I.Q vs, Common Sense

I.Q vs. Common Sense

 

There’s a big debate goin’ on over racial differences as they affect I.Q. I was quite intrigued with the discussions among a number of scholars citing studies and producing graphs to back up their claims. It wasn’t until I realized that some Frenchman invented the test around the turn of the last century that I realized that the standard was set to the European white society at that time. So the whole debate today is full o’ holes.

Well they said that the Australian Aborigines scored lowest on the comparison list, for example. Yet I remember a test done a number of years ago where a race across the outback between somebody on a motorcycle, another team in an overland vehicle, and an old Aborigine tracker walking on foot was held. You know of course that after about five days of racing the motorcyclist and the overland driver were each surprised to be greeted by the tracker who was already at the finish line. Go figure. Then just recently there was the little lost girl that nobody could find for about nine days with GPS, helicopters, sniffer dogs etc. Well another old tracker took off from the last place where the girl had been seen and within four hours returned with her in his arms. Go figure.

An’ then the Rogers Telecom System crashes an’ everybody is up in arms about it. I heard one lady say “What would we do in an emergency if we can’t get hold of anybody?” Can you believe that? Tell you what lady, in a situation like that, go to a person over seventy an’ ask them what to do. Once you get over the serious bump from them kicking your stupid I.Q. arse, they’ll tell you exactly what to do.

There was the time back in ’46 when the Weston Bakery employees decided to go on strike. Well holy Second World War all over again! No bread! NO BREAD? NO BREAD! What in the world would we do with no bread? The mothers wouldn’t be able to put peanut butter on them slices o’ cardboard they called bread no more. My mother never said a cussword in her life, but hearing this, she came about as close as damn at these idiot women who seemed to never have heard of baking your own darn bread.

So there ya go. I guess what we gotta do is to define this intelligence crap (or perhaps redefine it). It obviously has nothin’ to do with common sense. For my money you can take yer intelligence an’ stuff it where the sun don’t shine. Give me good old common sense any day. An’ that Frenchman who invented the I.Q. test, well he probably couldn’t bake a loaf o’ bread neither. At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.

Malala Youstafzai

Malala Youstafzai

 

I don’t know if it’s a sad day when we have to look to a child to show us the way out of our human dilemma or it’s a good day when such a young person can inspire us. But then hasn’t it always been the way? Didn’t Buddha wander throughout the land as a young boy to meditate and learn all the things he needed to know to set out the basis to live by? And didn’t Jesus enter the temple at age twelve? And didn’t Joan of Arc lead the French armies to victory before being burned at the stake at age of nineteen?

And in recent times didn’t David Suzuki’s daughter address the United Nations on environmental issues that shocked everybody into paying attention? And then there was the Kielberg kid who one-upped Jean Chretien at the United Nations when he was just a little shaver.

Then of course, there is Malala Youstafzai, an ordinary Pakistani girl growing up in a beautiful neighborhood in Pakistan with a penchant for learning – until the Taliban showed up. They came, closed and bombed schools, murdered teachers and students alike and disallowed education altogether.

That was too much for Malala. They would not deny her or any of the other girls their education, so she began to speak out about it. Of course, you know the rest. She was targeted on a school bus going home from classes and shot in the head and left for dead.

Thanks to the heroics of the medical teams in the U.K. and the diplomatic services, Malala pulled through. She lost many things in the ordeal – her hearing in one ear, the sight in one eye and so on. But she never lost her focus on girls’ education, and she never gained an ounce of fear of her enemies. In fact if anything, she gained the ability to categorize them with laser precision. They’re afraid, she said. Knowledge is power and they’re afraid of that.

