Mathematics Language Dissection- MLD II

Hi Gang,

Deon’s busy, this is his Pretending-To-Be-Manic-Because-The-Alternative-Sucks-Dirt alter ego, Deon.  Today I was wondering if anyone remembered

Mathematics Language Dissection- MLD-I?

Anyone?  I didn’t think so.  Which is why, for your masochistic pleasure, or my sadistic pleasure, I bring you More Mould, that’s right, a second math language article.  This is REALLY going to suck.

I promised I would do this to you, about a month ago, so if you didn’t quit following me by now, this is your fault.

Today’s word:  Tangent.

You know what a tangent is, right?  It’s a random going off-topic odd thought that inserts itself into a normal conversation or train of thought, causing the whole thing to derail.  If you suffer from, or enjoy, being somewhat Attention Deficit you know what I’m talking about.  Click the link, because not being able to finish one task before getting distracted by the next one, and ending up not finishing anything by the end of the time you’ve allotted, oh that’s just so funny.

We’ve taken to laughing at ourselves, because laughing
WITH the bully is so much more tolerant than telling them, firmly, to fucking stop it.  On the positive side of the graph, at least a tangent is an uphill battle, without ever quite reaching the goal.  (In math, it’s called a “limit.”  Oh fuck, that’s not positive at all.  Nevermind.

The picture has it right, you struggle to reach that goal, the uphill climb, and then at some point you realize it’s hopeless, you’ve gone off track and not finished so you start the fuck over again from negative infinity.  Other people think it’s frustrating, or they think it’s funny as a coping mechanism to not fire us, divorce us, or murder us, depending on just how close they are to us.

Or we’ve taken to laughing at ourselves because laughing is better than crying.  I’ve taken to coffee.  Back in my day, says the really old man, they didn’t have all these fancified “disorder” labels to claim.  And they didn’t have all these zombi-fying medications to take to help people cope.  If you were disorderly, you were either undisciplined, or you were drunk, or both, and no one respected you or your messy desk no matter how badass of a genius you were.  They still don’t respect you.  But there’s medication for that, you’re cured.  Horse shit.  You’re addicted and it works for a while and then quits being effective.  My kids have gone through cycles (yup) of various meds, from the one that causes hallucinations to the one that’s addictive to the ones that work for a while and then have “diminished efficacy over time.”  I’ll stick to coffee.  And no, I’m not an addict but I drink it and I don’t have a criminal record as a serial murderer.  You’re welcome, everyone who pisses me off or acts just a little too cheery in the morning.

That’s right, both Joey and that “Morning’s Here” bastard are DEAD to me.  NO, I didn’t listen to it beyond confirming it actually was the right clip.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love music.  Which is why The Pretenders just ran through my head a second ago.

This is the picture of a tangent line.  A circle is “the set of points equidistant from a center point”  As you can see, it demonstrates the unfairness of life, because from any of the infinite points on the circle, there are tangents to go off on.  You can truck along on your circle, about to complete a fucking revolution, and at any given point on your revolution you can get thrown off on a random tangent.  That’s right, I said revolution.  I’d like to finish one revolution but there are an infinite number of things that need to be done first, which is why I can’t ever finish just ONE.

Thank God for coffee, or ritalin, or amphetamines, or whatever drug you take to help with your ADD or AD/HD, if you have it.

If you started reading too fast you missed me adding

  THIS to the writing for today, because that’s what went through my head.  And then I accidentally clicked to publish before I was ready to do that.  Ugh.

AND, the last gem of a meaning for tangent is the following bit of silliness:

This is a tangent too: