1/1/11

Image via Wikipedia

Isn’t that a great date?  It’s like 2011 is saying, Yes, you had some interesting numbers in 2010; but let me show you what I’ve got…

2010 had the consecutive (8/9/10, 11:12:13), the repetitive (10/10/10) and the palindrome (01/11/10).  Of course, it all depends on your perspective: my American friends won’t have had the same first one because they put the month before the day; here in the UK 8/9/10 happened in September but in the States it was in August.  Then there’s the manipulation: if I had added or subtracted zeros then 8/9/10 would have been 08/09/10 and rather dull; 01/11/10 would not have been a palindrome at all as 1/11/10.

I love interesting numbers, hence my excitement last night: it wasn’t the 23,000 that got me squealing; it was the 999.  If it had been 23,941, for example, I wouldn’t have mentioned it; but that one-under-a-round-figure in twelve months was just too good not to be shared.

Numbers also show you something about people – here’s something I learned in 2010: people like to smile.  The post of mine to receive the most hits by far was Smile And The World Smiles With You; Dissect It And People Ask ‘Who’s That Freak?’ .  Okay, not one of my better titles but it received 6,831 hits in six months so it must be doing something right.  I’ve even learned the Turkish for ‘smile’ because 32 Turkish-speaking people found me using gülücük.

A total of 7,275 visitors found me using a variation of ‘smile/laugh/funny/cartoon’.  Contrast that with the lowly 8 who found me using ‘scowl’ or ‘scowling’.  There was also the one weirdo who found me using the search term ‘long nipples’, but the less said about them, the better.

Of course, it’s possible that people using negative terms in their blogs are receiving way more hits than I am; there’s a lot of ‘hate’, ‘spite’ and ‘misery’ out there.  But I like to think that most people want to be happy.  And if they do, I hope they’ll visit me: I like feeling happy.  Don’t you?