JohnnyV
Jun 21, 2006, 3:03 PM
This piece went around some academic listservs, and gave me a few laughs. I scored a 13 on the asshole test, so I guess I'm not doing so badly.
Even though some of the items on the Tight Ass Early Detection Test are geared especially toward people who work in education, I think a lot of the same ideas hold true for lots of other fields too....
So take the test, and find out if YOU are an uptight asshole.
::::::::::::::::::::
Tight Ass Early Detection (TAED) Test
Find out if you are an uptight asshole so you can begin early treatment. For each of the 30 statements below, decide if it is extremely accurate, very accurate, fairly accurate, a little accurate, or not accurate at all, about you.
For each extremely accurate statement, please give yourself a 4
For each very accurate statement, please give yourself a 3
For each fairly accurate statement, please give yourself a 2
For each slightly accurate statement, give yourself a 1
For each inaccurate statement give yourself a zero.
Then tally all your points and read your diagnosis on the bottom of the page.
1. You roll your eyes when people say things you disagree with.
2. You approach most debates with the beginning assumption that the one proved wrong should go and impale himself on a samurai sword.
3. You gloat under the guise of giving people unsolicited advice.
4. You call everybody smarter than you pretentious.
5. You call everybody less intelligent than you ignorant.
6. When someone says something and you’re jealous that you didn’t have the chance to say it first, you nitpick about some insignificant detail, or say, “well, it’s much more complicated than that.”
7. You harshly evaluate people who report to you and claim that you’re “preserving the standards of the profession.”
8. Every time you notice an error or weak point in a posting on a listserv, you flame the sender publicly.
9. You often allude to inside jokes between you and cool people, in front of people you consider less cool, just to make sure folks know you’re part of the in crowd.
10. When confronted by the fact that almost nobody likes you, you say you’re selective about who you associate with.
11. You promote yourself as a feminist and then undermine, badmouth, and sabotage women whenever you get a chance.
12. You condemn racists and then make every African American presenter at conferences, interviews, or workshops look stupid, “to make sure they don’t think they’re gonna get a free ride.”
13. You say that homophobia is an irrational prejudice, and then when someone confesses a homosexual experience to you, you make them feel like a perverted freak.
14. You proudly have “very few but very close friends,” with whom you mock all the people who try to get close to you.
15. You often say things like, “you don’t really know me,” or “I don’t really know you” to people, just when someone is starting to feel comfortable around you.
16. You bitch about Starbucks Coffee for its corporate monopoly and feel great about buying shag sweaters sewn by starving children in Ireland, Peru, or Indonesia.
17. You say that people who go to Hooters are pathetic trolls, then you masturbate to porn in the privacy of your own home.
18. You can’t express a thought without quoting an expert or someone famous.
19. You hate most people you meet and justify it by talking about what a horrible society you live in.
20. You see people wave or say hello and ignore them.
21. You act as though you’re selflessly helping humanity from bad ideas when you rip apart things that other people say or write.
22. You never give money to homeless people, and you rationalize your miserly attitude by quoting Thoreau, Nietzsche, or Emerson.
23. When you see someone with a youthful enthusiasm and creative approaches to their work, your first instinct is to crush their naivete and cut them down to size.
24. The thought of having an extended conversation (60+ minutes) with an auto mechanic, waitress, beautician, or garbage collector, makes you nervous.
25. When people refuse to bow to your self-appointed authority over all matters affecting the universe, you call them anti-intellectual and say they are the reason for the decline of Western civilization.
26. You condemn the fanaticism of religion and then treat your favorite expert like a messiah, upholding his or her latest book like it’s scripture.
27. You mock people for arriving at their beliefs by reflecting on personal experience (calling them “navel-gazers”) while you fail to mention that you’re really just bitter because you don’t have interesting experiences on which to base any beliefs.
28. You claim that your elitism and cantankerousness is the result of having high standards, and you dismiss being nice as a lack of rigor.
29. You like learning about the horrors committed against people in other parts of the world, and then when individuals tell you their problems, you admonish them for getting too personal.
30. You see yourself as an upstanding citizen, and yet you have a million reasons for why, when someone asks you for help, you can’t just stop, listen, and help them out.
31. BONUS: You have an unlisted phone number because the only people who would want to look you up are disgruntled enemies planning to prank call you.
