On the geniuses who out themselves

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 1 Comment

I went to high school with a genius. In daily life, he offered scant evidence that he possessed a beautiful mind. But we knew he had a 165 IQ, because he kept telling us about it. Whenever he failed a math test, and once when someone corrected his pronunciation of Michaelangelo’s famous Sixteenth Chapel, he reminded us of his giant brain number. “That’s on a test,” he would say. “Not just an estimate.” We wondered whether he was simply lying or if his parents had told him in some irrevocable mistake. If that wasn’t it, then somewhere in town there was an educational psychologist whose license needed revoking. We loved to talk about this question.

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Friday links! Personal problems edition (and update!)

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 10 Comments

Today’s edition of Combat! blog is late and extremely half-assed—we’re talking quarter-assed, really—because I have personal problems. As a crazy person who works for himself, I spend a lot of time balancing the demands of my unreasonable boss with the shortcomings of his incompetent employees. Some days it shakes out and I do the work. Other days I make a spectacle of myself, which is basically what we’re doing here. So buckle up: I’m an unreliable person whose shitty writing reflects his fundamental inner shititude, and I have tricked you into expecting better from me. It’s Friday, nothing matters more than my own disappointed narcissism except for possibly my narcissistic disappointment, and everything sucks. Want proof? I feel compelled to tell you anyway.

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