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2000.10.29 : 2000.11.04
Saturday, November 4, 2000
Yak. Like it or not, we have a new Shower
Song.
Seventy-six ta-cos led the
big parade
With a hundred and ten tostadas close
at hand.
They were followed by rows and rows
of bu-ri-tos,
the cream of ev'ry taco stand.
Plurp. Somehow connected to this was my half-waking dream this
morning of a parade down 5th Avenue involving, not horses, but giant tacos.  And
instead of the street being coated with horse droppings as the parade passes
by, it is covered with green curls of cut lettuce, blobs of grated orange
cheese, and dollops of hot sauce. I dreamed of creating a picture of this
parade in Photoshop for Plurp, making a physical model of the plasticity
of the cheese so that it smears realistically when trod upon by dozens
of tiny taco feet.
Yow. Noted not because of the political content, but simply because
it is great writing.
ATLANTA, Nov. 3 - It is the
lowest, meanest, nastiest insult one Georgia politician can hurl at another.
It is worse than scalawag or Yankee, liberal or atheist, so incendiary
a weapon that it has not been wheeled out until the final weeks of the
campaign.
But now, even small children can turn
on the television around Atlanta and hear two Republicans liken their opponents
to ... Hillary !
David Firestone in the
New
York Times
Plurp. Listening to Sibelius' Symphony Number 2 this afternoon
(which was quite wonderful), I found myself wondering
again why anything is beautiful. That is, what evolutionary advantage
is bestowed upon creatures that have a sense of beauty?
What happens when we find something beautiful? Our attention is drawn
to it. We feel happy, contented, perhaps contemplative, perhaps exhilarated.
We want to be around it.
I can see a clear evolutionary reason for a sense of beauty in potential
mates. Like the peacock's tail, whose size and luster displays the health
and strength of the male, the physical characteristics that we associate
with beauty in humans may give us subconscious signals about what constitutes
a fit mate.
Symphonies and sunsets, on the other hand, are a harder case to make.
Perhaps finding beauty in a place is connected to wanting to be there.
Perhaps we find beauty in places where we are more likely to survive -
places that are safe, are conducive to our well-being - the meadow rather
than the swamp.
In music and architecture there are, of course, important subconscious
links to cultural experiences. But there are also, I think, universal sources
of beauty in the symmetries that are at the core of both arts. Symmetries
are pleasing, I suspect, because they make experiences easier to organize
mentally and make it easier for the mind to predict what will happen next
or elsewhere. Being attracted to easy-to-organize experiences or environments
leaves more of the mind's energy free to focus on other important tasks.
(I think that prediction of what will happen next or elsewhere is a
major function of consciousness, and allows those who possess it to anticipate
what will happen in the world before it happens, a huge evolutionary advantage.)
Our sense of beauty has some pretty strange side effects. Take physics,
or instance. I find the Special Theory of Relativity beautiful. Why? Because
it so grandly joins some of our most fundamental ways of thinking about
the universe - length and motion, time and energy. And it makes from them
amazing symmetries: mass and energy are the same, time and length are aspects
of the same thing. I find myself contemplating relativity, smiling contentedly,
much as I do when watching a lovely sunset.
Certainly there has been no evolutionary pressure to develop our sense
of beauty to choose good mathematics or physics. (There hasn't been enough
time for that to happen!) So it is an amazing accident that a sense of
beauty, evolved to help us select mates, living conditions and restful
environments, could drive us to develop some of the highest achievements
of consciousness.
You might even think that's beautiful.
Yak.
You know what I love about
her? She's got a great apartment.
And yes, this was a New Yorker.
Yak.
I went to one of those obedience
schools once. Everything was going fine until someone spilled hot wax on
my naked ass.
 Plurp.
The blue dog
lived in
fear of dropping
the chalupa.
Friday, November 3, 2000
Yo. If you're one of that vast congregation of undecided
voters in this upcoming election thing, you should
check out Duke
2000. Now here's a politician to whom we can all relate.
Why me? Why now? Simple:
I had a dream. A dream that all men... Well, it wasn't a dream exactly.
