{"id":1044,"date":"2004-11-16T04:16:00","date_gmt":"2004-11-16T04:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2004\/11\/16\/punishment-like-mine\/"},"modified":"2004-11-16T04:16:00","modified_gmt":"2004-11-16T04:16:00","slug":"punishment-like-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2004\/11\/16\/punishment-like-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"punishment like mine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>I just looked at a clock I expected to read one in the morning. Instead it reads four. Misery, company, you know the equation. Here. Deal.<br \/>\n<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Tony Blair opens a new wing to an Edinburgh hospital. After cutting the ribbon, the British prime minister tours a ward, filled with patients who seem to have no obvious injury. He greets a bearded chap, who replies:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Fair fa&#8217; your honest sonsie face, Great chieftain e&#8217;the puddin&#8217; race! Aboon them a&#8217; ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o&#8217;a grace. As lang&#8217;s my arm.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Blair &#8212; somewhat confused &#8212; nods, grins and moves on to the next patient, to ask how he&#8217;s getting along. The man shakes his head and mutters:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some hae meat, and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Blair turns to a third patient, an older man in a tam, who cries:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Wee sleekit, cow&#8217;rin, tim&#8217;rous beastie, O, what a panic&#8217;s in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi bickering brattle! I wad be laith to rin an chase thee, Wi murdering pattle!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sweating bullets, Blair turns to the senior doctor accompanying him. &#8220;What sort of ward is this?&#8221; he whispers. &#8220;Are they psychiatric patients?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; replies the doctor, &#8220;It&#8217;s the Burns unit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><i>this next one as posted by <a href=\"http:\/\/donkey_hokey.livejournal.com\/\" class=\"lj-user\">donkey_hokey<\/a>, which is a strong warning name if I ever saw one <\/i><\/p>\n<p>After many adventures in Pointland, Lineland, and Flatland, Ferdinand Feghoot waved goodbye to an equilateral triangle and began his journey home to three-dimensional space. Alas, along the way, his Dimensional Extrapolator failed, and when he stepped outside he found himself, not in his backyard as expected, but in a world occupied only by numbers.<\/p>\n<p>Feghoot explored his surroundings curiously. Across the street, a 3\/4ths played soccer with an attractive young 5\/8ths, while a stern-looking 16\/25ths watched in silence. Other numbers slid around the area, screeching about fractions that had recently been halved and screaming about friends&#8217; plans to exchange common denominators. The cacophony was so deafening that Feghoot had to plug his ears with his index fingers.<\/p>\n<p>In the sudden silence, he noticed the most amazing thing of all: A decimal point rolled down the road, followed first by one three, then another, then another, then another, creating a very long train of .333333333. Indeed, Feghoot realized, the threes continued out to infinity.<\/p>\n<p>Feghoot unplugged his ears, approached the first three, and said, &#8220;Greetings! I&#8217;m a visitor from another world, and I must say, I find you fascinating. Are repeating decimals such as yourself common here?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A mouth on the decimal point opened, closed, and opened again. Feghoot thought he heard a distant scratchy cough, but he couldn&#8217;t make out any words. Then the decimal point tumbled away down the street, followed by its trail of threes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My,&#8221; said Feghoot, &#8220;but that was very rude.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 16\/25ths across the street heard him. She shouted, &#8220;What more did you expect?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Feghoot cringed at the noise and plugged his ears again. &#8220;I had hoped he would answer my question,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But he did!&#8221; Her five wobbled in anger. &#8220;You just couldn&#8217;t hear him, for he doesn&#8217;t speak very loudly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Why not? All of the rest of you talk with, ah, rather adequate volume.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course we do,&#8221; she said, &#8220;but then everyone knows that fractions speak louder than thirds.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just looked at a clock I expected to read one in the morning. Instead it reads four. Misery, company, you know the equation. Here. Deal. Tony Blair opens a new wing to an Edinburgh hospital. After cutting the ribbon, the British prime minister tours a ward, filled with patients who seem to have no &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/2004\/11\/16\/punishment-like-mine\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;punishment like mine&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}