Snooze Button Dreams
Snooze Button Dreams
Snooze Button Dreams
March 29, 2004
Shamming/Sharing (#10)
(Category: Shamming or Sharing )

Update: Results are in the extended entry.

Want to know what it's about? See the Shamming/Sharing intro post.

My apologies for the time gap with the sham/shares. I got a little bit tipply last night whilst watching Matrix:Reloaded and Second Hand Lions. Both were good movies. I don't see what everybody was bitching about with Matrix2 there. It's an action movie, y'all. Don't be looking for a Tom Clancy plot in a Keenu vehicle. Anyway, I'm not tipply tonight but I am big time sleepy. I didn't want to put y'all off for another day but I was going to anyway until I thought of a great short anecdote and a great way to sham it. A short check with my pseudo-random number generator to find out which version to record for posterity and here it is for your guessing pleasure.

Is this anecdote a sham or a share?

In my crazy youth I worked at Wegman's grocery store. Just about all of the people I hung out with (and/or moved in with) also worked there. Thursday's were paydays so every Thursday we'd all go down to a local bar/restaurant to drink pitchers of beer and throw darts. And eat chicken wings - this was Buffalo, after all. This particular establishment was our place of choice because the Weggie's crew had established itself there and they didn't bother to card anybody in the group. I and my underage coworkers appreciated and exploited this trust.

Anyway, my step-mom had been on me for a while about drinking too much and basically challenged me to go a night with the crew without drinking anything. She did it in an obvious and pathetic reverse psychological way (You couldn't go out with those people a single time without drinking!) but I was ornery enough to want to prove her wrong anyway. I might have just needed to prove that to myself as well.

I had my teetotaler evening with my pitcher of Coke sticking out like a lone sentinel in a forest of amber beers. I was the first out when we broke for the evening since I didn't have to pony up for the tab (non-alcoholic beverages were free - designated driver program or some such). As I pulled out of the parking lot I noticed a car pull after me from a parking lot on the other side of the street. Yup, coppers. They followed me for about a quarter mile until I'd turned onto the Boulevard (the first big thoroughfare from the bar). They seemed a bit pissed when I told them I'd had only soda to drink and they quickly realized I wasn't bullshitting.

Fortunately for a couple of my friends it was only the one cruiser working that bar. The ones who might have had a problem with the police were spared due to my red herring.

Current Standings:

Four Correct
jim

Three Correct
MojoMark
Sue

Two Correct
Helen
Mike the Marine
mitzi

One Correct
Brian Jones
Jeremy
Lovely Wife
Mutinousdoug
Rob
Simon
Susie
Tiffani

Zero Correct
Everybody else

RESULTS:

This was an absolutely true share. My one experience as a teetotaler was justly rewarded by the look of horror on the patrol officer's face when he realized that I really had been drinking soda and all of the people who had been boozing had left while he was with me.

Tommy, Simon, Sue, Rob, MojoMark, Brian Jones, and Helen got it right. 7 out of 11; I must be getting easy to figure out.

Posted by Jim | Permalink
Comments

Well, my gut says its a fake, but a fat lot of good thats done so far, so Share it is.

Posted by: Tommy at March 21, 2004 10:27 AM

Maybe you've got an anti-gut. You know, where every first impulse is exactly wrong. Once we find out how you did here we'll know for sure.

Posted by: Jim at March 21, 2004 10:45 AM

Isn't this the basis for an urban legend/joke?

I go with sham. Much like me, there is no way you would go into a bar and not have even ONE beer...

Posted by: Mike the Marine at March 21, 2004 03:34 PM

I was going to say sham because Mike the Marine is right, but I'm going for share because it's way overdue, random generator or not.

Posted by: Simon at March 21, 2004 08:27 PM

sham

Posted by: mitzi at March 21, 2004 10:38 PM

So, you were the designated decoy. I'll go with share.

Posted by: Sue at March 21, 2004 11:54 PM

share - the law of probability dictates that this can't be another fat ole lie

Posted by: Rob at March 22, 2004 05:23 AM

Simon & Rob - Your humanity is showing. You know logically that previous results don't matter a whit to the pseudo-random number generator, right? I'm not using any smoothing algorithm so no matter what has come before, the current expected result is almost exactly an even chance for truth or false.

Posted by: Jim at March 22, 2004 05:42 AM

They also neglect the fact that that's what i chose. When in doubt vote against me, that way everyone else will be right or i get all the points, Mwahahahah...
Sorry.

Posted by: tommy at March 22, 2004 09:33 AM

This Sham is proudly brought to you by Weigmans, "were an educated guesser is our best customer!"

Posted by: jim at March 22, 2004 09:40 AM

Share.

Posted by: MojoMark at March 22, 2004 11:54 AM

Share. The story bears the ring of passionate truth and wistful reverie, just right for difficult times like these.

Posted by: Brian Jones at March 22, 2004 01:23 PM

I'm going with jim on this one. He's doing better than all of us. Sham

Posted by: Tiffani at March 22, 2004 02:07 PM

I'm going to say share. I have no idea why, maybe I just have a crush on Simon and he said share, or maybe it was the term "pathetic reverse psychological way" that sold me.

Posted by: Helen at March 22, 2004 02:12 PM

Tommy got one right! Tommy got one right! Wooooop! Wooooop!

Posted by: Jim at March 29, 2004 03:45 PM

So the cheque cleared, did it? Alriiight.

Posted by: tommy at March 29, 2004 04:41 PM
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