二百五

So, 250 posts.

The big two-five-oh.

A quarter of a grand.

Two eights of one thousand.

Double 100. Plus fifty.

A landmark. A milestone. A millstone. A landstone. William Gladstone.

As everyone knows, the number 250 in Mandarin is a term of abuse: an accusation of stupidity. And yet I have confounded this notion by producing 250 blog posts that are the exact opposite of stupidity.

The exact opposite.

The number 250 has succeeded despite its older sibling (251) being a Sophie Germain prime. There must have been some jealousy.

But 250 had simpler mathematics on its side. Four of them make a thousand.

One G. 1K. 5 monkeys.

I'm a quarter of the way to having written a thousand posts.

It's not very impressive, is it? Numbers are arbitrary. Or maybe they represent the purest form of truth. One of those.

I wonder why more people don't write an entire blog post about a single number...

Oh. Yes. That's why.

***

A joke:

I went to a gay pride event the other day. Turned out it was just a load of happy lions.

Is this funny? I don't know. I imagine the joke has been made before. I think the humour would have to come from a deeper examination of the reality of that situation.

I would turn up, perhaps wearing a large moustache and a string vest (as I believe this is the homosexual uniform). I'd have a placard with me.

The lions would welcome me to join them, even though I had clearly misjudged the whole situation.

I'd try and frolic with them, but would feel quite foolish and out-of-place.

The lions would make a joke, and say this kind of thing happened all the time.

I'd gradually drop my inhibitions.

Then they'd eat me.

That's where the laugh would come, I think: the instant of my death.

***

That's the trouble with collective nouns - they're inherently ridiculous. I think they were all devised by a maniac, chained in the bowels of the OED. They could only have come from a lunatic:


a Parliament of owls
a Rasputin of stoats
a Misunderstanding of hats
a Wig of termites
a Crenellation of regrets
a Beretta of school-teachers
a Systematic Identification and Suppression Initiative of geese
It's pure madness!
It's pure madness.
I've been in the bowels of the OUP building, looking for that chained-up maniac. But when I got there, all I found was a pen, some paper, and some surprisingly well-fiitting manacles.