4:13pm
Tuesday
14 March 2006

I heard about a woman who got a job reordering an entire town. The numbers were off because the mayor had a counting problem, and she'd been hired to reintroduce 8. It'd been missing in some clocks. She'd also needed to go over the books and see if the adding was correct (which of course it wasn't, without 8) and to check all the signs. Drivers were apparently going off the highway, following the sign that said GAS: 2 MILES, to find nothing but dusty roads. The sign was supposed to say 88. It was a whole industry, townsfolk dashing over to gasless cars with cans of portable petrol.

She was called a number doctor. That was my dream job.

—Aimee Bender, An Invisible Sign of My Own

A link or two for you this lovely π day afternoon: