What's 6 times 7? How many roads must a man walk down?

The number 42.  Much like exclaiming "37!?" will make Kevin Smith fans snicker, this number has special geeky significance to those of us who enjoyed "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

This isn't not about the secret meaning of life, the universe, and everything.  It's not even really about Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  It just happens to be my 42nd post, so I thought the intro relevant.

So, the topic of statistical probability came up the other day... maybe while I was watching House.  And given the fact that I actually do believe in some things that are statistically improbable and mathmatically unlikely, I still find this song by Tim Minchin to be quite funny and thought-provoking.

So for the lack of something else witty, profound, personable and engaging to say, I leave you with these lyrics to ponder.

If I Didn't Have You


If I didn't have you to hold me tight.
If I didn't have you to lie with at night.
If I didn't have you to share my sighs
and to kiss me and dry my tears when I cry,
well, I really think that I would have somebody else.

If I didn't have you, someone else would do.

Your love is one in a million; you couldn't buy it at any price.
But of the 9.999 hundred thousand other possible loves,
statistically, some of them would be equally nice.
Or maybe not as nice but, say, smarter than you, or
dumber but better at sport,

or tracing.

I'm just saying, I really think that I would probably have somebody else

And, look, i'm not undervaluing what we've got when I say
that given the role chaos inevitably plays in the inherently flawed notion of 'fate',
it's abstruse to deduce I found my soul mate at the age of 17.

It's just mathematically unlikely that at a university in Perth
I happened to stumble on the one girl on earth specifically designed for me.

And if I may conjecture a further objection, love has nothing to do with destined
perfection; the connection is strengthened; the affection simply grows over time.

Like a flower
or a mushroom
or a guinea pig
or a vine
or a sponge
or bigotry...





or a banana.

And love is made more powerful by the ongoing drama of shared experience
in a synergy of a kind of symbiotic empathy or... something.

So, I trust it goes without saying that I would feel really very sad
if tomorrow you were to fall off of something high or catch something bad.

But I'm just saying, I don't think you're special.
I mean, I mean, I think you're special
but you fall within a bell curve.

I mean, I, I'm just saying, I really think that I would probably have somebody else

I mean, I reckon it's pretty likely that if, for example, my first girlfriend, Jackie
hadn't dumped me after I kissed Winston's ex-girlfriend, Nia back at Steph's party in 1993,
enough variables would probably have been altered by the absence of that event to
have meant the advent of a tangential narrative in which we don't meet.

Which is to say there exists a theoretical, hypothetical, parallel life,
where what is is not as it is and I am not your husband and you are not my wife
and I am a stunt-man, living in L.A., married to a small, blond, portuguese skier,
who, when she's not training, does abstract painting, practices yoga and brews her own beer
and really likes making home movies
and suffers neck-down alopecia.

But with all my heart and all my mind I know one thing is true,
I have just one life and just one love and, my love, that love is you
and if it wasn't for you, baby, I really think that I would probably have somebody else