The Mensa people want me to do my memory thing at their Annual Gathering in October, as a warmup act for the Brain of Mensa finals. I'm not sure whether or not to take them up on the offer - on the one hand, it's always great when people want me to perform in front of an audience (it still doesn't happen all that much), but on the other hand Mensa members are the worst possible audience for any kind of brain-related showing-off. They'll just respond with "Hmm, well, I could have done that just as well, of course" or "Hmm, well, it's an amusing trick, but it's not real intelligence, is it?"
Having been a member myself for many years, I know what a bunch of snobs Mensans can be. If I really want to stroke my ego, I should go to a stupid-people convention. They'll genuinely believe that I'm really, really clever and not suggest that I might be an entirely average person who can do a party trick with cards. On the other hand, I'll get a free meal out of Mensa and maybe even some intelligent conversation. So I'll probably do it. I'm bad at saying no to people, after all.
Incidentally, I'm seeing a lot of people writing it as "MENSA" just lately. It's not an acronym, people. It's the Latin word for "table", indicating a round-table kind of society, and a play on words with "mens", meaning "mind".
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