I got home early from the office yesterday and happened to catch the last half of the new game show on Fox, "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?" I should watch more television, since it helps remind me why so many of my associates are idiots. If this is the standard people in the rest of the country are held to, then of course my associates are going to be idiots, because even two standard deviations above the IQ of someone who can succeed on this show is still going to be somewhere around 60. I don't know if my associates are smarter than fifth graders. Most of them certainly are not smarter than I was a fifth grader, or even as a preschooler, but that's probably not an appropriate standard to hold them to. It doesn't actually matter if they're smarter than a fifth grader, because most of the work we make them do is work a fifth grader could do pretty easily. And that's part of the problem. We've dumbed down our standards so much that expectations even at an elite law firm are frighteningly low. And so what does that say about the rest of the population, who are working at places not nearly as challenging as this? It says that they can be even dumber, perhaps unable to count to ten, or read street signs. Like the contestants on this game show, who somehow managed to dress themselves but still can't remember whether the United States is a country or a planet. Next we're just going to eliminate language altogether and have people grunt at each other to win a million dollars. Or a thousand pennies, because the contestants will be just as excited with that prize and it won't cost the network as much money. A thousand pennies! Imagine, all those pennies! And they're so shiny! Oooh, shiny pieces of metal. I mean wood. I mean paper. I mean food. Oh, I don't know, I'm too stupid to remember to breathe.

Meanwhile, I'm wading through resumes from 1Ls looking for the remaining three spots in our summer program and some of them have the nerve to send me LSAT score reports revealing they got less than 170. They should just be sterilized. Actually, all of them should be sterilized, no matter what they got on the LSAT. Anyone who takes the LSAT should be sterilized. Anyone who really thinks that being a lawyer is going to lead to happiness and fulfillment clearly has a screw loose and shouldn't be reproducing. They could put a chemical in the test booklets that would just make people's genitals shrivel up and fall off. Lawyers don't need them anyway. None of the associates have time to do anything with those parts except pleasure themselves in the law firm bathroom. (I saw you, Young Guy Badly Hiding Your Impending Baldness. I saw you.) And by the time you're a partner, whoever you're with is certainly no longer appealing. Anonymous Wife hasn't looked desirable to me ever since she spent my entire fifth-year-associate bonus on permanent eyeliner tattoos back in '93. There's nothing that's less of an aphrodisiac than someone spending money she didn't earn on permanent blue lines drawn into her eyelids. On bad days now she looks like one of those baseball players, with the eye block grease under their eyes to block reflections from the sun. This is what she spends money on when she isn't controlled. That's why I make her sign a new contingency agreement every year regarding the fate of my money for when the inevitable occurs and she cons a younger man into bed with her. I saw you, Young Guy Badly Hiding Your Impending Baldness. I saw the way she looked at you at the Christmas Party, and I saw you move that strand of hair over the top of your head and wink back at her. I have my eye on both of you. That's why you're getting transferred to Chicago. Your head's going to be cold, but you can buy a hat.

I wish we could get fifth graders in the office instead of law school graduates. Less ambition. More malleability. They'll do the work, I know they will. Damn these child labor laws. Damn these child labor laws to hell.

I wish I lived in the 1800s. No Internet to distract everyone, and everyone was a lot more lenient about the kinds of personal services you could pay children to do for you. I mean, I guess I kind of get decent service from everyone under me at the firm, but it would be so much better if they didn't think of themselves as adults.