29

Hello...this is a Myspace blog from last week I'm reposting per flattering request...with spell check this time...enjoy!

Last week, I turned 29. As stated in my previous blog, 28 is – mathematically speaking – a perfect number. 29 is not a perfect number:

"It is an Eisenstein prime with no imaginary part and real part of the form 3n - 1. Since 18! + 1 is a multiple of 29 but 29 is not one more than a multiple 18, 29 is a Pillai prime."

That's Wikipedia – the idiot savant of the internet. Numerical analysis aside, I was experiencing a mild sensation - resembling pride - at the thought of being an Einstein Prime.

Einstein! Synonymous with blithesome genius.
Prime! A gay detective novel by Poppy Z. Brite.

A thrilling and rhythmic pair of words concocting images of intellectual fabulousness! How perfectly me!

On a second look, I realize I am no such thing...no physical manifestation of tolerance and mystery...no brain child of the world's most famous tongue-sticker-outer. No, my little-thought-about numerical identity is An EiSENstein prime, the manic musings of Ferdinand Gotthold Max Eisenstein "irreducible (or equivalently prime) in the ring-theoretic sense,"

To put simply.

My mild pride dissolves into mild disappointment. I am just about to exit Wikipedia in a mild huff, when I decide to check the page on Mr. Eisenstein , who's alien gibberish caused a sensation amongst the alienated and gibberating mathematical geniuses of 19th century Germany.

Unfortunately, there isn't much written about him. There couldn't be. He died at the age of 29.

You would think such an interesting coincidence would render my thoughts reflective. But honey, I've been writing eulogies and playing It's A Wonderful Life "what-if" games since I was old enough the cogzinate. Maturity has morphed my morbidity into an amusing hobby. Read on, if you will, a short list of famous/influential persons who I have outlived, how old they were when they died, and how old they would be now if they had survived:

Kurt Cobain: 27, 40
Basquiat: 27, 46
Buddy Holly: 22, 70
Tupac Shakur: 25, 36
Janis Joplin: 27, 64
Bobby Sands: 27, 53
Stephen Crane: 28, 135
River Phoenix: 23, 37
Lee Harvey Oswald: 24, 68
Karen Silkwood: 28, 51
Otis Redding: 26, 66
Crispus Attucks: 27,. 264
John Keats: 25, 111
John Wilks Booth: 27, 167
Egon Schiele: 28, 117
Caligula: 28, 2993
King Tutankhamun: 18, he died in 1323 BCE, you do the math.

Of course, there is also the rest of the famous "27 Club," Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and so on. Some of these were surprising to me - I had no idea Mr. Oswald was so young, and for some reason I kept thinking River Phoenix died in his late twenties - 23 seemed so adult to me at 15. Now they are practically the same thing, except one has a credit card.

Perhaps more on this later...for now, though, I have to get back to work.

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