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h
Datclaimer: The following report may contain things which are untrue.
In fact, it probably does. Matt's life isn't terribly
interesting and he often feels the need to embellish his experiences
and use other means to dress up his narrative. For example,
despite the fact that Matt is writing this himself, he insists on referring
to himself in the third person. What a putz. Hey!
h
THE MATT HOLOHAN REPORT, VOL. 1, ISS. 8 -- 05/28/99
The official newsletter of the Matt Holohan Club
(Formerly known as the Loyal and Benevolent Order of Sith Lords)
*
ANOTHER NUTTY PROBLEM
A Saga in Three Parts
*
PART ONE: PESKY PESTO
This week Matt attended a get-together at a colleague's apartment.
The plan was to spend the evening playing Axis and Allies (Milton Bradley's
tasteful boardgame which reduces the action and suffering of World War
II to Monopoly money and dice rolls). Refreshments were served, including
some odd chicken pita things. When Matt asked what was in the pitas, he
was met with angry cries of "Just eat it!" from the others present. After
he had finished the tasty thing, he was finally given the list of ingredients,
including pesto, which unbeknownst to Matt contained pine nuts as a core
ingredient. "Ah, pine nuts," Matt replied upon hearing this. "That would
explain the allergic reaction I'm having right now." The best thing about
Matt's nut allergy is that the reaction is very slow, so he managed to
put away a healthy dose of the offending substance before the early stages
of anaphylactic shock set in. To make a long story shorter, Matt sat on
the couch riding out the minor swelling of his tongue and burning sensation
in his mouth and throat while the other guests were busy rolling dice for
military and economic domination of the global scene. Matt returned home
that evening with only minor discomfort and hoped that a good night's sleep
would allow the pine nuts to take their savage course while his frail and
pathetic body rested quietly. Little did he know...
*
PART TWO: REVENGE OF THE PINE NUTS
Although the mouth, throat, and sinus effects had pretty well subsided
by the time Matt went to bed, the pesto hadn't yet begun to attack his
digestive system. Matt awoke several times throughout the night with severe
abdominal pains. Despite this discomfort, his stomach wouldn't let him
throw up the troublesome legumes, try though he did. After painfully slipping
in and out of sleep between moans and curses, Matt awoke at about 7:30
a.m. with what felt like twenty pounds of concrete in his sinuses. This
finally got his fat ass out of bed and onto the streets in search of an
open store that carried antihistamines. After wandering up and down Telegraph
Avenue for a half hour in a blurry haze (he had forgotten his glasses),
Matt bought some overpriced Sudafed at 7 Eleven. The magic red pills didn't
clear him up, but they lessened the pressure enough for him to be able
to get back to sleep. An hour later he awoke again, and upon looking at
himself in the mirror he witnessed the latest act of aggression from the
pine nut camp: a flap of skin had swollen from his nose over his right
eye, creating the illusion that his eye had migrated about two centimeters
toward his ear. "Well that's just great," Matt said. He then popped a few
more Sudafeds and went back to bed for a few hours. His sinuses were clearing
and the stomach pain was gone, though his eye remained swollen for the
rest of the day.
*
PART THREE: THE AFTERMATH
The next day, the only souvenirs Matt had from his harrowing pesto
experience were some minor lingering stomach pains and a red bump on his
lower eyelid where the swelling had been. Matt learned a few things from
this experience. Most of these lessons will be omitted, since high-horsed
didacticism is really really annoying. The biggest lesson is that Matt
has got to get himself one of those Epipens. Then he could just shoot up
some adrenaline whenever any offending foods invaded his body. Perhaps
the most tragic elements of this sad, sad tale is the fact that the person
who prepared the profusely pine nutted pesto pita had prior perception
of Matt's penchant for poorly putting up with peanuts and other nuts. Yeah!
Alliteration, baby! Or is it consonance?