FIGURE OUT YOUR SCORE:
To diagnose yourself, please add up all the points you received on the questionnaire.
45+ points: You’re not just an uptight asshole, you’re a twenty-megaton asshole. If you’re not already switching to a liquid diet, you should think about doing so soon. Only about one or two people in the world probably like you at this point, including members of your immediate family. With good reason, too. You are a shithead and a poser. Even I, the guy typing this up, don’t like you. Luckily I am a word processing specialist, so if you’re this much of a nitpicking, quibbling, high-strung piranha, you wouldn’t give me the time of day. The good news is you’re probably posed for a high-power career. The bad news is that the next time you have gas, you’re going to be in extreme pain because compound air molecules would have difficulty passing through that pinhole of a rectum you’ve got.
30-44: If you try to be a little nicer, you may be able to save yourself from the most deadly stages of uptightness, although your prospects are bleak. Stay at your current level of snobbery and self-righteousness and you may be able to enjoy yogurt, tomato soup and angel hair pasta fro the rest of your life. Bread products and large legumes will pose a problem. Go on a vacation somewhere, alone. Ask yourself: wouldn’t you hate traveling with an extra replica of yourself? That’s how the world feels when you’re around. This may help you lighten up and stop acting like a snide little snotrag.
16-29: There is still hope! Spend some time with your mother. Take a few days to read trashy books, the kind of stuff you’d find on sale at a highway rest stop. You’re getting a little uppity but if you can hire a leather dominatrix to loosen you up with a large, lubricated dildo, you may be able to relax and treat life with a sense of humor. If that fails, call 911 and ask the Fire Department to administer an emergency, high-power enema. Act now before you find yourself unable to look at a juicy beef sandwich without cringing.
Less than 15: Okay, you’re fairly nice. But don’t start thinking you’re perfect, you goody two-shoes. Somewhere you’re hiding a nasty viper’s heart. If you start thinking you’re oh-so-sweet, you’ll become full of shit when you least expect it. You may just be a backbiting, passive-aggressive punk, who would be an asshole with an ounce more confidence.
Zero: Everything they say about you is true. You are a gullible twit who knows nothing about the world. From now on, change your name to Doormat.
This diagnostic exam was developed by the United Nations Center for Lessening Educational Narcissism, Callousness, and Hubris, or UNCLENCH.
Even though some of the items on the Tight Ass Early Detection Test are geared especially toward people who work in education, I think a lot of the same ideas hold true for lots of other fields too....
So take the test, and find out if YOU are an uptight asshole.
::::::::::::::::::::
Tight Ass Early Detection (TAED) Test
Find out if you are an uptight asshole so you can begin early treatment. For each of the 30 statements below, decide if it is extremely accurate, very accurate, fairly accurate, a little accurate, or not accurate at all, about you.
For each extremely accurate statement, please give yourself a 4
For each very accurate statement, please give yourself a 3
For each fairly accurate statement, please give yourself a 2
For each slightly accurate statement, give yourself a 1
For each inaccurate statement give yourself a zero.
Then tally all your points and read your diagnosis on the bottom of the page.
1. You roll your eyes when people say things you disagree with.
2. You approach most debates with the beginning assumption that the one proved wrong should go and impale himself on a samurai sword.
3. You gloat under the guise of giving people unsolicited advice.
4. You call everybody smarter than you pretentious.
5. You call everybody less intelligent than you ignorant.
6. When someone says something and you’re jealous that you didn’t have the chance to say it first, you nitpick about some insignificant detail, or say, “well, it’s much more complicated than that.”
7. You harshly evaluate people who report to you and claim that you’re “preserving the standards of the profession.”
8. Every time you notice an error or weak point in a posting on a listserv, you flame the sender publicly.
9. You often allude to inside jokes between you and cool people, in front of people you consider less cool, just to make sure folks know you’re part of the in crowd.
10. When confronted by the fact that almost nobody likes you, you say you’re selective about who you associate with.
11. You promote yourself as a feminist and then undermine, badmouth, and sabotage women whenever you get a chance.
12. You condemn racists and then make every African American presenter at conferences, interviews, or workshops look stupid, “to make sure they don’t think they’re gonna get a free ride.”
13. You say that homophobia is an irrational prejudice, and then when someone confesses a homosexual experience to you, you make them feel like a perverted freak.
