I hate it that five and six look so much alike. I mean, they both have curvy things on top and loopy things on bottom. If you're far away, or the type is small, or if you're even just the slightest bit drunk, a five looks just like a six.

 

And then you can be off and not even know it. And being off by just one might not be so bad if you're only off by one penny or one degree on the thermometer. But what if you're off by one channel, then you miss your favorite show, or one digit in a phone number then you call the wrong person? Or what if you're navigating a spaceship and you're off by one degree, you could blow up the wrong planet.

 

I've been thinking for a while now that five and six looking so much alike is extremely bad, especially since they're right next to each other. And at first I thought the answer would be to have the one and the five switch places; that way, at least, they won't be right next to one another.

 

But then I think that the fact that they're right next to one another makes things confusing because folks are just so used to seeing t hem together, but it's not the real problem. The real problem is that five and six look so much alike. They're kind of like when you meet a pair of twins who aren't identical but look almost alike, so that sometimes you might have to look twice but once you do you can totally tell them apart.

 

I think the Olsen twins are kind of like this. I mean like one is blonde and one is bulimic, and I think the blonde one might even be taller but maybe that's just because bulimia stunted the other one's growth. Anyway, you can tell they're twins even though they look different, just like with five and six.

 

So that way, I guess, if I change five and one, it might actually make things worse. Like how if you just saw Mary Kate all the time, and then you saw Ashley, you wouldn't think "Hey, that girl looks just like Mary Kate", you would think "Hey, Mary Kate has developed an eating disorder!"

 

So if five is just five and you think it's six, then you're just off by one. But if five is one and you think it's six, then you're off by five. And five is way more than one to be off by.

 

Unless five is one. Then it's way less. Either way sucks.

 

And don't get me started on eight and nine. Five and six are like the Olsen Twins, ok, annoying, but at least they're kind of cute and funny and stuff. But eight and nine are like the Menendez Brothers. They're just waiting for the chance to kill you and then make up some stupid defense.

 

Or maybe not.

 

This guy at my work says that the stuff I think about is just like the stuff other folks think about when they're on drugs.

 

Anyway, eight and nine look alike just like five and six look alike.

 

I don't know why whoever made up the numbers had to make them all look so much alike. Why couldn't they use more straight lines like they did when they made up the letters? And how come there's upper and lower case letters but there's no upper or lower case numbers?And how come they call it a double-U when really it's a double-V???

 

 

Numbers are cool though, despite this. You can do so many cool things with numbers. You can plus them together and minus them from one another, you can times them and divide them and even square them.

 

Squares are cool. Like if you add one and three, two consecutive odd numbers, you get four, which is two squared. And if you add one and three and five, three consecutive odd numbers, you get nine, which is three squared. And if you add one and three and five and seven, four consecutive odd numbers, you get sixteen, which is four squared.

 

And if you take nine (three squared) and subtract four (two squared) you get five (which is two plus three). And if you take sixteen (four squared) and subtract nine (three squared), you get seven (which is four plus three).

 

Weird, weird, wild stuff.

 

 

You have squares and roots in your own life, and I can prove it. You have two parents, and four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents, and on down the line. If you go back just 25 generations, there's 67,108,864 people. And that's only about 500 years.

 

When you think about it, that's a lot of damn people for back that long ago. That would be like five or six countries full of people, including all their kings and stuff.

 

So you know what else is weird? If you go back 50 generations, which is only like 1000 years, yuo get over 4.5 billion people, which is more people than were even alive back then. I used to wonder what happened to all the people, but in college they say its because so many people married their cousins back then.

 

I don't know about all that. But if you go back just seven generations, that's 128 ancestors, and if you add in everyone from your parents on back, that's 254 people. I don't think I even know 254 people, and if I even do I'm quite certain that at least 240 of them annoy the crap out of me.

 

But it's interesting to think about 254 people spread out over 150 years, and who knows who all is there? Maybe there's Civil War generals and movie stars and spies. Really, there could be one guy out there who is descended from Ivan the Terrible and George Washington and General Patton and Elvis and Chef Boy-Ar-Dee.

 

This is all starting to freak me out.

 

 

You know what else freaks me out about all this number stuff? Zero. Zero isn't a number. It's not even anything. It's nothing. It doesn't even exist, really, and yet when I say "zero", everyone knows automatically what I'm talking about.

 

It's like zero is there, but it doesn't exist, and you can see it even though it's nothing. And if you put it next to a one (which is one of something), you get a ten, which is ten of something. And the more zeros (nothing) you add on, the bigger the something that you have gets.

 

I am so freaking out right now.

 

I liked your cheerleader rant too (not that you are thinking about cheerleaders)

One more thing: Why is the number 7 the only number between 1 and 10 that has two syllables? This is a major problem especially when counting music. For example, if you have to count 8 8 time, you count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. But it seems like you count nine beats because it takes so long to say the word seven that it might as well be the eighth beat as well. Anyway. Yea. Adrienne

 

 

 

 

 

And, as a final point I'd like to make, a lot of people say that Jesus wasn't real, but even the people who don't like Him agree that He was at least a real person.