pH for the Value-free
New Millennium

How close to Ideal Neutrality are you? It’s easy to find out. Just answer the following 10 questions:

Favorite religion? ____________
Give yourself –1 if the name of the religion you wrote starts with any letter other than "t". If the name of the religion starts with "t" give yourself 0.

Favorite SUV? ____________
Give yourself –1 if you wrote anything in the blank. If you wrote nothing give yourself 0.

Favorite newspaper? ____________
Give yourself –1 if your wrote "USA Today," –2 if you wrote "Wall Street Journal," +1 if you wrote New York Times, +2 if you wrote "Los Angeles Times," +3 if you wrote either "Le Monde" or "Die Zeit."

Favorite magazine? ____________
Give yourself –2 if you wrote "Time", "Newsweek," or "US News." Give yourself –4 if you wrote "New Yorker." Give yourself +1 if you wrote "The Nation," +2 if you wrote "The Progressive," +4 if you wrote "Mother Jones," +5 if you wrote "Screw" or "The Advocate."

Favorite occupation? ____________
Give yourself –3 if you wrote job title whose first initial is "c" (CEO, CFO, etc.). For all others, give yourself +1.

Favorite president? ____________
Give yourself –2 if you wrote anything, 0 if you wrote nothing.

Favorite computer operating system? ____________
Give yourself –5 if you wrote any OS whose name starts with "w", -2 if it starts with "m", +2 for all others.

Favorite orgasm? ____________
Give yourself +5 if you wrote anything, 0 if you wrote nothing.

Favorite director? ____________
Give yourself –2 for any name in the second half of the alphabet ("n" through "z"), +2 for any name in the first half of the alphabet ("a" through "m").

Favorite channel? ____________
Give yourself +7 if you wrote anything, 0 if you wrote nothing.

Add your answers and write the result here: _____

If your total is more than –7, reduce it to –7. Similarly, if your total is more than +7, reduce it to +7.

All that remains now if for you to consult the Interpretative pH Chart for the Value-free New Millennium:

You will notice that at the perfect center of the pH Scale for the Value-free New Millennium we have the absence of all color, all meaning, all value. Zilch. Nada. Riens. Nichts. The Triumph of (now we must ask you to recall high school physics for a moment) the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That big fat Naught is the position to be strived for by all worthy persons in the New Millennium: value-free, non-thinking, indifferent, non-judgmentally content with his or her affluent, wired or wireless lot in life.

Deviation in either direction—doesn’t matter whether to the left or the right—indicates pain, pain, and more pain.

Scores to the left indicate increasing greed, ceaseless acquisitiveness, merciless competitiveness. If not interrupted, such persons move from early-in-life tendencies toward voting Republican, cherishing Neiman-Marcus charge cards, and the occasional flight on the Concorde, to later-in-life unrestrained Scrooge-ness culminating in appointment to a cabinet level position in the Defense Department.