Try Again

I keep kicking around ideas for the intro. Here's the latest, or an element thereof, or something like it. It's rough, but I'm trying to develop the general metaphor.

In math equations, X is the unknown variable. We solve the value of X by determining every other number in the equation. Yet in the case of the so-called Generation X, the media rushed to judgment without filling in much of the equation. Observers relied on stringing together pop culture phenomenons -- a novel, a cult film and a musical sound -- and assigned arbitrary values around these suppositions. Pundits everywhere exclaimed that Generation X was doomed to do worse than its parents, even though there were no figures to indicate this result. In general, people tried to decide what X represented without filling in any of the other blanks ... preferring to plug their own assumptions into a blank slate.