Roman Numerals For The XXIst Century

I discovered the other day that Co-Worker has made a little "Roman Numeral Cheat Sheet" that she keeps near a computer. Now I don't work for the Super Bowl or for a bunch of monks (is there a collective noun for monks? a shhh of monks? a pate of monks? a thelonious of monks?), but in our business one sometimes has to wrestle with Roman numerals. As somebody who attended grade school before calculators, studied (sic) Latin, and loves watching movie and TV credits roll by to see how quickly he can convert those lettered "numerals" into numbered numerals (I'm so competitive in the stupidest of things that I often toss and turn all night because both of my sides want to be the one to be slept on), I must admit, I'm pretty good with Roman numerals, though that D=500 thing always makes me pause. But after pondering Co-Worker's cheat sheet, I started wondering about those RNs. Are they still taught in school? I asked youngest Co-Worker that very question. He said yes, but then failed pretty miserably my pop quiz; surprisingly, it seems, L=50 eludes a lot of folks.

So, in the spirit of "the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome" (or however E.A. Poe put it) I started thinking it might just be time for a bit of a Roman Numeral Revival. And where else to launch such a thing as this ever-pertinent, ever-serious blog? The time seems totally ripe to celebrate numbers that are actually letters, or vice versa. We live in a time when nothing is as it should be, don't we? We have phones that are used for everything but calling people (and especially returning calls!), we seem to be rapidly giving up on a world rife with a variety of crazy despots (though who knows, Newt hasn't taken himself out of the race yet), and somebody named Snooki has published a book before I have. So what the hell, let's have numbers that are letters, right?

Naturally, though, we need to modernize things a bit for our (generally) non-toga-wearing way of life. The old standbys I, V, X, L, C, D, M (did the Romans count beyond 3,999?; what's 5,000 or 10,000 or one trillion?) are fine and very useful, but our needs in this century are much greater than Caesar's and the boys', don't you think? What follows (admittedly in the Beta [Greek, Roman what's the difference?] phase only, and certainly open to 21st century tweaking by committees and sub-committees) is a jumping off point for a new era of Roman Numerals. Tell me what you think.

• YOY=the estimate the auto repairman gives you
• OHPLEASEOHPLEASEGODOHPLEASE=the numbers you play each week in Lotto
• UMMMMM=the number you report to the score keeper after hitting two balls out of bounds, one in the water, and three-putting on a short Par 4
• OHSHIT=the difference between the price of what you've just purchased and the amount of money in your wallet
• P=the cost of a pay toilet (do pay toilets still exist?)
• XXX=30, still (perverts)
• DMV/BMV=infinity
• BYOB=the going rate of a liver transplant on the black market
• WTF=the number of people who will voluntarily vote for Newt Gingrich in MMXII
• DREAMONOLDMAN=the year Cleveland will next celebrate a sports championship
• CELIBACY=the total amount of $ Tiger Woods will spend in his lifetime on alimony and hush money payments
• LOL=what your dentist charges for a hit of nitrous oxide
• Nth=the number you get from the pull-a-number thing at the bakery
• BRRRRR=the temperature in Cleveland tonight
• TnA=the standard cover (sic) charge at your local strip club
• BUYGOLDGUNSANDSOUP=the tipping point of the national debt
• FUBAR=the national debt
• T=the price of tea (CWE) in China
• SNAFU=the overdraft fee your bank charges
• HELL=the price of your soul