blame for rising real estate prices." This is an exact quote from my female teacher. She claimed to have been a feminist-minded college student in the '60s but now she "can see secular advantages to mothers staying at home." I can't even remember what the lesson was about when this came up, it was a few months back.

"The higher the taxation of a country, the lower the spirituality of the people." Different teacher quoted here - this one's male and happens to be an immigration lawyer by profession. At the time he claimed there were studies that proved this, but gave no citation. Yesterday, I approached him to ask where he was introduced to that concept, and he told me it came from conservative talk radio host Dennis Prager.

"Legalizing marijuana will only increase deaths from DUIs." Our class discussion went from alchohol in the media to vegetarianism to drug use. I raised my hand to make a comment about eating as "close to the vine" as possible, but as you can probably tell, substantial tangents had already eaten all our time. I just can't wait for next Sunday!

Kid Logic

I'd like to take this opportunity to "overshare" some of my ignorant childhood views of the world. First off, where do babies come from? Up until fourth grade, I had no idea that parents had any say in the matter. I honestly thought God just pointed his finger at unsuspecting, married women and ZAP! They were pregnant. I used to look at families with nine kids and wonder if God had it out for them. I was completely unaware of abortion, miscarriage, puberty, sex in general, and teen pregnancy. Furthermore, genetics meant nothing to me for many years even after I learned about sex. Up until I had my son, I was convinced that I would be "cursed" (ha ha) with all daughters because I had more friends that were girls than boys. Now when I consider that my dad had all boys and his dad had all boys and one girl, it should have been obvious to me that boys ran in my genes. Jumping back to childhood, I truly believed that one of my dad's brothers was Hispanic, despite having two Caucasian parents. I thought that any parents could have children of any race. Think that's too imaginative? Then try the purpose of butter/margarine: we used to say my mom "nuked" all the meals she cooked for us because they were always still too hot to eat when we first sat down at the table. Because she always put butter/margarine on the food after bringing it to the table, I got it in my head that it was not for seasoning but for cooling the temperature of the food. I mean, we stored it the fridge and it did cut down on steam, right? I continued to think this through more than 20 years of making toast. I kid you not, I learned the truth from a college roommate. I still have a problem with seasons though. Because schools have fall semesters that start in August and spring semesters that start in January and summer vacations that start in May (mine did, anyway), I've never be able to adjust to the science of equinoxes and solstices. I can't wrap my mind around Labor Day being the hottest weekend of the year. See, if autumn starts in August, then it should be cooler by September, right? Though snow may be on the ground the first week of January, I still want to believe in the back of my mind that spring has begun. And halfway through summer will always be the same as halfway through the calendar year for me. That's just pure logic...

The Word of the Day Is "Crowdsourcing"

"In addition to basic differences in attitude that seem to arise with differences in age, each generation tends to use social technologies in different ways. To get a broader sense of these differences, I asked 1,200 of my closest friends on Facebook and Twitter what they thought of the online generation gap. Surprisingly, the answers I got - from people as young as 19 and as old as 60 - were fairly consistent. The gap is most evident in the way people use the networks, not in whom they connect with. The networks of nearly everyone who responded to my questions span multiple generations of users. But the observations my correspondents made about the kinds of posts that other participants submit were telling. One representative response came from a Twitter user who had this to say: "Gen Dvide=Usage Dvide <25>25 tend 2 use 4 customized networking/info/culture/research" (that's text speak even I barely understood).

Translation: It's all in how they use it. Common gripes about the inanity of Twitter updates - stereotypically oversharing every moment of daily life from breakfast to dinner, including all rest stops - may be largely due to the tendency of 20-somethings to broadcast their personal lives in their status updates. (The Twitter criticisms can be rebutted, of course.) Nearly every respondent acknowledged that members of Generation Y - often defined as those born in the 1980s and 1990s - seem bent on publicizing every detail of their daily life over the Internet. By contrast, members of Generation X - tagged as those born between 1964 and 1984, who now make up much of the mainstream workforce - tend to post more information about their professional lives, conferences they're attending and projects they're working on. To some older observers, it looks like self-absorbed bragging, though many 30-somethings claim to have reaped career-boosting benefits from this type of crowdsourcing." (Robert Strohmeyer, PC World, feature article on the MSN homepage, June 10, 2009)