*
EVERYBODY MUST GET STONED
While we're on the subject of medical maladies, let's talk about kidney
stones. People say that passing a kidney stone is second in pain only to
childbirth. I disagree. In some ways, passing a kidney stone has got to
be more painful than childbirth. After a woman goes through the pain of
birthin' a baby, she (usually) at least gets the emotional satisfaction
of having created a human life form that loves her, right? Put after a
guy (I make this gendered generalization because the vast majority of kidney
stone victims are men, but we don't hear much about that do we? Nobody's
selling stamps to fund kidney stone research, are they? Or what about prostate
cancer? Sure, breast cancer and ovarian cysts are in the paper every day,
but what about men's health? Is it any wonder we don't live as long as
women? It's bad enough we have to deal with the stress of dating women,
throw us a bone and look after our ureters, for God's sake! Honestly.)
passes a stone, the only thing he has created is a disgusting little lump
of protein sediment that serves no other purpose than grossing out little
children as it sits in a jar of formaldehyde on your dresser. Canada sucks.
*
WHAT THE HEN?
Most potato salad asses who responded to last week's math puzzler said
that the answer was one hen. The logic that these people, as well as vos
Savant, used, went like this:
*
1 1/2 hens, 1 1/2 eggs, 1 1/2 days = 1 hen, 1 egg, 1 day
*
This is as wrong as sin on Sunday. There are two proper ways to approach
this problem: insight and dimensional analysis. Since the DA is a pain
in the arse, we'll start with insight.
*
1. Look at the 1.5 hens as a single entity. We'll call it "Eric the
hen and a half." Eric produces 1.5 eggs in 1.5 days, which is equivalent
to 1 egg per day. The question asks how many hens would it take to produce
six eggs in six days. This is egg production at a rate of 1 egg per day,
which is exactly Eric's production rate. Thus Eric can produce six eggs
in six days and the answer is a hen and a half.
*
2. For you math and science people, here's some mathematical tapdancing
to stave off summer brain atrophy. We want our production rate in terms
of eggs per hen per day, or R (rate) = N eggs/(hen*day). We're given 1
1/2 eggs per 1 1/2 hens per 1 1/2 days. So, matching the dimensions we
get:
*
R = (1.5 eggs)/[(1.5 hens)*(1.5 days)]
R = 2/3 eggs/(hen*day)
X(# of hens) = [(6 eggs)/(6 days)]/R
X = 1 egg/day * [(hen*day)/(2/3 eggs)]
X = 1/(2/3) hens
X = 3/2 hens
*
Thank you, thank you very much.
*
TEST YOUR DOUGLAS ADAMS IQ
In an effort to make his weekly trivia extravaganzas more and more
esoteric, Matt has decided to dedicate this week's puzzler to English author/humorist/all-around
great guy Douglas Adams, the genius behind the Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy series as well as the two Dirk Gently Books. Below is a list of
Douglas Adams characters along with a scrambled list of keywords/phrases
that apply to specific characters. Match 'em up, match 'em up, waaaaaay
up!
*
1. Babel fish
2. Dirk Gently
3. Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged
4. Fenchurch
5. Marvin
6. Vogons
*
a. Insult project
b. "I'm so depressed."
c. Bad poetry
d. Ridiculous red hat
e. Universal translator
f. Sex while flying
*
That's a thinker, all right. Good luck. Like that means anything. Canada
sucks.
*
STUPID BERKELEY!
What's the point of having a post office with a separate lobby and
window service area if they both open and close at the same time? More
doors to close? More tedious unskilled labor to push postal workers over
the edge that much more quickly? Why must one stand outside the locked
Sather Gate Post Office at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday night needing to buy a
stamp and watch sadly as the stamp machines mock him from behind locked
plexiglass doors? What is wrong with this city! Get these moronic socialists
out of power so businesses and government offices can be run according
to logical and sensible rules!
*
Matt Holohan wishes to apologize for the preceding treatise on the
Berkeley Post Office. This is yet another indicator of Matt's desire to
be Ryan Tate.
*
And now, the end.
*
Matt Holohan
Honorable Founder
The Matt Holohan Club
[email protected]
www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Den/6234/matt.html