10958 is a Hard Problem!

I was talking to my nephew Jack-Jack the other day about the 10958 Ascending debacle.  If you are unfamiliar with it, check out my post from 10/21/19.  It is a nasty little piece of ostensibly simple math.

Jack-Jack and I were trying to find an answer to the 10958 problem when I told him what I always do when faced with a math problem that is very hard.  Simply put, I give up.  In my experience, that is almost always the best way forward.  Does that mean I go to bed and forget about the problem?  No, not at all.  I will use 10958 Ascending to illustrate what I mean.

Look over the following numbers, and you will quickly see what the problem is all about.  The numbers 1 thru 9 have to be used in ascending order.  You can use the simple mathematical operators, along with exponents and parentheses.  Obviously, the equation you create has to equal 10958.

I told Jack-Jack that the problem appears to be too difficult to solve.  People have been looking for an answer for a long time and everyone has come up empty.  I suggested we do the following:  Let’s take 10958 and multiply it by 9 and then divide that number by 8.

In terms of the numbers we have to worry about, the problem has just gotten much easier.  Now we only have to deal with 7 numbers instead of 9.  That is a big difference.  By giving up on the original problem we may have found an easier route to a solution.  And yes, I am not too happy about the decimal.  The “.75” may very well create more problems than it solves.

Of course, we can keep working backward in the hopes of finding a solution.  Will that work?  I doubt it.  The more I look at this problem, the more convinced I am that there is no solution.  Why so pessimistic?  Many professional mathematicians have written computer programs to search for an answer.  None has been found.

In general, though, I believe that giving up on hard problems is a sound strategy.  If the problem can be broken down into smaller, more easily manageable parts, then the chances for a solution go up.  In this particular case, I think we are all up against it.  We are left with trying to figure out what is so special about 10958.  It appears to me to be just another number except in this particular instance.  I really don’t know what to think about this issue.  It is all very strange.

Postscript

So, it took me a long time to get this posted.  I was in the hospital for about 5 days.  I am fine.  I am feeling a lot better and things are looking good for my future.  One of the doctors told me I should have another 40 years as long as I don’t get hit by a dump truck while out for a run.

During my stay, I spent a lot of time on the 10958 problem.  I would have done a lot of writing but when I left for my doctor’s appointment I was too weak to walk upstairs and get my laptop.  I had a suspicion I was going to the hospital, and I really wanted my laptop, but I didn’t want to be found three weeks later in a pile at the bottom of the stairs.

As you might guess, I made no progress on the problem.  I truly find it astonishing that solutions to every other number up to 11111 are easily found.  What is special about 10958?  Why is it out there on a limb by itself? I still have no idea.  I remain confused.

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind: Volume 2: The Athena Chapters,
Chapter Ten:
Beef Stroganoff

“What the hell do you think you are, some kind of rocket scientist?”
A question asked (with just a hint of anger) of a guy named Derek by some random Townie at a hole in the wall drinking establishment near MIT’s campus 30 years ago.

I might as well start and end this book at a dive bar.  The physical locations are separated by decades in time and hundreds of miles in space, but they are essentially the same place.  The tiny, insignificant details are different, that’s all.  Apparently, all seedy bars with rat populations that eclipse the number of human patrons are exceedingly interesting places, at least to me they are.

A long time ago, I would guess it has been about 30 years; I witnessed something quite interesting.  I was out for a drink with a guy named Derek, who was a graduate student at MIT.  We were sitting at the bar when a man in his 40s walked in and had a seat.  The stranger started talking to one of the other regulars about a problem he was having with his car.  You know, carburetor this and fuel pump that and on and on.  I slowly sipped my diet coke (no beer for me back then, I had to study) as Derek threw himself into the conversation.  He was in a bit of a mood, and he was blowing off some steam by showing off as only he could.

Derek started in by giving the guys a lecture on how cars work, and by that, I mean a very deep dissertation on the physics of combustion engines.  The two guys looked cross-eyed at each other and at Derek as they tried to keep up.  Finally, one of the guys, totally frustrated and on the verge of kicking Derek’s skinny little butt, looked over at him and said: “What the hell do you think you are, some kind of rocket scientist?”  I tensed a little because I knew this situation was going to go down one of two ways.  Derek, with a twinkle in his eye, carefully reached in his pocket, took out his wallet, and slowly handed the guy an ID card from the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and said: “Why yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”  I laughed as hard as I ever had, and that broke the ice.  The guys all laughed, and we had a great time, the three of them pounding beers while I nursed my diet coke.

Reflecting on that story serves as a simple reminder of how much I have been looking back as I have lost countless nights of sleep while writing about what has happened to me since I met Athena.  Reminiscing is not something I enjoy doing; I prefer to put on blinders and look ahead.  Fundamentally, I am one of those people who are delusional enough to think that my best years, my good old days, are still ahead of me.  Hope springs, right?

I am in the awkward position of having to look back a little bit more to complete this volume.  I don’t think I have mentioned what I was working on before I met Athena, before my little corner of the universe turned upside down.  Well, guess what?  This was supposed to be a baseball book.  No kidding.  Random Thoughts From A Nonlinear Mind, Volume Two was planned out as an entire series of essays on the mathematics of baseball.  The vast majority of the book was already written when I sort of got sidetracked (just a little) by a chick in a dive bar.  It looks like Volume Three will tackle an Exploratory Data Analysis approach to all those numbers that baseball players generate after the umpire yells “Play Ball.”

While everyone holds their breath with wild anticipation for that book (I’ll take that bet!), it looks like I have finally reached the end of this one.  This is the last chapter and, believe it or not; it is short and sweet.  I am writing it just to give a sense of the overall perspective I have on this whole ordeal.  I want to give everyone a little more insight into what this experience has meant to me, and, oddly enough, I have to start with a Canadian rocket scientist.

Yvonne Brill, a very clever woman with an international reputation, died recently.  Back in the 70s, she made seminal contributions while working on propulsion systems for satellites.  Aside from being a world-class rocket scientist, she was also a wife and mother.

Brill’s life merited an obituary in The New York Times, and that is why I am writing about her.  The obituary was a disaster.  The person who wrote it started, in the very first line, by telling the world that she made a mean Beef Stroganoff.  When I read that I couldn’t believe what I was reading, many people, including the editor of The New York Times‘ obituary department, also were not happy.  I am sure that in the history of history, the words “Beef Stroganoff” have never before created so much controversy.

So, what is the big deal?  Was her Beef Stroganoff really not that good?  Is that what upset everyone?  No, not at all.  The problem was that a discussion of the culinary prowess of a first-rate scientist does not belong in the first line of her obituary.  That brings up the question: Are you aware of what a big deal first lines of obituaries are?  I polled many of my friends, and none of them had any idea that first lines are a “thing.”

People with a certain type of ambition (think really, really big) muse about things like first lines of obituaries or what equation might grace their tombstones.  Ludwig Boltzmann’s gravestone has his famous equation, one of the most important ever conceived, right on the top.  If you are ever in Vienna, you can go look it up.  Right above his bust, you will see the following: S = k* log W.  Can you imagine doing something so important with your life that your grave marker serves as a testament to your remarkable achievement?  Some people, and I have known many of them, think about this stuff a lot.

People like Presidents of the United States are living the first line of their obituaries every day they are in office.  If you are a scientist or a writer and you are ever awarded a Nobel Prize, you can guess what the first line of your obituary will be.  That first line is supposed to sum up the major work of a life.  The person who wrote Brill’s dropped the ball and, after a storm on Twitter and Facebook, the online version of the obituary was quickly changed.

Do you have a life’s work, something that will ultimately define your time on Earth?  In my experience, most people certainly do not.  Nearly everyone I know is just trying to get by.  They have jobs and families, and I guarantee you they have never given a single thought to what the first line of their obituary might be.  We all know what it will be, though, don’t we?  Loving husband/wife, father/mother, and so on.  From someone who has no family, I will say that is not a bad way to start an obituary.  I make that statement with the full realization that mine won’t read that way, and yes, I say that with more than a tiny bit of envy.

If someone had asked Brill, she may well have said that the best job she ever had was being a wife and mother and that her biggest contribution to humanity was her children.  That is the kind of thing moms say.  The scientific community, though, sees things a little differently.  She was a major figure in rocket science, especially propulsion systems, and her contributions were immense.  Who the hell cares how her Beef Stroganoff tasted?  Is there anything that could possibly be more irrelevant?

I am sure that you all are wondering why I am ending this volume with an essay about the botched obituary of a woman I never met.  That answer, unlike all the others in this volume, is an easy one.  I knew the moment Athena introduced herself that the most important thing that was ever going to happen to me was happening right then.  I still have no clue how I knew that, but I remain firm in my belief that my initial impression was correct.  I mentioned earlier what my obituary was not going to say, if you have made it through all these essays, then you know damn well how the first line is going to read.  I have just finished writing it.

POSTSCRIPT

A few interesting things have happened to me since I finished this chapter.  As usual, these experiences form a disjointed, seemingly random thread.  This time, I will start at the beginning.  Sure, I will still bury the lede, but incremental progress is better than none.

Most writers will tell you that they do not watch a lot of TV.  Many do not even own one.  I do have numerous TVs, but there are lots of days when they are never turned on.  It is hard for me to write if I am distracted by television sounds.  I prefer writing in my library while listening to Mozart.  I have no evidence that his cosmic genius somehow rubs off on me, but hope springs, right?

I do not watch a lot of TV, but I occasionally get hooked. In Chapter Zero, I mentioned the television show Breaking Bad.  What a treat.  Transcendent is one word I would use to describe that series.  I thought the writing was stellar.  The acting, of course, was as good as it gets.

For me, the void created by the end of Breaking Bad was filled by an HBO show called True Detective.  Wow, what an intelligent and interesting short series (of course, I am talking about the first season).  One thing that I have been doing after each episode is to go through all the online reviews posted by the army of critics paid to tell me what they think.  There are many reasons I am doing this.  Mainly, I want to see if all the critics are seeing what I am seeing.  They are mostly unanimous in their praise for the series; many refer to it as the best show on television.  One review, though, caught my interest.

Emily Nussbaum, TV critic at The New Yorker, wrote a provocative piece about the first year of True Detective.  She was critical of the portrayal of women in the series.  Of course, lots has been said about the female characters on Breaking Bad.  Not many people were impressed with them, either.  Skyler and Marie were not nearly as popular as the male characters.

After reading Nussbaum’s article, I happened upon an interview with Cary Fukunaga, the director of season one of True Detective.  Fukunaga was asked about the portrayal of women on the series, and he readily admitted that the show would never pass “The Bechdel Test.”  Well, I thought, what is that?  I had never heard of anything called a Bechdel Test, so I decided to do some research.  What I found was quite intriguing.

In 1985, Alison Bechdel published a comic strip called  “The Rule” in her series Dykes to Watch Out For.  In the strip, two women are walking down the street while having a conversation about movies.  One woman remarks that she has criteria for whether to see a movie or not.  The first criterion is that any movie must have at least two women in it.  The second is that the women have to talk to each other.  The third, and this is key, is that the women must talk about something other than a man.  These three criteria became known as The Bechdel Test.

The Bechdel Test is important because it gave rise to The Finkbeiner Test, a proposition that was mentioned quite prominently when the Brill obituary was published.

Ann Finkbeiner is a science writer who did not propose this test.  A journalist named Christie Aschwanden named the test in honor of Finkbeiner.  The test was meant to root out gender bias in articles written about women scientists.  The criteria (taken directly from the Wiki page) are as follows:

Does the article mention the fact that the person being written about is a woman?

Is her husband’s job mentioned?

Are child-care arrangements discussed in the text?

Does the writer talk about how this person nurtures the people that report to her?

Is there a mention of how surprised this person was by the competitive nature of the field?

Does the piece talk about how this person is a role model for women?

Does it mention that she is the first woman to do this or that?

