Monday Ramble #56 “The Numbers Game” (My Book Is Here!!!)

Monday Ramble #56 “The Numbers Game” (My Book Is Here!!!)

For those of you that don’t know, The Brother Victorious, our co-host Jasmine and I have a Blogtalk radio show that we broadcast every Tuesday evening at 8pm called The Emotion Picture. I am dropping a new CD entitled The Calling with coast2coastmixtapes.com hopefully on January 12^th of 2012.

On December 10^th of this year, I am pre-releasing my book full of these rambles and 100 copies will be available.

Why am I telling you this? So you can tune in, buy, listen, support or whatever it is that will cause the numbers to go up. Why do we want numbers to go up? Why does anyone want numbers to go up? So people can see the numbers, think you’re doing it big, follow you on Twitter, talk about you, make you halfway famous and somehow, someway, one day the numbers in your bank account can magically go up.

The only numbers we want really low are bills. When you open up a bill you always hope that it’s zero. Like maybe the bill people messed something up, or the phone company forgot about you, the landlord or mortgage company didn’t count November for some reason, or possibly you didn’t use enough electricity so they gave you a month on the house. That never happens though. Instead, those numbers represent what you owe.

And your bank account represents how much you have. I try to have multiple accounts just so when I see a low number I think to myself, “This isn’t the final count of my worth. Somewhere there’s more.”

That doesn’t work though. Numbers rule my life. I’m a slave to digits, to counting, to an eternal abacus that keeps going and going. I walk around with measuring sticks calculating how much things cost, how many hours I have left, the price of gas, how many times a week am I going to wear these pants…It never stops.

The first time I learned how to count to ten, I was like seven months old. And my family was pretty impressed. Then I did it backwards, then in Spanish, then I went to Rome and learned their numeric system, then I skipped a grade. Life moved fast back then. But if someone would have told me that the number game would never end, I would have chilled out right then and there.

People ask if you know how to count, how old you are, what grade you’re in. It was so stressful that by the time I was two, I was already paranoid about my receding hairline and my lack of allowance.
But now here I am, 380-something months later, and all I do is wake up looking at numbers. The time on the clock, the weight on the scale, the digits on the microwave, the elevator floors, pin numbers. Help me. We all want to be number one but we’re sad if we have go out and request a table for one.

What did we do before Soundscan sales, video views, downloads and page visits? How did we know if something was good? I think we trusted our opinions. Recently I asked someone about some rap guy, and I wanted to know if he was good. The person answered, “I think he’s hot, he has 2 million views on Youtube.”
“Oh” I said. And I meant that “Oh.” Like I was convinced. What the hell was I thinking? I know what I was thinking; Hov said men lie, women lie, numbers don’t.
And now that’s like some holy doctrine repeated by rappers everywhere.

Do I think numbers have lied before? Yes. And I’m not personifying them like Sesame Street does…

I’m saying people pay to make it look like they’re more famous than they are, and I’m saying that 2 million followers can still result in 13,000 albums sold. Ask Soulja Boy.

All I’m saying is you can’t really trust a numeric representative all the time to tell you where talent lies. But at the same time, those reps justify you nowadays.
The resumé is being replaced by page visits.
How can one call his/herself a good blogger/rapper/business person with only a small amount of site hits?

Math is one of those subjects I didn’t dig once I got to high school because the answer to a math problem was so final.

I realized I needed room for error. There are no short essays on math tests, and no chance for me to make an instructor believe I might have read the chapter, or I might remember the cause of some war or something. With math, it’s just one answer. Sure there may be a fraction or mixed numeral equivalent, but most times it is what it is.
Sometimes they can be cold and brutal. A number you don’t like just stares at you. Scales do it all the time. Online bills can be evil. The page loads when you pull it up, and the number is bold or in red, and it looks like it’s flashing and snickering at you, and you have no idea how that number got so high.
And it’s not going to go anywhere until you do something.

There was a time when numbers were friendly. When the answer to “How old are you?” could be displayed on one hand…back when home phone numbers mattered…a time when an argument outside about sports was based on knowledge of the players, and not just a phone-searching-stat-checking debate.

It was an era when someone gave you a time to pick you up or meet you, you respected it because they couldn’t call you to tell you they were there after they left home. Numbers meant something way back then. Now they mean everything and nothing.

It really makes me think that sometimes I should focus on cheating instead of winning. Don’t you sometimes wonder how videos on a site like worldstarhiphop.com have so many views? What if I was to cut out the middleman and instead of waiting on comments, I put my own. Instead of trying to get organic views I learn how to jook the stats like they say in The Wire.

Fix the books, make it seem like my numbers are up so people will see my numbers up, then check me out. It sounds backwards. I know it’s been done, and this isn’t a unique idea, but I wanted you to think about it. A broken scale that reads the number you want to see doesn’t really change anything does it?
If I buy 50 copies of my own book, does that make me foolish, a failure or a smart guy that knows people need to know something sold out to think that it’s good?

So with that all said, on December 10^th, 2011 I will be making The Toilette Papers: The #1 Number 2 Bookavailable. Well the first 100 copies will be available, and if you read any of these rambles at any time I would appreciate your support so that I can really get some promo for the release at the top of next year. I don’t want numbers to govern my life but I am aware of the fact that I need them just like we all do.

So when you’re doing number two in the bathroom, this book can be the number one choice to join you in there. And if you don’t read in the bathroom, just put it in there anyway, it will make your trip smoother with my animated face staring at you.