The whole business seems to have lit a fire in her belly to carry on and advocate on behalf of girls and women throughout the world. But make no mistake. This is not a child or young woman who has tunnel vision on only education. This is a young lady who possesses the emotions of most of us. When an interviewer asked her if her father would be angry if he adopted her, Malala, surprised by the inference, exploded in uproarious laughter and her smile lit up the entire room. Only a few moments before in the interview she was asked what her feeling was about the Taliban who targeted her. She said her first instinct was to take off her shoe and hit him with it. But then she thought that would only lower her to the same level as him. Instead she said she would also advocate for education for his daughters as well and he would do what he would do. She was not afraid.

From up here on the top shelf, all I can say is Wow! Let us never curb the aspirations or the inspiration of our children. They are our last hope for sanity in this convoluted world we’ve created. At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.

 

Nurturung Nature

Nurturing Nature 

Seniors will outnumber children worldwide within thirty-five years! That’s what they said on the news this morning. How about that! Civilization is coming to a crashing halt in the foreseeable future. What the H E double hockey sticks? Don’t we know how to make babies any more? How in the world could that happen? How could we possibly screw up sex, I’d like to know.

Well, for one thing, we forgot what sex is for. Used to be that it was taken for granted that it was to reproduce our silly selves. Not no more! No sir! Civilization has come too far for that kind o’ nonsense. These days sex is used for entertainment, conquest between the genders, sales and marketing tools and everything else except its prime purpose. What the heck, there’s sperm banks, cloning technology, and even adoption opportunities of children from third world countries. There’s hundreds of ways to get babies.

An’ now, just in the nick o’ time to save our nurturing abilities before we forget them altogether too, we got our seniors outnumbering the little brats we used to produce to take their place. Now at least, these young people we produced will be able to nurture and care for their parents and grandparents. That’ll keep ‘em from losing the talent altogether. The bonus is that the parents will be able to tell the kids what’s wrong. That’s better than little infants who can’t talk anyway. They just cry so you gotta guess what’s bothering them an’ half the time you don’t get it right anyways. At least this way the old folks can tell you an’ you got a better chance of not screwin’ up. Of course that’s assumin’ they still got most o’ their marbles, the old folks that is.

Me, I’m lookin’ forward to the day when my children can pay total attention to me an’ the missus, lookin’ after our every need and whim. I just can’t hardly wait for to go racin’ down a hospital corridor against the missus, hell-bent for election to the finish line. I got my grandson picked out too. He can run like the wind and ain’t nobody can catch him.

Well an’ then there’s the business of feedin’ us. We got that covered too. One of our granddaughters is a registered dietitian an’ she’s already workin’ in long term care so that’s a no brainer. The only thing I ain’t figured out yet is the bathing an’ diaper changin’. They’ll have to draw straws for that. We just don’t care cause if there’s one thing we’re better at than the little infant children, it’s havin’ long naps. We can nod off on signal an’ never know what’s goin’ on ‘til what’s goin’ on has already gone on.

So it seems to me we’re lucky to have been born in a time when sex was used to produce children. We were blessed with a bunch of them an’ they in turn followed our example. So we’re a self-sufficient family unit an’ everybody else can go take care of their own business. At least that’s how it seems from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.

Oh Crumb!

Oh Crumb!

 

Oh crumb is right! I’m gettin’ so dang farn fed up with bein’ fed up with people an’ their antics, I’m fed up with it already! There ain’t no more pleasure in sittin’ here yellin’ at everybody, ‘specially since they don’t listen anyways. Besides, in Canada you got yer Rick Mercer rantin’ away at most o’ them and in “Murica” you got yer Angie Baldwin doin’ the same thing. Both these folks got laser aim at who needs yellin’ at. If they was in the Wild West Show, they’d be close competitors to Annie Oakley’s aim.

The point is, if I’m gonna rant about somethin’, it should be about somethin’ positive or upliftin’. The world is full o’ bitchin’ an’ bellyachin’ as it is. Well, where do I begin? I could talk about the father and son team who won The Amazing Race Canada. Tim Hague senior and his son Tim junior from Winnipeg came in first, an’ walked away with the whole kit an’ kaboodle.

