Numbers Can be Fun: Mandate This.

Some math people I know keep telling me that numbers can be fun. They're nice people, and I don't want to hurt their feelings, so I pretend to believe them. I'm sensitive like that. Besides, nobody who studies antique dirty books for college credit, and teaches slightly less elderly books for a living (while pretending not to notice the sexy bits), has any business making fun of mathematicians. So, I decided to look at numbers from a slightly different angle, to see if anything fun popped up.

My first forays into the numbers game validated my 'numbers suck' philosophy. This is not to say that there aren't people in the world who would consider my bank account amusing, but I'm a poor sport about it. The 77 cents on the dollar promise for my working life is equally grim. I mean, I like a dangling participle as much as the next guy, but I can't see how having one merits a 23% salary differential. However, with due diligence, I discovered a way to make numbers work for me.

Remember last year, when the friends of Dick Cheney and his Pet Monkey decided that 3 million more votes comprised a mandate? (We won't talk about disenfranchised voters now.) Have you noticed that the Monkey has used his 'mandate' to do whatever he damn well pleases with our country, including appointing an embarrassment to speak for us at the UN? Well, a quick look at the 2000 census has cheered me right up. It seems that American women, with a whopping 5.3 million-strong lead in the gender poll, have a super-mandate. Women are in charge, kids. And, frankly, I'm tired of these uppity dangling-participled minorities telling us how to run OUR country, acting as if we should put ourselves out giving them meaningful voices in the media. Blathering on incessantly about their rights to a fulfilling career, happy family lives, entertainment, and pin money to spend on the frivolous things that make their little days go more smoothly. My God! Isn't it enough that we pretend to listen to their thoughts, and never tell them how fat those khakis really make them look?

Clearly, since God made more of us, He wanted us to be in charge. And, when God wants one to be in charge, He means "get out there and steamroll over every person who doesn't look, act, and think just like" the ones He put in charge. So, ladies, I suggest we get busy doing the 'hard work' of being ridiculously privileged, and develop the entitlement issues we have been ordained by God to have. You wouldn't want to upset God, would you? Gentlemen, you needn't worry, we'll be a kind as kind can be to you, provided that you're pretty and agreeable enough, and can make a decent cup of coffee.