Pi!

Using techniques described by Harry Lorayne, I’ve been able to somewhat easily and enjoyably memorize the following number (broken up into two lines, so wordpress won’t freak out):

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

58209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679

That’s 100 decimal places.  And I generally dislike numbers.  And memorizing things.

I think I’m going to stop at 100, for three reasons:

1. Checking for errors takes a really long time already.

2. I have no reason to memorize pi digits in the first place.

3. The world record is apparently 100,000 decimal places.  Upon hearing that, a tiny little part of me says, “Hey, I wonder if I could ever…” (Cut to me six months later — rocking back and forth in a chair, muttering gibberish through my long, unkempt beard, in a locked room with strange symbols and seemingly random numbers written all over the walls.)

. . .

If anyone has any suggestions for numbers that would actually be useful to memorize (beyond checking accounts and phone numbers and such), let me know.

Odd x3

This afternoon at the corner bodega I saw a slightly frazzled Muslim woman who was looking after five or six energetic young children.  She was wearing a tightly wrapped headscarf, and sticking out of the side of the headscarf was the lower half of a pink Motorola Razr.  Though the phone was open, she did not seem to be having a conversation with a person on the other end.  My first thought was, “Wow, somebody’s begging for brain cancer,” which was a strangely hostile thing to think.

Tonight I walked into a Starbucks, and immediately knew that something was amiss.  Everyone, customer and employee alike, had a slightly stunned look on their face.  Nobody was saying anything.

Eventually somebody giggled.  The silence having been broken, I asked the man standing next to me what was going on.  It turns out that moments before I walked in, someone had entered, grabbed a bag of coffee beans, then run away in a bizarre, cartoonish fashion.  “Knees all wobbly,” is how the man described it.  My first thought was, “I guess Starbucks employees won’t run after me if I ever decide to steal a bag of coffee,” which is a naughty thing for me to have thought.

An hour later, standing in line for a comedy show, another thought: “Hey, I’ve had two odd experiences today.  I wish something else would happen, because three odd things would feel more narratively complete.”  Five seconds passed, then a guy walked by me — having a casual conversation on a cellphone, and wearing these things:

I didn’t notice if the cellphone was a Razr.  I’m going to go ahead and assume that it was.

New York City = nuts.

Evil Toby

Here’s a dumb little commercial mash-up I made. Enjoy.

Your Blog

Hey, friends with blogs that I don’t currently link to:  Do you want me to link to you?

At the moment I only have links to bloggers that I’m pretty certain wouldn’t mind visits from random strangers.  The blogs all talk about funny stuff, and assorted cool things, and so forth.

Your blogs talk about your political views, and/or have pictures of your kids, and/or talk about your personal biz-ness.  Not necessarily intended for anonymous passers-by.

I’d e-mail you all personally to ask, but I’m lazy.  So instead, I’ll be a comment-whore.  If I know you, or SHOULD know you, and you have a blog, and I don’t currently link to it, and you’re cool with me linking to it, leave a comment on this post that says so.

Eliza!

My old (young) comedy pal Eliza Skinner has a funny blog that I read, along with other funny things that I watch or listen to, as appropriate.

Today her blog was mentioned in one of New York’s free daily newspapers, the Metro. Hopefully she will get a lot of new readers/fans from that. She is very reading- and fan-worthy. I just thought I would mention her blog today as well, so that my massive readership can add to the frenzy. And then her blog will explode.

Literally.

And my blog will be the only blog left.

And then everyone will have to read my blog.

And I will feel loved.

And whole.