That is the list of questions that are asked of a piece of writing to determine whether it passes The Finkbeiner Test.  Here is the first line of Yvonne Brill’s original obituary that was published online in The New York Times on 3/30/13.

“She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job, and took eight years off from work to raise three children.”

Good grief.  I bet Douglas Martin, the author of this obituary, wishes he would have known all that you just learned.  I guarantee you he is now up to speed, but it is a bit too late; that particular genie has made good his or her escape.

When I decided to start a blog, I let everyone know that this space would always be available if anyone ever had something they wanted to say.  I have asked several people on numerous occasions to submit an essay, an opinion piece, or some fiction. They always tell me they will think about it and then they disappear into the ether. So, you can imagine how happy I am to post the following essay by Leslie Fraley.

The Way Forward
by
Leslie Fraley

I am so tired, hurt, appalled, and outraged by the actions of police officers in this country.  They have been not only victimizing the African-American community for 200 years; they have been trampling the rights of all citizens in this country and getting away with it for far too long.  Anyone who thinks this is a new problem is naïve or in denial.  The only reason we are able to document these abuses now is due to the ubiquitous smartphone.   I thank God every day for the technology that brings the evil that men do into the light.

People have been calling for better training, better laws, citizen review boards, and the like as a watchdog to contain overzealous actions by a police brotherhood that protects its own, even when they are clearly in the wrong. “Protect and Serve” is meant for the police as a motto focused on citizens, not to render a protective blanket around themselves, at the expense of the public good.  How could a man put his foot on another man’s neck, I am speaking about the treatment of George Floyd by Officer Chauvin for those of you who don’t know, for nine minutes while the man is in handcuffs on the ground.  How do you justify the feeling that your life is in ultimate danger in this position?  I guess that dark skin just scares the hell out you, doesn’t it?   How could several other officers watch this occur and do nothing?  When George Floyd was saying he could not breathe, how much effort would it have taken for someone to walk over and check on him?

How much effort would it take to say to your fellow officer, “Chauvin that is not necessary, get off of him”?  How could a group of 30 cops in Buffalo being given the orders to clear the streets think that it is okay to push down a 75-year-old peaceful protestor, observe that he was bleeding from the head, and just act like they did a good job?  How could anyone think that this type of behavior is okay?  And then when the offending officers in Buffalo get called out for their misdeeds and are reprimanded, the entire team of 57 officers quits in protest!  I can’t even wrap my head around that reaction.

Who do you think you are?  You must believe yourselves to be above the law! No amount of training is going to give people that lack moral courage a different perspective.  No amount of training is going to stop people from being racist if that is the way they were taught.  No additional laws are going to protect the public from an out of control police force that gets off with a slap on the wrist when the perpetrators are put on trial. Asking for permission has become way out of fashion; we would rather ask for forgiveness.  If the police and District Attorneys stack the deck in their favor by changing venues to more favorable locales, how do you hold anyone accountable?  Does the Rodney King incident back in the 1990’s ring a bell for anyone? The Los Angeles police beat a man senseless and were found not guilty after they moved the trial to a venue more disposed to not caring about what happened to a person of color.  Too many of these officers think that giving them a badge is a license to do whatever they feel they want to do, and so far, this has been the case.  I was filled with hope and vindication last year when Officer Amber Guyger was convicted of murder, and sentenced to prison for the slaying of Botham Jean. She only received ten years, but it’s a start. A small price to pay for walking into the home of a black man minding his own business and killing him; and then claiming it was a mistake.

Far too many of these officers are not equipped with the right mentality to do the job.   I will not say all officers are to blame, that is too easy and blatantly false. We have good people trying to do their jobs to keep us safe, and I appreciate their efforts.  I see your acts of kindness in buying food for those in need.  I see you taking some time to play basketball with kids in the street when you were called in to break up the game because they were disturbing the peace.  I recognize that there is a myriad of officers, both female and male, who deescalate conflicts.  I applaud you for doing a job that is tough to do.   However, do not for one minute think that because you put your life on the line, it gives you carte blanche to do whatever it is you feel you can get away with.  It has become axiomatic that some of these officers we have trained lack compassion for their fellow citizens.  You can’t dictate to someone how to feel about others.  You cannot create legislation and expect it to provide a conscience to people.   I mean, really, what is the difference between what the Nazis did in the 1940s to the Jews and what is being done today in America?  The Nazis were more efficient at it.  I have one potential solution; that might help as a training aid.  Give every officer a card that they have to pull out of their pocket and read before going on a call that says the following: “I am a police officer sworn to uphold the law. I need to treat everyone that I encounter like it is my mother or father, aunt or uncle, sister or brother, childhood friend, or military buddy.”

A very good friend of mine told me about a tradition at Harvard.  They bring in all the new students and tell them that a unique opportunity has been bestowed upon them.  It is a privilege to study at a great university, and because of that honor, much is expected of you as an individual.  The same is true of being a police officer.  You are given much authority, so you need to conduct yourself to a higher standard. You can’t let your prejudice, hatred, fear, or having a bad day affects how you execute the functions of your daily job.

I have to give Colin Kaepernick a shout out for his willingness to ruin his career to make our society a better place.  Some people like Drew Brees would say he was desecrating the flag and the service of our men and women in uniform.  One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. He didn’t burn a flag, nor did he raise his middle finger to our soldiers, sailors, and airmen.  He used his national spotlight to make people think about what is going on in our country.  It is easy for people not affected by police brutality to say it doesn’t belong there in our face when we want to just enjoy a game.  To you, I say, where does it belong? Do teachers discuss it in classrooms? Do we have town hall meetings about it?  No one ever talks about it or does anything until a high profile person takes the time to bring it to everyone’s attention. Unfortunately, Colin also made a major mistake.  He admitted that he does not vote.  That brings us to my other solution.

My second solution to help make America great again is for everyone to vote. We citizens need to look at the records of our politicians at every level of government and vote out those individuals that do not uphold the ideals of fairness and justice for all. How long did it take for everyone to get the right to vote? A person not availing themselves of this right is not only a disgrace; she is giving a middle finger to the flag, to our military, and to the people that fought so that we all could vote.  A society should be judged by how its most vulnerable citizens are treated. America does not have the best record in this matter, but we keep on pushing forward, learning from our mistakes, and trying to make tomorrow a better place.  All US citizens have a right to be here, have a right to equal justice under the law, have a right to vote, and have a right to go about their daily lives without harassment.

I have to be an optimist and think that we will someday reach this apex, but it is going to take the efforts of everyone to make this happen.  I am not a high profile superstar.  I do not have one million followers on twitter.  I am not a politician.  This is my contribution to the dialogue that I hope pushes us in the right direction. The late Michael Jackson said it best, “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change.”

Leslie Fraley

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind: Volume 2: The Athena Chapters,
Chapter Nine:
Dissonance

“You goddamn sissy-eared mollycoddle! When you hear strong music like this, stand up and take your dissonance like a man!”

Charles Ives

*****

Buford Lister leaned back in his chair, the big one at his favorite desk.  He sipped whiskey out of a Klein Bottle with his right hand as he spun two red dice in his left.  Around and around, back and forth, and then one over the other until one fell from between his finger and thumb and landed in his palm.  It wasn’t a moment like Newton and his apocryphal apple or Archimedes and his apocryphal bathtub; it wasn’t a flash of insight that was going to change the world but, what the hell, it was close enough.

*****

I wanted the penultimate chapter of this book, a collection of essays that are supposed to be about a dude who met a chick at a rock show, to be very different.  I imagined nothing more than a chapter heading and lots and lots of pictures.  No text required (smiling faces holding forks don’t need any superfluous explanation).  Didn’t quite work out that way, did it?

Apparently, I am nearing the end of the Athena Saga (yes, I said Saga!) with a chapter about the big question that Brenda asked me, a query that still has me off balance, listing strongly to one side.  Any ideas about what she might have asked?  It is a pretty big mystery, I know, but I promise I will get to her question.  I make no such assurance about my answer.  The thing is I simply don’t have one, at least I can’t yet think of one.

*****

Buford Lister was in no mood for Mozart today; he told his computer to randomly play a few dozen songs from some random punk group that he was vaguely familiar with.  He turned the music down to a subtle pulse (not the way it was meant to be heard for sure) as he thought about what the dice might or might not tell him.  He stroked the Magic Eight Ball that he kept on his key chain and contemplated what to do next.  Dice, eight ball, eight ball, dice; does it matter at all?  Sigh, I don’t think so.  Am I really ready to do this?  Am I going to give up total control?  He looked around the room and began to become more and more comfortable with the idea that it didn’t matter, not even a little.  Control, just like purpose, was a total illusion.

*****

An interesting thing happened today, my brother Terry called me.  When I picked up the phone, he said, “I see you have made a clean break.”  “Huh,” I said, “what are you talking about?”  Apparently, the ringback tone on my phone expired, and he took that as a signal that I have made a “clean break” (at least in my mind) from Athena.  Yeah, she has been on there the whole time.  I still laugh when people try to get me to tell them who she is; all they have to do is call me, and they will hear her singing back at them as they wait for me to answer.  A few of these curious individuals have called me, and I find that really delicious!

Unfortunately, Terry is wrong; the ringback tone simply expired, so I will renew it or find another song by her band to take its place.  Now that I think about it, I should probably do that right now.  My cell carrier offers a few choices, and I think I know which one I want.  I’ll be back momentarily.

*****

Buford Lister made an instant decision while the dice were in the air.  Odd is cereal and even is bacon and eggs.  One die flew off the table and landed on the floor.  Damn…decision time…does that count or not?  That die would make the total odd, and he really wanted bacon and eggs, so he called the floor out of bounds and threw them again.  This time he got an 11.  OK, I’ll eat the damn cereal.  He was on his way.

*****

Now that I have taken care of that bit of mundane business, I can try to get to the point of this essay.  This chapter is about Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Mozart, and a string quartet Mozart dedicated to Haydn.  Joe and Wolfie, what an unusual combination.  In my mind, their friendship is as odd as one would have been between Sid Vicious and Frank Sinatra. (Sid old boy, loved the record!  Thanks Frankie baby, the next round is on me.)

Haydn and Mozart: two people who, on the face of it, have little in common; nothing at all except for all that is important.  Both composers of music (two of the greatest who ever lived) and yet one so much greater than the other.  Job titles similar, occupations the same, and yet for my money, there is all the difference in the world between the two of them.

*****

Buford Lister (well-fed, showered, and shaved) found himself strutting down the boardwalk.  He was full of confidence; you would be too if you were no longer going to take responsibility for any of your actions.  He was whistling some obscure punk song (they all sound pretty much the same) when he noticed a flashing light off to his left.  PSYCHIC…READINGS…PSYCHIC…READINGS…PSYCHIC…READINGS…

The woman inside the little office was young, and pretty so he took out the little magic eight ball on his key chain and asked: “Oh great and powerful Magic Eight Ball, should I go get a psychic reading from the pretty, young woman right over there?”  He shook it and waited…it said, “YES.”

*****

Mozart wrote and dedicated six string quartets to his friend Haydn.  Haydn adored five of them.  The sixth, well…not so much.

On January 14, 1785, Mozart finished a string quartet for cello, viola, and two violins.  It is the string quartet number 19 (K. 465), more famously known as the “Dissonance Quartet.”  This piece of music, Mozart’s most famous quartet, is perhaps the greatest expression of genius (and not just musical genius) that I am familiar with.  That is a pretty stout statement, but I will stand by it.

Haydn received the score and immediately realized that there were numerous copying errors in it, the scribe had obviously been drunk (I mean totally lit) when he sat down to begin his task.  In fact, it was littered, not just peppered, with these egregious mistakes.  Notes were obviously wrong, put in the wrong place at the wrong time, and even more problematic; other notes didn’t belong at all.  When Haydn found out that Mozart intended the score to be this way, he had a fit.  Haydn surely recognized the genius of Mozart, but this was way too much.  He simply couldn’t understand what it was that Mozart was trying to do.

