Personality quiz...

What's your Jung-Myers-Briggs personality topology? How do you rank on an IQ test? Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Two of these are common online personality surveys. The other is a popular TV show that reveals what we already knew to be true: Pretty people aren't always smart people.

When the online personality craze began -- or when messages related to the craze first entered my world through a Facebook notification -- I considered these tests to be sophomoric exercises in vanity designed to entertain teenyboppers and the reserve army of the unemployed. I still believe this, of course, except now I identify with these people categories and am perfectly comfortable spending a few minutes every day psycho analyzing myself.

I wonder if the shrinks who design these quizzes know how addictive they are. They have to have an incling. I think they even plan the "Internet connection failed" glitches that force you to go back and reenter all your data a second time. After all that work punching in our info, we can't leave now without knowing our four character typology! I need my IQ number! So instead of acting out my intelligence, I press the refresh button and start over, hoping for a better connection next time.

This morning I was tackling one of FB's numerous personality profiling tools. It doesn't matter which one; they are all the same, only with varying spelling and grammar errors. I figured I would knock out a quick test before breakfast so I would have a good idea of the intelligence I would have to work with for the day. It was like checking the oil on your clunker before hitting the highway.

I was happy with how quickly I was moving through the questions. Each response was simple and there were usually only one or two options per query. I could see a pattern behind the test's construction and worked deliberately to create a positive result. My Internet connection was solid and it looked like the oil would come out full. But I started getting hungry. Page after page of questions filled my screen and I started to wonder if I was completing an IQ test or e-Harmony's notoriously extensive personality profile. I was pretty sure I was over 29 levels of compatibility by now.

40, 50, 60 questions I answered, obediently watching the little firefox circles turn as the pages advanced. I knew I was doing well, but this was taking a long time. I made a mistake on a question and had to go back to fix it. I ran into a question that required some thought and opened a new tab to enter a term into my Quicktionary. That search took too long (Quicktionary is almost as bad a misnomer as "JiffyLube"), and I guessed on the answer. Then Quicktionary found the term and I had to go back and correct the guess.

I spent just over forty minutes mulling, revising, answering and reanswering the questions. Then, without warning, the screen went white. Did I want to support site's sponsor? Did I want to purchase a discounted vacuum cleaner? Did I want to become more virile? These are the questions I had to answer before the Internet would reveal my score.

Then it happened. My number appeared. That couldn't be right. I was well below average. I knocked the monitor with my palm, as if the impact would jar my score to another percentile. This was my worst test yet and I had passed a shorter version the day before with flying colors. How could it do this to me?

My confidence is shot. I worry that everyone I meet will have seen my sub-par scores and will question my intelligence. I am concerned that nothing I say will be taken seriously because all will focus on my two digit IQ instead of my ideas. This one test has cast me into an eternal realm of intellectual irrelevance. Here will I sit in the spongy mire and pity myself...until tomorrow when I can take another quiz.

Man, I am starving...

YOU WILL ENJOY A TRIP TO ASIA

Here's a riddle for you: I'm one in fifty-two; I am stressful but nothing new. I come around with great fanfare. When I'm passed, all will celebrate. What am I?

If you answered Finals Week, you are absolutely right. And now I am celebrating. I am making like Lindsay Lohan on a chick's night out and throwing caution to the breeze as I party like it's 1699. I'm doing the Tony Romo thing and giving it up for what I gave up.

A few days ago as I looked over my notes one last time before my first examination, it seemed like the week would never end. I was queasy like a sailor in the swells and feeling about as smart as one too. From behind, my tests looked really, well, fat. Now they look like petty undertakings that, while polemic, could have been much worse. I need a T-Shirt saying "I survived Finals Week" or some such overused slogan to help commemorate the accomplishment. I'm not done with school or anything satisfying like that, but I did complete another semester which, if you're a derelict like me, is a big deal.

When my last final was over, I shook my professor's hand, thanked him for the class and then ran for the exit. After an embarrassing and altogether gratuitous encounter with the dean of the college (sorry!), I breathed the open air of liberty. Suddenly struck by cinematic inspiration, I made like Mel Gibson and shouted "FREEEEDOM!" at the top of my lungs. I wasn't really free - summer school starts in three weeks and I'm taking more hours at General Mills in the interim - but I shouted anyway. I don't think anyone still taking a final appreciated my display, but it got a couple chuckles from some passersby.

