Saturday, October 11, 2008

Doctor Differential!



Finally! Captain ILL has again enlisted my aid on a mission of extreme importance. Although my participation was once more limited to driving the car, the Captain assures me that without my assistance, success would have been terribly inconvenient. I received a call at 3:14 this morning from everyone's favorite Captain; the ILLmobile was in the shop again, and he needed someone to drive him to the scene of the crime. He seemed a bit impatient on the phone, but I gathered that Doctor Differential and his gang of irrational numbers were on the loose and it was only a matter of time before they committed yet another number-related crime. I jumped in the Honda and rushed over to the ILL cave. In my haste, I'm afraid I exceeded the speed limit by around 2.72 mph, but luckily the Captain was not present to witness this minor offense. After picking him up, Captain ILL filled me in on the details of the despicable Doctor's dastardly deed. Apparently Doctor Differential had been hired by the GOP (whom Captain ILL insists on calling the Grand Old Poopyheads) to break into the offices of a polling company with the intent to influence the upcoming election by messing with the polling data. The Republicans were planning to steal the election! I dropped him off outside the office building where the polling company was located and waited in the car. I was naturally curious about all the shouts, crashes and explosions coming from inside the building, but not curious enough to venture inside. After about 1.41 hours, a battered but victorious Captain ILL emerged dragging the nefarious but unconcious rogues behind him. The police arrived shortly thereafter, followed closely by the press. Captain ILL gave a short interview where he re-interated his opinion on the evils of numbers while Doctor Differential shouted out polynomials and swore vengeance on "the moron in the red longjohns who couldn't solve even a linear ordinary differential equation without removing his boots to count on his toes". The Captain left his boots on and delivered a swift kick to the Doctor's posterior as he was being forced into a police car.

In case anyone missed it, Captain ILL insisted that the moral of this story be posted in bold:

"Don't trust numbers! Most of them are irrational and the rest are imaginary!"


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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that may have been written while wandering in the fog of a yucca haze.

I'm now getting why numbers are not a useful thing for the Captain. He has this amazing ability to transcend the physical laws. Newton's Second Law of Motion for example, F = d (mv) / dt, means nothing to Captain ILL but the rest of us bottom-feeders have follow it to the letter or risk being sucked into a gaping black hole. Yep, it's GOOD to be the Captain.

Captain ILL said...

On the plus side, I have a new phone that allows me to post blog entries wherever I happen to find myself. On the down side, I can also post in whatever state of sobriety I happen to find myself in.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone started throwing Newton's laws around, and I see that you use a hefty dose of irony by expressing the 2nd law using the Leibnizian notation instead of Newtonian dots. Poor Isaac must be rolling in his grave.

Anonymous said...

It was just easier to copy in from Wikipedia, that's all. BowlingJoe doesn't know jack-diddly about Isaac Newton or anything of importance that he did.

I can tell you, however, that the optimum angle for a bowling ball entering the 1-3 pocket is six degrees.

Captain ILL said...

For those out there like Bowlingjoe who don't know "jack-diddly" about Isaac Newton, he's this famous scientist dude who invented gravity after being concussed by a falling apple (before he discovered gravity, people kept themselves stuck to the earth with glue or nails). Little known fact: since that time all scientists let themselves get hit in the head by falling apples in hopes of duplicating Newton's discovery.