Dumb Fifth Graders

Pre-season running
A change in running tactic meant a slower crawl up the Anderson Street hill in last week’s circuit of The Tan that meant, with 1km to go, I was 40 seconds behind my previous time. Not having burnt all of the fuel however meant that after burners could be engaged and I finished strongly, making up 37 of the 40 seconds. This of course still meant that I was slower than last time (with a time of 17:04) and still some way (it would seem) to breaking the “magical” 17:00 barrier. My boss still ran a 16:30 ish sort of time which seems harder to crack every week I try. “Onwards and upwards !” Next week we’ll employ a new tactic, hopefully one that is FASTER.

Love/Hate
What I really hate is people who walk slowly, perambulate in front of me and add insult to injury by premeditating my walk-around by drifting from their pre-aligned path into mine. A situation where a laser guided rocket would be a great add-on to completely remove them from ever walking this earth again. By contrast, one thing that I love is breakfast, and in particular, a warm bowl of porridge (call me Goldilocks if you must), sweetened with brown sugar.

Rant
Have you seen this latest insult to low brow entertainment, masquerading as “family viewing”, ‘Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?’ ? We all accept that a quiz show is what it is and rewards general knowledge. Sale of the Last Century did that better than most for years. People enjoy it. Millionaire plays to the same kind of crowd and at least the questions get harder the longer one contestant plays. We also acknowledge the, ‘it has nothing to do with a quiz show’, versions that are game shows that ask dumb-ass questions to pass the time. The questions asked on the ‘5th Grader’ show are genuinely questions that primary aged kids might be expected to know or answer in a classroom. Now I passed grade 5 some years ago. And grade 6. And grade 7. And so on. {didn’t do so well in some other years but that is not the point – I AM SMARTER THAN A 5TH GRADER}. It seems that the questions asked are not especially difficult, one just has to take care how one answers. Think it through again. There’s no trick. Not like the trick questions we used to ask each other in grade 5, example, “an electric train … how much smoke, etc.” Take an example of a question I heard on Nova this week : which STAR is the closest to planet earth. Hughesy, not thinking, thought PLANET and said, “Mars”. WRONG. The Sun of course is the closest star to planet earth. See, it sounds tricky but its not really. The silly adults that appear on the show really deserve their public humiliation of being stupider than a 5th grader because they don’t know the answers ! “The largest dinosaur was called a T___ Rex.” I mean, Come On ! Get this dross off !