The beginning, so slow (damn unusual), key changes left and right, notes that are clearly wrong are played as if plagiarized from an adolescent author with no musical training.  Haydn, the writer of beautiful “constructed” music, could not allow himself to see the music through the eyes of Mozart, he didn’t have the capacity to experience the music through the eyes of transcendent genius.

*****

Buford Lister pushed open the door, and their eyes immediately met.

“I have been waiting for you,” she said.  After she spoke, she immediately regretted not saying hello first.  She intended to apologize but didn’t get the chance.

“Really, waiting on a paying customer?  Here is my $20, let’s get to it.”

“So quick to business.  That is what I was told.  That is too bad, and it is all so sad.  Tell you what, if it is what you wish, we can get right to it.  Sit down, and I will tell you a few things.”

Buford Lister took out two small dice from his pants pocket as he sat down across from the beautiful woman.  He twirled them around in his hand as he said, “OK, show me what you can do.  I have never been to a psychic before.  This is so exciting.  Look at me; I am having trouble sitting still.”  Buford Lister gave her a playful smile, one that said I won’t be believing anything you tell me, but I will try to be polite and listen. 

“You sir, are a man in trouble, you are a man who has no idea what to do, you are a man who has met his Twin Flame.  Do you want to hear more?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about, but feel free to continue.”  He reached for the $20 and pushed it across the table toward the psychic.  “One thing, what the hell is a Twin Flame?”

“Oh, you know more about that than I do.  I have not met mine, most likely, I never will.  You, on the other hand, are one of the chosen few, you are one of the lucky ones.”

“Uh, OK, sure.  Go ahead then.”

“I see you with a woman, you are totally undone, you have unraveled and yet she is giving you nothing.  It appears that any conversation the two of you are having is largely one way.  Does this sound familiar?”

Buford Lister, totally intrigued, shook his head.  He thought that most people go to see a psychic because they have love problems, that is just the nature of a psychic’s work.  It is usually love or career, and she had a 50 percent shot at guessing correctly.  It just so happens she got it right.  Yep, that is precisely what he thought.

*****

A key, musically speaking, is nothing more than a bunch of notes that sound good together.  That is pretty much it.  Notes are considered to be in the same key if they sound pleasing to the ear when played together.  You are listening to a dissonant composition if the notes you are hearing do not sound right when played one after the other or played together.

Musical dissonance is a very interesting topic; unpleasant and unexpected sounds make for unstable chord progressions and a tense listening experience.  Modern listeners are so used to this type of music that we don’t even pause when we hear Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet.  For the time it was written, though, it was totally scandalous.  Haydn certainly wasn’t the only person who didn’t think very highly of it.

Dissonance strongly imposes (or subconsciously implies) lack of resolution in a piece of music.  A series of dissonant notes leaves the listener uneasy; they know there has to be something more to come; intellectually and emotionally, the listener knows the piece is terribly unresolved.  There is an implied promise that there is something pleasing to come, at least there better be if the composer wants to keep an audience.

*****

“So, this woman is not a regular woman, and no – she is not your Soul Mate, she is, in fact, your other half.  That is why time stopped, and the unseen dimensions opened up to you when she spoke.  Tell me I am wrong.  You can not because I am right.  I see her now; I saw her before you came in here.  Her hair, four different colors with a large purple section down the right side.  Tell me I am wrong.  You can not because I see her.  Such a tiny woman.  So beautiful, so charming; you instantly knew her, you not only knew everything about her when she spoke to you, but you knew everything about the world and your place in it when she said ‘hi’ to you.”

Buford Lister could not believe what he was hearing.  How could this woman possibly know this?  There is no way she could know about something like Kaylee’s hair.  This is really weird.  “Actually, she never said hi, but I must admit you are right about everything else.  How do you know this? Who are you?”

“I am just a person like you, one in tune with her surroundings.  The big difference is that I accept what I feel, and you let your rational mind push it away.  Do this for me right now, explain to me what happened when you met her.  Tell me why you met her where and when you did.  Tell me why it took you so long to find her and then…nothing.  Tell me why she won’t even acknowledge you.  And while you are at it, explain to me why you have felt a strange and urgent explosion of creativity since you met her.  I will now sit here quietly and wait for your answer.”

Buford Lister looked around the room, and all he saw was the flashing sign, the same damn flashing sign that caught his attention in the first place.   PSYCHIC…READINGS…PSYCHIC…READINGS…PSYCHIC…READINGS…

He wanted to shake the magic eight ball; he wanted to run out the door, he wanted lots of things.  He got nothing except a cold chill.  “I don’t know what I am supposed to tell you.  What do you want me to tell you?  I have no idea how you know all this about her, but I must admit you described her perfectly.  What is going on here?”

“Like I said, I am just a person like you.  I see things, and I feel things.  The difference is I am able to understand things, that makes me quite unlike you and very much unlike her.  You both are hopeless, and that is a shame, more for you than for her.”

Buford Lister started to say something, but she cut him off.  “No, you need not say anything, you need to listen.  You know that you found your purpose in life when you met.  You instantly felt that the reason you were born was to stand before her as time ceased to exist, as the universe stopped to admire the two of you as you stood across from each other.  You quickly became confused as you realized that those around you seemed totally oblivious to the magical moment itself; it was as if you were the only person, and I do mean the only person, in the room who got it.  You know exactly what I am talking about.”

*****

Charles Ives was perhaps (maybe, just maybe) the first great composer produced by the United States, he certainly was one of the first to gain an international reputation.  His compositions were ignored during his lifetime, but his music is performed today; not a lot, but it is played.  Ives was an experimentalist and, you guessed it, a major proponent of dissonance.  Perhaps that explains why he lived a largely anonymous life, maybe he was just born before (or after) his time.

Ives, who played football at Yale, loved the music of Beethoven.  That is a little curious because it seems he loved dissonance even more.  Mozart seems a more logical choice for Ives’ affection, but no, I can find no mention of Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet in Ives’ musings.  What I do know is that Ives disliked “pretty” music, and he was no fan of the beautiful music that Mozart typically created.  In general terms, he thought that Mozart “emasculated” the music he composed.

Ives was one interesting character.  He was known to stand up and yell at the “sissy eared mollycoddles” who had the nerve to boo and hiss when they heard dissonant music being played as they sat, as paying customers, in various concert halls.  Ives would have none of it; any such uncultured poseur needed to get with the program and “take their dissonance like a man.”

*****

Buford Lister had to remind himself to breathe as the psychic continued on.  She went on and on about the technical differences between a Twin Flame and Soul Mate.  At one point, he could have sworn he was sitting through a talk on string theory instead of listening to a bunch of spiritual nonsense.  After some time, he finally pried his eyes off her and glanced around the room.  Off to the psychic’s right were three degrees in unassuming frames nailed to the wall.  They were all from MIT.

The psychic noticed Buford Lister admiring the degrees, but she was not distracted.  She continued on.  “Time not only seemed to stop when you met her, it did stop.  That is what happens when Twin Flames come together.  The laws of physics become suspended, at least in the localized region of space that the two people happen to be occupying.  I also know that similar things have been happening to you since you met her.  I know that you have been having issues with your perception of time.”

Buford Lister’s ears, as well as his eyes, opened wide.  How can she possibly know that?  None of this makes any sense at all.

“You no longer experience time as continuous; it is lumpy; it comes to you in discrete chunks.  I can tell by looking at you that when you get home, it will feel like it has only been moments since you left.”  She took a long pause as if to gauge the unspoken response of the man sitting across from her, a man she had never seen before but whom she appeared to know intimately.

“Look, I am not interested in any of your philosophy or your metaphysics.  I don’t want to hear any more mumbo or jumbo, and I certainly don’t care what those degrees are in.  You haven’t told me one thing I find useful.  I have only heard nonsensical gibberish.  It would have been equally useful if you had given me a lecture on unicorn anatomy or the social structure of Leprechaun society.”

The Psychic took a deep breath, such a hard case, she thought. “All right then, what would you like to know?  I am at your service.”

“So, what happens now?  What am I supposed to do?  You tell me about a thing called a Twin Flame, something I must admit I have never heard of, and then you go on and on about a bunch of other stuff that I simply do not understand.  So give me my money’s worth.  Tell me something useful. Tell me about my future.  Do I have any type of future with this woman?  Will I ever even see her again?  I gave you $20, and you haven’t told me anything helpful.  Look, if you want I will go halves with you, we can change the sign outside to read  RANDOM…BULLSHIT…RANDOM…BULLSHIT.”

*****

I set out on a 90-minute run today.  I had a cooler of drinks in my truck, an extra shirt, and a couple of towels.  Funny thing, 30 minutes in both my knees started to hurt.  I said a rhetorical “NO!” to myself, and then I yelled a literal one.  The Athena Mojo appears to be wearing off; I no longer have the power within myself to make my knees stop hurting simply because I want them to.  I had to stop, go home, and start typing.  So here I am, right now, trying yet again to find words to explain the unexplainable.  I find myself constantly wrestling with the vagaries of construction and wondering about the inherent promise of Dissonance.

Having my knees hurt is not the only interesting thing that happened to me on the run.  I was rounding a corner when I noticed something off to my right.  There it was, a hawk, a big beautiful hawk had just swooped down and taken a rabbit.  Its attack was quick and precise.  I doubt the rabbit even knew what was happening.  As the hawk tried to fly away with its prize, an unexpected thing happened.  The hawk, apparently startled by me, dropped the rabbit as it flew away into the trees.  I did a few more laps, but I didn’t see the bird again.  The dead rabbit was still there but it wasn’t yet a meal.  What do you think of that, Athena?  Pretty intriguing sequence of events, don’t you think?  Knees hurting, rabbits dying, and me struggling to find words to type.

*****

She took out a very old, and very large, Rider-Waite tarot deck.

“Oh, you need a little help?  I thought you were an intuitive, a true empath.  Why are you using cards?”

“I don’t really need the cards for help; I use them mainly for clarification purposes.  I know exactly what I am sensing and what I am being told by my guides, but I want to be sure the cards confirm the messages.”

“I see, bad news.  You just want to make triple sure of everything before you send me on my merry way.”

She shuffled the cards, and shuffled, and shuffled.  She never took her eyes off Buford Lister.  “Tell me when to stop shuffling.”

Buford Lister waited; he didn’t want her to stop shuffling.  He wanted her to continue; he wanted to remain seated across from her, the last thing he wanted to do was to get up and leave.  The next to last thing he wanted was to hear what she had to say.

“OK, now.  Stop now.”

She moved with a sense of purpose, her actions swift and decisive.  The cards quickly found themselves in the pattern of a Celtic Cross.

Buford Lister didn’t bother to look at the cards; he spent the whole time watching her.  It was as if her brain was turned inside out, the cogs and gears spinning just for his amusement.

“This is not making a lot of sense to me.  My guides keep saying something about some type of artistic endeavor.  My main guide is a man named Roland, and he is telling me to tell you…oh this is very strange, he is writing on a piece of paper with a pencil that is in the shape of a baseball bat.  Does that make any sense at all to you?”

Buford Lister didn’t want to tell her that it made perfect sense to him.  Instead, he asked her what the cards were telling her.

“The cards in this layout are being intentionally ambiguous.  I have seen this many times before.  The cards do not want to give you a straight answer.  The cards are telling me “maybe yes” and “maybe no.”  Nothing really that helpful.  I am being told that it is up to you.  The thing to keep in mind is that extraordinary circumstances do not respond well to ordinary strategies.  That is what Roland is telling me.”

