On my facebook page, and it’s been there for a few days because there’s always somebody new commenting on it, a sucker born every minute and what not, there is this math challenge: 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1×0+1=? and there was a warning right there that most people would get it wrong but I went ahead anyway and, hedging my bet, said it must be either 1 or 0 and everybody said “haha, you’re stupid, it’s 12,” some nonsense about order of operations and I guess it’s fair enough because grammar nerds (and I count myself as one) will happily argue for hours about whether to use the Oxford comma or not (I am against it, except in emergencies) but the thing is, i think it’s important for us to realize that it is just a trick question, something purposefully designed to elicit wrong answers, for humor, and not real mathematics.
Mathematics, like English or French or music, is a language. It is a way to communicate, to convey information. When it is being used for that purpose, you would find some easier way to express the equation, like maybe putting the 1×0 at the end, or in parentheses, or both. But, so much of our communication is like that, made up of attempts to fool someone, or trick them for humor. Sometimes, I must admit, it is funny. That’s what puns are all about, and I do enjoy puns.
I guess I’m just bothered because I am not good at math, and I feel “why are you trying to trick me, for fuck’s sake, math is hard enough. You could have written the equation in some more normal form and I might have still got it wrong. Even just counting to 12 can throw me, because that is 2 more than I have fingers.
I’m also not great at music, which is a bit of a problem because sometimes I write songs. (Well, song parodies for the most part. I wouldn’t actually know how to write a song because I can’t read or write music, and I’m also tone deaf, people talk about key of this and key of that and I have no idea what the hell they are talking about and probably never will)I’ve also written some poems that other people have turned into songs.
So, tonight at the January Alchemy poetry reading I sang a song called “Somewhere in Montevideo,” an ode to the joys of legalized marijuana, to the tune of “Don’t Cry for Me , Argentina,” trying to release my inner Madonna, but it sounded nothing at all like Madonna, because first of all I’ve got a man’s voice, I don’t know if it would be called a baritone or a bass or if that even applies if one isn’t hitting actual notes, but also my voice cracks all over the place when I try to sing something like that.
It’s all meant for humor but I’m sure there are some musicians in the audience who are thinking “OMG, this worthless character can’t sing for shit” and they therefore don’t even recognize the cleverness of the lyrics.
What we have, sometimes, in the immortal words of George Kennedy, is a failure to communicate.
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