Plurp: A Weblog

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2000.12.10 : 2000.12.16

Saturday, December 16, 2000
Blab. A reader from the political part of the spectrum writes:
I think the Blue Dog looks like George Bush -- scared in the headlights.
It is certainly frightening to think of the blue dog with a paw on the Big Button, isn't it?

Blab. A reader who never forgot writes:
"we can all get back to baking bread, and teaching children, and selling cars, and writing code, and unpacking boxes...": I don't think we ever stopped, really. There was just this sideshow for awhile, going on in the background.
That's the spirit!

Blab. From the Big Blab Box, a reader writes:
Return to sender!
Address unknown!
No such number!
No such cone!
Perhaps this is a secret communication revealing that Elvis was a Conehead. Shocking!

Blab. A reader determined to make us study the physiology of color vision for the rest of eternity writes:
No actual incoming light can (I believe) fire just one of the three color systems in a normal trichromat. So what color would you see if something made just one of them fire? A Whole New Color? Or just some old color interpolated in by the fusty old brain?
We suspect that's a whole nother kettle of wax.

Blab. A reader who may be the original nominator of yesterday's maybe-Helenism writes:
Sorry for the omission! "kettle of wax" = "the whole ball of wax" + "a whole nother kettle of fish"
And a possibly-other reader writes:
I believe the alleged Helenism 'different kettle of wax' is 'different kettle of fish' + 'the whole ball of wax'. For information on the latter, see this or that. I don't think this is a Helenism, but what would I know?
We interpret different kettle of fish as meaning something different from something else, and whole ball of wax as meaning in its entirety, or something like that. We're having trouble, however, with the common theme which would unite them into a single Helenism.
No doubt further elucidation is in store!

Blab. A reader with knickers in need of substantial untwisting writes:
I am very offended by "Police Navidad". First of all, it insults a truly great song. Second, it degrades the Hispanic community by trying to link it with police action, particularly during this holy season. You should be ashamed! Why don't you insult the Anglo community instead?
Yes, well, where to start? We did try it with the English-only part of the song:
We want to wish you a police Christmas
We want to wish you a police Christmas
We want to wish you a police Christmas
From the bottom of our hearts
But it just didn't seen funny to us. You see, the Spanish word feliz rhymes with the English word police, making the modified version scan well, which helps make it funny.
It's not really intended as an ethnic dig. In fact, we're not familiar with a connection between the Hispanic community and the police, though perhaps you can enlighten us.
It's as if we had tried to make the following joke in English:
We wish you a hairy Christmas
We wish you a hairy Christmas
We wish you a hairy Christmas
And a Happy New Year
and you got all worked up because we were making fun of bald people ... Oooh . That's good!

Yo.

Yo. Attention Lovecraft fans. Gigantic new hydrothermal vents have been found deep on the ocean floor. Dubbed The Lost City, they tower some 180 feet above the seabed, and have an ecology never before seen. Sleep tight.

Plop. Getting out from under the bed a couple of days ago (and no, I won't explain), I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back. It's not bad, as far as I can tell, but it is worrisome. The back is a funny system. If one muscle poops out, all of the others try desperately and futilely to compensate until, all at once, they poop out too. Then your back ties itself in one big knot and you can't move for a week.
I'm told that this is "probably user error" in Back 1.0, and that Back 2.0 will have a "just plain die" option, which would be a distinct improvement.

Yak.
You know, it would be hard to have sexual fantasies about Julie Andrews.
Well, I'm sure someone does.
Omigosh. You're right.

Yak. From a very nice dinner last night with David and E at Sono:
I would not drink Chateau Yquem.
I would not drink it, Sam I Am.
I would not drink it from a flask.
I would not drink it from a glass.
I would not drink it with a sweet.
I would not drink it as a treat.
I would not drink Chateau Yquem.
I would not drink it, Sam I Am.

Yow. Desperate for a last-minute Christmas present? Not sure what to get that reclusive neighbor with the growing collection of artillery shells?
We've got just the thing for you - genuine This Is Not A Web Page paraphernalia. Imagine! High-quality t-shirts, coffee mugs and mouse pads, emblazoned with the trademarked logo of stevewhite.org. And all at low, low prices.
Buy them now, before we change our minds!