*****

I started writing these essays because I wanted Athena to pop her head up and let me take her to lunch.  After the passing of some time, these essays have turned into nothing more than a cautionary tale that I am leaving behind for my niece and nephews.  At some point, they are going to get old enough to contemplate the nature of the universe and their role in the cosmic ballet (albeit one that might be accompanied by a provocative orchestra trained in the ways of Dissonance).  When that time comes, long after I am gone, I want them to be able to load this volume up and learn a thing or two about their uncle and the most unusual experience of his life.  At some point, I hope they sit their own grandchildren on a knee and tell them about a long-dead relative that once met a woman at a rock show.  They can talk to the kids about deep questions concerning this and that and the other, and then they can casually mention to them that this guy (a man in a pork pie hat and checkerboard Vans) wrote an entire book about meeting a chick in a dive bar.  The grandparent can look the kid in the eye and tell them that the dude did find some answers to all those questions, but unfortunately, the answers just implied deeper and more disturbing questions.  “My uncle would have said the answers he found simply created more Dissonance with a capital D.  Yes, that is what he would have said.”

The kids can then ask their grandparents about the meaning of life and if there is a purpose to be found in any of this.  Papa or Mama can then hand them a pad with a digital copy of this book on it and tell them: “Well, my uncle claimed to have found something very profound along the way.  The book you are going to read is in his own words, take your time, and maybe you can figure out exactly what he learned.”

*****

Buford Lister went back home and sat in the dark as he contemplated what he was going to do.  He knew exactly what the psychic meant.  If he did nothing, then he had no chance.  If he did something normal, something expected, (something constructed), then that was the same as doing nothing at all.  Big risk, big reward, blah, blah, blah.

He wasn’t a writer (hell, he was trained as a scientist), and yet he was compelled to write.  He got a bunch of books and learned all he could about how to write elegant sentences, how to construct linear arguments, and how to push a story along.  He learned about “show don’t tell” and “writing the gutter.”  He sat down, and he wrote and wrote, and wrote.  Of course, the more he wrote, the better he got at it.  Eventually, he had written an entire volume on what had happened to him when he met Kaylee, the punk rocker chick with the purple hair and the sunburst Telecaster.  He finally realized that with resignation came, well… resignation.  Peace, like the concept of a multi-dimensional universe or that of a Twin Flame, was way too abstract an idea for him to wrap his head around.

*****

I am a student of the universe, and I am also a student of human nature.  In the last few years, I find that I am also a student of Dissonance.  Where exactly does that leave me?  Am I supposed to continue to struggle to try to find some ultimate meaning for this highly unusual experience?  Am I to dodge and weave and put my trust in those who speak with utmost authority on topics such as wood nymphs, unicorns, and leprechauns in a feeble attempt to gain a little comfort?  I don’t think so.  What I will do is hope that this type of Dissonance is somehow musical (literally and figuratively) and that Athena eventually comes forward to offer the resolution that I think (and I hope) I deserve.  I have no idea if she will but hoping and wishing that she might offer up a simple “yes” or “no” (or even an “OH HELL NO”) to a request for a stupid lunch date is a pathetic waste of time.  She either will or she won’t, and there isn’t anything more I can do about it.  I have done all I am willing to do…I am spent.

I guess I will close this chapter with the following thought.  It has been a long time since I have heard from her and an even longer time since I have seen her (it has already been years with an “s”) but if you can all keep a little secret I will let you know that I still can’t help but smile when I think of her.  I still know for a stone-cold fact that she is the most random, most inexplicable, and most extraordinary person I have ever met.

Oh no (damn it all), so much for my dramatic ending.  I just realized that I promised to get to that one big question Brenda asked, a question I can’t ever (and I mean EVER!) remember anyone else asking me.  So Brenda, am I happy?  I am surrounded by way too much Dissonance to know how to answer that.  I spend each morning fighting with all I have left to rage against the “Hayden-esque” life the universe so desperately wants me to live.  In the afternoons, the fight turns inward as I weigh the pros and cons of my decision to give up on my fool’s errand of trying to convince a punk rocker chick that something magical and highly profound happened on the night we met.  In the evenings, after my run, when I rub my knees and lean back in a feeble attempt to let Mozart’s music elevate me, I find myself numb to the whole experience, the experience of meeting Athena as well as that of life in general.  I apologize Brenda, but I have no response; I simply have no idea what to say.

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind: Volume 2: The Athena Chapters,
Chapter Eight:
Cinema Paradiso (Brenda’s Essay)

“Best dressed, my ass.”
Those words, the ones you just read, are the only four words my high school principal ever spoke to me.

*****

Buford Lister spied her across the room.  Shy (well, yeah), but not too shy to walk up and say hello.  “Excuse me; I’m Milk. I saw you from way over there, and I just had to come way over here to say hi.”

“I’m Kaylee, nice to meet you.”

Buford Lister, the man without a plan (a present-day Keyser Soze dressed up as Verbal Kint for Halloween), tried to collect himself as he was unexpectedly pummeled by bizarre thoughts and powerful emotions.   Quick thinker that he is, The Man Known As Milk (apparently he is known as that, this is the first I am hearing of it) instantly took out the big guns.  He needed a little time to think, to collect himself, to figure out what was happening to him.  What he really needed was a diversion.  After a few deep breaths and several seconds of awkward silence, this is what he said.

“That must have hurt like hell?”
“What’s that, what hurt?”
“When you fell from heaven.”

*****

I thought I was done, I really did.  The last chapter was supposed to be, uh, the last one; that is what I had planned, and when I finished the last sentence of Chapter Seven, I thought this volume of essays was complete.  Well, guess what?  Apparently, this book is not finished, and this is due, mainly, to a totally innocent decision I made concerning drafts I sent out for review.  A woman named Brenda, an old friend from my hometown, got one of the copies.   She grew up out in the sticks just a few miles from the little brick house my parents had.  Rumor has it that my brother used to pull her hair in grade school.  Of course, this is one of those “he said, she said” deals with no resolution in sight.  I’m thinking he probably did try to yank her hair right out of her head.

Brenda has a fancy degree from an even fancier school on the East coast.  I used to hang out with her when she was an undergrad, and I was in grad school.  She is extremely sharp and not shy at all (sigh) when it comes to giving her opinions.  I keep a top-secret list of my all-time favorite people, Brenda is on it, and that is one of the reasons I value her opinion.   I will get to Brenda and her in-depth analysis of my writing ability (as well as my sanity) in due time.

First, I guess it is time for a little news.  Is Brenda’s critique the only reason I am writing more, or am I still typing away because Athena actually decided to pop her head up and say hello?  No, she didn’t call, message me, write me, or drive by my house blowing kisses out of her tour bus window as I waved back from my front porch.  I have heard nothing at all from her.  I am still stuck on those four little words she wrote me such a long time ago.

Apparently, I have nothing positive to report, and yet here I am, once again, sitting at my computer.  So, what exactly happened?  Why do I insist to persist?  Well, a month or so ago, I had finished my “Athena book,” and I sent it out to a few select people for comments and criticisms (and in a somewhat surprising, some would say shocking move, I did not send it to Athena).  Some of these people were not shy when it came to telling me exactly what they thought about the book and what they think, in general, about me.  The main reason I am writing this essay is because Brenda lit into me with full force.  Don’t worry, it was all in good humor (at least some of it probably was).  Trust me, you will hear all about her review soon enough.

*****

The edges of Kaylee’s mouth appeared to touch each of her ears.  She tried to talk over her laughter with varying degrees of success.  “I have never heard anything like that before.  So, your name is Milk, eh?  I bet there is a story behind that.  My guess is there aren’t many parents who would name their son Milk, so I am thinking that is probably not your real name.”

She bit her tongue as she took in the spectacle of his duct-taped shoes and the extension cord doubling as a belt.  She wanted to ask him about his clothes even though most people at punk rock shows look like they spent the day working on the back of a garbage truck.  Milk was a little different, though; he looked like he arrived at the show in the back of one.

“That is true,” said Buford Lister in his newfound suave voice.  “They, and by “they” I mean all the fine young ladies, call me Milk because…I do a body good.”

She had heard every conceivable line from every random guy on three separate continents.  She wasn’t phased (not even a step back); she was, in fact, a little charmed.

*****

I have decided to begin my discussion of Brenda and her (ugh!) review of the first seven chapters with, what else, a story.  I graduated high school with her husband, and I want to let everyone know the very first words Joe ever said to the woman who was to become the mother of his children.  Apparently, classic, old school pick up lines sometimes do work.  I wonder…did she fall in love with him right then?  Was it one of those magical moments in time that I seem so fond of writing about?  I really don’t know, but she did end up marrying him, so Joe must have done something right.  I have heard that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…but….yeah, I don’t think I am ever going to approach a woman, look deep into her eyes, and say, “You don’t shower much, do you?”

*****

“What are you drinking?”
“Nothing.”
“What would you like?”
“Whiskey, straight.”

Buford Lister made his way through the crowd to the bar.  He got a whiskey for her and two beers for himself.  He was the kind of guy who always got two beers for himself; he prided himself on the fact that he was a two-fisted drinker.  In his mind, it made him compelling; it was something an interesting character out of a well-plotted novel would do.  Anyway, it was almost always a good conversation starter.

“OK, do we get right to the kid’s names, or am I supposed to charm you first.  Do I need to make a bigger impression before you agree to marry me?”  She couldn’t believe it, but she found herself stepping closer so that she could clearly hear him over the loud guitars in the background.

The conversation flowed, they talked about anything and everything.  She kept telling him, “No one ever talks to me like this, I never get to meet people like you.  Where did you come from?  What are you doing here?”  You are not my type at all but…(that part she never said, she didn’t have to).  He sensed her thought, he knew (hell, everyone knew) they were a total mismatch.  He wanted to tell her that they should have a conversation about types someday, but not now.   He was in too deep a fog to talk about violinists that become concertmasters or people who make a living playing the same Lilith Faire chord progressions over and over.

“So, tell me a little about yourself?  Tell me something about The Man Known As Milk that would surprise or astonish me.”  Her eyes moved up and to the left as she finished her question.

“Well, about the only thing you need to know about me is that I was voted best dressed in high school.  Yep, that is my most coveted award.  The interesting thing is how I won it.  I was sitting in homeroom, minding my own damn business when we started voting for those nonsensical awards.  Some kid yelled out, “Vote for Buford Lister for best dressed!”  Everyone laughed and then voted for me.  I thought this would be isolated to my homeroom.  I didn’t think there was any way that other kids were going to vote for me if I wasn’t there in the room with them.  Well, the voting was a landslide.  I took it down with no problem.”

“You were voted best dressed because you dressed like a slob?”  She barely got the words out, her laughter creating intermittent stuttering and breathing problems.
“So the question to ask is just how bad does one have to dress to win best dressed?”
“ Pretty bad, I guess.”  He looked down at his T-shirt and ripped jeans and said: “As you can see, I still don’t put any thought at all into my wardrobe.”  Buford Lister rubbed his chin and then took a long drink. “So there you have it.  Now it is your turn.  Tell me something few people know about you.”
“Uh, you are going to think this is weird, but I collect leprechauns.”
“Oh, I need to hear more about this.”

Kaylee and Buford Lister, two people that no dating service would ever put together, and yet…

*****

I am sitting back in my big old chair, wondering what might have happened if I had used Joe’s epic line on Athena.  I bet I wouldn’t have written any of these chapters, that is for sure.  But I did write a bunch of essays, and Brenda certainly has a strong opinion about them.  Here is the e-mail I got back from her after her first read-through.  I sent her a series of questions, and she was not shy (no shit) about answering them.

Do you like the book?  No.
Do you think the story is interesting?  No.
Do you think it is well written?  No.
Did you find yourself rooting, just a little, for me to get a lunch date?  No.
Good grief, and that was just the beginning…

*****

Buford Lister was floating as he drank beer after beer after beer.  He listened to Kaylee, I mean really listened to her.  He wasn’t waiting to talk like most people do; he was too charmed to talk much anyway.  He wasn’t even interrupting her to get her to clarify what she was talking about.  No, most of his energy was taken up by trying to maintain his balance.   That was pretty much all he was capable of.