More like an hallucination. And it wasn't men, it was elves. The Keebler
Elves. They'd broken into my motel room, and they were going through my
pants looking for change.  And
Papa Keebler, he was sitting on the foot of my bed, he was so close I could
reach out and touch him. Anyway he looked at me, and I thought he was going
to say something about cookies, but he didn't, he said, "Duke, son, follow
your rainbow." And then a squad car pulled up outside and all the elves
scattered. But I never forgot it. It changed my outlook forever. Where
other men see merely a brighter tomorrow, I see colors. But that's just
me. We don't have to get into that.
-- from interview on Fox station WGHP,
March 14, 2000
Yo. Not gonna do it? Wouldn't be prudent?
If Duke leaves you cold, you might want to vote instead for your favorite
Saturday
Night Live presidential impression. As of the time of this typing (is
that a new expression?), Dana Carvey's George Bush is the clear winner
with 48% of those voting.
Here's a place where your vote really does count.
Blab. An eagle-eyed reader alerts us to over 6,000 places on
the Web that discuss the major cultural issue of ...
Parp!
This brings up an interesting challenge. Find four letters that, when concatenated
together, can not be found anywhere on the Web by Google.
(Hint: There aren't any! The extra-credit version of this challenge
is to show that all four-letter combinations are already indexed on the
Web. The best such solution Blabbed to us will be credited here
on Plurp. Get to work!)
Thursday, November 2, 2000
Blab. An environmentally-conscious reader rallies us
to Save the Mountain Walrus!
A lone mountain walrus makes the trek
across the Nevada desert. Perhaps outcast from his herd, he will
try to find others of his kind during the mating season and join another
herd for the migration north in the winter.
Rant. From what I hear, there's a thing called an election
going on some time soon. It goes something like this. A self-selected group
of people express their choice of which of two other people they like better.
The one that the most people like gets to be a president of something.
Part of the interest in the game is that neither of these two fellows
is particularly likable. They are both middle-aged Protestant white guys
who have lived privileged lives. They are both married to middle-aged Protestant
white women who have lived privileged lives. They both have been playing
this game most of their lives, much like aging beauty pageant contestants
donning their swimsuits one more time.
What's more, what they claim they will do if they get to be this president
is so similar that almost no one can articulate anything but trivial differences
between them.
Who are these guys, you ask? That's the best part. There's a guy named
Gore
who is concerned about violence in the media, and a guy named
Bush
who says he's got enough experience for the job. What were they thinking?
The final clanger is this. The people who express their choice in this
populatiry contest are less than half of the adult population. Yet, whoever
gets to be president is not only considered the moral leader of
the whole population, but the military leader as well. He can drop bombs
on other countries, encourage other people like him to take lots of money
from folks like you and me, and on and on.
Pretty good work if you can get it, I guess. A bit too dishonest and
power-hungry for my own taste but, judging from the amount of TV time spent
on the subject, most people must just love this stuff.
Blab. Apropos of that last rant, a correspondent wishes us to
publicize a late-breaking news item on that election thing.
UPI - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Due to an anticipated voter turnout
much larger than originally expected, the polling facilities may not be
able to handle the load all at once. Therefore, Democrats are requested
to vote on Tuesday, November 7, Republicans and Independents on Wednesday,
November 8. Please pass this message along and help us to make sure that
nobody gets left out.
- The 2000 Presidential Election Commission
We're always happy to do our civic duty.
Plurp. Correspondence from Japan.
It has been several months
since we have heard from you. Time fries.
Indeed. We have been feeling the effects of this for some time.
Plop. Goodness! Examining the server logs for www.stevewhite.org
revealed an embarassing problem. Every single page in our Stuff
section wanted desperately to load a background GIF that doesn't exist.
How rude! These pages have all been appropriately disciplined and promise
never to do it again.
Plurp.
The blue dog always
voted for whomever
could bark
the loudest.
Wednesday, November 1, 2000
Blab. Perhaps referencing our
recent rant about how long things take, a reader notes a careful study
of the phenomenon:
Two
weeks!
