Readers, I found the following quiz in a nondescript public
garbage can outside the soda fountain near my house. I recommend you take a minute to fill it out. It is very enlightening and gives you
insight into who you really are.
Personality Quiz from the Year 2180: Find out who your
true self is, what your destiny entails, and how to follow your dreams.
Preliminary Information for Statistical Analysis
What is your race or ethnicity?
- South
Antarctican
- Staten
or New York Islander
- Robot
- Constantly
Sun-burned
- Schwarzenegger
What is your gender?
- Female
1
- Female
2
- Technically
born of a frog embryo
- Post-structuralist,
i.e. male
How tall are you?
- 7’1-7’3
- 7’4-7’7
- 7’8-7’11
- Taller than 8’0
How much do you weigh?
- 0
pounds
- .5-1
pound
- 0
pounds
- Greater
than 1 pound
Thank you. The
quiz will now begin. Directions:
Please use whatever writing implement is closest or seemed least beat up in the
bric-a-brac drawer in your kitchen.
Read each question quickly and haphazardly, missing key details. Respond to each question in
nonsensical, incomplete fragments.
The time limits are arbitrary; you may ignore them. You may not talk to your neighbor unless
you are discussing which answer is best.
If you have a question, keep your hands down, gaze intently at your
quiz, and ask your question multiple times in ascending volume until I hear you
and respond from a distance. You
may start now.
1. Which best describes your typical Tuesday night?
A. Ironically barbeque up some Hot Pockets, then eat them
while ironically watching reruns of “Home Improvement.” Then pass out on the couch and
ironically dream of a better life.
B. Go out with your buddies to the Hole in the Wall. Steve, what up, man? Pass me some of that PBR.
C. Hit the e-books!
I’m an e-student and need to e-study!
D. Get a quick bite to eat after work at the In-N-Out Burger
on the Moon and then watch the game with your kids, whom you adorably call
Sport, Honey, and Bottom Feeder.
2. What is your ideal first date?
A. Enter a virtual reality simulator, go to the mall, eat
cheese fries, and people watch while discussing how awesome high school was.
B. I hate first dates!
Can’t we just skip to the second date? We would already know the basic stuff, so we would be
comfortable with each other and could do something really fun, like go to the
beach and build a sand castle, where we would benevolently reign for eight
fortnights, two nights and a foghorn.
We could make a declaration, yes, a set of rules that govern all human
behavior. Everyone would be equal
and all talents would be valued.
It would be an ideal society, and we could unblock the vast reservoir of
human potential. No Canadians.
C. Enter a virtual reality simulator, where you go to a nice
restaurant, see a 9-D movie, and take a virtual walk in a P.A.R.K. (Partial
Aphrodisiac Reaction Knapsack), before having your date signals app instruct
you on whether or not a kiss would be appropriate.
D. Hit the town!—where you enter a virtual reality simulator
and go to a concert, followed by a hike, cooking a nice breakfast, eating
breakfast for dinner, and staying up all night just talking—you as a 75-foot
gorilla, your date as a new animal that flies and looks like Mila Kunis, made
possible by virtual reality. (BTW,
boyish man-slob who turns out to be a gorilla and inexplicably charms Mila
Kunis is the plot of the next Judd Apatow movie.)
3. You’re going to be stuck on a desert island. What five things do you bring?
A. Gunnysack filled with etch-a-sketches. Record player. Generator.
Popsicles. Halloween costume for
party situations.
B. $150,000,000,000 American. Dylan Zorbzrob’s Survival Guide for the Modern Paranoid
Maniac. The Desert Island
Botanical Guide to Edible Plants, Animals, and Adrift Plastics. Rice. Portable water purifier.
C. Your favorite novel. A guitar.
Favorite sweater. Barbeque
sauce. Fully-automatic AK-47.
D. Your five best friends, but don’t tell Jenny because
she’s ranked #6 right now.
4. Fill in the blank.
I wish I were _______ so I could _________
A. The same_____do the same thing.
B. Healthier ______ live to be 350.
C. A better cook ________ cook better.
D. A little bit taller, was a baller, had a girl who looked
good _______ call her.