“Kaylee, excuse me for a moment, but I will be right back.”  He shook his beer, the universal signal of hey, I have to pee, but I am not going to come right out and tell you I have to pee.  “Ok, make sure you come right back.  If you are going to watch your concert make sure you come find me before you leave, OK?”  Poor old Buford Lister (excuse me, I mean Milk) said “sure” as he started to walk away.

Author’s note: Narrators of stories have special powers; any high school English teacher can tell you that.  They can see everything; they know everything, some you can trust, and some you can’t.  Well, let me tell you this as I break right through that special wall that separates the author from the implied author and the implied author from the narrator.  I saw what Buford Lister did next; I saw it with my own two eyes.  He went to the bathroom, somehow got his hands on a napkin and an ink pen, and wrote down in his own words what only he could write.  Why did he need to write anything?  He didn’t, but I guess he wanted to make sure she got the message.  This is what he wrote:  I am totally, completely, and utterly undone.  Thank you, Buford Lister.  You will notice the Harvard comma right after the word “completely.”  Apparently, even little notes on napkins are supposed to be grammatically correct if you were taught that things like Harvard commas are important.

*****

Brenda’s tirade began with my choice of font, no kidding…let me say that again; she started off by criticizing my choice of font.  “What did you do, type this thing on a 1930’s typewriter?  Get with the program blah, blah, blah.”  After she recommended a movie (a 2007 documentary) about Helvetica (apparently her font of choice), she went on to tell me that “pfffttt!” is not a real word, and therefore, I am not allowed to use it.  She explained that if I were French, then my usage would be appropriate, but I am not French; therefore, I need to delete all mention of it.  I really have no idea where that came from.  I am wondering if “pfffttt!” would be acceptable to her if it was presented in a more agreeable font?  Hmmm…  And yes, Brenda (pfffttt!), as you already know, I changed the stupid font.

*****

“You know, I was thinking of Mozart the whole time I was watching your set.”

“Huh, why would you be thinking of Mozart?”

“I just finished a historical novel about his sister.  After I finished the book, I did some research and learned as much as I could about her.  She was an extremely talented musician, but she was never allowed to pursue her music simply because she was a woman.  Society just wouldn’t have it.  It just wasn’t done back then.  I liked the book; her story is a very interesting one.”

“Well, I would love to hear it, but it is almost time to go.  I have to get back to my hotel soon.”

“OK, tell you what.  Tell me how to get a hold of you, and I will write you a little story about what happened to her.”

Kaylee grabbed the napkin that Buford Lister was still holding in front of his chest.  You don’t need to ask; of course, he looked like a total doofus.  He didn’t care how he looked, and she wanted to see how long she could get him to keep holding it up.

Time stopped as she started to write.  Buford Lister looked around the room and realized that something was not quite right.  In fact, nothing was right.  No one was moving; the only thing that seemed to be racing were the thoughts in his head.

*****

I have an inspired idea; let’s go through Brenda’s (pfffttt!) comments one by one.  My, my…this should be fun!  The first thing Brenda said is that I spent a lot of time trying to justify what I am writing, “It’s your book; you don’t have to justify it to anyone!”  Yeah, under normal circumstances, that would be totally true, but these essays reside in the realm of the highly unusual.  I am not sure if there is anything normal about this book.

Any author, if they want to remain a writer, must know their audience.  That might be Rule Number One.  If you do not know your audience, then you will not be able to give them what they want, and you will most certainly lose them.  The interesting thing here is that I wrote the first seven essays for an audience of one.  Yeah, I know the irony is that I don’t know her at all to begin with.  Maybe that is why I am still reading drafts of these essays during lunch instead of laying my patented charm on Athena as she eats a salad.

Now I need to make a confession to Brenda (pfffttt!) and everyone else reading this.  I found myself wanting to apologize after nearly every paragraph.  “Damn Athena, I am so sorry I am doing this.  Please don’t feel uncomfortable.  Really, I am not an ax murderer.  I am sooo sorry if you find these essays weird at all.  I mean it, I apologize.”  So, the justifications Brenda so dutifully pointed out are really disguised apologies to the one person audience I was writing for.  How did that work out for me?  Disastrous is one word that comes to mind.

It got so bad for me that one little throwaway line that Brenda wrote me made me seriously consider destroying the first seven chapters and starting over.  She, I am sure, will be surprised to hear that, but it is true.   It certainly wasn’t just Brenda’s comment, nearly everyone else who read the first seven chapters all came to pretty much the same conclusion.  They all were, unfortunately, for me, way wrong.  She wrote: “Unrequited love sucks, doesn’t it?  I am surprised something like this hasn’t happened to you before.”  Wow, where to begin?

OK, did I ever mention that word, the L-word, anywhere in the book?  Nope, not once, and trust me that was on purpose.  I fell miserably in love with a girl when I was an undergrad; I briefly mentioned that fiasco in Chapter Two.  What happened to me the night I met Athena was anything but a run of the mill boy meets girl scenario.  While it is true that I went totally “ga ga goo goo” over her, I did not lean in real close and whisper “duh, you’re purty, you have purty hair” in her ear.  At least I don’t recall making a total idiot out of myself; I think I was just my normal idiot self.

It never even occurred to me to put my experience within any boy meets girl context.  What she did to me is something a magnitude different.  I still have no idea what the hell happened that night, I really don’t, but I know it was not a “boy meets girl and boy turns to jello” deal.

I was in a state of shock when I read Brenda’s note about unrequited love, I really was.  The problem became compounded when I realized that nearly everyone else who read those chapters came to basically the same conclusion she did.  I have to ask:  If that is what this story is, a tale of unrequited love, then doesn’t that make me the most pathetic guy on the face of the Earth?  I mean, really, if I simply fell in love with her the moment she spoke to me then why, oh why, oh why would I announce to the world that she won’t even talk to me now?  Damn, that is rather sad.  I don’t think I would have any legitimate reason to put myself out there like that.

*****

Author’s Note: There are people who believe in the Akashic Records.  I know they are out there, I have met more than a few.  I can hear you now: Huh?  What are those?  Supposedly (at least as the story goes), these are records of the entire history of the universe.  Everything, and I mean everything, is written there.  Remember that time you were mean to that poor little boy in second grade?  Bam – you are busted!  Remember that time you got really sick in junior high?  Were you really near-death, or were you just being dramatic?  If you want to know just how sick you were, then you access the records to find out.  Things like that are in there as well as the sections dealing with the formation of planets and the like.

I used my powers as a narrator to confirm what my intuition told me was true.  Remember that napkin from an early chapter?  I just mentioned it again a little bit ago.  Well, guess what?  If you go to the Akashic Records, there is a special section called “The Sweetest, Sexiest, and Most Charming Thing An Entity (it really does says entity) Has Ever Done.”  Number nine on the list is what Kaylee did next.  I still get a little misty when I think about what she said.  This is what happened…

Time got kick-started, the people in the venue reanimating in unison.  There was no apparent reason for the stoppage or for the restart; it was just one of those things.  As she came back to life, Kaylee turned toward Buford Lister and smiled.  He had no idea what she wrote on the napkin; he didn’t look because it didn’t matter.  He couldn’t take his eyes off her, how could anyone in there take their eyes off her?  Then it happened, the top ten list of the Akashic Records was forever changed.  Kaylee stuffed the napkin in Buford Lister’s shirt pocket, leaned in, and said: “That is the one my mom uses.”

*****

Brenda (for reasons known only to her) went on to read the first seven chapters twice more.  At some point, she sent me a short e-mail with a cryptic message, one that had quite an impact on me.  All she said was: Have you ever seen Cinema Paradiso?  Now, I remembered the movie, but I never bothered to see it.  Brenda wrote me again, in this message she told me about a little vignette in the movie, a story about a soldier and a princess.  I sat in stunned silence as I researched the story and realized the point Brenda was making.  Here is the basic outline of the little tale included in the movie.

A soldier (poor bastard) falls madly in love with a princess (hubba hubba).  He sees her at a banquet and becomes smitten as soon as he eyes her.  A few weeks later, he manages to talk to her.  He tells her that she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and that he can’t live without her.  The princess, impressed by the depth of emotion in the soldier, tells him that if he sits outside her window for 100 days and nights, she will marry him.  The soldier takes his place and doesn’t move; he stays through all the weather and all the hardship.  The story ends on the 99^th night.  The soldier, on the cusp of his dream, leaves and goes home.

Now, is that what Brenda thinks is going on here?  Am I waiting like a little bitch for Athena (some sort of apparent punk rock royalty) to grant me an audience?  Hmmm, interesting, isn’t it?  I certainly have never felt that way, but I have to admit I was stunned by the little story in the movie.  My reaction to it was not a good one; it was raw and totally unexpected.

The narrative of the movie does revisit the story of the soldier.   One of the characters eventually explains what he thinks is going on when the soldier got up and left even though he was so close to his prize.  The explanation is that the soldier knew that the princess would never be able to keep her promise; she wouldn’t be allowed to marry a common man.  By doing what he did, the soldier got to do something extraordinary; he got to live for 99 days under the illusion that the princess was going to be his.  On that last night, he had to get up and leave because he couldn’t have possibly lived with the fallout of staying the full 100 days.

I called Brenda after getting her email.  As unbelievable as it may sound, during the conversation, she asked me a question that I had no idea how to answer.  I must admit I am still a little stunned by her question, and I remain totally bewildered by my reaction.  That little exchange gets its own essay; Chapter Nine is all about her innocent little question and my inability to respond with nothing other than confused silence.

*****

Kaylee was, apparently, in a mood.  She was pressed for time, but she decided to play a little game with poor old Buford Lister.  “Have you ever seen Cinema Paradiso?” she asked.  Buford Lister, the legend of his conquests growing larger in his own mind, said, “Of course I have seen it. Why do you ask, do you want me to stand outside your window for 100 days and nights to prove my instantaneous love for you?  Do you need me to demonstrate that my aim is true and that my intentions are noble?”  Kaylee said nothing, she simply gave him the look that all professional cutie pies, femme fatales, and trained assassins learn at a very young age.  She kept facing him, but her eyes, those Platonic eyes, darted off to the side.  It was the sexy look away, the anti-look that creates tangible and visceral fallout anywhere near ground zero.  The man known as Milk took that to be a “yes.”

NOTE: We talked briefly about narrators.  I wasn’t entirely truthful (I am, apparently, one of those narrators that can not be trusted), not all narrators know all things at all times.  Readers are given insight into the thoughts of only a few characters unless you are reading someone like Jane Austen, she could tell you anything you wanted to know about any character, no matter how minor.  She was known to switch perspectives three of four times in a single paragraph.  Unfortunately, I am not omniscient; I am just a dude.  I can only tell you what I experienced and what I perceived.

*****

I am part of a group of writers, and I use that term very loosely, who write flash fiction.  I have named us The Flash Fiction 500 Friends (the worst name I could think of).  We pick a topic and write stories exactly 500 words in length.  The tales must have a narrative arc; they have to be real stories; no vignettes allowed.

I wish everyone could have heard Mobe deliver his dramatic reading of his last story.  It was the worst thing I have ever seen or heard.  Mobe’s story wasn’t done, but he decided to read the rough draft to the group because everyone else was finished and ready to read.  “He grabbed an ax…(10-second pause accompanied by page shuffling)…from the wall.”  I am insisting that Mobe read nothing but rough drafts in the future.  His dramatic presentation, while not very theatrical, was funny as hell.

Olive seems to have fallen into a bit of a pattern; the females in his stories, usually the wife or mother character tends to get offed in various mysterious and violent fashions.  This is strange in light of the fact that he has an outstanding marriage, one that is the envy of everyone.  Luckily his wife has been warned; she knows about this disturbing pattern and doesn’t seem concerned at all.