What I wanted to mention about this is that Tim senior has Parkinson’s disease. If you know anything about that terrible ailment, you know that with it, you get to collapse like a sack of flour from time to time as the disease progresses. It has to do with brain degeneration. That’s only one of the ways the disease gets your attention. Kissin’ the floor or the pavement becomes a favorite pastime it seems.

But researchers have found that a point of focus will allow the sufferer to avoid the ‘kiss of floor’ syndrome. Like if you’re tryin’ to walk an’ nothin’ moves, you focus in your mind a march or a dance step. That suddenly trips a switch an’ you’re walking again. Only trouble is, you gotta keep you’re mind on the step or it’s straight down again. So you can imagine the concentration it took for Tim senior just to finish this race, never mind win it.

Well, and then there’s the second place finisher, Cory and Jody Mitic, two brothers. Jody doesn’t have a leg to stand on (since he lost them both in Afghanistan to a landmine) so he ran on prosthetics. No big deal!

And don’t let me forget the two little women who took third place, two sisters – Vanessa and Celine, one an actress and the other a fashion model. These two mini competitors wouldn’t physically amount to a hill o’ beans, but mentally - look out.

Well they all went at it hammer an’ tong, each one badly wantin’ to win the race. An it had nothin’ to do with the money neither. It was the challenge an’ the camaraderie that drove them to focus one hunnert percent. An’ you know what? In my book, every one o’ them is a winner! I’m getting’ a little long in the tooth to have that kind of focus, but I sure admire it. There! Now that was a story worth tellin’ an’ that’s the truth! At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’. 

Miley and Justin (America's Future)

Miley and Justin

(America’s Future)

Justin Bieber is obviously wearing his dad’s pants cause they’re too big for his tiny little juvenile bum. I just had a thought. Seein’ he wears them red jockey shorts underneath, why doesn’t he put them on over top of his pants? That way they’d stay up an’ he’d look like superman while he’s at it. Bet he never even thought about that! An’ Miley Cyrus can’t seem to get any sex other than with her microphone, and Robin Thicke was dressed as a referee rather than a singing partner.

What a pitiful sight these two icons of the music business present. Imagine how embarrassed their parents must be. They’ve raised a couple of real buffoons for gawd sakes! I don’t know if there’s a law allowing parents to revoke their parenthood, but observing these two, well, an’ maybe even Lady Gaga – but there ought to be. You ought to be able to declare these human disasters as orphans – hand them over to Child and Family Services. They’re forever looking to save somebody so who better than these nondescripts?

Well, I gotta be fair to these urchins. Somewhere in each of their woodpiles you’ll find a publicist of some sort hidin’, lookin’ for an opportunity of sensationalism to up their financial incomes. Hah! I’ll tell you what would be sensational in Justin Bieber’s case – if his old man were to come on stage durin’ one of his performances an’ pull the kid’s pants up so high as to give him such a wedgy that he’d be singin’ first soprano for the rest of the night. That’d larn the kid an’ his publicist.

An’ as far as that Miley Cyrus is concerned, that big smelly arse of hers is a perfect target for a trick I used to have with a wooden spoon. I’ll tell you, the result would be far more explosive than an orgasm with a microphone. Mind you, she wouldn’t have to worry about sittin’ down at the dinner table for a while.

But, them publicists are a wily lot. They must be the same ones that talk young Muslims into becomin’ suicide bombers. They pick up kids with a particular talent (an’ not too much else) an’ set them up for their own aims. “You can do it!” they say. “You’ll be a hero!”

Well, my suggestions would have as much impact as all that “naughty” stuff they’re pullin’ an’ would gain the respect of a much wider audience. At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.

