Untitled Document

Hung up on numbers in Utah

by tommy kirchhoff

It's not psychotic to say that all things quantified will soon be adjusted. You want the test? Just pick a number. Your age, a TV channel, any accounting entry. No matter what the figure looks like now, if you factor in a little time it will certainly change.

For that matter, let's just start with time. Can somebody explain this hysteria with setting a watch ahead 15 minutes? I mean, are these ergomaniacs really fooling themselves into thinking they're early? Or do they obsess on the notion that they're on time because they were able to plan "15 minutes out?"

Daylight Savings Time is nothing more than a neurosis created by people afraid of the dark. Set it ahead, roll it back. Lather, rinse, repeat. A lifetime of resetting your watch. The only thing DST has going for it is consistency in it's change-except for places like Indiana that don't observe DST, or places like Arizona that use two clocks. With DST the time can be set semi-annually no matter how many days in a calendar year or who the lunatic is leading the charge.

Thanks to Julius Caesar, the calendar year 46 BC had 445 days. Caesar figured out that every fourth year had been needing an extra day (LeapDay); so he considered how many days the calendar was off by, stretched the year out 80 days to clean things up, and decreed that LeapYears would have an added day to adjust for the irregularity (back then, March 1st was the first day of the year). Then, a little over 1600 years after Caesar became the human pincushion, Pope Gregory XIII chopped out 10 days and absolved that years ending in "00" would not have this LeapDay. It wasn't until the 19th century that astronomer's calculations revealed the under-compensation of Greggy; they then feathered in another exception-that years ending in "00" divisible by 400 would have the Leap Day. Great! Are we getting' close yet? Not really, because we started tracking time with computers; now we can't even tell for sure if a programming glitch like Y2K will be the end of the world. And hey! Let's do it again in 2038!

Here in Utah, the number 2000 was just a slight anxiety before the nervous breakdown. 2002 is the number we're all manic about. And as we all commonly create dementia about 1 number or another, let's review the digits that really reflect our insanity in Utah.

In Utah, if your 15th wife is 16, its 10 years and 10 thousand dollars.

If you're 21 you can 3.2 'till 2:00 am; but it takes 2 times as much to achieve .08. What that really boils down to is you just pee 2wice as much. Of course the Utah DABC wouldn't understand because none of those zeros will have one drink.

"Friday" is just a fancy word for the sixth day of the week. There is very little work-difference between it and the seventh day of the week. It's almost state law that nothing happens on the first day of the week.

If your heading west into Salt Lake, you can drive 70 on 80, but only until you hit State Street (which is zero). Someone tell me it's not crazy that 2100 North runs East-West and 300 West runs North-South. So if you're looking for the intersection of those two streets, you can either go to 296 West 2100 North, or 2075 North 300 West. Now that's arithmomania.

If you're trying to get the four-one-one on the Park City nice-price, here's the norm: pay 56 K prices for 28 K service; a quarter in the fiscal third can cost 50, but it might last longer than a half. If you live in the 84060 ZIP code, your area code is 435. Heber City is also 435, and a tiny 12 miles away-but it's long distance.

In some other places, the "deviants" can bet $1000 on lucky # 7 -- but not here. Here you can secretly bet your friend that the post office is still open at five; but when he doubles down to see you send something out, make sure you're inside the door. The #1 auto repair place will take 4 days to fix 1 switch-then they'll charge you double. If your skis are over 190 cm, you could be construed as "1986." The numerical difference between "resigning" and getting canned is the sum of rumors divided by the set of people telling them.

And still, these matrices are all changing, but some we can subtract. Like this: a Weber basin acre/foot of replacement water is about $136 per year. That buys you 325,850 gallons. A typical golf course is said to use 18 million gallons of water per season, or approximately the same volume required as a town of 9,000 residents. (And guess what--typical golf courses do not exist in the 2nd driest state). So as the number of proposed golf courses changes and goes up, what will happen to the pri¢e of water? Hmmm. A crazy person might say, "Conserve water - the golf courses are thirsty."