Here are some examples of topics we have tackled:

-A person makes a Ho Ho Cake that doesn’t turn out.

-A person comes home to find a package addressed to their long-dead grandfather.

-A person is walking down the road and finds a quarter standing on end next to a single die with a missing 6.

-A person takes their spouse’s glasses by mistake.

-A person finds a cell phone with a message saying meet me at such and such a place at such and such a time.

-A person goes to the store to buy an mp3 player.

-A person meets someone they haven’t seen in 30 years and discovers that person has had a sex change.

-A man instantly falls in love with a woman, and she tells him that if he stands outside her window for 100 days and nights, she will allow him to buy her lunch.

*****

“If you are nice I will tell you the funniest joke in the history of the English language. “ Kaylee smiled a big whiskey smile.  “Really?  Wow, I can’t wait to hear it.  One thing though, I want the joke to have a unicorn, some Leprechauns, and maybe a Yeti.  Can you do that for me?”

“Wow, that is a bit of a tall order.  Actually, the joke I have in mind has none of those things in it.”

“Fine, disappoint me when you are just getting to know me.  That is just fine.”

“Look, I wasn’t going to tell you the joke anyway.  I have to keep some ammunition in reserve.  If I use up all my charm capital, I won’t have anything left for the next time we meet.”

Kaylee laughed as she adjusted her leather jacket.  “Who said we would ever meet again?”

“No one said that, but hope springs, right?”

*****

Here is my conclusion to the essay.  No letter (imagine that!) to Athena (said all I have to say), Brenda (pfffttt!), Santa Claus (I haven’t been good this year anyway), or anyone else (no idea who else to write to).  No, I have decided to end this chapter with the following 500-word essay I submitted for the entertainment and approval of the Flash Fiction 500 Friends, easily the most unlikely literary group in the history of the written word.  The topic: A man instantly falls in love with a woman, and she tells him that if he stands outside her window for 100 days and nights, she will allow him to buy her lunch.  Here goes.  And no, the Quad F’s do not bother to check my math.

ONE HUNDRED NIGHTS

Buford Lister rocked back and forth and then back again in his little wooden folding chair.  He couldn’t stop thinking about her.  One look, just a simple glance, really, and it was over.  After that unexpected and stealthy sledgehammer attack, he stumbled around town for a bit until he decided he was hungry and happened upon a cozy little sidewalk cafe.  I must have been 2:00 in the morning, but the city had a vibe, it looked and felt like it was noon.

His soul, torched by a single look, was still on fire, cooled only by the ice water that her memory injected into his veins.  That, after all, was going to have to be good enough.

He kept going over and over the conversation.  Follow me around for 100 days and nights, and I will grant you a lunch date.  I might even let you hold my hand, maybe.  Every single time I look out my hotel window, I expect to see you there.  If I look out even once and do not see you, then you are finished, understand?  That was the abrupt end to their talk, and then she dismissed him.  As he started to walk away, she told him that her tour was just beginning, and he should be clever enough to find out where she was going next.  She also told him that if he approached her at any time during the 100 days, then he was toast.

He knew there was no way he was going to accept her offer.  Any woman who would ask such a thing of him wasn’t worth his time, end of discussion.  The problem was that earlier that day he had lost a poker hand with a straight flush, turns out he had the dummy end and, sure enough, the guy across from him had the seven of clubs to fill the higher hand.  Now, this.  Rhetorically speaking, Buford Lister wondered to himself, what are the odds of seeing a Yeti and a Unicorn on the same day?

A beautiful, young server came over to take his order.  She didn’t say a word before Buford Lister broke into his routine.  “OK, I am going to tell you a little story, well actually it is a joke.  The funniest joke in the history of laughter.  Ready?”  She nodded a confused yes.  “Rene Descartes walks into a cafe and orders a cheeseburger and a diet coke.  The waiter says very good sir and leaves.  Sometime later, the waiter returns with a croissant and tea.  Descartes says, “What is this?  I ordered a cheeseburger and a coke.”  The waiter replies, “Sorry sir, it was a croissant and tea.”  “No, I ordered a cheeseburger and a coke.”  “Sir, I was standing right here, and I am sure you ordered a croissant and tea.”  Descartes, now angry as hell, stands up, slams his fist on the table, yells, “I think not”…and disappears.”

“Uh OK,” she said.  “So I am guessing your name is Rene, you want a cheeseburger and a diet coke, and you are thinking of running out on the check.”  Sigh, close enough.  “That will be fine.”

The server went to put in the order just as Kaylee looked out her window.  Her expression immediately and drastically changed.  Damn it all; I really thought this guy was different, I didn’t think there was any way at all that he was going to sit there like a little bitch just waiting for me to throw him a bone.  Her brow furrowed as she picked up her sunburst Telecaster and ripped into the opening measure of Blink 182’s The Rock Show.  Oh well, that has pretty much been the story of my life. 

Kaylee nearly set her Tele on fire with her aggressive playing while Buford Lister quietly ate his sandwich.  Even though no one felt it, the Earth continued to rapidly rotate on its axis while revolving through space at tremendous velocity.  On that same planet, just down the road from the little cafe where Buford Lister ate, the same cafe that (as luck would have it) can be found across the street from the big hotel where Kaylee was staying,  a Yeti walked off into the sunset.  Beside him was a unicorn pulling a cart full of flush leprechauns, their pots of gold still unclaimed.  Neither Kaylee or Buford Lister saw them.

One day when I was a graduate student at Harvard, I was given a sheet of paper, just a single sheet.  On this page were examples of common grammatical mistakes that we were to avoid at all costs.  There was a short paragraph about the difference between their, there, and they’re.  It was that kind of a handout.

The recipients were all given a final instruction at the bottom of the page.  We were told, in no uncertain terms, to never, ever use a qualifier with the word “unique.”  Unique meant unique, one of a kind.  Something could not, by definition, be very unique or pretty unique.  The thing being discussed was either unique, or it was not.  If it was not unique, it might be rare or unusual, but there is no such thing as being really unique.

I always take note whenever I hear the word unique being misused, and believe me, it is almost always used with a qualifier.   In fact, I can’t remember the last time I heard someone, anyone, use the word correctly.  This doesn’t upset me at all, I have learned to go with the flow.  The word “unique” has simply evolved along with the English language.  No worries.

So, there you have it.  That is the introduction to my long time friend Stu. I have known Stu for over 40 years, and I will say that in my experience, Stu was unique.  He was one of a kind.  I have never met anyone like him, and I don’t expect I ever will.

If you noticed the change in word tense, you know that Stu passed away a few weeks ago.  He was having some health issues, but his death was unexpected.  He thought he had years.  So did I.

It is not possible to summarize a life with a few stories, but I have little choice.  I am going to tell a couple tales about Stu, my long-haired, bearded, kindhearted, substitute teacher, secret multimillionaire, poker playing, math-loving friend.  And that is just the beginning of the list.

Stu was substitute teaching when the schools were all shut down due to Covid-19.  He subbed because he needed to keep busy, he certainly didn’t need the money.  The following happened one day when he was subbing at a rural elementary school not far from his home.

Stu was eating lunch next to a full-time teacher when he noticed a boy eating by himself.  Stu asked the teacher what they should do about it.  The teacher, unbelievably, told Stu that he wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it.  Stu, astonished by the reaction of the teacher, asked a couple of this boy’s classmates what they thought they should do.  They immediately asked the boy to join them.  He declined, but the point is Stu saw something he didn’t like and tried to fix it.

As Stu and I talked about this incident, we both expressed our disappointment in the teacher who refused to address the problem of the solitary boy eating lunch.  We both agreed that this teacher, apparently teaching for unknown reasons, had no idea what was in his job description.  Stu was bothered by this person’s lack of caring.  He was genuinely disturbed by this incident.  That is the kind of man Stu was.

Stu was about to make his acting debut, he was going to be in a short film I am making.  I offered him the role of a drunken, broken down mathematician.  After immediately accusing me of typecasting, he accepted the offer.  I was looking forward to shooting his scenes.  He was going to be great.

Anyone who knew Stu knew he loved playing poker.  It was one of his main passions.  I was always trying to get him to read the essays I am constantly writing.  As many of you know, lots of them are mathematical in nature, and they are right up Stu’s alley.  He never seemed to get around to reading them, though, because he was sitting in front of his computer playing poker.  I wrote one particular essay that I knew he would like.

There is a special mathematical problem known as 10,958.  More specifically, it is 10,958 Ascending.  I tried for weeks to get Stu to look at the essay I wrote about it.  I told him that mathematical immortality awaits the person who was clever enough to solve it.  Finally, one day, I checked my email, and there was a message from Stu.  All it said was, “Wow, that is interesting.”  Stu had found a worthy problem.  Like all worthy mathematical problems, the more he fought with it, the more it fought back.

A few days after that initial email, Stu wrote to me and said he was considering giving up poker to spend more time wrestling with 10,958 Ascending.  After that, I sent him multiple emails a day, asking him if he had solved it.  The answer was always “Not yet.”

Me: You solve it?
Stu: Not yet.
5 minutes later…
Me: How about now?
Stu: Not yet.
5 minutes later…
Me: Any progress?
Stu: Not yet.

I told him how disappointed in him I was, I reminded him how simple the problem appears to be.  I asked him what was wrong with him.  Of course, we both had a strong suspicion that the problem was unsolvable.  Professional mathematicians the world over have tackled this problem and given up in frustration.  That said, Stu promised me a solution.  He was getting his computer coding skills back up to speed as he conjured up alternate ways to attack this nasty little problem.

There aren’t a lot of people who can make me smile just by walking through a door.  Stu was one of them.  I am severely disappointed that he was taken before his time.  We had a lot of work to do.  The future was bright.  I already miss him.

Postscript

For those of you interested in 10,958 Ascending, check out my post from 10/21/2019.  The post is entitled, you guessed it, 10,958.  I think you might like it.  After all, Stu did.

Legos for Adults

I made it through high school and my undergraduate degrees without ever using a PC.  How is that?  They were rare, few people had them.  If I recall correctly, I didn’t even see a PC until I was at Harvard.

I arrived at Harvard in 1986, typing my papers on a typewriter.  I didn’t know how inconvenient that was because I had no frame of reference.  After all, a typewriter was a quantum leap from pen and paper.

A year or so after my arrival, I stumbled upon a word processor at Sears.  Word processing was all it did, there was no other functionality whatsoever.  It had a small mono screen and an attached dot matrix printer.  It was the greatest thing I had ever seen.  If there were typos, I could correct them on the screen before they were printed.  The device was a true quantum leap from the typewriter.  Having that thing on my desktop made my life a lot better.  For me, it was truly revolutionary.

Some years later, I was once again making my way through a Sears store when something caught my eye.  I noticed an IBM PS/1 computer marked down…way down.  I examined the specs, 9-inch mono screen, 256k of ram, and no hard drive.  I couldn’t buy it fast enough.  I took it home a few minutes later.

The computer had a modem so I was able to get on the World Wide Web.  There was no internet yet, so there were very few sites I could visit.  I was able to connect to the Harvard library system, and that turned out to be a big plus.

I ended up using that machine for years, swapping out floppy disk after floppy disk as they reached their capacity.  As good as the word processor was, this computer, a real computer, was infinitely better.  Even though I don’t use it, I still have it.  It is a great machine.

Shortly thereafter, I started to build my own systems.  It was truly the Wild West.  Manuals were bad, much worse than they are today.  It was a true guessing game to figure out where all the cables from the case were supposed to go on the motherboard.  Nothing was labeled, most connectors could go in two ways, one way would be correct, the other would fry a hard drive.  And heaven help the poor slob who wanted to insert a modem into a system.  Jumpers had to be accessed and disabled on the motherboard and Ouija Boards usually had to be consulted to ascertain their location.  Once again, labeling was considered optional by the manufacturers.

