Numbers...

Numbers befuddle me. Math was not my strong suit throughout all my years of schooling.

Example:
My generation, born in the fabulous Eighties as we are, is the first that could possibly mistake the title of George Orwell's novel 1984 for the year of its creation.

1986-1984=2 years between the number in the title and my year of birth.
The book was actually written in 1948, in case you didn't know.

1984-1948=36 years into the fictional future Orwell was writing about.

2008-1986=21 years since my birth... 'cause that's important.

Of course:
2009-1984=25 years into a past that looks nothing like 1984, since any 1984 in which Apple Computing is founded, Terry Gilliam's Brazil is made, and the creation of Watchmen is started is no era of thought control. Steve Jobs thought so.

36-22=14 years into our future might be our 9002.... You know, figuratively speaking. That would be two Obama terms! (Here's hoping.)
and
"1" and "4" are the two numbers that book-end the title 1984.

In fact,
98-14=84! AHA!


However and furthermore:

-Time in the world of 1984 is quite relative you see because, as the main character tells us early on: "To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. "

-This is also similar to the social-temporal construct at work in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, a fucking wonderful book I just read which has not much of anything to do with anything.

And the really important information here being that I couldn't have done any of that without a calculator. Not a whit of it. Well, not most of it anyway. Oh well.