I am not Will Hunting

...but that movie still makes me feel like an ass. This post is dedicated to Dan, the advocate of my education. Pssssh. I should make him pay for my schoolin'. Heaven knows he'll be making a quadrabizillion dollars soon enough, what with his doctorate and law degrees. Some people are smarter than the rest, some people are way smarter than the rest, but then there's those few, like Dan, who possess such genius that I think they're actually just retarded, and the rest of us are duped.

So I just took the online Mensa test. It's only a little quickie, a 30-minute, 30-question test, and I'm pretty sure they make it ridiculously easy so they get people to pay to take the real test. After all, everybody wants to prove that they're not stupid. And what better way than having a whole panel of people who've proven they're not stupid give you a piece of paper that says you're not, either? I submit that there is none. The only question I got wrong was "Only one other word can be made from the following word. What is it?" The following word was INSATIABLE, and the answer, naturally, is

-Well now just hold on a minute. Think about it. Think for a little while about it. Think for a long while about it. I thought for more or less one solid minute before deciding that the fate of my evening did not, in fact, hinge upon my ability to answer this question. My skills in spelling are mediocre at best; my only proud point in my command of the English language is my skill with grammar. I couldn't tell you the first thing about the structure of sentences, various phrases and all that jazz, but I can use the crap out of them. It's kinda like driving a car, I think. Some people suck, some people are pretty good, some people make a fortune driving in a long oval for 500 miles once a year, but only a very sparse few of us can lift up the hood, point out every piece and know both its name and function. I'd like to be one of them. Fortuantely, I'm too busy mastering the copy-making business.
And even though my spelling ability is off (certainly more so than it used to be, now that I don't do a whole lot of actual writing), I still refuse to use spell check. I disable it every time. I couldn't really tell you why; maybe it's some sort of "elite" thing, maybe I find it extremely annoying when the very machine that I assembled in my basement tells me how to spell words it doesn't truly understand, but the same deal went down back in the day with calculators. I was that kid back in school, the one who refused to use a calculator, and always handed in his math test with the columns full of notes and quick calculations. I almost made it all the way through High school, if it weren't for all those pesky trigonometric functions. Seriously, I wasn't about to sit there and calculate sines and cosines in my head. That stuff's for the birds. Or the calculators, I guess.
So, this post is for Dan. I'm going to finish school, I'm going to master time and space, and I'm going to buy a B-91 Wraith. The end. Now get off my back. And tell my parents, too. I don't think they take me seriously when I tell them I'm going to finish.
Just don't mention the Wraith.

Oh yeah, BANALITIES. I can't believe I didn't get that.

Sand Dunes-a-plenty

For those of you (yes, I'm referring to all two who might read this in the next year) who haven't seen the movie Dune, put down the Crisco, call into work, and immediately go rent and/or buy it.

Rent and/or buy? Why would you both rent and buy it? That doensn't even make any sense. This guy is crazy.

More like Dune is crazy. Crazy awesome. This movie is a tribute to the elite among us that hate every movie ever made based on a book merely because they attempted a script/plot/character trait change to make it more theater worthy in that the script of the movie--to the word--is taken directly from the book. Even those little "he thought, she thought" exerpts in the book are voiced over in the movie. It's almost comical in how thurough it truly is. Perhaps more comical is how I used this little fact to write a book report on Dune while only actually reading the first third of the book. Excellent book, yes, but quite a long read. Besides, it's not like I didn't go back and read the book again later. I prefer to think of it as "time-diverted grade achievement." I'm just that awesome.

Anyway, there's this combat technique in the movie developed by one of the feuding houses known as "The Weirding Way." This technique in some form or another changes certain vocal patterns into something like a burst of energy. Think of it like the world's best blowdart gun. Not that I'm jealous. Also not to say I wouldn't want to know how to do this, but it just reminded me of the technique I had begun training myself on about three years ago. I one day will be able to put my very flat, very rigid hand straight through somebody's neck. Or, until the need arises, through various large melons and thick steaks.
This may remind some of you of a different goal I have been working on, one of monutmental significance. I haven't quite gotten the hang of things, but don't you worry. I'll be able to hunt large game in the nude with my bare hands yet.

I heart Detroit

Seriously, every time I go to work, I think to myself how much better Detroit is getting. Every day, it looks and feels a little bit better, and though my store is ten paces from "da hood" (meaning a row of projects dedicated to the proliferation of crack cocaine and illegal/stolen DVDs), it just seems like the smog of run-down urban life is finally lifting. And just when I get done thinking that very thought for today, I leave work, only to find a huge glass bottle smashed under my tire.
"Great," I think. "Good luck steering around that." And as I think about how sharply I'm going to have to turn the wheel to avoid shredding yet another tire, I realize that in the midst of the glass isn't what I thought was the label from the bottle, but the label from a new tape deck adapter I had just bought two days ago. And around it, the shattered pieces of what was left of my passenger window.
As I look up in horror at my missing heat retention barrier, which I value most this time of year, I see a little white cord dangling out onto the side of my car: the tape adapter. "Lucky for me," I think. "They only took the CD player. A good tape adapter is nearly impossible to find these days." Seriously, ask Dan. He'll back me up.
They also stole my phone charger. Luckily, my phone fell down into my footwell when I went into work today. Of course, I had to slice my hand open on glass shrapnel to find it, but at least it was there.
On my very frigid ride home, I looked over at the glass pile and tossed-about innards of my glove compartment trying to find anything useful. Luckily I found a very large chunk of concrete. I kept that, thinking that one day, it might be good for breaking something, such as glass. You never know when that'll come in handy.
I wanted to take a picture of the mess my car was left in and the rock and everything, but they stole my camera, too. I guess that just means it's time for a DSLR.
And a car alarm.

and a ccw.