Yesterday’s Star-Ledger, which apparently does not screen for crazy, contained this letter to the editor that made my brain feel like it was full of soda.

More divining

So the world didn’t end on Saturday. As a card-carrying member of American Mensa, allow me to try again.

If you assign a number to each letter of the names Barack and Obama, such that A equals 1 and B equals 2, etc., Barack sums to 36 and Obama sums to 32. These two numbers share something in common; they are both even submultiples of the number 576. For example, the Obama number, 32, will sum to 576 in exactly 18 steps. If we now introduce Obama’s “essence number,” which is 5, the number numerologists have identified as the number of “change,” and multiply Barack’s 18 steps by the number 5, we get the number 90. If we then add this 90 to the single number that links his first and last names, the number 576, then we get 666.

So there it is. Barack Obama is the Antichrist and America is headed straight for hell.

– Thomas Clough, Maplewood

Yes, I transcribed that. No, I didn’t change – numerologists say 5! – even a single comma. The only important newspaper in New Jersey printed that as you see it. I couldn’t find a link or I’d absolutely demand you go have a look. Absolutely. It’s the kind of thing you should see for yourself and slap me if I’m lying.

Speaking of crazy, which I can because I play for Team Crazy, have a look at this picture from General Hospital.

Here we have actress Brianna Brown standing in front of a locked door in a scene where the actress on the other side of this door is acting out pretending to be locked in this basement – and not because I’ve phrased that incorrectly and union regs prevents anyone from actually being locked in anything. No, the other character in this scene knows she’s about to be rescued by the character who plays her husband. That makes six people – three of them actors and three figments of our imagination – who haven’t noticed what I notice every time I see someone locked into something on a soap opera. Look at this picture again. Know what you don’t see? Hinges. That’s right. The hinges are on the side where the tiny, helpless woman being held captive is. That means the door isn’t actually locked in a way that would prevent her escape. It is rather securely fastened on a temporary basis, especially since it’s a basement door and a basement is where most people would keep tools.

The crazy part is you’re not supposed to know that because you’re a woman, you soap opera viewer you.