The Last Word, May 23 2009

Today is May 23, commonly written as 23/5.  So naturally I'm thinking about the Law of Fives.

I first read about the Law in the Illuminatus! books when I was an impressionable teenage dweeb about 23 years ago.  Maybe you've heard of it too.  If not, then you're about to acquire an absurd mental tic which will compromise your rational thinking for the rest of your life.  Hope you don't mind.

Basically, the Law of Fives states that everything is related to the number 5, its fractions 2 and 3, or their concatenation, 23.  I don't have my Illuminatus! books anymore, but as I recall, they're peppered with illustrations of how there's something genuinely historic and indeed sinister about the number 23.  Here are some examples:

The earth is tilted at an angle of 23 degrees.  There are 23 letters in the Latin alphabet.  The first prime numbers are 2, 3 and 5.  Each human parent contributes 23 chromosomes to a new baby; human chromosomes are arranged in 23 pairs.  The philosopher Descartes chose the equation 2+3=5 as a sample objective truth in his seminal “Cogito Ergo Sum”.  The number of people required to exceed a 0.5 probability that some random pair share a birthday is 23 (try this experiment at work, it’s fun).

Wait, it gets better.  Divide 2 by 3 to get .666, the decimal of the Beast.  Time Magazine was founded in 1923.  Radioactive Uranium is U235.  The Lunar Cycle is 28 days, or 23+5.  The Mayan calendar ends on December 23, 2012 (and 2+0+1+2 = 5).  Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564 and died on April 23, 1616 (the very same day as Miguel de Cervantes).  His famous First Folio, without which he’d probably have been forgotten, was published in 1623.

But there’s more!  Tupac Shakur was shot 5 times!  Psalm 23 in the Bible, “The Lord is my shepherd…”, is TOTALLY the best!  There are 22 books of Revelations, begging the question, what happens in the missing 23rd???  Caesar was stabbed 23 times!  The world's most evil band is U2 – note that U is the 21st letter in the alphabet, and 21+2 gives 23!  Similarly, the current Taoiseach's initials are 2nd and 3^rd, assuming the Government hasn't fallen yet!  Like, wow!

Cretinous?  Well, yes.  But you just try getting through the rest of your life without seeing 23 in every phone number, lottery result, address or anniversary.  And remember, today is May 23.  There are 222 days remaining in the year, and that's, well, the number 2 written 3 times.  C'mon... isn't that just a tiny bit weird?

The Last Word, May 16 2009

I was involved in a banana-related incident at work this week.

My plan was to get a Tracker bar from one of those vending machines with the transparent plastic carousels inside.  They’re subdivided into differently sized compartments for lessees to load with tasty, additive-laced crap of assorted shapes and prices.  This infernal device is called a Shopatron.  I swear to God.

So I'm standing there like a gonk, holding the rotate button and scanning for my target.  A chocolate chip Tracker spins by but I barely glance at it.  As a health-conscious modern guy I’m limiting myself to the nuts’n’oats variety.  My body is a temple.  Or at the very least a grotto. 

Lost in a trance, I fail to see the overripe banana in the Shopatron's lowest level.  It was clearly intent on escape, having somehow manoeuvred its way to the very edge of its Perspex prison.  All for naught, however, as it was now being dragged and mushed against the front pane of the machine, shredding swiftly into a bruise-coloured smear of gory potassium horror.  I watched, paralysed in ghoulish fascination, as the sickly gunk continued to spew and the evacuating peel writhed like a worm on a hook, torturously expiring at five revolutions per minute.

The fact is, I hate those damned machines, and this disembowelling of the friendliest of fruits was only the latest in a series of embarrassments.  I've lost track of the times I've absent-mindedly opened the door on an empty slot while the delicacy I desired gurns spitefully and inaccessibly at me from an adjoining corner of this Escheresque hall of mirrors.  Sometimes I let the spring-loaded hatch slip from my trembling hands before retrieving my bounty: it slams back immediately, and of course you only get to open it once. 

It's possible my issues with vending machines spring from a pathetic childhood episode in Islington Tube Station when a packet of crisps I was wrestling out of the vicelike flap-trap at the base finally exploded all over London City’s finest pinstripe suits.  Or it could be the sinister soulless menace I always get from those spooky Dutch shops consisting entirely of coin-operated automats selling weird dumplings and battered eggplant.  They kill people too, you know: dozens every year.  Apparently it was a big problem for the US Army in World War II, soldiers being crushed by heavyweight grub dispensers.  

We worry about robots, or CCTV, or government databases.  Fair enough.  But watch out for that humming machine-monster in the corner too, that’s what I say.

The Last Word, May 9, 2009

Surely the Lotto is nature's most humbling and amazing force: more powerful than an angry Social Partner, more miraculous than a nicotine patch, more life-changing than a full Steve Austin bionic reconstruction.

What else can yank us, in the twinkling of an eye, out of our dismal lives of education/exploitation/expiration and into a state of grace in a leisurely world of idleness and luxury?  Multiple mortgage-free homes, Ferraris for all the family, wristwatches made of pure plutonium… these are the plans that burble from the gleeful lips of Lotto winners, and rightly so. 

Of course there are always the tedious few who proudly declaim that the cash won't change them, that they'll report into Mr. Burkett in Hayes Haberdashery at 9am on Monday, same as they have for the past ninety years.  These people don't deserve to win and should be made to give the money back – or better still, to convert their lately acquired fortunes into fivers and throw the whole damn lot into the air, ideally right outside the Examiner offices on Lapp's Quay.

We've all heard the depressing statistics about the futility of even buying a ticket, how the odds are so low that you're more likely to be hit by lightning or squashed by Elvis landing a flying saucer on your head.  Well thanks a heap, mathematics!  Do you mind if we dream a little dream over here?  And what is the Lotto after all but the very stuff of dreams, a sort of magical divine selection, the hand of Zeus descending from the clouds to pick me up and deposit me gently into Jennifer Aniston's arms, somewhere in Malibu.  C'mon, Jen's still hot, you know she is…

But here's the thing.  There are people, believe it or not, to whom these delirious fantasies of Lotto wealth seem quite pathetic.  Take, say, Barry O'Callaghan.  A recent estimate values the 39-year-old publishing and software mogul at almost €350m – so the average Lotto jackpot, to him, is about as exciting as winning a Christmas turkey would be to me (note: I have never won a Christmas turkey).  Beside such colossi, we are mere monkeys in the zoo, munching innocently on the insects we pick from our mangy proletarian hides. 

We can take some consolation in the existence of people like Sean Quinn, who's apparently worth two and half billion.  I like to think that the O'Callaghans of this world look at the Quinns and think, enviously: "Flash gits, nobody needs that much."  For there's always someone better – and worse – off than you, in the end.  Exactly how much is enough?  And how long is a piece of string, anyway?