Blab. An emphatic reader contributes a prospective answer to
yesterday's
riddle:
They're talking about OREGANO,
of course!!!!!!!
Interesting, isn't it, how the solution of one mystery creates yet another?
Yak. On our two-block easterly walk home from an amazing dinner
at Sono last night, we were
stopped by a police barricade. It seems that Clinton was staying at an
obscure hotel in exactly the intervening block. Dozens of New York's Finest
were assigned to do something, though it was not clear what.
Helen: I have to cross
the street.
Cop: You can't cross the street.
Helen: But I live over there.
I have to go home.
Cop: Sorry. We were told not
to let anyone cross the street.
Helen: What am I supposed
to do?
Cop: I guess you'll have to
wait.
Helen: Until what?
Cop: Until you can cross the
street.
This did not strike us as the best possible plan. Living in New York, you
quickly realize that the police are told to do things, but they are never
told why. So they have a hard time figuring out when to make obvious exceptions.
So we crossed 57th street to the north (which wasn't blocked) and talked
to the cop there.
Helen: I have to cross
the street. I live over there.
Cop: Oh. I guess that's OK.
Go ahead.
It's a skill we all learned as kids. If Mom says no, ask Dad.
Yo. T-shirt
seen at work:
Your village called
Their idiot is missing
Yo. Are we Beatrice? Some years ago, there was a corporate advertising
campaign for Beatrice, apparently a Really Big Conglomerate with lots of
assets in various food industries. It seemed like almost every food product
in the world was produced by a company that was owned by someone who was
somehow part of Beatrice.
You don't hear much about them these days. Ever wondered what happened
to them? Turns out that they were bought
by KKR back in 1983 and then sold to ConAgra Inc. in 1990.
 So
I guess now we are ConAgra. Hungry? You've
Come To The Right Place. Who would have guessed that such diametrically
opposed brands as, say, Hebrew National and Slim Jims were the
same company?
Yak.
Yeah, I remember Fred. Quiet
guy. Very artistic. He was always making sculptures out of hummingbirds
with his chain saw.
Plurp. B claimed at lunch today that Catholicism had gotten rid
of the notion of Limbo some time ago. Is that true?
Limbo, as I recall, was the place where Innocent Souls went when they
died. These were babies that died before being baptized, heathens who had
never heard about Christianity, and so forth. In other words, these were
the folks who never had the chance to exercise their free will and accept
or reject the Christian god.
I seem also to recall that, once the Rapture comes and all the faithful
get catapulted into Heaven, all the folks from Limbo pop back onto Earth
and get involved in Armageddon somehow or other.
Limbo is no longer in the mythos, where do all the Innocent Souls go?
And do they get a chance to play the game again during Armageddon?
Type your theological meanderings in that cute Blab box in the
left margin and send it to us!
Yak. Lunchtalk turned somewhat blasphemous today, speculating
on the following PA announcement at work.
In the event of Rapture,
IBM will be observing a normal work day.
Plurp.
The blue dog was
not previously
aware that
babies could even
do the limbo.
Tuesday, October 31, 2000
 Plurp.
Well, kiddies, it's Hallowee'en. So dress up as cultural icons, and go
collect razor-blade apples and rat-poison candies from your reclusive neighbors.
Reminds me of the time I was running sound for the High School theater
group. I made a tape of ghoulish sounds - moans, chains, stuff like that
- ran it through a loop to get a great echo effect, and played it on speakers
mounted in a window by the front door.
I'd leave it silent while the little tykes tottered up the driveway.
When they stepped onto the porch, dressed in their darling little ghost
and goblin outfits fresh from Sears, I'd crank up the volume.
Turns out there was an impressive developmental effect involved. After
the age of about 6, the kids seemed to separate fantasy from reality and
could get into the whole Hallowe'en thing as a goof. Before 6, however,
it's All Too Real and the little ones would almost inevitably go starkly
wide-eyed and run back to safety of the sidewalk and their waiting parents.
More candy left for me, I figured. Muahahahahaaa.