Plurp.
Deck the dog
With bowels of Harvey
Fa la la la la
La la la la

Friday, December 15, 2000
Blab. A reader advances a thoughtful theory as to the appearance of Mia on several blogs.
Re Mia: I think you and Dave and Ian share a lot of readers. You often link to each other, and the sort of things you write about are similar enough that someone who enjoys one is likely to enjoy the other two as well (but not so similar that it's just redundant to read all three).
Entirely possible! We will henceforth refer to this as the Rogue Reader Theory of Mia.

Blab. Integrating too many recent Plurp themes to even enumerate, a reader writes:
William Safire, while thinking of the Old Ones, ate several tons of terrace furniture. Meanwhile, God fed him a piece of Stephen.
Bill always did have a healthy appetite.

Blab. A reader with intimate knowledge of the traffic light industry writes:
I'm surprised you didn't see the reason stoplights are not an issue for people with red-green colorblindness: red is always at the top, and green at the bottom. (On occasion when they must be placed horizontally, there's a consistent convention there too although I don't recall what it is--specifically so that colorblind people will not be confused).
That makes perfect sense to us! Thanks for the insight.
From slashdot (Source of All Truth ™), another possibility:
Green lights are slightly bluish. Red lights are slightly orangish. This is so color blind people can tell the difference. Also, in the US, red is on top/left, green is on the bottom/right. Again, it helps those that have trouble with color perception, but it also helps everyone (consistency and also if you've just had the sun in your eyes even "normal" people can have a problem telling the difference) Although I have seen some green lights that were almost pure green or even a bit yellowish. But those are the exception.
Elsewhere on the Web, a random person suggests a Darwinian approach to the problem:
As far as horizontal traffic lights - These are located in places where color blind people don't drive - ie. Amarillo, TX; Blanchard, OK; Orange, TX. You can't tell which way the light goes from red to green. Results, you sit through till you can watch traffic flow and get rear-ended!!

Blab. A reader kindly concerned with our diet writes:
You didn't have dates. You had truffles. Hoho!
They were actually truffles, not Hohos.

Blab. In that newly-christened Big Blab Box, a reader writes:
I LOVE BIG BOXES!!!!
No doubt this is a reader who already has a bookmark for the box fetish gallery, which I never would have known even existed without hunting for it just now.
We do love catering to the many sweaty fantasies of our readers. But on this one, we can only imagine.

Blab. Also in that gargantuan Big Blab Box, a reader writes:
<<We don't want to make this into a twenty-pound Milk Dud that you have to swallow all at once.>>
Choak, cough, aaaaaaggg...........[expire]
One more Plurp reader bites the dust. It's a sad thing.

Blab. A reader who may have spent the better part of her youth up to her elbows in finger paints writes:
Check out hexachrome, Pantone's six-color process. Sincerely, the zyx lady.
P.S. I think I might be a tetrachromat, but I can't prove it yet... research continues
Hmm. Looks like this color printing stuff is even more complicated than we gave it credit for. We wonder if we'll see septachrome in the future. (Or is that a brand of bathroom fixture?)

Blab. A reader concerned with proper English usage writes:
Check out my log entry today about the various versions of "the itsy bitsy spider", and Google's validation of the One True Form. Well, only if you're interested. (I don't have permalinks yet though, damn!) -Beth
As a way of encouraging Beth to get those darned permalinks working, we steal her entire entry and reproduce it here.
I watch Discovery Health a lot: these days, and they have some really good shows (such as Birth Day - I've got fourteen episodes taped already, and I'll post a review here soon sometime).
There's a really annoying ad I see over and over again, though. It's for a Time-LIFE collection of children's songs - 100 songs on 4 cd's.
It drives me nuts, because instead of singing "the itsy bitsy spider", they sing some misbegotten monstrous imitation called "the incy wincy spider". What the hell? "Wincy"!??!? This word evokes in me the image of a spider grimacing in pain, or perhaps the Sisyphean struggle of repeatedly ascending the water spout.
So, I turn to the arbiter of all that is correct (in the English language, anyway), Google:

