Xicotencatl, el soldado valiente

There’s nothing like the moments in between major events to make your life feel like a soap opera as you wait for the other shoe to fall.

In this episode, our main character kills time at a computer lab as he waits for his partner to finish soliciting help from a super powered neutral party. Soon, he hopes his life will be far less stressful and he will cease carrying all the weight that is perpetually on his shoulders.

Will he get the girl? Will he be victorious? Will he live in the mansion? Party with his best friends? Race the hip car? Or will he ruin it all for the sake of some much-needed sleep? Stay tuned to find out.

Frankly, I want to change the channel. I hear Spongebob is on.

Last Year: Uni: The Game
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Rooting around in your friends’ business

A comment from a reader led me to challenge my math (singular, because I employed only one mathematic). As you will no doubt recall, I recently calculated that a friend of a friend was a friend squared. This made sense only when I assigned a numerical value less than or equal to one (1) to my friends (which has gotten me into trouble before).

My fuzzy maths were incorrect (obviously), but I didn’t realize it until Steve pointed out the humour potential of calling a friend of a friend a square root of a friend.

Not only does it make numerical sense in my fuzzy head, but it makes humourous sense in Australia.

And that’s really all I care about most days.

If a friend of a friend is ?F, and an enemy of your enemy is your friend (?E = F), then it follows that one enemy is worth a friend squared.

And this time, there isn’t any playing with negative numbers because the square root is going in the wrong direction (right).

How does it make sense that a friend is only worth the square root of an enemy?

I’d wager to say that it’s because the units are meaningless. I mean, I came up with them out of nowhere and attempted to force algebra into everyday life, which isn’t as easy to do as you may have thought.

…

Mr. Melendrez was full of it.

Last Year: The Keys to my Heart
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Why Steve got moderated

Apparently, my blog automatically sends comments to moderation if they have a few key words. It’s really a nice feature, but if the words are hidden, the chances of real people getting pinned for moderation drastically increase.

The list, should you care to be an ass and make me moderate your next few comments, is as follows:

• -online
• 4u
• adipex
• advicer
• ambien
• baccarrat
• blackjack
• bllogspot
• booker
• byob
• car-rental-e-site
• car-rentals-e-site
• carisoprodol
• casino
• casinos
• chatroom
• christ
• cialis
• credit-report-4u
• cwas
• cyclen
• cyclobenzaprine
• dating-e-site
• day-trading
• debt-consolidation-consultant
• drug
• discreetordering
• duty-free
• dutyfree
• equityloans
• fioricet
• flowers-leading-site
• freenet-shopping
• freenet
• gambling
• god
• health-insurancedeals-4u
• homeequityloans
• homefinance
• holdem
• holdempoker
• holdemsoftware
• holdemtexasturbowilson
• hotel-dealse-site
• hotele-site
• hotelse-site
• incest
• insurance-quotesdeals-4u
• insurancedeals-4u
• jesus
• jrcreations
• levitra
• loan
• macinstruct
• mortgage-4-u
• mortgagequotes
• online-gambling
• onlinegambling-4u
• ottawavalleyag
• ownsthis
• palm-texas-holdem-game
• paxil
• penis
• pharmacy
• phentermine
• poker
• poker-chip
• poze
• rental-car-e-site
• roulette
• sex
• fuck
• shemale
• shoes
• slot-machine
• slot
• soma
• steve
• taboo
• teen
• texas-holdem
• thorcarlson
• top-site
• top-e-site
• tramadol
• trim-spa
• ultram
• valeofglamorganconservatives
• viagra
• vioxx
• xanax
• zolus

Don’t ask me. I didn’t make the list… except for the parts I did.

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Stupid Halo

ar·bi·tra·tor n.

1. A person chosen to settle the issue between parties engaged in a dispute. See Synonyms at judge.
2. One having the ability or power to make authoritative decisions; an arbiter.

ar·bi·ter n.

1. One chosen or appointed to judge or decide a disputed issue; an arbitrator.
2. One who has the power to judge or ordain at will: an arbiter of fashion. See Synonyms at judge.

ar·bi·trar·y adj.

1. Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle: stopped at the first motel we passed, an arbitrary choice.
2. Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference: The diet imposes overall calorie limits, but daily menus are arbitrary.
3. Established by a court or judge rather than by a specific law or statute: an arbitrary penalty.
4. Not limited by law; despotic: the arbitrary rule of a dictator.

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A friend of a friend

My coworker Kevin Wilson and I played with this for a while today. However, in divvying up the rights to its usage, Wilson called Myspace rights and regular network broadcasting rights. Therefore, this shall not appear on my pilot, lest it airs in satellite or radio broadcasting. Sans syndication. Of course.

In any case, what does one call a friend of a friend? Is it a friend squared? A friend once removed? How about an auxiliary friend?

But then we get into some tricky math. If a friend of a friend is a friend squared, wouldn’t that suggest a greater friend than the one you had before? What would make it less so? Perhaps a friend to the one over a friend, friend? A friend coefficient, if you will?

One over a friend? Or is that too sexual? No? Nobody else thought that?

Meh, perhaps I should have given you more time to think. Anyway, a friend once removed makes a lot of sense, though it is hard to say and sort of implies a difference of generations… though probably not to everybody. A friend once removed is also useful, as you can increase the ‘once’ to however many times it is removed

My problem with it is that it’s difficult to say and requires some explanation.

Moving on.

Wilson and I finally settled on an auxiliary friend being the term used, but now I’m not so sure why. Really, it’s almost the worst one: It causes no humorous reaction and it’s not really accurate. So we’ll continue our quest.

This is the part where I bring up the concept of enemies.

As we all know, an enemy of an enemy is a friend.

Or, mathematically:

E x E = F

Does this also mean that a friend of a friend is an enemy?

F x F = E?

Not necessarily. Take this example using two random numbers:

3 x 3 = 9 ? 9 x 9 = 3

Therefore, a friend of a friend could be simplified into

(E x E) ^ 2

as per our original claim, though what that would equal is up to you.
My current estimate is that a friend is your other half, or:

F = U / 2

Therefore, if we go back to what we had before:

E x E = U / 2
2 E ^ 2 = U
iff U = 1, then
E ^ 2 = 1 / 2
E = ± ? 1 / 2
Or, approximately:
E = ± 0.707106781

Assuming an enemy is a negative thing, then E = -.707.

Similarly, then, a friend of a friend, or a friend to the second power, would be something of a .25 friend, which, if you think about it, makes a lot of sense.

(Math majors and logicians, I realize I equivocated by saying a friend was your other half then making a friend numberically equal to half of you, but the math just doesn’t work out well if you and your friend are equal, you understand.)

(also, ? is precisely equal to three)

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