The New Numerology

I fear I have painted myself into a corner. Friday has come and gone, as it so often does, leaving in its wake the apprehension that comes from knowing how these things play out. Saturday followed, then Sunday, and here it's Monday already and all I can think about is Friday. The thing is, you can't have more than seven umpteenths in a month, which leaves me in a bit of a pickle when Friday rolls around. Not that I mind sitting in a corner waiting for the paint to dry; I have plenty of food, because if there's one thing I never get tired of, it's pickles. Sometimes I get tired of motorcycles, but that's Arlo's song, not mine.

When you think about it, you can't put an ump where a 20 used to be and call it a day. I didn't think about it, but I can tell you that I would have done things differently if I had. Friday the umpth is about as rational as ump divided by zero, and rationality is too important to be thrown into the compost with the roots of negative attention.

No matter how much paint I use, my calendar just gets more and more messed up. Duty in the face of dereliction is one thing, but there's a fine line between stubbornness and tenacity, an even finer line between truth and fiction, and a teensy weensy line on the refrigerator where my calendar used to be. I have plenty of turpentine, so I'm not worried about that.

 

Friday the Umpteenth

How many Fridays does it take to pull the wool over my eyes? To answer the question, I decided to perform a double-blind experiment in the privacy of my own laboratory, where a sheepish grin is all the proof I need that synthetic hypotheses are every bit as warm as their manmade counterparts, and how.

Recognizing that the how is to the why as the where is to welding goggles, I felt my way into the closet where the eye patches are kept. While the ordinary scientist may be content with the rudimentary blindness afforded by welding goggles, there isn't any point in pretending that a single-blind experiment produces repeatable results. Extraordinary clarity demands extraordinary eyewear, which is reason enough to put the patch before the goggle.

Having eliminated parallax error and its telltale itch, I was free to turn my attention to more important matters, such as how many Fridays it takes to pull the wool over my eyes. In the presence of polite company, staring may be seen as an indication of vulgar upbringing, but seeing isn't always believing, and belief is far too subjective to be quantified simply by averting one's eyes. Like counting sheep under a strobe light, the sheer volume of thirteens on the average calendar fools the eye, lending a certain lumpiness—or umpiness, if scientific rigor even matters anymore—to the so-called equation.

In other words, appy ump day.