itsy bitsy spider - 6,890 hits

eensy weensy spider - 838 hits

eency weency spider - 489 hits

itty bitty spider - 478 hits

eentsy weentsy spider - 238 hits

incy wincy spider - 233 hits

So there you have it. They chose the *most hugely incorrect form* of the song - even "eentsy weentsy" scored higher.
What were they thinking? Probably some doofus in a position of high power enforced his or her impudent will upon the hapless children forced to sing the song this way.
Imagine the discussion and debate that went on during the recording of the song - whoever insisted on "incy wincy" must have been vastly outnumbered by those knowing the True Correct Form, "itsy bitsy". It makes ya wonder, it does. Well, me anyway.
Makes me want to write Time-LIFE and tell them that I would have bought this collection, but for the incorrect version of "itsy bitsy spider". But really, I have better things to do with my time, like sleep.
We go to the trouble of putting that entire entry here because:

We think it's funny.

We see an obvious pointed-haired manager explanation for what dunderhead chose the wrong form of the song, and we think that's funny.

We are pleased to see our Google-based method for determining correct English usage. Safire replaced by Google. We can just see it. And we think it's funny.

Blab. A reader pretending to be Beth leaps into the Helenism fray thusly:
I submit the Helenism "different kettle of wax". It appears three times via Google. -Beth
We get the different kettle of fish component. But we're missing the aphorism involving wax. Can someone enlighten us?

Blab. A reader with some timely advice writes:
A quote for no good reason: "You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." David Lloyd George
You know, we keep trying to do this, and were previously unaware that it could not be done. This will save us a lot of future pain. Thanks!

Blab. A reader concerned about the future writes:
With all the smart cars and new air bags and cures for cancer, etc what are we going to do with all those people that are suppose to die but don't? It's going to get really crowded here on the earth.
This is an important and cogent point. We hereby volunteer to assemble the list of people who are supposed to die, as a service to humanity (or what will remain of it when we're done, anyway). We already have a long list of candidates.

Blab. A reader attempting shameless flattery of our ability to craft memes writes:
Oh great, now I'm going to have "Police Navidad" running through my head all day.
Catchy, though, ain't it? Perhaps we should consider a second career in advertising?

Plurp. Lots of Blab today, for some reason. We wonder why.

Yo. Friend J at work suggests a new executive position within companies, especially companies in the information technology sector:
CPO - Chief Pontificating Officer
I'm sure you can make your own "short list" for the position.

Yow. It's the Very First Plurp Picture Caption Contest! Please submit your most clever caption for this picture. The best entry (well, if the truth be known, all of the entries) will be published here in Plurp for everyone to admire.

Yow. It's the Very First Plurp Seafood Cthulhu Haiku Contest! Please submit your very best Cthulhu haiku on the topic of your favorite seafood. (Note the irony.) The best entry (well, if the truth be known, all of the entries) will be published here in Plurp (and probably recorded in our Cthulhu haiku section) for everyone to admire.
No cheap imitations, though. All haiku must be within the Cthulhu mythos. (And thanks to David for this interesting suggestion.)

Plurp.
Deck the halls with Ian Whalley
Fa la la la la
La la la la

Thursday, December 14, 2000
Plurp. After weeks and weeks of grinding, bitter, cynical maneuvering, it appears that the long and seemingly unending national purgatory is over. The coin that has been spinning wildly in the air all this time finally landed and one or the other of those random politician guys is going to be president after all.
At long last, perhaps we can all get back to baking bread, and teaching children, and selling cars, and writing code, and unpacking boxes, and having mammoth meals with extended families. Because - you know what? - baking bread and teaching children and selling cars and writing code and unpacking boxes, and having mammoth meals with extended families -- is what life is all about.
Sometimes, in the dizzying spiral of media sycophants, obsessing on the crowd outside the mansion where someone you shouldn't care about might be sitting, we lose track of what's really important. You are really important. Your friends are really important. Your family is really important. And so is the bread, the children, the cars, the code, the boxes and those mammoth meals.
Those guys who slimed the people, the law and the truth in order to gain power? Ultimately, they're just not important.
So, please, bring your life back into focus. Hug your friends. Kiss your children. Rejoice in your bread, and your empty boxes, and your code. Remember what's important.