"Rob Carter, chief information officer at FedEx, thinks the best training for anyone who wants to succeed in 10 years is the online game World of Warcraft. Carter says WoW, as its 10 million devotees call it, offers a peek into the workplace of the future. Each team faces a fast-paced, complicated series of obstacles called quests, and each player, via his online avatar, must contribute to resolving them or else lose his place on the team. The player who contributes most get to lead the team - until someone else contributes more. The game, which many Gen Yers learned as teens, is intensely collaborative, constantly demanding and often surprising. "It takes exactly the same skill set people will need more of in the future to collaborate on (multinational, multicultural) work projects," says Carter. "The kids are already doing it." (Anne Fisher, Time, May 25, 2009)

On the movie Swing Vote, with Kevin Costner (see my 2/4/09 review), the main character uses the term "insourcing" to describe manual labor job positions getting taken by illegal immigrants. "Crowdsourcing" beats that word hands down. I happen to be one of those "self-absorbed" 30-somethings described above, using online networks for "info/culture/research." It reminds me of a conversation I once had with a college roommate about internet search engines changing what is "definitive" to what is "most popular." Marketing firms are already "crowdsourcing" different celebrities by the number of Twitter followers that they have. Popularity has gone from being a quality to a measurable quantity.

What that means for the future of employment is no different from the past - "it's not WHAT you know but WHO you know" (or how many people know you). Instead of the 20-year span defined above as 1964-1984 for Generation X births, I had always heard that the cutoff was 1978, making me a day away from being born into Generation Y (Why?). If 1984 is the actual cutoff, then that makes my youngest brother less than a year off from being Generation X. I think he played World of Warcraft, which I never did, so if you're just going by the second quote above, I am definitely X while my brother is Y.

E-mail Forward

"If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking 25 miles to school every morning... uphill... barefoot... BOTH ways Yadda, yadda, yadda.... And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it! But now that I'm the ripe old age of 30, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn utopia! I hate to say it, but you kids today don't know how good you've got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the internet. If we wanted to know something, We had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves... in the card catalogue!! There was no e-mail!! We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents! Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe! There were no MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and screw it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come undone...cause that's how we rolled dog! We didn't have fancy crap like call waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600 with games like Space Invaders and Asteroids. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel! There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards! And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove ... imagine that! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Regards,
The 30 and Over Crowd"

Don't Go There After Dark

It seems to me that every kid has a house close to theirs that's somewhat scary. It could be a neighboring house that's been vacant as far back as they can remember, and no one knows why it can't get sold. Maybe older kids tell stories about something that happened in a house nearby. Maybe a crotchety old widower yells at anyone who steps on his lawn, and he doesn't even mow it so it's all overgrown and home to mangy, stray animals. When I was a kid, the scariest house that I could think of was over by the public library. It looked like The Munsters house (I think the iron gate seen on the side of the house below used to wrap all the way around the front), the wind always seemed to be shaking the trees, the windows were barred, it was ghetto, and it still is. When I went back to the town where I grew up for my baby brother's wedding, I made a point to drive by this house and take the pictures shown below. The biggest difference between my "haunted house" and those of other kids' though, is that I wanted to live in mine. I wanted to buy it, put gargoyles on the gate, park a hearse in the driveway, and become the scary old guy that the neighbor kids called "the lizard man." My haunted house would be the best in town on Halloween and teenage punks would dare each other to trick or treat at my door.

Everything I Need To Know I Learned in Sunday School

This isn't to be preachy but for me to keep a record of my thoughts and the side talk that I have with my wife during class at church. One of the lesson points yesterday was on keeping the sabbath day holy and resting from our labors. Someone compared the things we should do on Sundays to the things we will do in the next life. My wife turned to me and whispered something to the effect of: "I don't want to sit on a cloud and play the harp in heaven. I just want to die and stay dead." I had no idea she was so tired. Neither of us really believe that anyone will sit on a cloud and play the harp in heaven. I feel obligated to mention that my wife doesn't really want to die and stay dead either. She is afraid of death though (I'm not), and what she fears most is being separated from loved ones who may or may not end up in the same place as her. This isn't to suggest that she feels superior to anyone she knows, if anything she would sacrifice a better place in heaven just to stay close to a loved one. We make quite the pair because I'm afraid of life (as in living with loved ones), and what I fear most is others' disapproval and unmet expectations. After death that will all be over with and we'll just have to deal with it, case closed. There's a reason I live half a day's drive from my nearest relatives. Don't get me wrong, I lead a happy life and I'm not anxious to die. Nor should my happiness be misconstrued as contentment. I know I'm far from perfect and therefore I hope I don't die anytime soon. I also hope that my wife gets over her fear of death before her time comes because she's a good person and deserves some rest.