In hindsight, I can look back and laugh about the late nights studying, the three hour examinations, the oral interviews for language class and the excruciating study groups, but the events of the week itself invited little mirth. In fact, the routine got so tiresome that I could not go the whole way through without a break.

Tangent: One summer a few years ago I was in Lake Havasu, Nevada Arizona. You know, the home of the London Bridge. I said summer, not spring, so get that idea out of your head. Anyway, the time of year didn't keep me from doing something crazy. Lake Havasu gets really hot in summertime. It gets so warm that some natives get water directly from the lake and poor in their pasta without putting it on the stove top first. I was sweating like a groom in the heat and needed some relief so I went into a local gas station and purchased a gallon of cold water. Over the next 36 minutes (two stop watches collaborated in cataloging my stupidity), I drank the entire thing. Twenty minutes later, I needed relief. Badly.

The relief I sought mid-Finals week was almost exactly like the palliation my bladder craved, only not physiological, liquid or related to meteorology. Come to think of it, my craving had very little to do with Lake Havasu.

I needed a fortune cookie. Hey, pregnant women have their socially acceptable dietary desires, can't a student in the middle of hell week? Thank you. But you can't just eat a fortune cookie, you've got consummate the exercise of reading the cookie's text by enjoying a meal first. So I zipped over to my favorite Chinese restaurant and ordered the old standby. When I finished the food, I carefully opened my cookie while wondering, as I do every time I enjoy one of these ethnic delicacies, what manner of witchcraft was used to bake the cookie without burning the paper.

My fortune read:

"YOU WILL ENJOY A TRIP TO ASIA"

If you're a fortune cookie aficionado, you'll know that most fortunes are nebulous excuses for predictions that could be just as true for me as my imaginary quadriplegic hetero-lifemate. I was used to "AN OLD MAN WILL GIVE YOU WISE WORDS" or "YOU WILL HAVE AN IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY." This is the advice that is truly useful: so arcane that it can be applied to whatever area the reader wishes yet with a comforting facade of profundity. So deep that it's shallow.

Asia? That couldn't possibly be right! My linguistic skill set does nothing to prepare me for the Orient. I can hardly use chop sticks and my back creaks when I try to bow. Not only will I go to Asia, but I will enjoy the trip. What is the significance of that? Was Asia a metaphor for a person, object or even a location closer than the other side of the world? Part of me wanted to return the cookie as defective and demand a replacement, but I was restrained by the knowledge that fortune cookies are like puppies in that people don't pick them; the fortune cookies pick you. "Asia" had picked me and this fate was incontrovertible. I was stuck with an enjoyable trip. Dang it!

For the duration of my remaining exams, I was plagued by this Asia. When I drew Robert Solow's economic growth model for Japan during the 1990s, my mind drifted back to Panda Express. When I answered a question about the concept of Wu-Wei and related it to modern economic theory, I imagined Confucius, the Asian philosopher. Even my French final had a question about francophone countries and I thought twice about putting Vietnam on the page. These "visits" to Asia were hardly "enjoyable," though.

If I fail any of my classes, I have an excuse. That incessant fortune was louder than it looked in the cookie and it distracted me and drove me batty.

Then again, maybe Asia is the summer I am about to enjoy...

Complaint

My biggest mid-term of the year is this afternoon and I have not yet completed my preparation. Time flew by like Al Gore's son in a Prius, leaving my hair pushed back and my brain woefully empty. I tried to get ready - honest I did - but my life has been a big league pitcher, throwing me curve balls with all the strength of his steroid-bulked arm. Obligations too numerous to fully enumerate, but including email, Facebook, phone conversations, movie watching, jetpack and, yes, females took too much of my heavily appreciated time and left my exam study sheet as blank as the stare I gave my mother when she asked yesterday whether or not I was ready.