Blab. In what may be an astonishing cameo appearance by Bovine Inversus its own self (one never knows), and in apparent reaction to last week's orgy of Bovinesquity, a reader writes:
-ahem- here we go --->
A man with no legs suckles black eggs found buried under mistaken automobiles whilst masturbating furiously with an octopus. To his great dissapointment, the man comes to discover that his young daughter lies asleep on the back of an ostrich destined for the center of the earth. Fortunately the ostrich is murdered by a detective novel of uncertain origin, later to turn up in an ancient manuscript entitled 'The Elephant', and pondered over by mute doctors during depraved rites involving the severing of the tongues of several amongst the wives of the Duke of Manchester.
<--- The long lost Elephant Chapter!
-bovine
PS: Thanks for all the links. :^)
PPS: On second thought, mabey it's not long lost, I think I can use that!
We feel as if we're watching history in the making. Or something.

Blab. A reader with pithy but well formed opinions informs us:
I hate little boxes..........
The reader is clearly male, of that we can be sure, as we all know that a transcultural indicator of femalehood is a love of little boxes. We never quite understood that.
But that does remind us of our little Blab box, which we always thought (and so did our readers) was both cute (those were the females) and too small (the males, obviously), thus revealing our own androgynous ambivalence.
So today, we introduce the Big Blab Box, the Blab box writ large, as if by the bloated hand of god itself. If your thoughts just don't fit in that little box, try the new King Size version.
The disadvantage of using the Big Blab Box is that we lose all context of your message. Using the classic Blab box (on this page) tells us which Plurp entry spawned your evil little thoughts. Using the Big Blab Box doesn't.
Whatever.

Blab. A talented reader confesses, though quite unnecessarily,
I may be guilty of a Helenism -- but you know better than me
"rattling his chain"
a combo of "rattling his cage" and "yanking his chain".
Hmmm... is there a cure?
Chris
Oooh! That's a good one! Congratulations on the mental fluidity required to accomplish this feat. It's much like Zen archery, I suspect. One trains a whole lifetime for that one perfect moment of letting go of conscious intent and becoming one with the living verbal flow.
Duly recorded!
(BTW, a mere five Google hits, only a couple of which are really the intended usage. Very nice!)

Yow. Ian, at long last, and after what can only be described as nearly unbearable birthing pains, has finally been able to squeeze out a valid Helenism.
That's a different kettle of ballgame

That's a different kettle of fish

That's a different ballgame

And Google finds it only once. Rejoice, one and all!

Yak. In a technical talk today, in which the speaker insisted that he was trying to keep a particular system simple.
We don't want to make this into a twenty-pound Milk Dud that you have to swallow all at once.

Yo. Every wondered just how far you can push the folks at the U.S. Postal Service, just how wacky you can get before they refuse to accept something for mailing? Well, it turns out you can be quite wacky indeed. My personal favorite:
Sound-emitting toy. A monkey-in-box toy that, upon shaking, shouted, "Let me out of here! Help! Let me out of here!" Addressed in big letters to LITTLE JOHNNIE. Sound toy was equipped with a new battery. Delivery at doorstep, 6 days.
(Robot Wisdom)

Yo. Ever wondered what it would be like to be color blind? Go here to get an idea.
I always wondered, mostly because my Dad was color blind, and I always wondered what it would be like to see the world through his eyes. He was red-green color blind (the most common kind; the less common kind is blue-yellow color blindness). It came up only rarely, such as when he couldn't tell if grass was green or brown. Curiously, it never came up with stop lights. Maybe there was a difference between stoplight-red and stoplight-green that he could perceive. I'm not sure I ever asked.
His color blindness saved his life, though, and hence it's the reason I'm even here, so I'm grateful for it. When he graduated from high school from an incredibly small town in rural Indiana, he and his buddies trundled off to join the Army Air Corp and become pilots. A very romantic idea at the time.
My Dad discovered his color blindness when the Army Air Corps tested for it during their qualifying tests. (I don't think he knew about it beforehand.) They wouldn't let color blind people be pilots, for pretty obvious reasons. So he became an aircraft mechanic instead.
Unfortunately for his buddies, the U.S. entered World War II shortly thereafter. Unfortunate, because being a pilot in World War II was not a good long-term strategy. Most of them died in short order. Most aircraft mechanics, on the other hand, survived, as did my Dad.
He didn't pass on his color blindness to me (thanks, Mom!). He did, however, pass on his passion for flying, which became my passion for space travel, which became my passion for mathematics and physics and computers, out of which grew the rest of my life.
So, as it turns out, I did end up seeing the world through my father's eyes.