My first system was a snappy little number with no hard drive, one-quarter of one megabyte of ram, and a blistering 286 processor.  When Dos Shell arrived, I felt as if it was a gift from beyond the moon.  Suddenly, I didn’t have to memorize every command from every program that I used.  With all due respect to Socrates, the file manager aspects of that utility was a game-changer.  For the first time, I could actually see the files in each directory and click on the one I wanted.  Truly astonishing.

I guess I probably built around 100 machines for friends and family.  I think I stopped when the Pentium 4 processors were the top of the line.  I still have a working Pentium 4, 150mhz with 4 megs of ram, and a tape drive.  I am very proud of that machine, it has never crashed…not once.

I stopped building computers because it became cheaper to buy pre-built systems.  In many cases (pun intended) it was a lot cheaper.  The big problem was that the cost of hardware continued to go down but the cost of software went up and then up some more.  This was in the day before Linux, and its multitude of distros, got a strong foothold.

I recently started building computers again.  I quickly found that the landscape for home-built computers has changed dramatically.  In a sense, building a computer today is like building with Legos.  Pieces simply snap together with little fuss.  The parts are dependable, well-labeled, and much cheaper than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

This is the computer my nephews and I built.  We are all in isolation so we talked on the phone as Corndog and Z put this machine together.  It was their first build and things went smooth.  The only problem we had was when Corndog neglected to plug the monitor into the wall socket.  After we got that squared away, everything was fine.

I would highly encourage everyone to build their own PC rather than go to Best Buy or order one on Amazon.  The build process is simple and I guarantee you will feel a sense of satisfaction when you boot up your new machine for the first time.

Bonus Eruptus Redux! A Few Thoughts on COVID-19 Testing

SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.  For what it is worth, SARS-CoV-2 stands for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.  This post is not about the virus, it is about the mathematical and probabilistic problems the virus presents to those who wish to test for it.  Unfortunately, the news is not good.

The first thing that any researcher would want to know is the accuracy rates of the tests being given to the public at large.   What is the rate of false positives?  How about false negatives?  No test is 100% accurate, and some do not come close to approaching that figure.  So anyone taking a COVID-19 test is going to have some reasonable questions to ask the people administering it.

If I test positive, what’s the probability I have the virus?

If I test negative, what’s the probability that I have the virus in spite of the test results?

Two legitimate questions, don’t you think?  To answer those questions, scientists need one more piece of information to plug into the equations.  They need a really good estimate of the percentage of people taking the test who legitimately are infected.  Of those three questions, at this point in time, we don’t have a good answer for any of them.

The May 13, 2020 edition of The New York Times includes an article by Todd Haugh and Suneal Bedi,  business professors at Indiana University.  While they are not scientists, they have a strong interest in the economic aspects of getting the economy back up and running.  Here are the headlines of their article:

In a population whose infection rate is 5 percent, a test that is 90 percent accurate will deliver a false positive nearly 70 percent of the time.

Yes, you read that correctly.  How good is a test if it gives us a false positive approximately 70% of the time?  Good question, isn’t it?

On 11/18/19, I wrote a short essay on the problems with mass medical testing.  Like the rest of us, I had no idea what was coming.  Replace the dreaded Bonus Eruptus with COVID-19, and you will get some insight into the problems we are all facing.  Mathematics and its close cousin Probability Theory are tyrannical in nature.  We can’t bend Mathematical Laws to our will no matter how much we would like to.  We will have to live with the inherent uncertainty of the tests being developed now and in the future.

Here is my original post.

Bonus Eruptus!

Let me begin by letting everyone know that I love The Simpsons.  The show is now in year 31, and I still look forward to each week’s episode.  I will admit that a few years in the middle of the run were pretty lean, but the show is experiencing a renaissance.  The Simpsons are back on solid footing.

Some of you may remember when Dr. Nick introduced us to Bonus Eruptus.  It was episode 21 of season 7.  The episode is entitled 22 Short Stories about Springfield, and that is exactly what transpires, 22 vignettes about the characters populating Homer’s hometown.  I think it is very clever and I have always wanted them to do more episodes like that one.  This particular episode, one of my favorites, first aired on 4/14/96.  Wow, the show has been around a long time, hasn’t it?  I will gladly take another 30 years.

During that stellar episode, Dr. Nick defined Bonus Eruptus as “a terrible condition where the skeleton tries to leap out of the mouth and escape the body.” Apparently, Grandpa Simpson had this condition, at least that was the diagnosis of the esteemed Dr. Nick Riviera.  I want to take a closer look at the mathematics behind this ostensibly severe condition.  Why?  I think that we might be able to learn a thing or two about probability theory and the inherent problems that come along with mass medical testing.

Please indulge me for a moment. Let’s all pretend that we live in Springfield USA and that Bonus Eruptus is a legitimate concern.  I know I wouldn’t want my skeleton to try to take its leave of me.

Imagine that Mayor Quimby, in a transparent attempt to get reelected, offers free, yet mandatory, testing to all the inhabitants of Springfield.  Since I have no idea how many people live there, let’s say that 10,000,000 people are living in the greater Springfield area.  I know that is more of a Capital City number but just play along, OK?  Of those, let’s say that 50,000 of them have the dreaded Bonus Eruptus.

Now let’s imagine that Bonus Eruptus is caused by a virus, one easily detectable by a simple test.  Like all tests, though, it is not perfect.  Some people who have the virus will test negative, and a certain percentage of the people who are negative will, in fact, test positive.  Imagine that the false-positive result rate is 2%.  Also, the poor people who have the virus will test positive only 95% of the time. So, the simple question is:  If someone actually tests positive, e.g., Bumblebee Man or Jeff Albertson (extra points if you know who that is), what is the probability that they actually have the terrible disease?  Think about that a while before you go on.  As you might already have guessed, the answer is not nearly as straightforward as you might think.  After all, why else would I be writing about it?

So, here we go.  Of the 50,000 people who have the virus, only 47,500 of them will actually test positive.

50,000 x .95 = 47,500

We know that 9,950,000 total people do not have it.

10,000,000 – 50,000 = 9,950,000

Of the people who do not have the virus, there will be 199,000 who will test positive anyway (the false positives).

9,950,000 x .02 = 199,000

So now, we can do some simple addition and see we come up with a total of 246,500 people who will test positive for Bonus Eruptus.

47,500 + 199,000 = 246,500

Of those, we know that only 47,500 will actually have it.  So if you test positive for the virus, there is only a 19.3% chance that you actually have Bonus Eruptus!. D’oh!

47,500 / 246,500 = 19.3%

Isn’t that interesting?  Without walking through the math, there is no way that a 19.3% chance could be seen as a reasonable possibility.

It is time for me to go.  I have to prepare for this week’s show.  I hear that Homer is going to do something stupid, and Marge is going to get upset.  I am about to burst with excitement.

Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind: Volume 2: The Athena Chapters,
Chapter Six:
Nuggets of “Wisoom”

Don’t tell me he was a good writer; he had the worst penmanship I ever saw in my life.
Mel Brooks, as the 2000-year-old man, commenting on the writing ability of William Shakespeare

I have the collected works of Gary Larson sitting right on top of one of my bookshelves.  Vonnegut’s novels, Gould’s essays, and Athena’s CDs are to  be found on the shelf directly below the two massive volumes that contain Larson’s brilliant work.  The Far Side is, hands down, my favorite comic strip of all time.  Ask anyone with even a cursory interest in science what their favorite strip is, and you will get a similar answer.  I can practically guarantee that.

I, of course, loved reading The Far Side before Larson’s retirement because of the scientific themes that permeated the strip.  Many of my family and friends also loved The Far Side but for a much different reason.  Larson was fond of calling the dimwit rubes that populated his strips by a certain name, one that happens to be the same as one of my friends.  This particular name appeared in lots and lots of strips.  Sigh, he liked to name these poor slobs “Warren.”  I can’t tell you how many of those strips were cut out and sent to my friend by various smart-asses from across the country.  They knew damn well he already would have seen it, but they just couldn’t help themselves.  OK, I admit that I was the major perpetrator.

Once again, as I sit at my computer and look over at the CDs and the Larson books, I find myself reminiscing about my time at Harvard.  Maybe my incident in the swamp has something to do with it even though I have been thinking more and more about that special place the last few years.  Maybe as I approach 50, I am just getting old.  Who knows?  I think I need to get back there for a visit.  The problem is I am sure I will not want to leave.

Back when I was living in my small basement apartment outside of Cambridge, the Boston Herald and The Boston Globe both published The Far Side.  Larson took a sabbatical year in 1988, and I have just recently recovered from the cold turkey shock of no new strips of The Far Side that year.  It was always a highlight of the day to see what Larson came up with.  One day, though, disaster struck; I found myself in the middle of a very bad episode of The Twilight Zone.  I picked up the paper, looked at the strip, looked at it again, and then set the paper down.  I thought and thought and thought some more before I picked up my copy of The Boston Globe again.  I tossed the paperback down as my pulse raced, and my blood pressure spiked.  Guess what?  Horror of horrors, I had no idea what the hell the strip meant!  For the life of me, I was confused beyond all recognition.

I didn’t know what to do.  I couldn’t believe that Larson had outsmarted me.  How could that happen?  There had to be another explanation, and I had to find it.  Sure, his strips confused people all the time, but I had never had such a problem.  In fact, I was the go-to guy whenever someone else didn’t get a strip.  I can’t tell you how many times I found myself explaining what an ichthyologist or an ornithologist is to glass-eyed people who had no idea what Larson was talking about when they opened their daily paper.  It was clear to me that Larson, in this case, had obviously made some kind of grievous error.

I can’t remember exactly what happened next, but I am sure I stewed about my dilemma for weeks, maybe longer.  Search engines were a few years off, and my IBM PS/1 with its little black and white screen (and no hard drive) wasn’t going to help me at all.  I was stuck.

I eventually found out what the strip meant, and I will tell that story in a bit.  Right now, I am excited because I get to mention Umberto Eco.  He wrote The Name of the Rose, a book that was adapted into one of my favorite movies.  I mention Eco because he has a library at his house reputed to contain about 30,000 volumes.  As a master of the obvious, I can say that is one big private library.  Eco, as you might imagine, is constantly asked a certain question by his house guests, and I am sure you have guessed what it is.  The query is something along the lines of “Damn son, have you read all of those?”

In Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan, a book I highly recommend to everyone, Taleb talks about Eco’s unread books.  He refers to them as his antilibrary.  They are there for reference, you just never know when you might need one of them.  Taleb goes on to argue that everyone needs as big an antilibrary as they can afford.

Well, guess what?  I just went to my library/antilibrary and took down Volume 2 of The Complete Far Side.  Of course, I did this to find the strip that caused such a big ruckus all those years ago.  I made a guess as to what year the strip appeared, and I found it in ten or fifteen minutes.  I would have found it sooner, but I couldn’t help reading nearly every strip as I leafed through the big book.  I discovered that my nemesis strip appeared on 12/21/92.  Thank you for letting me know an antilibrary is a good idea Taleb, I must admit that it never occurred to me that I would one day need Larson’s strips for research purposes.  We can add that to the long and growing list of things that have never occurred to me.

The strip in question was not one with a scientific theme, that was the big reason why I didn’t get it.  The panel had four guys with pocket protectors, briefcases, and pencils doing all kinds of fancy horseback riding.  The caption simply read “Cossack accountants.”  I had no idea at all what the hell that was supposed to mean.  Do you have a clue?

I can now tell the story of how I was able to solve the riddle of this mysterious strip.  I remember one day sitting in the office of a Harvard research professor.  His name is Don, and he is a very good guy.  And luckily for me, he also has a Ph.D. in history.