I may be a derelict. I may be a lazy derelict. I may even be a lazy derelict with bad hair, but I do have gumption. (As a side note, I considered starting my collegiate entrance essay with the last three sentences but settled instead for "Being an underprivileged minority youth is never easy, but when it is compounded by abandonment, addiction and abuse - the three As of my childhood - it can be the death knell for academic achievement, the two As of my future." In a related story, I got accepted to every school I applied. I'll post the entire essay sometime for all you aspiring derelicts.) So where was I? Ah, yes, gumption. It took a little psyching to prepare myself, but I marched directly into my professor's office yesterday and laid down my pathetic case in the hopes of finding some sympathy.

Dr. Monarch, as my female instructor is aptly titled, was not interested in the sordid details of my personal life or the scheduling conflicts that landed me in the undesirable position of begging for mercy before sitting for the exam. Her lack of interest notwithstanding, Dr. Monarch did nothing to halt my remonstrations and even laughed occasionally, a gesture I interpreted as encouragement. On I plowed, through three minutes of memorized material and two of improvised verbal gymnastics.

I talked about my Spring allergies and the ill effect the wind was having on my general disposition. I drew attention to my dislike for particular breakfast cereals and established a link between Kashi Go Lean and indigestion. I talked about the Laker's game earlier in the week and how disappointed I was that the number one team in the Western conference had to clinch its seed at my team's expense. I even described a small sore that had cropped up between my big and second toes and how distracting little abrasions like that could be when trying to focus on something as arcane as macroeconomics.

In retrospect, I spent more time preparing my case for leniency than I did studying for the test. But I consoled myself knowing that an hour of writing and considering a grade defense was well spent when it precipitated a poor performance, because I would have a poor performance. If I could inoculate my evaluator to my inability to draw a Cartesian plain with straight lines (much less calculate an IS or LM curve) , she might think twice before smashing through my responses with red ink. Regardless, I might be able to make a friend in this lonely world.

When my verbal flow ceased, a silence so loud it could be packaged as the rebellion music of the next generation filled the room. Dr. Monarch cleared her throat, an action that was less productive than it was discouraging.

"Young man," she began, using a title that generations of males recognize as the prelude to a rebuke, "I have been teaching at the college level more years than you have been alive and yet I have never heard such locution. Have you considered developing that presentation for a politician? You would have to remove the bit about your big toe, but it might work otherwise. The style sounds vaguely like something I heard from John Edwards once (or fifty times). Anyway, kudos for that. The biggest mistake you made was a temporal one. You presented your spiel before taking the mid-term - a mid-term you might very well ace - now the only thing your words will motivate me to do is examine your answers more carefully. Congratulations. My advice to you is to go get a menthol lozenge and a good night's rest. And try to remember that the IS curve is downward sloping."

I was rejected like a basketball in the air against Hakeem Olajuwon. I was in the third row and heavily discombobulated. But I had made my case, said my piece and recorded my complaint. Now all I have to do is take the test. The test I haven't finished studying for...

SuperbowlTM Mania

Hype. That's the Kosher (meaning Terry Bradshaw approved) word to describe the rabid entertainment blitz surrounding the biggest football contest of the year. Its "two weeks of hype" or "really hyped." But Webster would turn in his grave if he heard the semantic application "hype" gets near the first Sunday in February. Hype comes from the prefix "hyper" from the Greek "huper," meaning "over" or "beyond." Etymology aside, the word is really sporty (notice I didn't say "sexy?") and gets thrown around a lot on the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN), even though it could be considered pejorative. But I like "mania," because, well, because I like being obstinate (or is it abstinent) and I am incorrigible, or so my mother tells me, which is really sweet.

So the SuperbowlTM is almost upon us. In fact, the outcome will be pasted across America's front pages like McCain's wrinkled mug before the Florida Primary before you next hear from FCN. I know, 72 hours can be a long time, especially when all you got was a Life Tip on Wednesday. Here, have another Kleenex.

It may interest you to know that FCN was not idle on Wednesday. Au contraire my doubting amigo. We took the bus down to scenic Arizona (home of McCain and millions of other retirees) and attended one of the New England Patriot's media availability sessions. We wanted to go the SuperbowlTM, but the ticket prices were exhorbitantly high. It will be a miracle if anyone other than a fat rich white male gets into the game. Once at the press conference, C dressed up like a Latina and asked Tom Brady to marry him ("her" in the context of the proposal). Everyone was really impressed with the accent and feminine voice tones that C was able to put together and with the fact that he was able to fit into a wedding dress. While Tommy turned us down, he did compliment C on his good looks and said he would be a "lucky find."