Yow. You can now send mail to Plurp from your Web browser
by just clicking on the Mail link on the left (under the Site
header). So, if you don't like that itty bitty Blab box, and your
browser is configured to do mail, you can send us voluminous blabbery in
a new improved form.
I, like you, am agog.
Yow. The bots have found us.
Search for the word plurp
in Google and guess what the very first entry is? I really am number
one! This blog is even ahead of www.plurp.com. Heh.
Yo. Friend C contributes the following puzzle. If you think you
know the answer, Blab it at us and we'll publish it here. We here
at Plurp are completely stumped.
What are they talking
about ???
Son: Is 50 enough?
Mother: That’s not nearly
enough.
Son: Well, how about 100?
Mother: No, that’s still not
enough.
Son: All right, how about
90?
Mother: Yes, that should be
just about right.
Plurp. What, praytell, is a FUN
SIZE BAR, and why is it labelled thusly?
THIS UNIT NOT LABELLED FOR
RETAIL SALE
Yo. It seems that a couple of folks convinced US Airways that
their hog was a therapeutic companion pet, like a guide dog for
the blind, and took
it on board with them.
Many people on board the
aircraft were quite upset that there was a large uncontrollable pig on
board, especially those in the first-class cabin.
Frankly, I admire their verve! I mean, can you imagine sitting around the
swamp, saying to your good pal Charlene:
Say, Charlene, hows 'bouts
we take ol' Hector down to the airport and tell 'em he's a guide dog. How
far d'ya think we'd get?
The answer would be, as it turns out, Seattle.
Plop. There's a weather guy on the radio news station who pronounces
meteorologist
in an oddly-metered way, extending the third syllable just a beat too long
to sound right. I finally figured out what it sounds like.
I'm your KABC Meaty Urologist
Kevin Smith.
Now I can't hear it any other way.
Yo. Is it Feed A Fever, Starve A Cold or the other way
around? Let's ask Google!
Yikes! Too close for comfort! I wonder which it is.
Yow. We're going to a restaurant named Sono tonight with Steve
& Pat. Gotta make reservations. In the Olden Days, that would involve
a heavy analog device called a phone book (you couldn't even click
on it) and then the use of a phone line for - get this - analog voice traffic.
These days, well, Web Search
!
Plurp. On the news last night, there were some demonstrators
demonstrating against (or for?) something or other. They were chanting:
No more lies! No more lies!
Curious, I thought, that they just happen to have exactly the
number of lies that they wanted.
Plurp.
The blue dog thought
one
was enough.
Monday, October 30, 2000
Blab. An anonymous correspondent reports the following:
Apparently a guy at work
had a 6-yr old niece visiting over the weekend and overheard a conversation
between her and his son, concerning the book Men are from Mars, Women
are from Venus. The 6-yr old firmly stated this opinion: "Well,
I think women are from Venus and men are from Stupiter".
Blab. My Greatest Fan points at an article about a death row
inmate who can't seem to get a new trial despite the fact that his lawyer
apparently slept
through key parts of his trial.
This is, of course, in Texas, the state where George Bush assures us
that no innocent person has ever been executed. I know I'll sleep
better at night. 'Course, I sleep in New York.
Blab. Following up on a previous
bit of silliness, a reader writes:
Ahhh, so you followed my
hint and found the copylefts, but you did not find the copyups and copydowns!
Our reader has rather odd
reading habits. Takes all kinds.
Yo. Imagine a Web site where anyone could write anything they
wanted, and associate it with a word they choose. Imagine that word (and
hence what they wrote) being hyperlinked into everything else on the site
that uses that word. Now go check out Blather,
which is just that. And while you're there, think about how you would go
about making sure you had seen everything on the site.
Yak.
I couldn't believe it. There
she was, walking around in her orthopedic shoes saying, "I'm Presbyterian!
I'm Presbyterian!"
Plurp. The Web is a wonderful place. Wanna do a jig-saw puzzle,
but it's too much bother to schlepp down to the toy store? Then go here.
You can choose from among hundreds of pictures, dozens of piece shapes,
and anywhere from 6 to 247 pieces. Try one with 247 little squares, if
you're brave.
