Cody Has A Goldfish That Was Born In California

In a previous post I pointed out that the reading level of HOT POOP is ELEMENTARY, my dear babycakes, according to this quick readability test I found at criticsrant, and I'm not going to dispute their conclusion, mostly because I can't, and who cares?

Besides, I will be arbitrarily dumping big random words into various posts from now on, slowly increasing the readability level of HOT POOP until this blog becomes a shining beacon of genius and it's accompanying pretensions.

Anyways, I did something tonight that I've never done before - I watched an episode of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader. I did so because of that damn readability test, but mostly I watched AYSTA5G because of the WGA strike and the lack of 30 Rock and The Office tonight.

Carassius auratus!!!!!

Long story short, I AM smarter than a 5th grader. I'm probably not smarter than all 5th graders, but I am smarter than the fifth graders on tonight's episode, and I'm smarter than the 22 year old UCLA Surfing Professor (seriously) who took the test tonight. He balked at the question "Which US President signed this document in 1823 proclaiming that European powers would no longer be allowed to colonize in the Americas?"

I admit that I had to think about it a bit, but I did write down the correct answer on my little pink Post-It, and if I had been on the show, I would have won $100,000, and the possibility of continuing and winning the full $1,000,000.

But I'm not terribly telegenic, and I think if I met Jeff Foxworthy, I might punch him in the throat because I'm smarter than him, too.

Anyways, the questions on this show are challenging enough, if only because they involve the kind of knowledge and thought processes that I don't believe alot of adults utilize much as they get older. Things such as doing 3 digit, multiple-operation math equations in one's head, or knowing in which century William Shakespeare was born. For the record, I have serious doubts that the typical 5th grader knows when the bard was born, and none of the kids on the show knew the name of that presidential document of 1823.

I have to admit, that when they first announced the premier of this show last summer, I found it rather sad, and even a bit offensive. Is this what we've come to? Testing adults to find out if they're smarter than 5th graders? Has our educational system failed this badly?

And then I remembered the very sub-title of this blog, an old nugget from Frank Zappa...

"Information is not knowledge."

Mastering 3rd Grade Geography is not the same as navigating one's way out of a baaad situation in East St. Louis. Passing 4th grade health won't fend off chlamydia in the freshman dorms, or help you find a decent vein when yr pumping junk.

Of course, if you flip-flop all this, it still rings true.

Knowing where to score semi-automatic weapons in downtown Madison won't help me win on Jeopardy!, not to mention landing that marketing job at Oscar Mayer.

(Mmmmm, Hot Poop Filler...)

In the end, maybe an ELEMENTARY reading level is preferable for a such a pedestrian blog such as this. After all, newspapers typically write to about a 7th grade readability level, because clear, concise writing is easier for more people to understand, and isn't that what THIS is all about? Electronic populism?

HINES WARD!

Hotcha! Hank