5. This is the final question. Imagine the following scenario. You’re the leader of a ragtag crew of scrawny misfits, and
you’re going up against the strong, non-prudish rich kids in the championship
game of summer league zoom ball.
You’re all about to start high school, and you want to enter with a
bang, completely reshaping your loser middle school image. Plus, the guy/gal of your dreams but
also of real life will be watching, and you could be the new it couple. However, your coach was injured in a
tragic accident (picnic, lightning, pack of Segways gaining self-consciousness
and rebelling against their human overlords), so now you’re in charge. What do you tell your team to pump them
up for the big game?
A. Well, we made it this far. Nobody could have predicted that. Now let’s make Coach Cox proud out there, although he could
be dead by now. And even if he’s
not dead, he might be so badly injured that he has no concept of what zoom ball
is anymore, and he might not even remember who each of us is. So, no matter what happens out there
today, let’s tell Coach that we won, and that we did it for him.
B. Listen up! I
want you to wipe those stupid looking frowns off your faces! We’ve got a game to win! It’s time to ship in or ship out! Is that it? Ship in or ship out?—something about doing something or
shipping out. That means you,
Turner! And you, Rodriguez! Let’s get ‘em!!!!!
C. OK, bring it in.
Let’s face it. They’re
bigger than us. They’re stronger
than us. And dang it, they’ve gone
to more school dances than us.
But, guess what? We’re
smarter. It’s time to talk
strategy. They’ll get off the line
faster, so I want a man-to-man defense, but I want Gottfried playing loose and
helping out downfield. If they go
to a 4-6-1, we’ve got to match up.
And this is important: instead of going for the big play, let’s just
chip away one point at a time.
That means when we get the ball in their mouths, we do the ceremonial
dance for no more than ten seconds before getting back on d. And if they start doing cartwheels to
get the bonus scrim, we need to counter with a pack of ferrets that we let
loose. Harrelson, I want you to be
ready for our special Hammock Parachute play, so suit up in your astronaut
costume at the end of the second.
No mistakes; tighten your control.
Let’s go.
D. In June, would anyone have said we’d be here today? No! They all said that the Chesapeake Dogwalkers were a loser
team! That we’d never win! Well, here we are. To all those people, we need to go out
and prove that they are factually inaccurate! That their powers of prediction lack along one, maybe two
vectors! Coach or no coach, the
Dogwalkers are going up against the Grizzlykillers this afternoon, and I want
to see some Grizzlykiller blood out there! Now everybody take a knife. Also, there’s an old zoom ball rule that if your coach can’t
make it to the championship game, then you can hire a different coach
temporarily. So, here he is, Mr.
Zoom Ball himself, Titian Macromanager!
[Titian:] When I heard about what happened to your coach from my
supermodel assistant who rarely wears clothes around the office, I thought to
myself, Wow, how sad. I wonder if
I can do anything to help that takes no effort. I couldn’t think of anything, so my other supermodel
assistant suggested that I coach the team for a game. And here I am!
I know how you guys play.
I’ve seen the tape. I’m
impressed, and I know you can beat this team!
Scoring
If you answered…
Mostly As:
The whole “life is boring so let’s make fun of it by doing
things half-heartedly and then sleeping in a pile of regret, broken promises,
and CAN records” shtick is getting old—really old. Half of you is a lame sourpuss whose vacant insides are
projected onto the events that surround you, but the other half is sincere,
showers, and downright loves life.
Embrace the second half of you, cultivate it, and watch it ripen and
flower come harvest-time. Make
sure to eat plenty of nitrogen-rich fertilizer.
Mostly Bs:
You, sir or madam, are a king among kings, a queen among
queens, which is to say, pretty much like everybody else around you. It’s time for some excitement! Some joy! Some spontaneous acts of windigglefrazzling! But I understand: you’ve been beat
down, pushed around, treated like trash.
It’s been a tough few months, but it’s time to pick yourself up and dust
yourself off. Find your center and
focus on the important things in life—specifically, exacting terrible revenge
on those who did this to you.