Plurp. In a way, we are all color blind.
I've been thinking more about tetrachromats - people who can see more colors than most of us can - as mentioned the other day. There are some interesting consequences of having a fourth kind of retinal color receptor, beyond the usual red-green, blue-yellow and light-dark.
Take paint, for instance. You mix red paint with yellow paint and you get orange paint. But you don't really get orange light, exactly. Orange light is light with a wavelength of around 620 nm. What gets reflected from our paint mixture, on the other hand, is a combination of red light (650 nm) and yellow light (570 nm). It's possible that there's no strictly orange light reflected at all!
Instead, your red-green receptors are tickled by the red light, your blue-yellow receptors are tickled by the yellow light, and your brain interprets the combination as orange. Why? Because orange light tickles these receptors in this same way. So your eye is unable to distinguish between orange, on the one hand, and the red-yellow combination on the other.
Just as a red-green color blind person cannot distinguish between red and green, you cannot distinguish between true orange and some red-yellow combination (let's call it rellow). You are color blind in just that way. Most of us are.
Tetrachromats, if they exist in the population, have a third kind of color receptor, for some other color blend. They could distinguish orange from rellow. In fact, these two colors would look as different to them as red and yellow look to most of us!
In thinking about colors, we carry a lot of assumptions around. We say that we can "make" any color of paint by mixing three basic pigments: cyan, yellow and magenta. Three colors make everything we can see simply because we have three different kinds of photoreceptors. But tetrachromats would be able to see lots of colors that can't be made from three base colors. They would need four base pigments in order to make all possible pigment colors that they could see. So four-color printing (the above pigments, plus black just because it's hard to make it stably from the three base colors) wouldn't cut it for tetrachromats. They would need five-color printing.
Indeed, it would probably be even worse than that. Your orange ink and my orange ink may be, to a tetrachromat, entirely different colors, so "standard" colors and "standard" inks would have to be completely revised.
Similarly, we say that we can "make" any color of light from three base colors: red, green and blue. But, again, that's only because we have three different kinds of photoreceptors. Tetrachromats would need four base colors. Our RGB computer monitors would have to be replaced by RGBY monitors (or something like that) for tetrachromats.
Neat stuff!

Yow. Yesterday was International Truffles Day, honoring the day, now twenty years ago, that Helen and I made chocolate truffles together in preparation for a dinner party. It was, we think, our first "date" (though we never really had "dates"). Helen had been told to keep the conversation light; we ended up talking about families and relationships and death and all those other light subjects.
Then there was the chocolate on our fingers. But we won't discuss that here.
We have celebrated International Truffles Day ever since. It's quite a big deal.
truffes
STAYS FRESH
10 DAYS
AFTER PURCHASE
teuscher * teuscher

We, however, have gotten much better mileage than this.

Plurp.
Police Navidad
Police Navidad
Police Navidad
Próspero año y felicidad.

Wednesday, December 13, 2000
Blab. A reader, caught in the death grip of eternal pedantry, insists:
I wondered for a while about whether or not something can 'almost' cause 'Certain Disaster'... I really don't think it can. It could almost certainly cause disaster. Or certainly cause almost disaster, perhaps?
We will leave it to the William Safires of the world to rule on the ultimate permissibility of any given combination of words. To our dear and valued correspondents, we merely point out that the wages of pedantry may be limited to that single shekel of fame that results from having their words reproduced in this little-read blog.
(Goodness! That might well be the very nicest way I've ever told someone to get a life.)

Blab. A concerned reader writes:
Are you certain the Blue Dog wasn't hung over by the chimney with care? Of course, it could just be anaphalctyc shock from velvateen poisoning.
We were wondering that same thing! The blue dog does always seem to us to be in the headlights of an oncoming train. But maybe we're just projecting.

Blab. In a penelope of creativity, a reader genetically merges Blue Dog Santa with - what else - Cthulhu haiku.
Velveteen on Dog
Blueness hidden under Red
The Old Ones Delight
Masterful, just masterful.

