meta-roj

my defense of the cd has generated some interesting responses. oddly, many of them are focused on the ramen math that appears toward the end. (ok, maybe that’s not so odd, except that it suggests people read the whole thing).

since it was so popular, i thought i’d do some more ramen math, take this to the next level and give you the generalized formula for feeding artists.

to be completely fair, i think i need to establish a more rational ramen-unit price, and for that, i need to bump up my previous price point. a quick spin around the web turned up a few places offering cases of 12 3oz maruchan ramen noodles for $1.89. unit price: $.1575, we’ll go with 20 cents for easy math, which is a substantial markup from my own last purchase (8 package for a dollar). of course, this is a financial projection, so the more times i can say “that’s a conservative estimate” the better. 20 cents is a conservative estimate (!). we’ll go with 20 cents.

next, a band cannot live on ramen alone, and there’s a creative way to double-up on the ramen magic. it’s rice, rice, baby. here we’ll go with a 25-pound bag for $15. at that price, rice is 60 cents per pound, or 3.75 cents per ounce. just to be conservative (!), we’ll go with 4 cents per ounce.

now to do the rest of the math, i need some rice-cooking standards. the trick is to make ramen according to the directions, eat the noodles, then throw 2 ounces of rice (or so) into the leftover “stock,” and cook it again for a second serving. so here’s the magic formula: 1 ramen package + 2 oz dry rice = two flavorful meals!

$.20/package + $.04 * 2 ounces = 28 cents for two meals, or 14 cents per meal.

we’ll round that up to 15 cents to be conservative (!).

there are 365.24219 days in the year, and three meals per day, so that’s 1095.72657 meals per person per year, and we’ll round that up to 1100 to be conservative (!).

so the working musician needs 1100 meals at 15 cents each, or $165 per year, just to eat. and we can extrapolate to a band of arbitrary size:

anything beyond that is gravy, of course 🙂 so, get out there and make some music!

there are other advantages to this meal plan… a 25-pound bag of rice has many, many uses on the road, but that’s a subject for another day…