Mensa (the High IQ Society), which I'm pretty sure stands for Many Educated Nerds Suffering Agoraphobia, is an international club for "really smart" people. They have a local Oregon chapter, called OMEN, and I'll tell you what: these brainy social outcasts know how to revel with intellectual impunity!

And while they may look dorky, and have buckteeth so big it appears as if they could eat corn off the cob through a picket fence, behind those baldpates & horn-rims, Mensans are party animals.

In case you're too dumb to know better, Mensa's sole requirement for membership is a score at or above the 98th percentile on approved IQ tests. Reverse-engineered, that's the top 2%.

The local Mensa club provides multiple "social and intellectual" events weekly. The national organization supports events all around the U.S. throughout the year, and international affiliates hold monthly and annual affairs around the globe.

From group gatherings at various ethnic restaurants, to primitive 'sans laptop' campouts, OMEN holds house parties, potlucks, dessert tastings, and First Thursday art gallery tours as well. They also have special interest groups (SIGs) that fill the calendar, including distinguished rendezvous with Linux-heads, gays and lesbians, role-playing gamers, and even slacker groups.

The Oregon Mensa chapter's most bombastic and coveted "all bets off" weekly blowouts, though, are the famed and fantastic OMEN Orgies! It is here that Mensa intellects gather at members' homes to stick mailing labels on their newsletters--and eat pizza. They have even been known to enjoy sugary carbonated beverages! Oh, those rambunctious rebels.

As if that weren't enough, brains are already boiling in anticipation for May 2003, where the next big regional gathering will take place; the long awaited RG-VI! For this particular gathering, members will trek all the way to the Columbia River to the Pacific Northwest's den of decadence: the Red Lion Hotel in the sin-city of Vancouver, Washington! Here up to 300 Mensa members from around the world will enjoy "interesting and learned persons" lecturing, lively discussions, games, watching gifted children acting precociously, puzzles, movies, hot-tubbing, champagne brunches, a hospitality suite full of food and beverages, and hold onto your thinking caps; NO CURFEW.

The scrabble tiles are going to hit the fan.