Blab. Once again, on catfeet and sighs, and as mysteriously as ever, Mia:
The starlings sang Mia awake. Outside, no more bullrushes. It was time to go. Time to collect the invoices. Time, finally, to forego excresence, to coagulate, to build locomotive engines out of broken bottles, to aim, to snoot, to acquire. Will eat lunch for food. Will require. Will emit.
The wonderful thing about this is that I have no idea how the whole Mia thing began, or who began it, or where it is going. She has already appeared here, on Dave's blog, and on Ian's. On others as well? Possibly. Mia, as we have seen, has a life of her own.

Rant. Why do almost no blogs have those great little Blab boxes? I mean, they are just way too cool and turn an isolated rant page into an interactive digital extravaganza. Oh. I remember - it's just way too bleeding hard to do!
But you know what? That's no excuse. I hereby decree that all bloggers must institute feedback boxes post haste, or have their pineal gland eaten by hummingbirds.
So get moving!

Plurp. It was windy yesterday. I don't mean Winnie-the-Pooh blustery, either. I mean serious windage! 50 mph gusts. Terrace furniture blown around and turned upside down. Several tons of leaves swooping over and around the roads like so many demonic Hitchcock crows. Large tree branches snapped and tossed across lanes of traffic. My office creaking and groaning under the load like a old sailing ship in an Atlantic storm.
If I had been swept up and plopped down in Oz I would not have been at all surprised.

Plurp. Dumb stuff from some guy at Ian's site. Find Poot. TV Nation polls. And OK, this is really dumb, but the Gary Larson cartoon at the end is priceless.

Plop. Well look at that. The term "dot commies", which I myself coined a while ago, gets nearly 500 Google hits, many of which apparently predate my coinage. This is more evidence for my theory that my best ideas are stolen by people with time machines.

Yo. Bill discovered that, by asking Google for "squeeze wrench", you get a whole bunch of sites that sell you things that you've seen on infomercials. If, that is, you watch informercials. And if, in addition, you actually want to buy that stuff. (What is a "squeeze wrench" anyway?)
Quite unexpectedly, asking Google for "squeeze wench" gets no hits at all.

Plurp. Under people "who had their 15" (minutes of fame in 2000, that is), the venerable Time Magazine - source of all truth ™ - lists:
Brazilian Models. Gisele Bundchen led fashion's busty mannequins of choice. Vogue reports that designers are already scouting new ethnicities.
Now, silly us, we weren't aware that there were any "new ethnicities", at least not that the folks from Vogue are likely to find any time soon. We must have missed the work of those famous genetic engineers at Vogue. Or Time. Or somewhere.
We sometimes wonder if venerable analog periodicals have had their 15.

Plurp. I was thinking the other day about the saying God helps those who help themselves. And what I was thinking about was how very different in meaning or humor other, very similar sayings might be. For example:

God feeds those who feed themselves.

God kills those who kill themselves.

God enjoys those who enjoy themselves.

God shaves those who shave themselves.

God controls those who control themselves.

God thinks for those who think for themselves.

God talks to those who talk to themselves.

I like that last one best. Lots of those folks in Manhattan.

Yak.
I want to be an anarchist. What are the rules?

Plurp.
Good King Wench's
Car backed out
On a piece
Of Stephen ...

Tuesday, December 12, 2000
Blab. A reader, anticipating a lucrative career in the lactation industry, writes:
About the prices of human bodies - I'd venture to say that a person could produce much more valuable biological material while living than when dead. For just one example, consider that purified human lactoferrin (an immensely powerful and valuable substance) is valued at approximately $2200 per gram.
Assorted bodily fluids contain varying amounts of it, with colostral breast milk coming first and saliva coming last. As a lactating mother, I could produce about 1-2 grams per day (at 1-2 mg/ml) if I got back on my old twice-daily pumping schedule, where my output was around a liter per day. So that comes out to being able to earn $2200-$4400 a day, with an endlessly renewable supply - I could go on for years and years if I wanted to.
Alas, males cannot really compete in this arena, unless they are able to produce a liter or so per day of either tears (2.2 mg/ml) or seminal plasma (0.4-1.9 mg/ml). Either that, or they could induce lactation, which has been reported as being quite possible for males, though I'd imagine it would take quite a lot of work.
And that's just with this one substance - there are many others. Sometimes people are compensated for giving blood or plasma, or other kinds of donations, but I think the income-generating power of those donations is dwarfed by the potential of such items as high-quality human ova, sperm (worth less than the ova since they are produced by the millions and can be harvested non-surgically), or the biggest-ticket item I can think of, the rental of a surrogate human womb for a pregnancy and delivery (doesn't this fetch multiple tens of thousands of dollars? I seem to remember hearing that somewhere a long time ago).
I guess when it comes down to it, women (or at least what they can produce) are worth a lot more than men. Though of course, I'm open to learning of counterexamples.
-Sincerely, the zyx lady, amateur lactator
(now considering going pro).
Who woulda thunk it? I don't know about you, but I'm going out and buying a spittle cup this very evening! Nary a drip between cup and lip, I say. I'll be rich!

