1:15:4 is the ratio for CPR on an adult. In other words, you give one breath of life for every fifteen shocks to the heart, repeat four times before checking pulse.

Good thing God doesn't work like that, eh?

The ratio of my relationship with mr. zippy is 1:1:1. One him, one me, one us. On another plane of existence 1:1:1 = My Holy Trinity, but that's 3's and how can that be??? oi, my head hurts.

Then there is the ratio of children we have. 2:0:!. There are two of us producing no offspring and having a good time doing it. And yet, anyone who knows us is prone to describe us as being 2:2:!. There are the two of us giving life and leisure to one persnickity cat and one magnificent dog, hairy though she may be.

Speaking of Bill Gates, we now have grade schoolers who cannot read but who can put together Power Point presentations. This is becoming the norm in our public school system. That puts the ratio at something like 1:-10,000,000. Or, one school system turning out in one generation ten million stupid people onto the rest of society.

Now, I can blame Bill Gates because he put all those crappy computers in the desperately underfunded schools and loaded them up with all the software he could burn. Rather, I wish he'd burn, but I digress... Nice tax deduction for the conglomerate, yes?

He's rather like a drug dealer. He gives them the good stuff for their first taste (made it free, even!) and when they came back totally hooked, begging for more, he sold them all crap to sustain their systems.

Cockroaches can't be killed. Neither can Microsoft.

1:4 is the ratio of classes I'm taking this semester, although I may make that 1:5 in the next few weeks.

1:9 is the ratio of voices I hear in my head. Actually, that's my brother and really it's more like 1:20.

I keep looking for the variables, those tiny little 'x' and 'y' symbols that make up the greater difference between my crazy brother and myself. The voices are one thing, I think. I mean, I make up all the voices in my head. I have to. Who else would I talk to? But, my crazy brother... his voices came with his DNA.... which, sadly, floats about in the same gene pool as my own.

4:4 is the ratio of phone calls I will receive from said crazy brother this year in which he only calls out of want for something. "I'm almost out of minutes on my phone card, can you send me another one?" That would be $30:600mins:1. I'm the 1 in that equation as I get only one phone call for my thirty bucks and that's so he can ask for something more. Got that?

10:1 are the odds that he'll fall hopelessly in love AGAIN with a lesbian who has no inclination of ever going straight. Ever. Did I mention... ever?

20:1 are the odds he'll continue to fall for girls who look like boys without ever admitting that his true inclination is for the penis.

5:1 are the odds that his penis will get some skanky mess because, you know, "it's hard to hide the rubber when you're only wearing a towel."

But how did this become about my brother? That's another page. *BOOF!*

There are signs and wonders everywhere; you just have to know how to read them. But I highly recommend reading in your native language and not relying on someone else's translation because you just never know when you might end up drinking a bad batch of kool aid to wash it all down.

For instance, my ratio of mr. zippy and me? 1:1:1 took something like 1:5:2 for him to get it right. One him, five girls, two marriages. Five heartbreaks, one divorce, one me. As for me? 1:X:1. I feel like I've gotten it right on the first commitment to ink. I mean, that X variable there? That represents a lot of boys, but they were all penciled in. I kept smudging over the rough spots trying to make them just right, but there is no such thing as Perfection. It's the null set, see? Until 'Y' entered the equation, making it an infinite set of possibilities.