The Numbers of The Chatelaine

In a recent incarnation as part of the flotsam & jetsam that bobs along marking the flow of the universe I remarked in an email to Eileen Tabios that of course I had seen an item she’d posted to The Chatelaine's Poetics because I was one of her five billion peeps.

Eileen, although by nature a conservative person, is definitely not a member of the FLUX SUX brigade; & since five billion is the next significant number (based on the Laplace operator, the sum of the second partial derivatives of a function) after the twenty million & some change she'd previously been quoting, she quite happily accepted this amended figure as the current readership of her blog.

So when I received an email today in my hotmail account with the subject 54868179 satisfied customers and still counting, I thought it was a rare act of grandstanding from her. Then I saw that the sender was New Diet Pill, realised the error of my ways, & wondered what the relationship was. Decided that what the writer of the missive was doing was contacting the readers of La Chatelaine & offering them the chance to regain their trim, taut, terrific figures after over-indulging in the gourmet (gourmand?) recipes – leaving aside the Achillean ones - & wine lists that they had discovered there.

I think you should ask for royalties, Eileen. Even at a cent per customer that's an awful lot of books that Meritage could publish.

(& not to forget Achilles. As I bobbed along I was pased by a whaler whose sailors were singing a sea shanty as they trimmed the sails. The chorus went:

Oh soon the town of Gloucester will glimmer so.
The ladies waiting there will shimmer so.
Such a pity my balls met the trimmer, oh.
For me it'll be basted turkey for dinner, oh.)