Blab. A pedanticist of ancient absurdist literature writes:
I have a question about recently translated fragment #58 - is an entymologist an etymologist who studies words related to entomology?
Just wondering. Also wondering why such a person would write books about roads instead of about bugs, or about words for bugs and bug-related things.
-Sincerely, the zyx lady.
That's what we get for using Babelfish for translating ancient Aramaic to English! We have written a sternly-worded note to those misbehaving locusts at AltaVista. In Latvian, of course.

Plop. We mourn the apparent passing of My Greatest Fan, who has apparently fallen off a cliff, swallowed tainted drugs, been kidnapped by cyber-terrorists, or otherwise met his or her demise since his or her last missive of November 14 of this year. Perhaps he or she abandoned our humble blog, falling prey to the evil but seductive blog of Mr. Whalley. Perhaps we shall never know.
We ask you to join us in a moment of silence.

Yow. For those of you who missed it, go listen to the zxy lady singing the alphabet backwards. Do it right this very second! Absolutely astonishing.

Yo. Combine Orienteering with a GPS and what do you get? Why, geocaching, obviously. Another good thing for us to do with our extra stuff!

Yow. We decorated the ritual Midwinter Festival tree this past weekend, piling on spirally steel icicles, flying heads, colored glass spheres and small, bubbly lights. But best of all is the blue dog ornament from A Blue Dog Christmas, dressed in festive Santa Claus velveteen, a wonderfully ridiculous Midwinter present from Ian.
(Note to groupies: Please do not send us stuff. We have way too much stuff. Ian's past sins are forgiven, but not forgotten.)

Plop. A commercial just staggered by on TV claiming that NBC is Number One. That's quite impossible of course. It is already well established that I'm Number One. NBC will have to wait in line. Take a number.

Plop. It's cold here! The beach party will definitely have to be postponed and I'm not too thrilled about it either.
Worse yet, something Bad seems to have happened to the roads as one of them became nearly frictionless yesterday, almost causing Certain Disaster to me and my little car on the way to work.
Who's in charge around here? That's what I want to know!

Plop. Ever wondered which are the sexiest scenes ever in cinema? Lucky you - Maxim Magazine has done all the hard work for you, so to speak, and here they are. If you're a guy, that is. And if you're in the demographic of Maxim Magazine which claims to offer "sex, sports, beer, clothes, fitness" and has a regular column entitled "Girlfriend of the Day."
I can't imagine how guys, as a gender, get a bad reputation. I really can't.

Plurp. What is it about a woman's sigh that can express so much: boredom, frustration, contentment, lust? What is it about a simple exhalation of breath that can mean so much?

Yow. Our ever-mysterious friend Bovine Inversus obsesses on the puzzle of the Secret Garden. And so do we! Very cool. (For the Luddites among you, here's what the Washington Post says about it, laid out in nice, easy-to-understand linear text. You should be ashamed.)
Also note the cyborg-fish, a game with no known rules or goal. I like it! Go play.
More Yenz stuff is here. Humorously, Yenz says that he's gotten a lot of hits from the obscure little town of Vienna, Virginia, and wonders who might be so interested in his site from there.
We note that sleepy Vienna is just about eight miles west of Washington, D.C. and that, in that latter little hamlet there are lots and lots of people who (a) worry that puzzles and such are Evil Secret Messages from Evil Secret Forces and (b) have rather incestuous ties with organizations all over the D.C. area. So Yenz's mysterious flood of request from quaint Vienna may well be Your Tax Dollars At Work.
Sleep well, knowing that Your Government might well spend most of its time solving silly puzzles on the Web. It could be worse.