Disney Versus Legoland

After laughing about one of the characters in the movie I Love You, Man taking his kids to Legoland every weekend, I allowed my wife to talk me into going on the day I had originally taken off to attend Coachella. The music festival turned out to be too expensive, but that's not to say that Legoland was much cheaper. All in all, I have to admit that it wasn't as bad as I expected (but parking should really be included in the price of the ticket) and it's better than Sea World anyday. For those of you that don't know, Sea World sucks. Granted, Legoland is designed more for kids the same way Universal Studios is more for adults. Disney had the right idea in creating theme parks that are EQUALLY enjoyable for parents and children alike. There's a new Sea Life attraction next door to Legoland and its restaurant has the healthiest, most gourmet menu I've seen at any theme park.

Injustices

I don't know about the rest of you, but daylight saving time killed me this week. To top it all off, what should have been a very quiet Friday at work turned out be my worst ever. It was such a little thing, but as they say, "it's the little things that kill." I witnessed two people that I respect very much, but equally, treat each other with such utter contempt that it broke my heart.

Perhaps this reminds you of the "mean people suck" bumper sticker. I could make a list here of far more serious social ills like farting in public, fraternity hazing, hate crime, sex slavery and tyranny, but I'm going to stick to the basics in this post. My mom's always referred to this as "man's inhumanity to man."

It's hard when you lose all respect you have for someone that you must continue seeing everyday. I guess my experience is just training for having multiple children someday who will hate each other and fight constantly. I'm no saint mind you, and I'm sure I've done, said, or thought my share of awful things involving others, both intentionally and unintentionally.

I'm not disillusioned with the human race though. I'm not discouraged about getting close to people. OK, maybe a little bit. But I understand the concept of forgiveness. I know it's not my place to judge much else besides the quality of the goods and services I pay for. I can separate. This all takes me back to a journal entry I wrote almost five years ago (as you might already know, I always start with a random quote which sometimes bears significance to the entry itself):

"When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return, it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the muck and to let them become the occasion for the whole concept of grunting, transcribed by the court stenographer." (Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead)

"A middle aged busboy from the restaurant and some others were pointing and smirking at a guy who seems to be a little slow and has a stutter. Nobody was laughing at the former for having a dyed red mullet or for being as old as he is and only as far along professionally as he is - two things he has complete control over. The latter fellow had food dripping from his chin, something I doubt he can control. He looked SO happy eating, completely oblivious of those mocking him." (23 September 2004)

Unsolicited Advice

"For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? . . . How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless." (George Orwell, 1984, 1949)

My brothers and I received hardcover journals for Christmas one year as kids, so my first-ever entry probably didn't amount to more than a list of the other presents I got that day. I kept a pretty good journal through junior high, then in high school I switched to calendar pages. I would write just a few words describing the most interesting thing I did for each day inside the little box on the calendar page. In college, I switched from big, wall-hanging calendars to day planner calendars. I keep those calendar pages in my three-ring photo album binders. While looking at photos for my recent review of the 2000s, I noticed that my calendar entries stopped the year I moved to San Diego. Before I stopped doing them though, I apparently added a new feature in the notes column at the end of each week on the planner calendar. I included a few words on a superficial lesson I had learned that week, like unsolicited advice for future generations flipping through my photo albums. Here is my advice to myself from the first full month I lived in San Diego:

August 1-7, 2004 "Send postcards to old friends to inform them of the move."

August 8-14, 2004 "Don't buy anything you can check out at the library."

August 15-21, 2004 "The point of living near the beach is to hang out at the beach."

August 22-28, 2004 "Going #2 every morning counts on Sundays too."

