Magellan's Log: S.A.T. Supplementary Questions

If you like this piece, check out:
Is It Empire Yet?
The Funniest Book
of the 21st Century (So Far)!

wpe6.jpg (7537 bytes) 128 pages of the best satire from 6 years of Magellan's Log. Well beyond chortles, Is It Empire Yet? verges on the downright hilarious. "Swiftian," says one reader. "Rib-splitting," says another. "Brilliantly, uproariously offensive to all right-thinking Republicans," says yet another. 128 pp. Paperback. 8.5" x 11". ISBN 0-9767821-3-8. $21.95:

Or at amazon.com: Is It Empire Yet?

S.A.T. Supplementary Questions
for the Reality-challenged

by Harriet Lobdell

We all stumbled through the S.A.T., learning those many unnecessary words, trying to remember obscure math theorems, forcing our minds to think in a rigorously logical fashion. We did it, and then got on with more important things.

We have recently discovered that, for all the headaches it caused, the S.A.T. format has some value in helping us make our way through those more important things which collectively are referred to as "life", or "reality."

How so? We have created a brief set of supplementary questions to the S.A.T. which will not help you get into Princeton but which will definitely give you a good reading on how well in tune with the REAL WORLD you are.

Remember the old analogy part of the S.A.T., with questions like:

hat : head = glove : _____

and you had to decide which was the correct word for the blank:

a. banana. b. Thermopylae. c. Einstein. d. hand.

Such questions of course had absolutely nothing to do with what is important in life (the quality of your last orgasm, the source of your next orgasm, how much money you have access to, etc.). But the S.A.T. was part of the game the system required you to play so you could get to a place where you could worry about the really important things.

Once you get to that place, though, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of why you wanted to get there in the first place. This loss of perspective concerns us here at Magellan's Log, your Internet source of definitive cultural analysis.

Take five minutes and go through the ten S.A.T.-type analogies and see just how well-balanced your mature world-view is.

1. ______ : America = America : World.
a. Porcupines. b. Blue. c. Slowly. d. Enron.

If that one's too tough for you, try this one:
Alternate No. 1. George W. Bush : Florida = ______ : America.
a. Porcupines. b. Blue. c. Slowly. d. Enron.

2. ______ : Christianity = Phineas T. Barnum : truth.
a. Galapagos Islands. b. North Dakota.
c. Thames River. d. Jerry Falwell.

3. ______ : Mohammad = Hitler : Goethe.
a. Table. b. Avogadro.
c. Second Law of Thermodynamics. d. Osama bin Laden.

4. ______ : journalism = Britney Spears : music.
a. Macchu Picchu. b. Flipper. c. Aluminum. d. Fox Network.

5. ______ : Republicans = Father Coughlin : Nazis.
a. Pi. b. Organic chemistry. c. myrrh. d. Rush Limbaugh.

6. ______ : George W. Bush = George W. Bush : Karl Rove.
a. Mary Shelley. b. Percy Bysshe Shelley.
c. Lord Byron. d. Ari Fleischer.

7. ______ : law = Bud Selig : sport.
a. Ibuprofen. b. Odysseus. c. Syzygy. d. Clarence Thomas.

8. ______ : politics = Monica Lewinsky : Bill Clinton.
a. Brown-nosing. b. Pancake make-up.
c. Sanctimonious. d. Katherine Harris.

9. ______ : literature = Pat Robertson : religion.
a. William Shakespeare. b. Sophocles.
c. Chaucer. d. John Grisham.

10. ______ : creativity = Danielle Steel : genius.
a. Mozart. b. Kumquat. c. Dingleberries. d. Microsoft.

SCORING:
Give yourself -10 (that's MINUS TEN) for each "d" answer. Give yourself +10 for each answer other than "d".

Your Score:
Any positive score is good, meaning that you are a gullible, well-adjusted consumer of the colorful, vacuous, entertaining propaganda that constitutes contemporary culture. The closer your score is to a perfect +100, the happier and more successful you will be.

Any negative score is bad, meaning that you are still thinking critically about life and, thus, culture, and trying to make rational decisions. The closer your score is to -100, the unhappier you will be and you should not be surprised if friends and neighbors eventually apply the label "troublemaker" or even "gadfly" to you.

END

Back to Magellan's Log 50

Magellan's Log front page

Send this page to a friend.