Plurp.
The blue dog was hung
by the chimney with care,
in the hopes that St. Nicholas
soon would be there.

Monday, December 11, 2000
Blab. A reader concerned with upside-down cows opines:
A walrus, overwhemled by the volume of the city of glass bottles, takes an option on a pint of bitter, and arranges some chairs in an oval. Shortly afterward, shifting is outlawed, and a busload of ferris wheels sing "Torremolinos, torremolinos!".
What is it about this that makes it in the genre? I'm not really sure. I read all of Bovine Inversus' novel, Elephant, over the weekend. All that there is so far, anyway. I can't really put my finger on what makes it all hang together. But something does.

Blab. A philosophically endowed reader writes:
You'd be blue if you always were at the tail end of a weblog!
That may well be true. It may also be one of those counterfactual statements that is non-falsifiable in the Kuhnian sense. (Let's see, do I file that response under erudite or pretentious? Hmm.)

Plurp. I had a dream last night that went something like this.
It's very early morning, somewhat before the sun comes up and it's dark. I'm walking along a residential sidewalk, headed vaguely south, going to a deli owned by a guy named Louie to sweep the sidewalk in front of it. I'm carrying a broom.
I walk beside a black limo that's parked on the street. A beefy guy with an Italian accent gets out of the driver's side and looks really worried. Whacha doin' here? he says. You not suppose' to come here. You not suppose' to come for me. I smile, hold up the broom, and tell him I'm just going to sweep Louie's sidewalk. Looking greatly relieved, the beefy guy gets back in his car.
A while later, I walk through a store of some kind. The owner, an older man in a white apron, confronts me. Whacha doin' wit dat ting in heah? Whacha doin' heah? Eh? Before I can explain, another guy, younger but much beefier, joins the fray. You can't be comin' 'round here wit dat, he says, obviously referring to my broom. Whaddya tink you doin', eh? I explain hastily that I'm just going to Louie's deli to sweep his sidewalk. Uncle Louie? asks beefy guy. Yeah, I say, but I'm not really involved in all of that mob stuff. I just sweep the sidewalk.
The two men are all over themselves in apology. Well why dincha say so? You gotta forgive us; we dint know. Hey, you can come in here any time, okay?
Interpretation, Freudian or otherwise, is gratefully solicited. And no, I don't know if Louie's sidewalks ever got swept.

Yow. We went to see Bobby McFerrin in a one-man improv show last night. That guy is perfectly amazing. His instruments last night were (a) his own body, with which he is a virtuoso and (b) the audience. Catering to people exactly our age, he crooned a slow and seemingly serious song in a baritone:
Come and listen
to my story
'bout a man
named Jed
... which was, of course, the theme to The Beverly Hillbillies. The audience caught on (well, everyone but Helen, who never watched such tripe) and McFerrin turned it into a sing-along. Really funny.
The highlight, however, was a one-man continuous performance of The Wizard of Oz, with McFerrin playing absolutely all of the parts, in song, and - um - somewhat condensed. The whole thing took less than ten minutes, but everyone in the audience (including Helen) could follow the entire plot from the little snippets that he included. Amazing.

Plurp.
What's the first thing you know?

Sunday, December 10, 2000
Blab. A curious reader writes:
tell us more about helen
Well, look at that! Now Helen has groupies. This blog stuff is pretty amazing.
What would you like us to tell you about Helen? (There's so much that could be told, after all.) Maybe Helen should get her own blog?

Yo. You know that there are color blind people, people who cannot distinguish colors, like red and green, that most of us can. This happens because there are cells in the retina that distinguish red-green, blue-yellow, and light-dark. People with red-green color blindness do not have the red-green cells (or they don't work right, or something like that).
What you may not know is that there may be people who have an additional type of color-discrimination cell in the retinas. These people may be able to distinguish colors, to see colors, that most of us cannot see. What must that be like?
Wild! While not all of the scientific evidence is in yet, that doesn't stop the ever-popular Red Herring from publishing this article on what they call tetrachromats.
(Oh all right, I got this from caterina.)

Plurp.
A man and a dog walk into a bar.
"Why is your dog blue?" says the bartender.

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