Poot and Scoot

4.4.2k3
Thursday, 24 April, 2003

When I set an alarm clock, for whatever purpose, whether it's to drop everything and brush the fangs, turn on the tube to watch the game or to simply wake my sleepy ass up to shower and get to work, I set the thing to go off at an odd minute. Three past the hour. 17 till. That kinda thing. I've been doing this for years with no real reason.
The other day I had to set an alarm to get up extra-early to trudge across town and give a cat a shot. I set the alarm for 6:33a. When it woke me and I shut it off I saw the display. 6:33. I thought to myself, "Wonder what other suckers are getting up right this moment. I wonder who got up a minute earlier and who got to sleep in a whole extra minute?" Taking it further, I wondered if I knew people who set alarms at specific minutes. I wondered how many degrees of separation from myself would find people setting alarms at six oh oh, six oh one and so on until 6:59a. So I threw out a little email survey.
I sent the simple message: Send yr first name, yr city, what time you set your alarm in the morning and who sent you the message. I sent one lone email to my pal in Atlanta, GA. Within hours I received dozens of replies from all over the world. The strangest was from a dude named Santa hailing from North Pole. He sets his alarm for 6:14a. Don't know if it's legit or not. Don't know if there are more than one "Santa" livin' in the North Pole. Could be that it really was him. Whatever the case, my question of degrees of separation answered itself. "A lot." A lot of degrees of separation between me and folks setting alarms for specific minutes past 6a. My reasoning: Don't know Santa. Don't know Gordon in Philly (6:18a); Phoebe in Caracas (6:44a); Leo in Boise (6:55a) or Bridgit in Stockholm (6:23a). I have all the forwarding paths and whatnot, but the first 6-ish response was about fifty forwards. The second was somewhere around a hundred. I got fucking bored.

Tonight: Annie's
Birthday request.
Bring yr pals. I will. See you there!


bye-ee!

whrr ... clik!