August 29-September 4, 2004 "Remember people's names."

My advice for this week? Don't wear pants with holes in the crotch because if you pass out or have a heart attack, everyone will see.

The 21st Century Commenced When...

"No century begins with the flip of a calendar page. Some would contend that the 20th century began with World War I and the invention of modern warfare. Others point to 1908 and the introduction of the mass-produced automobile. We ourselves have occasionally asserted that it was as late as 1933 that the century kicked in, the year in which both Hitler and Roosevelt assumed power, two events among many that put us on the path to World War II, the cataclysm that eventually created the modern United States of America and the American Century." (David Granger, Esquire, September 17, 2008)

As you read over my personal reviews of the last ten years below, ask yourself when the new millennium really began. Was it January 1, 2000 (midnight news coverage) or September 11, 2001 (24-hour news media)? December 12, 2000 ("Election-gate") or November 4, 2008 (Obama's election)? For me, it was February 2000, but you can read more about that nine posts down from this one. I'll just mention a theory of mine here that your adulthood is your childhood and your adolescence making peace with each other. Adolescence is spent trying to shake the childhood that seemingly holds you back from adulthood, but then you realize that there is maturity in not outgrowing your childish dreams and ideals, as far as fulfilling them might better the whole of humanity, both young and old. You could take this a step further (and probably over the top) and ask if the modern world has made peace with ancient history, or perhaps learned nothing at all.

Worty Dird

"Great performances, killer soundtrack, plenty of Beyoncé... Please go see the criminally ignored Cadillac Records." (from Entertainment Weekly, 1/16/09, pg. 7)

I found my old poetry notebook from high school and on the first page I have a definition of figures of speech copied from who knows what dictionary or encyclopedia: "A word of group of words used to give particular emphasis to an idea or sentiment. This special emphasis is typically accomplished by the user's conscious deviation (I love that word) from the strict literal sense of a word, or from the more commonly used form of word order or sentence construction. Such figurative locutions (another great word) have been extensively employed by orators and writers to strengthen and embellish their styles." In other words, "criminally" is a very funny word when put in front almost anything, but it struck me especially in the EW quote before "ignored." Not to kill the humor by explaining the joke, but obviously ignoring a movie is not illegal and therefore not criminal. You can tell me I have a sick sense of humor, but take a serious word like "insane," put "criminally in front of it, and suddenly it's funny to me. Comic books and horror movies use it all the time. Just take some synonyms for "funny" and put "criminally" in front: "amusing, blithe, capricious, droll, gay, gelastic, jocular, ludicrous (remember Spaceballs?), playful, and side-splitting" (from Yahoo Answers). Those last two paint some very bizarre/disturbing pictures, but funny too. For bathroom humor, there's criminally diarrhetic. If you're above that, there's oxymorons like criminally immaculate, criminally justified, and criminally legit (as in II legit II criminally quit). Got more?

For those who are interested in my new "Deep Thinkings" label, I got the idea for quotes followed by journal entries from my 11th grade English class. I still have a list of well-known proverbs, quotes, and sayings from my teacher that I keep in the aforementioned poetry notebook. Here's my first quote-and-journal entry from 9/19/96:

"Human beings are not perfectible, they are improvable." - Severeid

All my goals point toward progression, plain and simple. I believe all good involves progression and all bad involves digression. Going along on a plateau in life can't be good because it doesn't wholly meet the definition of progressin, which involves constant improvement. Furthermore, I believe unattainable perfection to be a misnomer. I agree that there is no end to the need for improvement, but I disagree that perfection is not also an eternal principle, as the quote would imply. At the point that a human being no longer undulates by digressing, even in the slightest, then a state of eternal progression in perfection has been achieved. One could argue that a concept like this would not essentially be eternal, because a point, as suggested above, would be required. However, it would just be the culmination of all terrestrial truth, not a zenith gradations, but a nexus point. Under my outlook, both eternal and mortal timeframes can be lived in. All truth would be infinite, yet its focus definite. I've pondered perception a lot - perfection is merely misperceived.

Uh . . . wow. Where did I come up this stuff?

