Explaining Metrics

Feelgood Haines and I are driving down I-5 to go to the Oregon Historical Society meeting. I say to Feelgood, designated driver and full-blooded historian of the Old Folks' Home where we are both incarcerated, "You ain't driving very fast."

Feelgood: "I'm goin' 100."
Ol' Hoss: "You dope. That's 100 KILOMETERS per hour. You're only doing about 60 American."
Feelgood: "I have decided to live metric. 'One hundred centimeters, one meter, buckle my shoe; 1,000 meters, one kilometer, sheesh, who knew?'"

Hoss: "What's wrong with inches and feets and yards, and gills and rods and acres?"
Feelgood: "Metric is lots simpler. And don't start on thinking about how to convert things, like multiplying gallons by 3.8 to get liters. Which I guess, isn't true in Canada, where you have to multiply by 4.546. So see, that don't make it simple after all."

Hoss: "So how is it better?"
Feelgood: "Because the rest of the world says it is. We is the last bastion of the 1/4 inch. Don't that begin to make you feel lonely? Here's a memory crutch for you Hoss. You know how quaint everybody thinks the English people in England talk? That's because they got a metric system. Think of it this way:

"The math that comes from the quaint,
"Is much, much better than ain't."

Hoss: "So, summing up, what is the advantage of metric?"
Feelgood: "You drive 100, like me. It's a lot safer."

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My favorite word today is glue. N., nectar of the Gods. Def.: The sticky residue left on your coffee table when rose petals fall and overstay their leave.