certified idiot — 1 thorough investigation

certified idiot, in case anyone is wondering, is a credential i award myself on alternate sundays after the call from my mother. the wall has a digital archive of insults, the phone is at 23 percent, a spoon is a smaller bowl, and the certification stands without external review.

i’m at the desk. it is monday, 9:42am, and carla is upstairs in the vendor walkthrough on the third floor — the one where someone always says “let’s circle back” twice in the same sentence and nobody flinches. i have the rest of the morning. that is enough time to produce a credential, including the seal.

i decided last night, between snooze 1 and snooze 2 of the 9 min snooze cycle, that the world has not been issuing the right pieces of paper. what we lack is a credential that ratifies what is plainly visible — a working definition of idiot in the original greek sense, formalized, numbered, and laminated. so i am building it. on company time. quietly.

parked at the desk. coffee is at the second cup. the spreadsheet they think i am working on is open in another tab and has not been touched since 9:14. carla will not be back for forty minutes, which is, in this office, a small eternity.

certified idiot, the credential, in plain language

let me tell you something about credentials. the world has them for everything except the things that actually shape your life. there is a credential for tasting wine, which stefan keeps bringing up at parties as though we asked. there is no credential, however, for the thing most of us are doing most of the time, which is being slightly wrong about ordinary matters with confidence. that is a gap. i am filling it.

so i drafted one. certified idiot is, by my own decree, a recognition awarded to a person who has accumulated sufficient evidence of confident misjudgment to merit a small piece of paper. the evidence is the point. anyone can be a moron for a weekend; the certificate honors sustained, well-documented incompetence under stable conditions.

the certificate has four parts. the seal. the registration number. the annual fee. and the line where the recipient signs themselves, because nobody else is going to.

step 1 through step 8, how to apply for the certificate, also it’s me

here is the procedure. it is meant to look procedural. a credential, to feel real, has to feel hard to get even when nobody is checking.

1. step 1 — submit the application. a single sheet of foolscap on the kitchen counter, written by hand. one page. front only. no resume.
2. step 2 — provide proof of pattern. you list the evidence. mine reads: seven microwaves killed. one fork used as a stirrer in the seventh and final unit. one phone perpetually at 23 percent in defiance of all chargers. one drawer of certified letters i intend to open during the next administration.
3. step 3 — pay the annual fee. the fee is whatever i decide it is on a given month. $14 in march, $9 in april, $0 last sunday because mom called. the variable fee is a feature.
4. step 4 — supply two references. mine are dave (vouches for the microwave evidence) and the wall, in the form of a digital archive of insults from strangers. dave laughed for nine minutes at the sixth microwave. that counts as peer review.
5. step 5 — pass the practical exam. one task, performed solo. mine was unloading a dishwasher with my eyes closed to see if i had memorized the layout. i had not. one mug went on the floor. the committee, also me, is generous.
6. step 6 — sit before the certification committee. the committee meets in the kitchen at 11:47am on a saturday. the committee is me with a notebook and a coffee. i ask the questions. i answer in writing. i grade the answers.
7. step 7 — receive the seal. a circular stamp made from the bottom of a coffee mug pressed into wax. inside the circle: committee for the recognition of self-evident incompetence. membership of one. office in a kitchen drawer.
8. step 8 — sign the certificate. the recipient signs in cursive. i sign it idiot again. the certificate is framed in a $12 frame from the bulk place and hung inside the kitchen cabinet, where, on hard mornings, i can open the door and remember the credential exists.

the eight steps are, on close inspection, identical to one step performed eight times. a real credential has a process. without a process, the certificate is a piece of paper. with a process, the certificate is a process, which is what the consultants charge for.

THE CERTIFICATE. IS. SELF-CERTIFIED. AND. THIS. IS. FINE.

the registration number is 0719, drawn in pen at the top right corner. it gives the certificate a number, and a number is what separates a credential from a complaint.

mom called sunday and asked when the diploma arrives

mom called on sunday, as mom does. she has a way of timing it for the moment i have just sat down with a coffee. she knows i write things on the internet. she does not understand why. she does not need to.

i told her, halfway through the call, that i was certifying myself this week. she said, in the tone she uses for most of my announcements, “as a what”. i said, “as an idiot”. she said, “you do not need a certificate for that, sweetheart, that one is well-established”. which is, in its way, an endorsement. mothers know. it is their power. it cannot be defeated.

then she asked when the diploma arrives in the mail. i had to explain that the diploma does not arrive — the diploma is issued, in the kitchen, by the recipient, to the recipient. she paused and said “well that sounds about right”. the call ended on a soft note. the annual fee, that month, dropped to zero.

i hung up. i opened the cabinet. the certificate was where i left it. the seal had not faded. the registration number 0719 was still in the corner. the credential, though entirely unaudited, was still in good standing.

the cross-reference here is simple. there is a parallel discipline, well documented in my walk-through of the difference between moron and idiot — a piece in the wider category of moron studies — that argues the same shape. you are not waiting on the world to declare you. the world is busy. the world is not coming. you declare yourself, in pen, on company time, in a kitchen cabinet, and the declaration holds.

verdict, the spoon is a smaller bowl, also redundant

here is the official verdict of this investigation, signed and stamped by the committee for the recognition of self-evident incompetence, which, again, is me with a coffee.

i am qualified. i have always been qualified. the certificate ratifies what was already true on a tuesday in 2019 when i first noted, out loud, that the spoon is a smaller bowl and is therefore redundant. that hot take, which i have defended in private and in public — including in a small workplace investigation about the youtube videos people watch when they are pretending to be busy — is the kind of observation a certified idiot is licensed to make. licensed by themselves. with a stamp. on wax. from a coffee mug.

the certificate is a record. the wall of insults from strangers is a record. the seventh microwave, sitting under the cabinet, is a record. the phone at 23 percent is a record, ongoing. the 9 min snooze, repeated three times every weekday, is a record. the certificate collects them on one page.

watch a small clip of cubicle life in office space, the mike judge film about people who are very tired, and you will understand the energy of this whole credential without my explaining it. peter does not have a certificate. peter would benefit from one. peter is, in the original sense, one of us.

carla just walked past my desk. i minimized this. she gave me the small nod that is either trust or surveillance. by 12:14pm i’ll know which. the certificate, on the inside of the cabinet at home, does not care either way.

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