Friday, July 24, 2015

Experiment 2 -- E-Squared

I'm trying the second experiment in Pam Grout's E-Squared first.  (I know, "Try not!  Do you must!")  She calls it "The Volkswagon Jetta Principle" because..., oh it doesn't matter.

During the first 24 hours of the experiment, I'm supposed to count how many green cars I see.  (Well first she writes "green cars."  But then she changes the color to sunset-beige.  But I don't know what sunset-beige looks like, so I decided to stick with green.  Besides, it's my favorite color.)

The first 24 hours began at midnight on Thursday, July 23.  I saw zero green cars.  I think I was supposed to see a surprisingly large number.  Nope, not me.  Well, to be fair, I saw three motor vehicles that were green.  One was a pickup truck.  I guess that counts as a car.  The other two were the cabs from much larger trucks.  I discounted those vague putty-like colors that, if the car were parked on a lawn, it would suggest green.

During the second 24 hours, I'm supposed to count butterflies and/or purple feathers1.  In the text she specifies yellow butterflies.  And then she suggests purple feathers instead.  Finally she leaves it to the reader to choose.  Seeing how dismal the first half of the experiment went, I figured I'd count any butterfly plus purple feathers.  And even when I read "purple feather" I knew I'd have at least one to count -- I have one in my office.  As well, I have a (dead) butterfly in my office.  So far, that's all I've seen all day.  And this is Summer -- there are supposed to be butterflies all over the place!  I'm even looking closely at artwork and product packaging.

So, one green "car," one non-yellow butterfly and one purple feature, um, I mean feather.

But now I wonder if this dismal outcome is a success in some twisted way.  I don't really believe in the so-called law of attraction, made popular by Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret".  For example, if it were real, a lot more guys would be having a lot more sex, for starters, because that's what most guys think about most of the time.  So my underlying expectation is to be totally underwhelmed by the results.  And so far, my expectation is being met really well.


1 Every time I try to type "feather" I end up typing "feature" and I think the "FP" is trying to alter the request. After all, there are a lot more purple features than there are purple feathers.

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