Yes, that really was us down in Arizona.

If you've been listening to any of the SuperbowlTM mania, you have undoubtedly noticed how desperate the sports media are to get a decent interview. It's a well known fact that athletes are not trained to speak. That's why when they do open their mouths they are either immensely boring, incomprehensible or mind bendingly crazy. In order to compensate for what has been dubbed the "Oral Intellectual Deficit," many anchors resort to interviewing members of their own journalistic entourage and talking heads from other channels just so they can fill air time. If you are a little creative with the channel switching, you can actually follow the "experts" as they make their radio and TV rounds. First Fox Sports, then Westwood One radio and back to ESPN for last segment of the hour. The journalists say the same things over and over again, sometimes getting passionate and calling each other names so that audience members won't follow osmosis to a different station.

There is nothing "over" or "beyond" about this mania, but some folks still call it hype.

Well, no discussion of the SuperbowlTM would be complete without a prediction. Plaxico Burress, a player only two of our eleven readers had heard of before this moment, predicted that NY Giants would win 23-17. I agree with Plax in one regard: The final score will be 23-17, but it will be the New England Patriots who emerge victorious, with some extra weight on their championship ring fingers.

Sorry about the "emerge victorious" and "extra weight on their championship ring fingers" verbiage. Maybe the hype is contagious afterall.

25 Things not to say during your Driver's Test

1) Before we start, I want to say that I had a pretty crazy night so please cut me some slack.
2) LOVE that clicking sound!
3) Diesel was cheaper. Now I see why.
4) Chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga ...
5) So, you come here often?
6) Train tracks! I think we can make it.
7) Some day, they'll have movie screens that fold down all the way in front so everyone can see them.
8) Yellow light, beep-beep!
9) Sometimes I pretend I'm an allied tank driver on World War II, and all those cars in the other lane are panzers.
10) There's that trucker again!
11) So how am I doing?
12) Come on. Quit giving me these tame orders. Let's open this baby up and see what she can really do!
13) Wow. I am so relaxed right now.
14) Police car! Keep your head down!
15) Look, it's my ex-girlfriend coming out of that store. If I swerve, would you mind taking her out with the door?
16) Sure is bright out here today.
17) I've been driving this road for years now.
18) Can't wait until I get enough money to buy a real car. I mean, look at this hunk of junk. It's a death trap.
19) Can we hurry this up a bit? I'm late for my online support group.
20) You wanna swing by my place on the way back?
21) I love the effect of all those yellow dots coming at you. So mesmerizing. Gets me every time.
22) Ahhh! No brakes! No brakes! Ha! Just kidding. You should have seen the look on your face. Hahaha!
23) Vroom, vroom!
24) That's where we crashed right there on the left. Nobody was hurt though. I don't think.
25) I wish we could always be in this car, driving down the road side by side. You and me. Forever.

Part 3: Driver's License

The event couldn’t have been more anticipated or more dreaded. After accruing the requisite number of hours driving the car (or, at times, being driven by the car), I was invited back to the DMV office to complete my certification.

It's worth noting that DMV offices are depressing places. You get the feeling that many of the patrons come to the office to die, not renew their vehicle credential or be cleared for the road. The rules of the DMV are similar to the rules of the men's restroom: Nobody smiles, nobody looks around, nobody asks serious questions. You take care of business and leave. Don't start a conversation and do not, whatever you do, do not flirt with anyone.

It took a few minutes to process my information, during which I made a number of cutting observations like the one above, but eventually an older woman whose haggard face and cocaine wrinkles belied her pasted smile welcomed me to step into “my” vehicle and perform basic automotive functions like initiating a turn signal and pressing the brake. When she was satisfied that I understood these commands she felt safe to enter the car herself. There, strapped into the passenger side seat, her mouth inches from my ear, with both windows sealed and the car turned off she started laughing.

