Monday, June 8, 2009

An oldie, but...

We'll get to the Camry's and Patchouli-soakers of the world in a little bit. But first, I'll carry one over from TOS (that's The Old Site, for those who still own typewriters).

I pledge THIS -- buy enough of my merchandise, and I’ll utilize the $$$ to fund a scientific project destined for worldwide headlines. I’ll call it “Project Stupidity”.

See, I have a theory, and it’s quite simple: There are two levels, in my opinion, of intelligence -- knowledge and common sense. “Knowledge”, being information smart, and “common sense”, being instinctively smart. It is my personal opinion that a single person cannot attain high levels of both at the same instant. In fact, my hypothesis is that both are mutually attached to a sliding scale -- as one increases, the other decreases.

No dumbass, not like walking and chewing gum at the same time!!

More like riding a bike while talking on a cell phone to your friend while crossing a crosswalk....against a red light....on Ventura Boulevard!!!! Let me explain.

Several days ago I was on my way back from Baja Fresh, standing at the corner of Ethel and Ventura, awaiting the green light to cross. Across the street, at the northeast corner, were two boys on BMX bikes. One looked like some half black, half white, quarter asian mutt with an affinity for Big Macs and porn, the other a curly haired white kid fresh from a shopping spree with daddy’s Platinum card at Abercrombie and Fitch. Both had that WB “plug ‘n play” look (stick ‘em in any WB show, and they’ll fit right in). The mutt looks for an opening, then crosses the street in a little less than a hurry. Fine with me. Kinda dumb, but at LEAST he made an effort to rush across. 

A moment later came his friend.

Let’s call him Chad. Yeah, that’s an outstandingly “fresh” CW name.

Chad, wearing a button down print dress shirt with cargo pants and sandals, complete with that curly unkempt hair so popular with his “kind”, decided it was a good idea to cross at a leisurely pace while speaking on his phone (probably to his “baby” -- let’s call her Hailey).

Chad had found a way to lower the seat of his BMX bike without killing himself, as well as figured a method for dialing the phone he holds in his pedicured hand. Yet, when it comes to crossing a busy boulevard, slowly, talking on his phone, on his bike, against the red light, oblivious to 4000 pound objects made of heavy metal hurling forth at 40 miles an hour towards him only because THEY HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY...well, that’s far too much to comprehend. His brain must’ve flat out shut down due to it’s inability to multi-task so many events at once. But there he was, ignoring the vehicles braking to a stop to avoid hitting the jayriding little prick, and at the same instant risking another car slamming into the back of theirs. At the end of his “mad dash”, he and his friend continued on their way, presumably to Chad’s hillside estate.

It was the kind of situation you’d like to simply walk up to the stupid fuck and clock him with a right hook, just so that “something” hit him. Then, of course, I would’ve hit a minor (I’m certain he was under 18) before midday traffic, and that’s never a good thing. His daddy’s most likely a power player in whatever he does, and that would make the situation worse. Of course, that begs the question: if daddy is so Goddamn successful, then how could Chad be so friggin dumb?

Which leads me to the study. The idea is, the more that's happening inside your mind, the less space exists to crunch "common sense components", or CSC. Like how Photoshop uses empty hard drive space to work complex commands (scratch disk), I believe the same goes for the human mind. The clutter of current information temporarily takes up unused space inside our memory banks. At a certain point, this creates a bottleneck, which slows down the ability of the brain to access information relevent to the CSC. Our boy Chad might be a smart kid (I doubt it, but we'll offer him the benefit of the doubt for argument's sake), but riding his bike while on the phone with Hailey, while probably attempting to look CW cool at the same instant denied his mind the ability to access the necessary information to suggest that crossing the boulevard at a less than leisurely pace against a red light in the middle of the day was an incredibly bad idea.

We could easily call this "Encino Mom Syndrome" (EMS), but that's a Natural Stupidity for another day.

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