Kettle.

Black.

When I was in high school, I cheated one time, on an English test.

No, I didn't copy answers from another student's test. No, I didn't bring in a cheatsheet and look up the answers. No, I didn't ask someone for help.

But I did game the system.

When the instructor, Mr. McClellan (he taught AP English the next year), would grade papers, he would mark the incorrect answers, total all of the incorrect answers, subtract that number from the number of questions on the test, and mark the score.

I had watched him grade papers a few times, and noted he went on auto-pilot after the first few papers. I don't know if he gave the same test year after year or what, but after the first three or four tests, he wouldn't look at the answer key, he'd just read the student answers, noting which were incorrect.

Well, this test I was taking was 50 questions long. I had actually studied for this test, because I was struggling in the class. Struggling in the class at the time meant, "I have a 93% in this class. Lose much more and I might get a B! Oh no! Work hard!"

Uh...

Yeah.

So, I was taking this test, and realized I didn't know the answer to question #27. I think there was another question I didn't know, but could guess at. This one, I had no clue.

Not sure if most people know this, but colleged-ruled paper has between 25 and 30 lines on it. If appropriately numbered, one could, say, number a paper 1 through 26 on one side of the paper, and 27 through 50 on the other side of the paper, and use only one sheet for a 50 question test.

Or, if you wanted to, you could, say, number the front side 1 through 26, and the back side, oh, I don't know, maybe 28 through 50.

Which I what I did.

Knowing the teacher counted wrong answers when determining the score, and that he would flip my test over when nominally zoned-out while grading papers, I chanced that he wouldn't noticed I skipped question 27 when he was gradiing.

I was correct.

I missed one on the test, and it wasn't number 27, for a 98% on the test.

After taking the test, before receiving it back graded, I looked up the answers to the questions I didn't know. I did that all the time, so looking them up was nothing new or unusual.

Remembering the answer over a decade later probably is.

The answer to question #27 is, by the way, "Guilt by Association", a logic fallacy where one quality implies another quality because an item has both of the qualities. A shallow example: The apple is red and round. The box is red. Therefore, the box is round. A better example is from wikipedia:

Anti-war activists has made statements critical of Israel. Neo-nazis have made similar statements. Therefore, opposing the war is equivalent to supporting Nazism.

A dumb statement, but one that some people would make.

If the purpose of school is to teach a person, then I would have to say that I learned that lesson pretty well.

Apparently guilt for cheating on a test in school is a good teacher. I didn't make that mistake again.

Cal's linklog pointed me to Tagyu.com, which claims to make "Your tags, smarter." The idea being you put in text or a URL, it gives you back tags. I think the idea is that it'll suggest tags that you wouldn't think of, but that the collective might. Sort of a free association thing.

Well, have to try this out. Currently on my mind? Why, ultimate, of course.

The lone tag back?

"pens"

Um...

Oh, it's a sad, sad day when a friend asks you what the last book you've read is, and not only does it take you four minutes to remember what book it was, but the book was actually crap.

In all fairness, it wasn't complete crap, just mostly crap.

The book in question is Carpe Demon. I read it on the way to Chico nearly two months ago. Two! I haven't even finished the latest Harry Potter for goodness sake. Sigh.

Kris purchased the book for me a few days before our drive to Chico. We had been at Borders, nominally for Kris to purchase the soundtrack to Wicked. In as much as I love bookstores (having worked at bookstores for over five years in high school and college), I wasn't quite ready to leave when Kris was ready.

Well, Kris was completely ready to leave, so even though I was resisting, he was insisting. After a few moments, Kris turned to me and said, "I'm getting in line. You can put whatever books you want into my hands until I get to the register, but I'm leaving now."

Um...

Okay!

I immediately plunked the stack of books in my hands into Kris' arms, and followed him out of the stacks. Along the way, I started picking up books and adding them to Kris' pile. A couple of them were ones I had been thinking of purchasing, but wasn't quite ready to get (realizing I had a 2' stack of books at home not yet read), but some of them were completely spontaneous.

Like the Carpe Demon book, whose sub-title of the book is "The Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom."

The back cover makes it sound interesting:

Lots of women put heir careers aside once the kids come along. Kate Connor, for instance, hasn't hunted a demon in ages...

That must be why she missed the one wanderin through the pet food aisle of the San Diablo Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, he managed to catch her attention an hour later -- when he crashed into the Connor house, intent on killing her.

Now Kate has to clean up the mess in her kitchen, dispose of a dead demon, and pull together a dinner party that will get her husband elected to County Attorney -- all without arousing her family's suspicion. Worse yet, it seems the dead demon didn't come alone.

It's time for Kate Connor to go back to work.

I read the first three pages in the store, to see if I could stand the writer's voice. It seemed okay, so sure, why not?

Well, by the end of the first chapter, I realized why not.

The style of writing was annoying. She was unable to make any statements of actions without explaining them to death. And the descriptions weren't entertaining either. Quite often the author tried too hard to create the scene and character voices, managing to just annoy me instead. An example:

"Mo-om." She managed to make the word two syllables. "You don't have to be gross."

Writing the word as two syllables puts both of them into my head as I read them, I don't need the description afterward.

The plot was predictable. The character development was unsatisfying and shallow. The lead character, Kate, pretty much had to be an idiot to behave the way she does in the book. And her husband? A complete moron.

The parts that should be exciting, the fight scene descriptions, for example, were lame and boring.

The book is 360 pages long, and satisfyingly thick. Until you open it and realize the paper is thick, the lines widely spaced, the font large and there are less than 300 words per page.

The part I think I found the worst was on page 279:

"Demons are the bad guys," Ediie said. "And believe you me, I've known some bad ones in my time, that's for sure."
I opened my mouth to get a word in, but Eddie rambled on.
"Vial things. And the stench? Hoo-boy..." he made a strong motion as if to dispel the odor.

Vial.

Sounds a lot like "vile," eh?

Yeah.

That was the one I remembered, but there were a number of misspellings in the book that were really annoying. Those, and a series of grammar errors just grated on my nerves.

Bleh.

The book sucked. Time to get this copy out of the house.

They're gone before you realize it. That very well may be the best thing about them in some cases, but it's also the worst thing about them, too.

Pretty much most of my childhood I struggled to forget. I'm sure most people (though definitely not all) are in the same boat of hating the awkwardness of growing up.

I became darn effective at forgetting memories, and being aware of the ones I wanted to remember. I remember sitting on the Olive Walk with Ari Pine, just talking on cool Southern California evening some time during my junior year at college, and thinking, "I want to remember this. This is a good moment." I have no idea what we talked about, nor who else was there, but I do remember that it was good, and that I wanted to remember.

I find myself more and more wishing that in the destruction of my bad memories, I hadn't lost the good ones, too.

But, I guess memories are like that, too. You don't get to choose.