I see the number 237 everywhere. It freaks me out. That was the number of the hotel room in The Shining where all the freaky shit went down. So ever since I first saw that movie, ages & ages ago, I've been noticing that number whenever I see it. It's not that that movie particularly scares me. It's more that 237 is fucking
everywhere. It's the number of milliliters in my shampoo. It's the number of words in a story I just edited. It's the page I'm on in whatever book I'm reading. It seems to be the time whenever I look at a goddamn clock.
It has reached a point where I have decided that one of two things has to be happening. The first & more likely explanation is that because I have an association with that number (an association that, at least in the beginning, was characterized by anxiety & fear) it tends to jump out at me whenever it appears.
The second explanation is that some numbers naturally occur in nature more frequently than others. There's a website, somewhere, somehow, that very beautifully displays the patterns of numbers, but I can't remember where it is. I'm out of my element here because it would be an understatement to say my brain is unscientific. I mean, ones and twos and threes clearly occur more frequently than four hundred fifty-fours and six thousand one hundred twenty-twos. I mean, I'm pretty sure they do.
& in terms of three digit numbers, 200 and 300 have got to be more common than 237.
But what about 237 as compared against its neighbors 236 & 238?
So one day about a year ago I got a notebook & started ticking off every time I noticed a random 236, or a 237, or a 238. Needless to say I got bored of it after about three or four notations -- not enough to prove anything. So for awhile I still had these theories in my head, without any sort of hard evidence. Now, it has suddenly dawned on my unscientific brain that Google exists & I can figure this out fast.
Long story short, I googled the numbers in question. & the results are ...
237: "Results 1 - 10 of about 11,100,000 for 237. (0.12 seconds)"
OK. That's a lot of hits. Then I googled the other two numbers.
236: "Results 1 - 10 of about 11,000,000 for 236. (0.16 seconds)"
238: "Results 1 - 10 of about 11,100,000 for 238. (0.24 seconds)"
Interestingly (ok -- interestingly to me; incredibly fucking dull to anyone else) 236 gets about 1,000,000 less hits than 237 or 238, who are tied. But it took Google
twice as long to come up with results for 238 as it did for 237.
So what does it all mean???
I think it means I need to get stoned & rewrite this post. I feel like that would be hilarious. It would have to be better than this. I bet after 237 bong hits I would arrive at some sort of hallucinatory epiphany about numerology. Or not.
