the shoddy statistics of parking

parking sometimes can seriously be a bastard shrouded in utter frustration, wrapped in used toilet paper, burning in hell while being used as a pin cushion.

think about looking for someone. we learn when we're 3 - or for the slow ones, at 15 - to stay put when we get lost. imagine a 100x100 matrix...and overlay it on disneyland. each cell will represent one section, or one ten-thousandth of disneyland. if you get lost and you stay put, there is a one out of ten thousand (1 / 10,000) chance of being found. throw in some variables like rationale and sensibility and the probability increases. but imagine now that you are the world's stupidest statistician and you start wandering around. now, at any given moment, there is a one out of one hundred million (1 / 100,000,000) chance of finding your worthless face. go buy a lottery ticket.

now think of looking for a parking spot. on a single street of metered parking, the chances of everyone having parked at the same time is fairly small. and in the event that they do, the chance that they all leave at the same time is equally, if not far more unlikely, UNLESS they are all part of the same entourage (carpool you baboons). anyway, people are constantly coming and going thanks to life's bustle along with the fear of a $50 ticket. thus, it would behoove you to sit tight for a second to wait for a spot because someone will eventually leave. the chance that you will come upon a spot as someone is leaving (two favorable incidents coinciding), is pretty small. but you might halve that denominator by staying put.

so i have summed up this entire concept in a haphazardous phrase: lawrence's ten minute rule. every ten minutes or less, someone will leave. if there are no meters or limits and the cars are covered in leaves, layers of dust, and bird poop, you might want to grab a laptop and a few movies.

we could sit around and make an algorithm, run some modeling, plug in as many variables as comes to mind, integrate supply-demand equations, and run integrals on these, but you're probably better off parking a mile away and burning off your big buns in that time. :)

bump, for your thoughts

some of you know what bump is. for those who don't, you can basically bump two iphones together to transmit/share a variety of media including contacts (i.e. business card or someone elses), photos, music, and so on.

a lot of times, verbal and written communication generally doesn't cut it for me, so sometimes, i just create awkward pauses. i have difficulty conveying my thoughts because most of them just can't be conveyed into words and my mind is reeling with countless thoughts colliding with each other in creative and absurd ways. they are spatial arrangements, complex algorithms, and other inanimate formations for which there aren't words to describe. think of our verbal simplification of complex feelings and emotions. we've managed to dumb down nerve signals to "ouch!" for mild instant pain, and "(insert expletive) this hurts like hell!" for greater continual nerve transduction, "i love you" to sum up a gamut of emotions and chemical reactions, and a hodgepodge of colorful words to sum up anger, frustration, irritation, and hate.

my point being, i don't even have the luxury of a term or an arrangement of terms that sums up my thoughts and thought processes at times beyond "complex." so it would be terrific if someone invented bump for thoughts. bump your foreheads together to transmit thoughts, emotions, etc. if that's too primitive for you, maybe we can just develop esp helmets. and then we can finally have an interface for my download crap to your brain software so that i can learn astrophysics and russian while i sleep.

also, while on this train of thought, someone needs to start fictitious technologies, inc. to develop all the tech we read about and see in movies. because i know j.k. rowling had something close to 'bump, for thoughts' and god knows what we can accomplish with a bloody flux capacitor! anyway, i'm sure star trek is a fairly good place to start if you're up for the challenge.