Her laugh was a maniacal as it was loud in the confines of the small hatchback and the closed windows trapped in the sound. Specks of spittle spattered the dashboard and my earlobe felt moistened. I desperately wanted out. Maybe I didn't need a driver's license afterall. Maybe I could just walk and take public transit the way they do in Europe. I could be environmentally and

“What’s the matter?” I asked with natural timidity. The laughing stopped.

“You wanna pass this thing?” Her voice was scratchy, acidic and thin reminding me of a female version of Marlon Brandow. I forced myself to look at my evaluator. Her eyes were dilated and her pupils enlarged, leading me to believe she had just run a line of methadone

“Yes.”

“Then shut up and drive. When I say turn, you turn. Otherwise, follow the rules of the road.”

An eerie silence permeated the car and was only pushed away when I started the engine. My older brother - the one who knew almost as much about driving as he did about women - had warned me that driving tests are like marriages in that the slightest little misstep can make for an unhappy ending. He said to move slowly, ask no questions and show some fear because evaluators like to feel empowered.

I moved through the parking lot in first gear, keeping my eyes pointed straight forward and turning my head in an exaggerated sweep of the oncoming terrain. I followed every detail of the driving manual, accenting my hand motions with finger twirls to show the woman in the passenger seat that I knew what I was doing.

The first few turns were uneventful, almost calming after my initial scare. Maybe the licensing process wasn’t so bad after all.

My brother had warned me against any attractive lull the proctor might design. It was the calm before the storm, the quiet before the smash, the last breath before the death shudder. I was to stay on the alert the whole time and never lose focus.

A bead of sweat dropped from my nose onto the steering wheel and I hoped the licenser didn't notice. Sweat could be interpreted as nervousness or discomfort with driving and nobody wants to have an uncomfortable driver certified for road driving with the full blessing of the state government. Nobody but Ron Paul and this lady wasn't Ron Paul.

“Turn left at the next stop.”

I arrived at the stop easily, and took pride in my ability to navigate the straight, unoccupied road at 35 mph. I stopped right in front of the sign and paused to recapture my focus. I looked to the left and saw no traffic. On the right side, my vision was obstructed by a protruding building, but from what I could see, there were no cars. I pulled ahead. As soon as my line of vision allowed me to see past the building on the right, it seemed a whole town's worth of cars appeared.

“Stop!” My evaluator yanked the parking brake and we screeched to a halt in the middle of the right-hand lane. Cars whizzed passed opposite us and I got a new lesson in finger obscenity from the passing traffic. Fortunately, the right lane stayed clear - or I would have been united with my instructor and a little vehicular steel in violent fashion - until I was able to squeeze into the lane and complete the turn. By the time I was safely driving along the road, my heart was beating like over a hundred and sixty beats per minute, I was sweating like Shaq at halftime and involuntary whimpers were escaping my mouth despite a good faith effort to hold them in.

My evaluator pulled out her clipboard and made some aggressive scribbling notations that were as illegible as they were large. I tried not to look at what she wrote and continued into the DMV parking lot, wiping my nose on the back of my sleeve. There, parked in the expansive government parking lot, she smiled at me with the same evil grin she had deployed at the beginning of the exam.

There, in the confines of the parked car, across from a heavily painted ugly woman, I thought about life and blind turns. I had a series of profound and marketable thoughts about the futility of trying, the sovereignty of God and just driving in general. Unfortunately, I forgot all of them when she opened her mouth to speak.

“Young man?”

“Yes?”

“I'm going to let you pass...”

She said a lot of other stuff. Something about inching forward to check around a building before barreling ahead and some advice about saving my clutch by not riding it, but I was too giddy to listen. I hugged the evaluator with sincere affection and then sprinted out of the car to tell my father.

I've been driving now for a period of several months and I have never gotten closer to being in an accident than when the DMV official was sitting right next to me. You can't fault my timing.

Part 1: Written Test

With vacation comes the opportunity to dig through last semester's notes and cull some worthy funny stories that were passed over earlier for publication now. The unfortunate and unavoidable consequence of this post facto research is, of course, that the episodes are a tad dated. The piece to follow was started in early February, but then put aside for some terribly important reason that I have now forgotten. Anyway, the driver's test is a timeless coming of age adventure and I'd be remiss if I didn't share my experiences with the Faithful CN Few.

This series of posts is dedicated to my friend who just passed the exam.

