It was only today when I googled this phrase that I realized I’ve been mis-attributing it to Will Rogers. I thought he popularized the saying, “There’s lies, damn lies, and statistics.” But google says it had been mainly propagated by a different country gentleman philosopher – Mark Twain. And even then there’s debate about where it started. I suppose that is the apex epitome of irony — there’s just as many lies, damn lies, and statistics about the quote.
I suppose I’ve always been a numbers guy. But lately I’ve become ever more obsessed with numbers, statistics, and my own inability to properly get the numbers to add up consistently and agreeably. And maybe they aren’t supposed to and that’s my problem. It isn’t just because I’ve finally begun work on collating information for my TY2015 income taxes. Albeit that isn’t helping my mood with numbers and stats. No, the real numbers I’m finding myself obsessing over are myriad and multi-faceted.
Let me begin with a meaningless stats update from a previous post. According to boxofficemojo.com, Regression starring Emma Watson and Ethan Hawke earned $31,000 from 100 theaters this weekend. Therefore, my inexplicable $17 ticket thus means I’m responsible for .055% of that. To break it down even further, Friday’s gross was apparently $11,500, making my ticket 0.15% of the total earned that day.
On a related note, the real reason I meant to discuss going to the movies that day was that I walked to the theater rather than driving. It was supposed to tie into the running theme, the discussion over the LA Marathon as a revelatory experience for how roads connect in Los Angeles and how sometimes it’s way easier to walk places than to deal with traffic, parking, and the like. While nobody walks in LA, I guess that makes me a nobody. And happier for it — it’s less stressful and cheaper than dealing with gas, parking fees, and such. But I happened to snap a photo of my walking pace and this being an ill-defined running “blog,” I thought I’d include it here.
Next, given my quest for 50 States and Seven Continents, and my own “Road To…” Marathon Series, you’d think I’d love numbers and stats all the more and all the time. But for the past few weeks… heck, the past few months… I’ve been weighed down by numbers and stats courtesy of one of the worst investments I’ve ever made… at least from a psychological perspective. I am of course referring to a bathroom scale. Inconceivably to me, I’ve seen my weight fluctuate to the point that I’m a good 10-15 pounds heavier than I want to be. And it’s not “muscle” so there’s no sense in thinking, “well, muscle weighs more than fat.” Because in the words of Paul Simon, “Why am I soft in the middle?”
I debated about this as a topic because I’m sure people are sick of hearing me whinge about my whole weight issue. I’m freaked out as I step on the scale and the LCD readouts can warp my mood. It’s silly as it’s more important how you feel than what that number reads. But that’s an easier thing to say than to internalize. Try as I might, that number impacts the way I see myself and the way I feel. I’ve had many days where I feel slothful and sluggish and I think part of that is contributed to by that infernal number. I’ve opted to cut short my body weight issues discussion for now because I have no idea if it relates to the ultimate goal of this web site or not. But I thought maybe a discussion on how no matter the number of marathons or races one does, there are certain things that do not go away — and body image and feelings of sluggishness/slothfulness are part and parcel of that. Not sure if that’s helpful to others, helpful to me, or just an excuse to whine online. But there ya go.
And in a final note on numbers for the day, this whole website is produced via a series of two digits — 1s and 0s. It’s all just binary code rendered according to a set programming language, right? Yet different platforms read those same binary numbers slightly differently. The whole thing looks fine in the “What You See Is What You Get” window on my Microsoft Surface Pro 3. The computer geek acronym squad calls this WYSIWYG, but it should perhaps be changed to “What You See Is What You Hope to Get” or WYSIWYHTG. That won’t happen as that’s too much a mouthful, unlike WYSIWYG, right tech geeks? Insert one of those emoticons or emoji smiley face snarks to indicate that written sentence should be read with a skewed, facetious tone. Perhaps that’s why different platforms read things differently — they’re more or less fluent in snark.
In any case, when I check the site on my phone’s browser or my iPad or even on another Windows machine, the layout can be… wonky. Certain random images load at “LARGE” size when I know they’ve all been set to “MEDIUM” in the image attributes tab. Oddly, some images get rotated no matter what I do in the “EDIT” screens of the image, no matter how many times I rotate it properly on my computer and then re-upload it to the site. Ghosts and gremlins exist in the machines out there. That or different machines read the numbers differently. In that, we’re back to the lies, damn lies, and statistics; somebody can recast the stats to whatever they please, be it a larger image size, a rotated worldview, or the belief that 1+1 equals 3. There’s probably a better capper to that series of suggestions but WYSIWYG — I’m a bit off and fumbling through.
Still, I’m trying to take comfort that if different platforms can interpret the same numbers differently, then perhaps that bathroom scale just needs to be viewed from a different perspective. After all, a great many science museums have taught me that what I weigh on earth isn’t the same as what I weigh on other astral bodies. Take the Moon. There I’d weigh about 16.6% of what I weigh here… so maybe I should just start thinking of myself as a Moon Colonist.
After all, what’s a little lie, damn lie, or statistic amongst friends?