*Transcendental *Logic

“Where facts are few, experts are many.” - Donald R. Gannon

Hehe, yup, that’s me!  Expert in something that virtually nobody really knows much about, thus elevating my mediocre knowledge and paltry couple years of experience into the stratosphere of learnedness.

Never let it be said that I don’t know how to chase the intellectual pedigree, heh.   In fact:

Chasing the Intellectual Pedigree:

Step One:  Big Words.  Worship them.  Learn most of them before you’re ten, if possible.  (Ignore those short people who kick your ass all the time, and go hang out with the people who know the biggest words.)  Know them, spell them, love them, write sonnets composed entirely of them in your teens.  Then — this is crucial — forget them all and learn to talk like some version of a prole (whatever you’ve got available: a homie, a hippy, a hick, whatever).  Now you can sound like all those big words pop out occasionally by virtue of your sheer accidental smartitude.

Step Two:  The Right Education.  Education is its own good of course, but if you want to exude general brainiocity from your pores, you need either philosphy or science (or some branch of one of them — physics counts, for instance — but don’t get too specialized.)  Get some minor degree in one or the other, and never tell anybody that you have it unless they try to argue with you in public about something.

Step Three:  Clout.  Persue one of the following:  A law degree.  A job in the court system (court clerk is a position of *awesome* power, for instance).  A career in politics (note:  requires an initial Ego of 18 and a special operation to drain your morals).  Any impressive prize that you think you could win.  Grants from major corporations and the state (think about it long enough, and you’ll quickly realize how YOU can help Katrina victims or improve Homeland Security…because let’s face it, just about anybody could improve on the job that’s being done now!).  Or any position with significant power in any major system — this doesn’t have to be big.  Think, “manager of a Secretary of State”, or “Administrative Assistant to the Mayor’s office”.  All you need is *some* clout to put the seal on your ultrasmartyness.  [ALTERNATELY, you could combine steps two and three with the next one, and seek a position doing something utterly obscure that nobody else does.  This can be a tricker way to go, but it worked for the Crocodile Hunter, eh?]

Step Four:  (obviously)  Some Obscure Thing to Specialize In.  Polyphasic sleep is taken.  ;)  But this is a category which never runs dry, and chances are you’ve already dipped your toe into something that would love to wrap itself around your social identity like a Burqa of Genius +5.  Think about something that you’ve done, or almost done, or considered, that your friends don’t know anybody else who has.  (This step can actually override the others, if done creatively enough.  For instance, there are five rich, famous guys out there who, ignoring all the other steps, realized that they were the only guys they knew who would stick battery electrodes to their genitals just to see what it was like.  And pow, Jackass was born.)

…And that’s it, voila, you’re an Expert.

-PD

…P.S., this is in jest, of course.  The real experts in polyphasic sleep are probably doctors and scientists, but darnit, they’re just not making very much noise out there.  I’ve tried getting ahold of some myself, to no avail.I wish they’d call me, and then I could steal their terminology and look even smarter.  I mean — then I could clue everybody in to their great ideas and ongoing work on this fascinating topic.

This entry was posted 2 years, 2 months ago on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 8:52 am and is filed under lists, polyphasic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.