Mostly Cs:
“Hey, what happened to the friend I used to know?” Are your friends asking that behind
your back? If so (and they are),
then let’s face it: you’ve changed.
While you used to be quirky, spontaneous, and downright criminally
negligent, landing you 15 to life in the slammer, now you’re conservative,
frigid, and bland—like a frozen, worn-out pair of Cheerios jeans. Your friends want you the way you used
to be. You’ve done your
auto-da-fé, and now it’s time to party!
Find a rager and rage like you’ve never raged berage. Just don’t get caught and violently
harassed by the police like last time ;)
Mostly Ds:
We all get it.
You’re a working professional with many “obligations,” such as “tending
to your family,” “performing ER surgery,” and “courageously fighting the
onslaught of mutant scorpion-kings.”
Big whoop. Well guess
what? Nobody cares. You seem constantly to exude joy and
happiness, but what’s this?—I think it’s my fist, exuding joy in your
face. Take it down a notch. No, take it down three notches, then
another five notches, then six more notches until you’re hypoglycemic,
comatose, and sleeping inside your dishwasher. See how that feels for a while; then re-enter the world a
little more apathetic.
I hope you enjoyed the quiz and are happy with your results!
The Week’s Training
Sunday, September 18th: 10 miles, 65
minutes. At the Minuteman
Trail. Right calf had been feeling
a bit iffy the past 48 hours, so decided to take it easy. Feeling better, though.
Monday: AM 5 miles, easy on the river. PM 12 miles, 83 minutes. Three times around Fresh Pond, very
relaxed pace. Calf starting to
loosen up. Behind in mileage for
the week because of the light day yesterday, so I might be playing
ketchup*. (*The need to “play
ketchup” was first coined by football announcer John Madden in the year
1793. Originally meaning “to pour
ketchup on yourself, then put leeches on the ketchup to get the demons out,
followed by jumping into the ocean to see if the ketchup floats,” it has been
generalized to mean “take steps to rectify falling behind.” It is never written “play catch-up,”
even though many people, even learned people, sometimes spell it that way.)
Tuesday: 14 repetitions of a segment of Heartbreak
Hill. A bit faster than the last
time I did this workout, but not feeling too great. Stopped a little before the goal. 14 miles total.
Wednesday: AM 12 miles, 80 minutes. Took the T to the Fells, like last
week. Was a delight. Legs a bit beat up from the hill, but
in general doing fine. PM 6 miles
easy easy easy on the river.
Thursday: 14.5 miles.
93 minutes. Very pleasant
run at the Fells. Or, as David
Attenborough would say, “The single greatest smallest migration to the Fells
ever undertaken by a person named Chas at the end of September 2011 in humankind’s
200,000 year history.
Astounding. Beautiful. Humans may never witness anything like
this again ever until next week.”
Friday: 10 mile tempo run. Warmed up to the Chestnut Hill reservoir, which is a gravel
path around a reservoir near Boston College. A flat, nice surface, and we deduced it was about 2500
meters around (around 20 seconds longer than 1.5 miles), although we should
measure it exactly. Loop splits of
8:25, 8:17, 8:13, 8:04, 8:16, 8:15, last mile perhaps 5:15. So, an average of around 5:20, fastest
mile around 5:10. A fine workout,
a nice improvement from last week.
I feel like I’m rounding into shape, not quite there, but getting there.
Saturday: 6 miles, 42 minutes, easy on the river. Legs very tired.
Week in Review: 96.5 miles, two long, decent workouts. No long run, but a shorter version of a
long run on Thursday of 14 miles.
Yoko Ono tweet of the week:
Send
a paper moon to your friend. Ask them to burn it.
Words of the Week
“The Lee Shore” Chapter of Moby-Dick:
Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a
tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.
When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod
thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see
standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and
fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years'
dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another
tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest things
are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch
chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared
with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward
land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is
safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind
to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst
jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze
the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she
crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain
would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for
refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see
of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the
intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the
wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous,
slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth,
shoreless, indefinite as God--so, better is it to perish in that howling
infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety!
For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the
terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear
thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing--straight up,
leaps thy apotheosis!