Perhaps you, as I, will revel in the satisfying Click when another
piece of the puzzle falls into place.
 Yo.
Who are the people with whom I work, you ask. Wonderful people, all. Clever.
Dedicated. And, um, colorful.
This is Ed. He's very enthusiastic. Sometimes, he wears a Cat-In-The-Hat
hat around work. Say Hi to Ed.
Yo. Wanna see something really scary? Another weblogger
has linked to Plurp from her blog. Oh sure, Dave
and Ian have, but they were the ones
that got me into this silly thing. What's scary is getting a link from
Beth
Roberts, who has a perfectly wonderful weblog, but whom I don't know
at all!
Plurp.
The blue dog's blog
had a text-to-woof
interface.
Sunday, October 29, 2000
Plurp.  Last
night was the famous 25th Annual Harry Tobin Hallowe'en and Tequila Drinking
Party, held pretty much continuously since friend Steve
was a wild and crazy undergrad in Florida. Not to dwell on the atmospherics,
but the party features Secret Punch (the secret is 200 proof grain alcohol)
served from the traditional toilet bowl, passed shots of tequila (with
lime and salt), loud music and, lately, a witch's ritual around a bonfire.
It's a costume party, and it is always themed. Each year, I try to be
the zenith of tastelessness. In previous years I came as:
-
A Geisha, with kimono, black wig and long red fingernails. Greeting guests
at the door was the interesting part.
-
A flasher. Sunglasses, baseball cap, tennis shoes, dirty black raincoat.
Shear flesh-colored bikini underwear with a strategically placed purple
ribbon that said Best In Show. Flashed people as they came in.
-
Jesus. Robe, sandals, crown of thorns. Legend has it that I passed around
shots of tequila saying "Do this oft in remembrance of me". Seriously offended
at least one devout Catholic. Oh well.
-
A victim of the black plague, complete with fleas. (That was last year;
the theme was "significant person or event from the last millennium".)
This year the theme was Saints And Sinners. Helen came as an angel,
natch. I came as Lord of the Abyss. Hey - might as well start at the top,
I say.
Today's Plurp is dedicated to The Party. What we remember of it, anyway.
Yak. Even prep for the party can have its moments.
Guy # 1: Can I use
your leather man?
Guy # 2: Sure, but you'll
have to pull it out of my holster; my nail polish is still drying.
Plurp. Interestingly, sinners achieved a clear numerical superiority
over saints. There were, in fact, only seven saint-related partiers:
-
Helen, as an angel, the only member of the Heavenly Host to make it to
the party.
-
Our friend S, as the Pope. Seen getting cozy with Carmen Miranda.
-
Friend M as a priest with a black cowboy hat. I appreciated that sly ambiguity.
-
A couple as St. Patrick and Santa Claus. I had to deliver the bad news
that Santa Claus was decanonized several years ago for being a mythical
figure.
-
A St. Bernard, with whiskey cask.
-
A guy in a St. John's University basketball outfit, with basketball.
Yeah, those last two seemed pretty marginal to me too.
 Almost
everyone else came as demonic figures of one kind or another - devils,
vampires, and like that - rather than strictly as sinners.
The highlight, according to this judge, was our friend E, who always
seems so innocent. She came as Monica
Lewinsky, complete with beret, dress slit way up to there, knee
pads, cigar and - well - white stuff on the upper part of her dress.
I think she wins the all-time grand prize for creative tastelessness,
which I thought my coming as Jesus would retain forever.
Yak.
Woman in low-cut blouse:
There's a sign on my apartment door, six feet off the floor, that says
You
Must Be At Least This Tall To Go On This Ride.
 Yow.
The witch's bonfire was the best one yet thanks, no doubt, to help from
demonic forces. We all came back in smelling like wood smoke on that chill
Fall night. It was wonderful.
This morning, emulating Yogi
Bear, I slept 'til noon. It started to snow, very lightly, just enough
to make Floridian Steve panic
and the rest of us smile as we sat around eating bagels and trying to remember
what happened last night.
I think we had a good time.
Plurp.
The blue dog has
no recollection of that
incident,
Senator.
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