Why let the facts just speak for themselves

AS regular readers of this blog know, I like to extrapolate.

I’m not ashamed of it.

You may choose not to. I’m not here to judge. Actually, I am here to judge, just not to judge that.

Maybe you prefer to extrapolate privately, all by yourself, or with a pet. Maybe your religion forbids it, or, as a child, your parents and teachers made you feel ashamed, telling you extrapolation would grow hair on your cerebral cortex. And so you extrapolate furtively, behind a curtain in the den, or only while camping with trusted friends, the clamour of a rushing creek masking your feeble murmurs.

Not me. I extrapolate for a living. As various web sources define it, extrapolation means to “draw from specific cases for more general cases” or to “infer from what is known.” The more athletic and prosaic among us might call it jumping to conclusions from a great height, without a parachute.

Admittedly, it’s not for the timid, this forging links between, say, pomegranates, Bay Day and the president of Iraq, or Christie Blatchford and a stagnant sluice. You need a certain level of fearlessness, an affinity for mumbo-jumbo, and, ideally, a thesaurus.

Extrapolation can cause metaphorical injuries as you attempt to stretch out the details of one event or individual, like an elastic band, so absurdly far that it snaps firmly around another. You can certainly (still metaphorically speaking) take your own eye out. For tireless extrapolators such as myself, collateral damage makes itself known in letters to the editor that sometimes leave a scar.

Admittedly, we can’t all extrapolate with finesse. Try as you might, your efforts to turn a doting reference to your 12-year-old cat into a diatribe against Jesse James’ treatment of Sandra Bullock or the scandal at the Vatican may fail to hit the mark if there really is no coherent link. I advise against mentioning cats at all, honestly. No matter what the context, they rarely culminate in a punchline.  

It’s best to extrapolate from provable data, like the truths unearthed by recent social science studies, tabloids, fashion magazines and home décor monthlies, pop singers, trend-watchers, and talk show hosts. But in a pinch, any source with a web address will do.

Today, for example, I got an e-mail from one of my regular correspondents, which is to say, a self-serving public relations flack who doesn’t know me from Moses. In this case, he was broadcasting the findings of something called the NPD Group. The NPD Group is not to be confused with the NDP group, which I’m pretty sure wouldn’t devote its attentions to the topic at hand: coffee makers. If this study had been done by the NDP group, it would probably focus on workplace hazards to baristas, but the NPD Group’s report, entitled Coffee Pods: A Consumer Perspective, looks instead at the fresh importance of single-serve coffee makers. It seems their sales showed a 103 percent jump in 2009.

Apparently, last year, Canadians were buying less coffee or “specialty beverages” away from home. Well, you amateurs might take this intelligence at face value, absorbing nothing from it but the sense that you’ll now be able to get a seat at your favourite JJ Bean.

Not so, us extrapolators. We spot a meaty bit of data and immediately conjure up a detailed family scene. There’s Mother, wearing grimy long underwear and hunkered down by a burning tire on the beach for warmth, having returned the house to the bank and sold all her clothes to feed her buying-coffee-away-from-home habit before finally giving up her JJ Bean mocha macchiatos. Nearby, Father looks wild, hopped up on cheap coffee beans brusquely roasted over the fire, and brewed into the kind of joe so black and strong it would put hair on the chest of Johnny Weir. The twins, now 4, have turned an old shoebox into a Starbucks for the tiny dolls they’ve made out of beach glass. The dolls happily march inside -- some, of course, stopping to idly nurse invisible cups for hours at a time.

Meanwhile, back in the news release, the senior manager of the NPD Group, one Pam Wood, says, “In a recessionary year, Canadians were still unwilling to give up quality coffee.” She insists that people just adore their single-serve coffee makers because they are “willing to pay extra now in order to save money in the long run.”

As it turns out, in 2009, “…contentment was highest among those who paid more than $150 for their single-serve coffee makers,” the news release continues. I would extrapolate from that (since I have a 30-year-old English degree and you may not) that the NPD (which I don’t think is the Nigerian Police Department, but you never know) would like each of us to buy an expensive single-serve coffee-brewing device as soon as possible.

Pam Wood observes, in the neutral tone with which you and I are now familiar, “Coffee is a daily staple for many Canadians, so it’s interesting to see the shift in this important ritual. Although most people are using these units for their morning cup, they’re also capable of making specialty drinks, which is ideal for entertaining.”

You amateurs may drift off at this point, perhaps sloping across the kitchen for a hot mug of your own, personal single brew. Next you’ll be artfully stacking charcoal briquettes or slapping your relatives or whatever you do for weekend kicks. But the bland advocacy of the NPD cannot divert extrapolators such as myself from our life’s work.

In my mind’s eye, I still see Mother in her long underwear, suspiciously glaring at the hellish, scum-topped cup of java her husband has slammed down in front of her, screaming, “Drink it, damn you!” The children can sense their mother’s horror and are crying as they try to shield their brittle homemade Starbucks store from the hobnailed boots of their bitter pater.

It is at this point in my extrapolation that Pam Wood comes to the rescue, driving into the clearing in her NPD Prius. It turns out that she has skin the colour of a properly made latte and eyes the well-deep darkness of a great Americano. “There’s no law against topping up a single-serve caffeine beverage with milk and sugar, even in these hard times,” she reassures Mother, handing her a stir-stick and a small domestic appliance of generic provenance, plus a minuscule generator. “That’ll be $200.”