Zelda's Inferno exercise: the "intelligence test"

Posted on: Sat, 02/20/2010 - 20:31 By: Tom Swiss

Zelda's Inferno exercise: Our exercise this week was another "intelligence test", where we made up goofy multiple-choice questions for each other, then wrote poems based off the answers we chose. My questions:

1) Which is these colors is hottest?

a) yellow
b) blue
c) flesh tone *
d) green

2) If you increase the tension on a guitar string, which of the
following would you expect it to do?

a) break
b) make a higher pitch
c) go limp *
d) get louder

3) Which of the following is the largest?

a) sunlight on your skin
b) music
c) Salvador Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory"
d) orgasm *

4) Before crossing the street, it is important to:

a) yell loudly to scare off any oncoming cars *
b) look both ways
c) jump really really high
d) close your eyes and pray to the gods of traffic

Other's questions, with my selected answers:

This movie was once Portuguese: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

This historical event resulted from the rape of a 12 year old: founding of the NYSE

An "ecological disaster": human species

This island chain is the result of plate tectonics: pizza hut

Rate in order of preference: orgasm, inner peace, money, chocolate

Man is to woman as: sky is to sea

The fate of the US is: psychedelic

Define spirituality: bug off

sociopath or psychopath: crazy happy

cartoon character: bugs bunny

famous person from the dead: jimi hendrix

more like Mohammad or the mountain: a rock mass

the seated position that fits you: side-saddle on a domesticated
mountain lion

What color describes your nightmare: day-old coffee in an unattended coffee pot

What lives behind your eyes: babble

What color is breath: peach

How long is memory: until the mushrooms wear off

Where to dogs go in their sleep: dancing over burning garbage

Why are: because something had to separate Q and S

How many: several before and several later

How for art thee: don't worry, and come back for the intelligence test

Two trains are traveling at light speed, both must: be periwinkle blue with extra headlights

How does the world work: my unicorn does it all

And the end result:

the trainer told the monkeys, three before and four after
and they were outraged so he offered four before and three after
and they were happy

you have to make arrangements like this as
you ride through life
sidesaddle on a barely-tamed mountain lion
sort of like Manjusri in the New World
part, perhaps, of the psychedelic destiny of the United States
Walt Whitman's America, not Ronald Reagan's
Thoreau riding a mountain lion out of the Walden woods --
can you see it?
Or Gary Snyder coming down from the peaks on the back of a puma?

the mountain will not come to you, stories about Mohammad
   notwithstanding --
you gotta climb up there and tame your own damn mountain lion
stun it with a yell and grab it by the muzzle
your hands right next to the teeth, not an inch to spare for fear
and climb on and hold on as it runs and bucks and tries to shake
   you off

learn to do this and perhaps you can save the world
from the ecological disaster that is civilization-as-we-know-it