14. You proudly have “very few but very close friends,” with whom you mock all the people who try to get close to you.
15. You often say things like, “you don’t really know me,” or “I don’t really know you” to people, just when someone is starting to feel comfortable around you.
16. You bitch about Starbucks Coffee for its corporate monopoly and feel great about buying shag sweaters sewn by starving children in Ireland, Peru, or Indonesia.
17. You say that people who go to Hooters are pathetic trolls, then you masturbate to porn in the privacy of your own home.
18. You can’t express a thought without quoting an expert or someone famous.
19. You hate most people you meet and justify it by talking about what a horrible society you live in.
20. You see people wave or say hello and ignore them.
21. You act as though you’re selflessly helping humanity from bad ideas when you rip apart things that other people say or write.
22. You never give money to homeless people, and you rationalize your miserly attitude by quoting Thoreau, Nietzsche, or Emerson.
23. When you see someone with a youthful enthusiasm and creative approaches to their work, your first instinct is to crush their naivete and cut them down to size.
24. The thought of having an extended conversation (60+ minutes) with an auto mechanic, waitress, beautician, or garbage collector, makes you nervous.
25. When people refuse to bow to your self-appointed authority over all matters affecting the universe, you call them anti-intellectual and say they are the reason for the decline of Western civilization.
26. You condemn the fanaticism of religion and then treat your favorite expert like a messiah, upholding his or her latest book like it’s scripture.
27. You mock people for arriving at their beliefs by reflecting on personal experience (calling them “navel-gazers”) while you fail to mention that you’re really just bitter because you don’t have interesting experiences on which to base any beliefs.
28. You claim that your elitism and cantankerousness is the result of having high standards, and you dismiss being nice as a lack of rigor.
29. You like learning about the horrors committed against people in other parts of the world, and then when individuals tell you their problems, you admonish them for getting too personal.
30. You see yourself as an upstanding citizen, and yet you have a million reasons for why, when someone asks you for help, you can’t just stop, listen, and help them out.
31. BONUS: You have an unlisted phone number because the only people who would want to look you up are disgruntled enemies planning to prank call you.
FIGURE OUT YOUR SCORE:
To diagnose yourself, please add up all the points you received on the questionnaire.
45+ points: You’re not just an uptight asshole, you’re a twenty-megaton asshole. If you’re not already switching to a liquid diet, you should think about doing so soon. Only about one or two people in the world probably like you at this point, including members of your immediate family. With good reason, too. You are a shithead and a poser. Even I, the guy typing this up, don’t like you. Luckily I am a word processing specialist, so if you’re this much of a nitpicking, quibbling, high-strung piranha, you wouldn’t give me the time of day. The good news is you’re probably posed for a high-power career. The bad news is that the next time you have gas, you’re going to be in extreme pain because compound air molecules would have difficulty passing through that pinhole of a rectum you’ve got.
30-44: If you try to be a little nicer, you may be able to save yourself from the most deadly stages of uptightness, although your prospects are bleak. Stay at your current level of snobbery and self-righteousness and you may be able to enjoy yogurt, tomato soup and angel hair pasta fro the rest of your life. Bread products and large legumes will pose a problem. Go on a vacation somewhere, alone. Ask yourself: wouldn’t you hate traveling with an extra replica of yourself? That’s how the world feels when you’re around. This may help you lighten up and stop acting like a snide little snotrag.
16-29: There is still hope! Spend some time with your mother. Take a few days to read trashy books, the kind of stuff you’d find on sale at a highway rest stop. You’re getting a little uppity but if you can hire a leather dominatrix to loosen you up with a large, lubricated dildo, you may be able to relax and treat life with a sense of humor. If that fails, call 911 and ask the Fire Department to administer an emergency, high-power enema. Act now before you find yourself unable to look at a juicy beef sandwich without cringing.
Less than 15: Okay, you’re fairly nice. But don’t start thinking you’re perfect, you goody two-shoes. Somewhere you’re hiding a nasty viper’s heart. If you start thinking you’re oh-so-sweet, you’ll become full of shit when you least expect it. You may just be a backbiting, passive-aggressive punk, who would be an asshole with an ounce more confidence.
Zero: Everything they say about you is true. You are a gullible twit who knows nothing about the world. From now on, change your name to Doormat.
This diagnostic exam was developed by the United Nations Center for Lessening Educational Narcissism, Callousness, and Hubris, or UNCLENCH.