On birthday candles.

[xiphias]

It is my considered opinion that, after a certain age, one should stop doing birthday candles on one's cake in base one -- that is, one candle per year -- and start using binary.

I suggest sixteen as the cutoff point. Up to age sixteen, you can have one candle per year. On your seventeenth birthday, you will have five candles, with only the first and last candles lit. In this manner, even Methuselah would only have required ten candles, had birthday cakes been an antediluvian tradition.

Comments

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Once I turned 20, I started using roman numerals. Conserves space (and candles) and is pretty easy to arrange, even the Xs.

[gilana]

I knew I couldn't be the only one who had that idea!

[burgundy.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I can't get behind this one. At least, not in all cases. Sometimes, a cake-melting overabundance of candles is the whole point. When my grandmother turned 95 (or was it 96?) we lit all the candles. Of course, that was on a separate cake. And I think it set off the smoke detector.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Not a bad idea, if quite amazingly geeky.

Of course, you'd have to be very careful to orient the cake correctly when placing it in front of the birthday girl/boy. It wouldn't always matter, of course, but you wouldn't want to turn a 35-year-old into a 49-year-old.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

I suppose it says something about me (and my friends) that I expect birthday candles to be in binary. I don't know the last time I was at a birthday party where the candles weren't binary.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

I haven't had a birthday cake in ages, though I keep wanting one. When my mom asked me what I "really really wanted" this year, I almost told her that I wanted a cake. With penguins. But I lost my nerve.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Heh. At the surprise birthday party for my housemate, the candles were in binary.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'll keep that squirrelled away for my next birthday when I'll be 110000.

[mswae.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who has been using binary for ages. And, I swear this is true, he didn't blink when he turned 30, but had a serious crisis when he turned 32 and had to add a candle.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

My family adopted the Roman numeral system maybe 15 years ago. This year my cake had 3 blue candles and 1 yellow candle. Plus one more (pink, I think) for good luck, because when a person is turning 31 you assume that a candle to grow on is kind of a pointless exercise. :)

[aethelflaed2.livejournal.com]

My parents forgot to buy candles for my birthday. They poached a candle from a toy candle holder. At least it wasn't a scented candle.

burning down the house

[(Anonymous)]

I told you about the time Joanna and I burt down the house trying to light Kent's b-day cake, right? It was his 40th birthday and all the candles wouldn't fit on the top of the cake, so we put them on the side of the cake. It wasn't a bad idea, until we tried to carry it... with wax dripping down the sides. The smoke alarm started going off and Jo started screaming because of the noise and b/c of the hot wax on her arms. Luckly, Kent came running into the room just in time to see a big ball of fire falling out of our hands. He actually blew out ALL of the candles before it hit the ground. Kinda impressive, but he did get a running start... So I guess the house didn't really burn down, but it was funny!

Re: burning down the house

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Presumably, his wish was, "Please, God, don't let the house burn down. . . "