Everybody is a snob about something.

For some people it’s sports, maybe music, their politics, their product loyalties (now that’s pitiful); but snobbery is ubiquitous.

I used to be a member of Mensa. I am no longer because I refuse to pay dues. I qualify, but I don’t inhale. Who would want to?

I quit in a huff a few years ago telling them to go to hell in an email which I still wish I had a copy of. I have no idea what happened to it– lost among the stuff we lose all the time shuffling the things we have about.

Essentially, I left because of vanity. I hate vanity, but for a group of so-called intellectuals, that was all they had to offer: a chance to be vain.

Mensa has a store where they have coffee mugs showing your superiority (if you are a member), where you can get bumper stickers, bookmarks, probably even dildos for all I know, emblazoned with the Mensa symbol:

The website has a lot of links for working with “Gifted Children” also. I guess the crop of snobbery has to be perpetuated. I was hoping there would be links to help tutor kids that maybe weren’t so “gifted”, that maybe needed extra help, maybe some confidence building. No such luck.

We gifted have to stick together.

I used to attend Mensa meetings when I lived in Dallas. There were definitely the snobs there, but there also were some fine people who just said “fuck it” to all the snobbery. A couple by the name Janette and Richard come to mind. They had the best attitude of anyone I ever met, which could be summed up by: “All right! Extra brain cells! Let’s destroy them!”

Somewhere I still have an invite to the “KumonIwannalaya luau” they held in 1987. They lived in Richardson. They roasted a pig in a pit they dug in their front yard (much to the obvious chagrin of their neighbors)– there was no room in the back, it was filled fence to fence with a pool. Porky rose from the pit promptly at 7:00. The drinks were free and plentiful. The guest list was confined to  a lot of fun people, Mensans and non-Mensans– not that you could really tell the difference after a few drinks.

One of the activities they planned involved dropping a group of attendees far too inebriated to drive themselves at a nearby (3 miles away) office park after dark. Never fear, each participant had a flashlight and their own golf ball and club. The rules were simple: whoever was able to make it back to Jan and Rich’s place and hit their ball through the window to their bedroom (around back) landing closest to Jan’s loafer won. What still remains unclear.

Take as many strokes as you like, try not to break anything, try to keep your drink from spilling all over the place (Richard will be out with the truck delivering refills), try to be as clear as possible when explaining to the friendly officers why you are out along a major boulevard with a golf club after dark on a summer night alarming motorists, and most of all, try to have a good time.

In a state with (at that time) an open container law, walking around on a Saturday with a drink was acceptable if not expected, even in Richardson. The golf clubs were another matter. Fortunately no one was jailed.

There was also “The Rock and Roll SIG”. A special interest group where the attendees got loaded and listened to all the deep tracks from albums that never got any airplay. I owe a lot of my taste in music to those folks. There was not a lot of snobbery there, just good music, the snobs were not welcome and did not stay long.

I attended only one Mensa meeting after moving back to Colorado, with my brother and future wife. It was like attending a congregation of the greek gods (“poor mortals, I feel so sorry for, and superior to them”). Everyone seemed to be focused lording their intellect, every conversation could be summed up as looking down on society in general as those poor dumb slobs who did not appreciate all this intelligence or trying to discern where then belonged in the smarts pecking order.

Assholes.

Where I work I saw one of those vanity ovoids that jerkoffs who run marathons have on their cars (usually with 26.2 for “I run full” or 13.1 for “I run half” marathons) to make themselves feel superior for running, only this one was inside the Mensa symbol with the ovoid containing “140.3”. Encoded for those “in the know” it essentially said, “my IQ is 140.3, neener-neener-neener.”

What a fuckwad. I can use that phrase, because it’s arabic for “douche-bag”.

Is that all there is to intellect? Just looking down your nose at “the intellectually inferior”. No wonder so many brainiacs had the shit kicked out of them throughout childhood by anyone with a lick of athletic ability.

I guess being smart doesn’t prevent you from being childish.

It seems silly to me for this to be the case, though. If you’re so smart, can’t you put it to good use? Can’t you try to do something good with all that “superior intellect”? I mean, who can change the world by being a good skier? Maybe you can teach kids or endorse good causes if you are good enough at it, but what the fuck good is having a brain if you don’t do anything with it other than brag?