If you're so smart, why ain't you rich, Rich?

I belong to a small group, having perhaps 200 members worldwide, called "UAMSIG."

The "SIG" part stands for "Special Interest Group." There are all kinds of SIGs, all around the world. Wikipedia's definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Interest_Group is a good one. You might take a break and visit their page before you continue reading this.

OK ... so do you know what a "SIG" is yet? If not, go back and follow that Wikipedia link. I'll tell you one organization that has a bunch of SIGs: Mensa, the High IQ Society. Mensa encourages its members to form groups, large and small, to learn about or promote whatever subjects interest them.

In my group, UAMSIG, the "UAM" stands for "UnderAchieving Mensans." We *may* be the smartest people you'd ever meet who never accomplished anything of significance. Not that everybody in the group fits that description. Some *have* accomplished things, perhaps enormously important things, yet feel they haven't lived up to what they *should have* done with their talents.

I, however, *am* one of those who've never done squat with their lives. What makes this a particularly egregious waste of a talented mind is that Mensa requires an IQ of 131 for membership. Eligibility, therefore, requires only that your IQ be in the top 2% of the population. The USA's population is over 300 million. If they wanted to, 6 million of those people could join Mensa.

My IQ is considerably higher. The actual number doesn't matter, but Mensa represents the highest 2%, the "98th percentile." I'm in the top third of one percent. I don't think of myself as special, because there are a lot of people as smart or smarter than I am. About a million of them in the USA.

And it's inappropriate to call myself "smart." I'm smart at taking IQ tests. And IQ tests measure only a limited set of mental skills. If I were *really* smart, I'd be doing something with it.

Hence, UAMSIG.

After I was fired from one of many jobs (maybe 25 years ago), my ex-boss was kind enough to arrange an interview for me with a "headhunter" -- an executive recruiter. Now I don't generally run around telling people my IQ. I never have. This blog post is an exception, because I want to point out how *not* smart I've been in living my life -- but sometimes (like when I had that job) what I say or do reveals I'm intelligent.

The first thing the headhunter said to me was, "I hear you're a genius." I was surprised. I thought for a moment but still couldn't think of anything better to say than, "Yes." I realized, years later, that the right response wasn't "Yes," it was "At what?" If my ex-boss had told the headhunter, and the headhunter told *me*, maybe I would have had a direction to go with my life. Of course the headhunter might have replied, "He didn't say you were good at *doing* anything; only that you're really smart." That wouldn't have done me any good.

As I said, I don't go around telling people my IQ score. About all I've used my intellect to do is write comedy material. Mensans love "word play" -- puns and such. Far too much of my comedy material is that sort of thing. Maybe that's why my act hasn't "taken off" yet.

In one or more other posts here I talk about having been a hippie in the Summer of Love in San Francisco, 1967. I'm pretty sure I smoked enough dope that summer to burn out a significant number of brain cells. Luckily (for my membership application to Mensa, anyway), I took the test a few years earlier.

1st post in a long time

I had the first funny thought in a long time.

It's just a stupid pun [well, alright, a clever pun], but it's nice to think of something that amuses me.

"A man with an eidetic memory can usually picture the last time he slept under a down comforter."

I considered putting spoiler space in here, but what the heck.

I'm using "eidetic" as a pun on "eider." An "eidetic memory" is commonly called a "photographic memory." Hence, "picture." A down comforter is made with "eider down" -- duck feathers. That's really all I can tell you.

Remember, you can't get down off an elephant but you *can* get down off a duck.