Driving. At 16 it's a rite of passage, an entrance from younger boyhood to older boyhood. It's the freedom to take your friends around town, risk your life and burn a few Jacksons on gas and a few Benjamins on insurance. It's sixty miles an hour at night on a deserted road with your lights off. It's a couple of dents, an obscene gesture and a snazzy bumper sticker. It's America by way of Japan.

Only in my family, the passage doesn't happen at 16. Because of insurance costs and a maternal distrust of anything with four wheels, my brothers and I had to wait until after our 18^th birthday to pursue our non-pedestrian dreams. And when I did get the green light to drive, I discovered the process is not as simple as Grand Theft Auto implied.

A couple of weeks after I attained legal adulthood (when insurance costs take their sharp decline), I scheduled an appointment at a local government office whose name in the phone book was as ominous as it was wrong: Death May 'Vollow (DMV). I was informed during a fifteen minute phone conversation with a computer that I would have to pass two tests: A written and physical driving exam, both of which would require my absolute dedication, preparation and resolve.

I'd heard the test was based on a monstrously difficult collection of arcane data that had as much to do with actually driving as putting together a car from scratch. One of the main characters in Adventures In Odyssey – a radio program I used to be addicted to, but have now been clean of for over a week – failed the test in dramatic fashion and I have a couple of friends who failed the test, one of whom failed it twice. These tales of woe and embarrassment were enough to point me to the books and within a couple of hours I figured I knew everything there was to know about the American transit system.

I wondered, as I was studying, what the importance of Eisenhower's establishing a national highway or the history of Oleander hedges was. Those of you who have taken the test probably think I'm a blooming idiot (or maybe another kind of idiot), but the actual material that was going to be on the test was never told me beforehand and the 1940s era driving manual I found at the public library gave me few pointers.

My confusion notwithstanding, the test turned out to be a piece of chocolate mousse. Had I been hungry I would have eaten the test for lunch. I made the test my farm animal. I bench pressed the test. I mean, seriously; I've had harder medical examinations. Here are a couple sample questions...

1) A giant squid is consuming an office complex by the interstate on which you are driving. What should you do?

a) Pull out an automatic weapon and save hundreds of lives by wasting the squid.

b) Obey all applicable traffic laws and phone the appropriate authorities when it is safe.

c) Disobey all applicable traffic laws and do not phone the police.

2) A black Ford GT wants to race. What should you so?

a) Remove a knuckle duster from your glove compartment, exit your car and beat the tar out of the GT driver.

b) Obey all applicable traffic laws and phone the appropriate authorities when it is safe.

c) Gun your engine to show the GT you mean business and then win the race.

3) Four cars arrive at an intersection at the same time: You, a Ferrari, a Toyoto Tundra and a firetruck. Who gets to leave first?

a) The Ferrari, because the most valuable car has the Right Of Way.

b) The firetruck.

c) Order of departure can be determined via hand motions and honks at the intersection.

Actually the second question was the only one I got wrong. I knew – everyone knows – that knuckle dusters are street illegal in California and I am not foolish enough to answer that, but a man has got to protect his turf and no GT is going to squish my pride. When I debated the merits of my response to the DMV receptionist she smiled, showing lipstick stained teeth and shook her head. I got the feeling appeals were as common as they were unappreciated.

The point is that I studied for a couple of grueling weeks and passed the thing without breaking a sweat. If you're looking to pass, my advice is to just go in raw. Studying just distracts from the obvious nature of the questions. You don't need to prepare much to succeed at a test designed to be passable by illegal immigrants who don't even speak the language.

The first part of my driving adventure was complete, but celebration was unwarranted; the worst was yet to come.

FCN's First Bonified IQ Test

Ladies and gentlemen, it is our distinct pleasure to announce our first ever fully certified, totally free IQ test. It has 10 questions + 1 for good luck, and is available

>>>here<<<

which, for those of you who don't click on things, is:

http://www.chatterbean.com/uquiz/myquiz200611290416118.php

Yes, we used ChatterBean. So we're cheap. There's no shame in that.

Anyway, this is your chance to find out how you match up against the FCN underachievers. You don't want to be classified a Moron, do you? Of course not. Take the test and discover your mental fate.