Grab a copy of my FREE ebook "Truthseeker" by going to Drivethrufiction.com 

The Nelson Mandella Effect

The Nelson Mandela Effect

 

Did you ever wonder how that great leader of the ANC came by his visionary prowess? I never did neither. Why would I? But it came to me anyways – like a vision of my own. See I was sittin’ by the screen door leading to the balcony at our place, gazin’ out to the north over top the buildin’ next to ours, when it occurred to me that’s what it’s like lookin’ out the window when yer in solitary confinement in prison.

Well of course our place ain’t really like that. It just feels that way. See, we’re under construction – our balconies, that is. So what they done is nail a couple’a two by fours over the door so we can’t get out an’ fall off it or get in their road while they’re workin’.

That’s all well an’ good except for one thing. THEY’VE LOCKED ME OUT OF MY BALCONY FOR CRIMENY SAKES! Are they not aware that this is the place I go to meditate, where Nestor Kropatnik writes his letters to whomever, where I do my little woodworking projects, where I sneak out for the odd smoke? There ain’t no justice!

I guess Jodi Mitchell was right after all with that parking lot song of hers, sayin’: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone”. Well it ain’t really gone. It’s sittin’ out there full o’ crud an’ dirt, hemmed in by a mighty scaffold, right on the other side of my screen door. It’s just that I can’t get on it. Oh, I could just go out the front door of the place and go for a nice stroll, or go to the park and sit in the grass, but hey, it’s not the same. IT’S NOT MY DAMNED BALCONY!

So I sit in front of the screen door and peer out, lookin’ at the sky an’ the buildin’s all around an’ meditate anyways. That’s what made me think of Nelson Mandela sittin’ in prison, peerin’ out his little window an’ dreamin’ about the freedom of his people from the oppression of Apartheid. Well it’s sort’a the same thing, except for the hard labor pickin’ at a rock pile or whatever else they done there. He must’a sat there starin’ out at the wild blue yonder thinkin’ about brave an’ noble things just like I do. Well he was finally freed an’ went on to do great things for his nation, while I’m still incarcerated behind the dang-farned screen door.

But my time’ll come when they finally tear them dad-blamed two by fours off it an’ I can once again step out over the threshold into freedom an’ meditate to my heart’s content. I may not be cheered on an’ hailed by the whole nation as its savior but at least I’ll once again hear that familiar refrain; “You take your blasted woodwork outside, No more whitlin’ in the house!” At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.

Michael

 Michael

I was thinking about writing a book about a remarkable young man who lived to the age of forty-two with a disease called neurofibrometosis. That was about thirty-nine or forty years longer than predicted. The reason I knew him so well was that he was the son of a lifelong friend of mine. It wasn’t until I attended the funerals of the young man and a few months later of his father, my friend that I decided to do it.

Having no idea of how to begin or what to say in my book, I let it write itself as it were. Of course I had to protect the identity of my friend an his son, so I decided on a fictional flight of fancy, inserting as much of their personalities and activities into the narrative as possible. It took a few months to get it all done, because the story kept taking unexpected turns and I could literally do nothing except try to keep up with it. I wasn’t sure of what I had written when it was complete until I started editing.

Each time I went through the book I discovered new revelations I hadn’t even realized. One of the most striking things I discovered was the tremendous contribution to society made by people with “disabilities” to the community as a whole. Doctors and nurses and caregivers of course make their living serving these people, but aside from making a living, the benefits that accrue to them as a result of this work are monumental. And the volunteers, often considered the heroes of social services are tenfold beneficiaries of the lives of the people they serve.

You could say that if anyone can make the world a better place, it would be people with “disabilities” and not the world leaders as we might expect. It kind of turns the world on its head and makes a mockery of the “top down” system of benevolence.

As a bit of a fatalist, I am grateful to be chosen to write this narrative an hope that I have given it a credible effort. I sincerely hope the reader will find the same revelations I did.

The eBook is available now at Nemsi Books http://www.nemsi-books.com/PubCompany/, and I’m sure that if you ordered the book in print, it will be available shortly.