Monday 13 November 2006

Pic of the day: It is all a matter of perspective.

Lies and statistics

This year I once again have the privilege of distorting Norwegian statistics. One of those market research institutes called me with some trivial questions a couple weeks ago. Afterwards they asked if they could send me a larger questionnaire. I said OK. I like to distort Norwegian statistics with my unusual (but true) answer. But boy was it a big one this time. Like a book.

It is quite fun to see the unspoken assumptions. That all households have a car, a TV and evidently a woman. The extremely diligent reader will notice that all of these are conspiciously absent here. Furthermore I don't own my own house, don't go on vacation (used to be not on vacation abroad, but lately it is not at all) and don't subscribe to physical newspapers. There were a lot of other amusing assumptions too, which I failed to write down when I filled out those pages.

It is nice to get confirmed how different I am from The Humans. It makes me feel special. ^^ Although that's not why I am like this. It just follows logically from the observation that I am not going to procreate. Such a wide range of things are simplified, some of them into extinction.

I guess it is pretty rare for a guy to not procreate and remain sane (or a reasonable approximation thereof). Most probably drink day and night and don't fill out questionnaires. But I do my part to represent the disengaged part of the human population. Don't bother to thank me... someone had to do it. Besides, it is great fun. ^^

For the grand finale, I had to reveal my knowledge about female hygiene articles. I think that is the right euphemism. You know, the stuff they use for bleeding. Tampons and stuff. I find it rather disconcerting that I recognized almost all of the brands even though I don't have a TV, rarely read newspaper except for the actual news (preferably International news) and have lived alone since I was a teen. (And before that, we never ever talked about such things in my home. I have no idea how my mom lived without them, but everyone did back then. And nobody ever mentioned that they existed, or that women menstruated, or anything else that had to do with body parts covered with underwear.)

I guess this really defines the meaning of the word "pervasive". Though I hope my answers are treated purely by computes, or the people analyzing them will probably think of some other word.