Thursday, February 22, 2007

16,874 Miles


I am now going to give you a lesson in how life works. By all indications, I'm the best man for the task at hand.

Last week, I said I was going to take some time off from blogging. The intent was to improve my writing and give you better stuff to read. Over the weekend, however, Sween decided to tag me on a meme. The meme involved telling you six things you probably didn’t know about me.

Yesterday, I decided that I wanted to post something short. I wanted to tie up a couple of loose ends and then direct you to my other blog, Bah! Humbug!, which had the usual once-monthly new posting. As I was finishing up, I remembered Sween’s challenge. I decided to close the piece with that, since I might be able to toss off a couple of quick jokes and make your visit here a bit more worthwhile.

I figured I could come up with six things rather quickly – not waste too much time on it – and then I’d take another week or so off, returning here just prior to my 50th birthday (it’s March 2nd, you know) with something really well-written. Instead, here I am again. Do you know why? No, you probably don’t. Nor will you probably want to, once you find out, but by then it will be too late.

The sixth item in the things-you-probably-didn’t-know-about-me list concerned self-gratification - onanism - masturbation, that is. I made an estimate as to how many times I’ve flogged the bishop over the course of my lifetime. As it turns out, approximately 11,000 times.

Stu, obviously with little better to do with his own life, did the math and figured that I was placing crank calls to Mr. Frankfurter about 12 times a day. Oh, OK, maybe he said per week. Whatever. While I’m fairly untroubled with rigidity problems, I’m not made of steel. The actual figure would be about six instances a week of pud pounding.

God help me, last night I decided to do some math. I wanted to truly find out just how much time I’ve spent putting a leak in the fireman’s hat. Are you ready? No, of course not. It doesn’t matter, though, because here it is.

I figure a reasonable estimate would be 15 minutes for each one-handed date. When I multiply 11,000 by 15, I find that I’ve troubled the talleywhacker for a contribution out of liquid assets a total of 165,000 minutes. Divide that figure by 60 and it turns out that I’ve been shaking hands with Cyclops for approximately 2,583 hours.

Further division – assuming that I get 8 hours sleep every night, which it would seem I might desperately need – shows that 161 days of my life have been spent batting the baloney. That’s more than five full months – almost six, if it’s February.

Wow. No wonder my writing sucks. In the time it took Melville to complete his masterpiece, all I've been doing is whacking Moby Dick upside the head. Call me Ishmael. Thar she blows, indeed.

On the good side, I figure that I’ve burned off at least a quarter-million calories priming my pump. If I didn’t spend so much time jerkin’ the gherkin, I’d weigh at least 500 pounds. Heck, if I could stand doing it 10 or 12 more times a week, I probably wouldn’t have to drop 15 pounds before softball season. I’d already have the body of a Greek God.

(Or maybe a Greek statue. That much wear and tear on my Johnson and it probably would have fallen off by now. On the bright side, I’d be able crush a Volkswagen with my right hand.)

(Now that I think of it, my softball coach is probably going to read this and have second thoughts about wanting me to handle any of the bats ever again. Oh, well.)

So, anyway, the life lesson here is that good intentions are nice, but they sometimes end up as just a five-finger stroll on the pole. You might intend to take time off from writing because you feel you’ve been wanking it, but then you end up not only writing again, but writing about wanking it.

Ah, what the hell, Jim. Maybe it’s not that bad. Get a grip.

P.S. You think you worked up a sweat on stairmaster? The title is derived from how far my right hand has traveled at a rather leisurely 90 strokes a minute. Of course, your mileage may vary.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holyl moly! I've never heard that many names for IT in my life. A priceless post! If this doesn't go viral, I don't what will.

Rebecca said...

hahaha. I'm so very glad I'm a GIRL. :)

Anonymous said...

Haha, this reminds me of the scenes in the Austin Powers movies where they transition to all the pseudonyms for what Dr. Evil's ship looked like. Good stuff :-D

Stu said...

Another question I just thought of: How'd you arrive at the number 11,000? It seems arbitrary, yet as I refigured the math, in the previous post's comments, it's a little less than once a day. So did you do the math first and figured once a day times so many years, or what?

Suldog said...

Stu - I figured 300 instances a year. I then multiplied by x years and rounded up slightly. All of the other math is similarly haphazard. You can rest assured, though, that I never let anything get totally out of hand.

Anonymous said...

I always wondered why you looked so comfortable holding a microphone... Now that I know, I think I need some brain bleach.

Stu said...

...out of hand... HA!

"Why do I smell AstroGlide?"

BklynSoxFan said...

A whole new catalog of nicknames for "choking the chicken"....

Many thanks to you Suldog....

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I've got to argue with your math. You can't possibly be anywhere close to 16,000 miles.

Given the numbers you've provided (90 strokes per minute, 15 minutes per session, 11,000 sessions), than in order to log 16,874 miles, your pocket rocket would need to be just a hair under six feet. I know you're a tall man and all, but I'm not buying it.

By my math, given a reasonably generous allotment of inches, your hand has probably traveled something more to the tune of 1406 miles. If you count one stroke as a "round-trip", I'll give you credit for 2812 miles.

But sorry, there's no way you get frequent flier points on 16,874 miles.

Now, here's the real ridiculous part of all this. Playing with these sorts of numbers can be a pain on a calculator, especially if you slip digits. It simply made more sense to use a better tool for the math. Oh, well; my husband always laughs when I say I have a spreadsheet for everything. I guess I really do, now that I've got a spreadsheet for the length of Suldog.

Sassy said...

Um, wow...and believe it or not,I actually found that fascinating. Ah, to see how the male mind works...

Suldog said...

Friday:

I'm not going to re-do the math myself, as I have more pressing matters at hand (at hand! hah!) so I'll assume that I misplaced a decimal. I'm always interested in accuracy, so I thank you for the extra work on my behalf. You get an A+ in Suldog's Math For The Perverted.

Michelle H. said...

Well, I certainly would like to check out your arm biceps. ;-) Now that's what I call exercise, and dedication to the craft.