this is an online conversation i had with brendan bellomo when he was not at his computer:

japhy riddle (6:59:19 pm): a new counting system:
japhy riddle (7:00:46 pm): here are the numbers: swone, fruit, twimity, for, bwix, chinchiller, auto-karen, eight, knife, sledge. that's one through ten.
japhy riddle (7:01:50 pm): if you wanna express 23, you'd say: trimity hammerhawk.
japhy riddle (7:01:55 pm): i'm sure you get it.
japhy riddle (7:02:42 pm): it alternates between decimal and base 8 when you're doing arithmatic. this actually makes math problems go a lot smoother. it has some different rules that i'll share with you.
japhy riddle (7:03:14 pm): and you're only allowed to subtract numbers lower than 6.4.
japhy riddle (7:03:34 pm): and you can only add number that add up to 30.
japhy riddle (7:04:09 pm): dividing is almost impossible unless you're using squares.
japhy riddle (7:04:19 pm): and even then, it takes 133 steps.
japhy riddle (7:04:45 pm): i think we should convert.
japhy riddle (7:05:11 pm): the word for 1,000,002 is "bonehammer".
japhy riddle (7:06:59 pm): and when you round numbers to 12 decimal (or base 8) places, you have to add the phrase "pance" to your job resume.
japhy riddle (7:07:41 pm): and if you cry when you work through a math problem, the answer looses all its 5s.
japhy riddle (7:08:01 pm): if it has none to begin with, it changes all the numbers to 4s.
japhy riddle (7:09:50 pm): if you multiply, it burns a tiny hole in the paper, or your lcd screen on your calculator. If you do it in your head, around 3 colonies of grubs will grow under your frontal lobe.
japhy riddle (7:10:34 pm): if you use a calculator with a vector display, the answer is always off by .0000004.
japhy riddle (7:10:54 pm): unless you shake it until it rounds to 8000.
japhy riddle (7:11:47 pm): you can actually use this number system really well for counting ants that have been abandoned or malnourished.
japhy riddle (7:12:26 pm): but don't try to take the average of these ants, you'll turn them to gasoline.
japhy riddle (7:12:36 pm): and then they're hard to count.
japhy riddle (7:13:21 pm): never add 46 and 1,097,309,497,093,470,934. you'll end up underwater.
japhy riddle (7:13:49 pm): with an oxygen tank filled with consentrated citrus.
japhy riddle (7:15:38 pm): if you add the radius of a circle bigger than the length of your writing utensil, a horse could potentially erupt, and not with just maggots.
japhy riddle (7:16:38 pm): and if it's bigger than the length of your calculator, 2 words will no longer be in the dictionary. and you better hope that one of them is not teaparty because those are fun.
japhy riddle (7:16:51 pm): leopards are neat.
japhy riddle (7:17:53 pm): if you spill coffee on your math homework, using this number system, a horse will erupt.
japhy riddle (7:18:30 pm): and your sheets may smell a little bit more like a piano.
japhy riddle (7:19:23 pm): don't explain these rules to anyone or you'll turn into a... quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack
japhy riddle (7:19:29 pm): quack quack quack quack quack
japhy riddle (7:20:12 pm): quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack
japhy riddle (7:20:16 pm): quack quack quack
japhy riddle (7:20:24 pm): quack quack quack quack moo quack quack quack quack
japhy riddle (7:20:29 pm): quack quack