I had asked many people what the strip was all about, and no one knew, I mean no one had a clue until I asked Don.  He immediately said that the Cossacks were known as excellent horsemen.  Of course, I remember him telling me, they could rape and pillage with the best of them, but they mainly went down in history for their mastery of horseback riding.  Huh, really?  I asked Don if there was any way I could have or should have known that.  He shrugged his shoulders, and I felt a sense of relief because I then knew that I was not the only poor soul who didn’t get that somewhat obscure reference.  I knew I could get some sleep that night.

So, Don had solved my problem, and I was grateful.  After his explanation, he handed me a copy of a paper he was writing.  He asked me to look it over and tell him what I thought.  I was more than happy to do that.  I’m sure you can all understand that when a Harvard faculty member asks for your opinion, that is a pretty big deal.  I leafed through the paper in his office as he told me what it was about.  It was a paper about Shakespeare; Don was trying to pin down his true identity.  The true identity of Shakespeare has been a question addressed by scholars for a long time.  To this day, there is quite a debate about who Shakespeare really was.  Many people think that there is no reasonable way that the historical Shakespeare was capable of having the inside knowledge necessary to produce all those great works.  Many scholars think that, of all people, the famous philosopher Francis Bacon is a very good candidate for being the true author.  Go ahead and google something about Shakespeare, Bacon, and true identity, and you will get a sense of the gravity of the problem.  It is quite interesting.  I don’t remember the conclusion to Don’s paper, but I do remember that he thought that there was no reasonable way that Bacon was actually Shakespeare.  Now that I give it more thought, I am pretty sure that Don argued that the historical Shakespeare was indeed the real Shakespeare.  Imagine that.

The epigraph of this essay is a line about Shakespeare from Mel Brooks’ and Carl Reiner’s 2000-year-old man sketch.  It is pretty damn funny.  I included it here simply because of the joke about Shakespeare having terrible penmanship, and that, by definition, makes him a terrible writer.  That strikes me as funny; that type of joke is right in my wheelhouse.  It is even funnier because the title of this essay should have been “Nuggets of Wisdom,” but my buddy Boss (like Shakespeare) is not a very good writer, at least by the standards of the 2000-year-old man.  In fact, his penmanship is nearly as bad as mine.  We can get to that story now.

For years I have been shaking my head and complaining to anyone who will listen about how bad our conversations are when I head out with the boys for a few beers.  All my friends are apparently, like me, masters of the obvious.  I often comment that their stellar observations should be documented to inform and educate future generations of deep thinkers.  I long ago decided that I needed to carry around a book so that I could record all their “nuggets of wisdom.”

Remarkably, one day Boss shows up at my house with a little spiral notebook labeled, in Shakespeare-like handwriting, “Nuggets of Wisoom.”  He swears up and down that is actually says “Nuggets of Wisdom,” but I see what I see.  If he gets really upset, he can type out his own damn essay.  Ha!

I just realized that I have once again reached a new low.  I am in the middle of an essay that, at least at some level, links Boss and Shakespeare.  I talked to my brother Terry the other day, and I told him that, believe it or not, I am finishing up an essay on Boss and Shakespeare.  He immediately said, “That was inevitable.  It was only a matter of time before that happened.  I know every time I look at Boss, I think of Shakespeare.”  That is really funny.  You might guess it is because both Boss and Shakespeare have both been known to wear pantaloons, but that is not the reason.  You see, Terry is one of those random smart-asses I write about now and then.  The only reasonable thing Boss and Shakespeare have in common is that they are both in this essay.  Trust me, you all would be very hard-pressed to find any other type of connection.

Now we can move along to the actual entries in my book of “wisoom.”  It will quickly become clear why I felt it was necessary to document and write about these friends of mine and their brilliant witticisms.  As you are about to see, these guys bring it strong.  Also, what follows gives rare insight into the quality of my social life here in lovely Iroquois County.  Of course, as many of you have already imagined, I have had to edit the material heavily.  I can’t even mention a large portion of it.  Those spicy entries are not included in this or any other chapter.

11 10 10 7:34 PM We were at BW3’s watching the Cavs play the Nets.  “Anthony Morrow (a player for the Nets) should have a nickname.  It should be Anthony “Bone” Morrow.” Boss.

11 10 10 7:46 PM “The other Cavs must step up in Lebron’s absence.”  Mobe.  I am totally speechless; I can’t think of a single thing to say about that.

11 10 10 8:56 PM “Twenty-year-old girls are hot.”  Mobe.

11 26 10 4:23 PM Once again at BW3’s.  This time we were watching Nebraska play Colorado in a football game.  “That guy has a big ass.”  Mobe.  Sigh and sigh again.

12 11 10 12:02 AM “Your pen name should be J. Owen Sheep.”  Boss.  I have no idea where that came from.

3 4 11 10:24PM  Ryan-Tyler is a @#$%&.  A great big ^%&*#@@ with a $#%%^&*&^% and a %^^&$#$#$ that &%%^**@@#$@.  Boss.  That comment speaks for itself.

3 4 11 10:25 PM My book says that I said that “Shawna is so pretty and amazingly perfect.”  Uh, it appears to be written in a young woman’s handwriting.  Those things happen when I forget to take my “Nuggets of Wisoom” book with me to the bathroom.  Interestingly enough, the previous comment by Boss is not in my handwriting either.

Those are the types of entries that populate my little spiral notebook.  I can feel the anticipation, can’t you?  We all know that the interesting stuff is coming up next, right?  It is time to take a look at all the advice I have received about Athena.  Most statements are not going to be attributed to a specific person.  The reasons for that might become apparent after you read the following little “nuggets of wisoom” spewed forth by various friends, acquaintances, and drunk strangers who wonder what the hell I am writing about in a dive bar at a table all by myself.  Prepare yourself for what follows even though I bet you all have a very good idea about what comes next.

“Uh, if she were interested, she would call you.”

“Give up; it is time to move on.”

“You are wasting a lot of time on a woman who isn’t even real.”  I really have no idea what that means.

“You are crazy.  You have lost your mind.”  I completely understand what that means.

“Give it up.”  I understand that, too.

“You should have given up yesterday, five months ago, a year ago.”  I was told that when I hadn’t even known Athena for a year.  I must admit that I am willing to listen to those who would argue that I don’t know Athena at all.  That sounds reasonable enough to me.

One woman, one of those random drunks that I mentioned earlier, looked at me for a long time without saying anything when I asked her what I should do.  Eventually, she gave up the following little gem:  “Has it ever occurred to you that there might be something wrong with you?”  Let me tell you how I met this person.  I was working on this essay at a local bar when a waiter walked over to my table with a check that wasn’t mine.  Two women from across the bar sent me their dinner bill.  Sigh and pffttt!  I went over to their table to ask them exactly why I should buy them their dinner.  Of course, they had no good answer.  I think they just wanted to know what I was doing all by myself with a pen and notebook.  Eventually, Phil (the same Phil from a previous essay) showed up, and we all sat together.  I told them that if they wanted me to buy their dinner, they had to eat it with me.  They were both done eating, so I got off easy.  I haven’t seen either of them since.

“It is time to give up.  She can be your muse.  Don’t dedicate your life to someone who is not reciprocating.”  My only reaction to this little nugget is a question, one posed rhetorically and hopefully answered for themselves by every single reader.1  Have you ever heard of anything more pitiful than a person who has a muse who refuses to even acknowledge them?  Feel free to let me know if you come up with something.  I am not going to hold my breath while I wait on the responses.

The most curious thing I heard was, “Your eyes are attached to your brain.”  I must admit that confuses the hell out of me.  I am at a total loss for any type of reasonable explanation.

The best response I received to my “So, is it time for me to give up?” question came from Sarah, a server at a local restaurant.  I asked her, and she said, “sure.”  Believe it or not, that response is probably close to perfect.  I learned long ago that most people are way too caught up in their own lives to worry about another person’s nonsense.  That is probably the way it should be.

It would appear that not a single person believes that I am doing myself any good by tapping out essay after essay about a person who doesn’t seem to want to even speak to me.  Their message is clear, but I bet you can all guess what my response is, can’t you?

I briefly mentioned in a previous essay that there are downsides to those powerful and inexplicable instant connections that some people are capable of experiencing.  For me, the upside is far greater than any downside I can imagine.  I am changed, I am inspired, I am in shape, and I am very tired.  Those are all good things, and they are all a direct result of me meeting Athena.  As for all the writing I have been doing, I am compelled to continue, I simply don’t have a choice.  For reasons I will never understand she continues to inspire me in a way that I never imagined possible.

Now for the bad news, and it is pretty bad.  Meeting Athena only reconfirms all the beliefs I have had about waiting for the right person.  I’m certainly not saying that Athena is the right person because it sure appears that she is not.  I would think that the right person for me would want to talk to me.  But exactly how am I supposed to settle for someone who does not inspire me or is not on the same wavelength as me when I know what the possibilities are?  I hate to say this, but deep down, everyone reading this essay will agree with me if they give it some thought.  We all know people who settled because they didn’t want to be alone.  I know lots of broke guys who don’t go out much anymore because their child support payments are so high.  How on earth did that happen?  Hell, I remember one conversation I had with a woman who admitted she had settled when she married her husband.  Incredibly, he was sitting right beside her when she said it.  I hear they are now divorced.  I am shocked to my core, how in the name of humanity did that marriage break up?

The sad bottom line is that once any person experienced what I did with Athena, it does not seem reasonable or even possible to just pick someone because they don’t smell too bad or because you are not looking forward to dying alone.  Being alone strikes me as the only reasonable alternative.  I am thinking that if everyone experienced exactly what I did when Athena introduced herself, they would all find nothing but inspiration in these essays.  Criticisms would fade to subtle admiration as they came to understand that giving up is an unimaginable, as well as a reprehensible, impossibility.  Also, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Once again, we are back to that wavelength stuff.  I became convinced long ago that I was living in a very different world from the one everyone else was waking up in.  The thing is, I instantly knew Athena was occupying the same planet I was.  If she doesn’t realize that or just doesn’t care, then there isn’t any more I can do about it.  I am satisfied that I have made my position clear.  I would rest my case, but I have no idea if I am the prosecution or the defense.  Maybe I should just work toward a plea bargain while the jury is still out.

Postscript

I have been studying the mathematics behind coincidences for some time now.  There are some events that we, as human beings, think are rare occurrences that really are not.  These events are found to be quite commonplace when viewed through a mathematical lens.  Many of the essays that I write deal with this counter-intuitive nature of reality.  Look over Volume One of Random Thoughts from a Nonlinear Mind, and you will see what I mean.

Initially, I was going to end this essay without a postscript, but something just happened that we will all find curious.  I often work on these essays while listening to music or watching TV.  On this occasion, I happened to have my TV on.  An episode of the old Batman show starring Adam West was just shown.  They ended the show with a tease about the next guest villain.  I am so glad that I DVR these old episodes because the next show features a guest that I have never seen.  The next “bad guy” that tries to doom Batman and Robin is none other than Olga, Queen of the Cossacks.  They just showed a glimpse of her on her horse.  I am completely astonished.

I have never heard of this villain, but she certainly exists; at least she does in the fictional world of Batman’s Gotham City.  In the next episode of Batman, she will try to “do away” with the Caped Crusaders, but we all know she will fail miserably.  I will admit that it is quite a coincidence that this episode was previewed as I was finishing the final draft of this essay.  In my mind, though, it doesn’t come close to what happened when a certain dude met a particular chick at a punk rock show.  I am still trying to work out the mathematics of that deal.  I will be sure to let everyone know precisely when I come up with something, but I don’t think you all should be holding your breath while waiting.

Notes

Note 1.  The eighth episode of The Simpson’s seventh season is entitled  “Mother Simpson.”  I had to mention it because of the following scene between Homer, his mother, and Lisa.

Mother Simpson (singing Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind): How many roads must a man walk down?  Before you can call him a man.
Homer: 7.
Lisa: No, dad, it’s a rhetorical question.
Homer: OK, 8.
Lisa: Dad, do you even know what “rhetorical” means?
Homer: Do I know what “rhetorical” means?