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...

In Defense of Moronitude

I recently took an online IQ test. You know the type: 40 questions to determine the taker's Intelligence Quotient. The test I took had an introduction that correlated IQ with "success" in life and a final page that completely contradicted the opening by disclaiming any accuracy of the test and pointing out that dumb people can be successful as well. Incidentally the disclaimer was about six times as long as the introduction.

They say you can't fail an IQ test, but I think I came mighty close. My intellect puts me among the company of the smart domesticated animals and retarded children of the world. The short blurb offered at the end of the quiz advised me not to have children so I wouldn't pollute the gene pool and presented several examples of "famous" people with a score like mine, the most notable of which were Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton and Harpo Marx.

I scored a 41 (click on the image for a larger view).

But 41 out of what?

Being (apparently) dumb and unfamiliar with the IQ scoring system, I went back to the internet and located this snazzy webpage which gives a thorough if not succinct explanation. The first chart of details that anyone scoring below seventy suffers from "Definite Feeble Mindedness."

The website also says that only 2.2% of the population falls into this "defective" category, putting me in what I like to call elite company.

In search of a finer classification of my mental capabilities, I continued my trek further down the page and found a graph which breaks up Definite Feeble Mindedness into four distinct categories.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am a moron.

But I am a proud moron. I take pride in the fact that I am not an imbecile and I most definitely am not an idiot; I am a medically classified moron and there is a certain rest that comes with being a peace with one's mental deficiency.

Some years ago, after the rabble of society hijacked terms like idiot and imbecile for use as pedestrian insults, the psychiatric community resolved to use more suave terms to describe my condition, or inability to pense as the case might be. They must have been concerned about my feelings and how I would react to school yard taunts being handed me in triplicate by a licensed shrink. Regardless of their intention, people like me were relabeled as "Moderately Mentally Deficient" and, with the exception of the new title, treated with the same disregard as before.

I know, turn on the violins and begin feeling sorry for me. I am slightly mentally retarded and well below the intellectual capacity of most of my peers. I will never live a truly normal life and will always wonder what my existence could have been - or would wonder if my brain allowed the activity.

Look at the bright side: my score qualifies me for a long list of educational and financial advantages, most of which will be paid by smarter people like you. I can go through life ignorant of many evils and enjoy the fact without ever paining to ask why. I can be simple - in every way - and never have to worry about things getting complicated, because they can't.

You are probably scoffing right now; maybe even considering a comment that pokes fun at my retardation. And, as long as you aren't a beautiful celebrity or a sports star, you can probably get away with such a wisecrack. That's something your intelligence let's you do better then me.

But before you get too self confident in your own abilities, I want to remind you that the great intellects of history, the true brilliant minds of the past, all lived miserable lives marked by more suffering than morons like me can imagine. Intellects like David Hume, John Belushi and Ernest Hemmingway were just too smart for their own good. Their lives would have been much nicer and much longer had they not overthought their own existences.

Mental ability makes life so much more complicated, so much more intense. God above has spared me the horrors of that kind of existence by giving me a 41.

So go on living your smart life. I'll just be the moron; happy, simple and alive.

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.