High School in Spain

Most people have a dream vacation, I had a dream education when I was in high school. You see, I was born with two different-colored eyes and aside from the constant comments, it hasn't ever done much for me. If anything, it's a bad thing, as one of the side effects in my case is a lazy eye which could not be fixed in childhood. I think there's even a horror movie out now where having two different-colored eyes means you have a twin that died in utero that will haunt you for simply being born. But I digress. My point is, I used to have a fantasy daydream where my eyes would win me something, and the thing I wanted most in high school was to get out of high school, or at least public school, and see the world. I imagined up a wealthy Spaniard who would search the world, or just the U.S., for a kid to grant a private education, to be located at his villa outside Barcelona. His only criteria would be a boy, age 14, with, you guessed it, two different-colored eyes, and I would be the lucky recipient to meet that criteria. If there were other 14 year-old boys with different-colored eyes, I could have specified that the eyes be brown and green like mine, or narrowed the search pool to the state of New Mexico, as I'm pretty sure I was the only match in my area. In 30 years, I've only ever met one other person with eyes like mine in person, and that was getting off a bus in Brazil. I said to her, "you have two different-colored eyes!" and she responded, "yeah, so?" Anyway, it's supposedly a one-in-a-million trait.

Going back to my dream education, the Spaniard would rescue me from my boring, impersonalized school and fly me out to meet my new exotic, private tutors (as magical as Hogwarts, right? But REAL! And years before Harry Potter without the classroom setting or the mean instructors.) I mapped out four years of seven-hour days with seven AP exams (28 of the 37 total) at each year's end:

Freshman year - English Literature; Environmental Science; Algebra; Human Geography and World History; Psychology; Piano and Music Theory; Soccer and Basketball

Sophomore year - Latin Literature; Biology; Geometry; European and U.S. History; Art History and Studio Art; Trumpet and Jazz History; Tennis and Baseball

Junior year - Spanish Literature; Chemistry; Trigonometry; Macro- and Microeconomics; Computer Science; Classical Guitar and Composition; Hockey and Golf

Senior year - French Literature; Physics; Calculus; Government and Politics; Computer Science; Drums and Sound Engineering; Wrestling and Volleyball

I would also prepare three meals a day alongside a professional chef for all those living and working at the villa. I would train in the swimming pool in the morning and on my very own skate park at night. During the summer I would travel to historic places like the Egyptian pyramids, Athens, Rome, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Berlin, and Moscow. During the winter, I would ski and snowboard the Alps and visit my family for Christmas and my birthday. After four years, I would ace the SAT and ACT tests, and get serious scholarship money for any college of my choice. Needless to say, this fantasy is so far from my reality. Yes, I did graduate from public school. No, I didn't pass any AP exams. Yes, I did graduate from a college of my choice, albeit a smaller pool of choices. No, I didn't get serious scholarship money but I honestly think I would have been able to by writing essays about a unique experience in Spain. Why Spain? It's because growing up in New Mexico, I wanted to learn Spanish (and I did take it in high school), but I guess I thought learning it in Spain would make it somehow cooler. Now I laugh to think that I would have learned to speak with a lisp. One more question before wrapping this up - is a dream vacation the best thing I could come up with in high school? What about space travel, a pro sports stint, lottery money, or a girlfriend that's a celebrity model? Yes, I do think my dream vacation would have rivaled any of those things, and it's definitely more grounded in reality. I think the best dreams are less fantasy and more reality.

Pluto Is Not a Planet (Or a Dog For That Matter)

I got into Greek and Roman mythologies the year that Nintendo came out. I played the Street Fighter arcade game around the same time. I must have combined those interests to create a fighting game where gods go up against each other with super-powers in the areas they're known for. I remember making the notes pictured to the left while spending the night at a friend's house. He was the first person I knew with a Nintendo and he would stay up all night conquering Castlevania, Mega Man, and Super Mario Bros. I had another friend who just owned sports games like Duck Hunt, Excitebike, and World Class Track Meet. None of these games were as cool as arcade games to me but I wanted cooler characters than the ones in Street Fighter too. I used the Greek names on these notes. Pluto is (for those who may not know) the Roman name for the god of the underworld, which is Hades to the Greeks. I made invulnerability his power, as he was also the god of metals and minerals, and his body could turn metal to defend against attacks.