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2000.12.24 : 2000.12.30
Saturday, December 30, 2000
Plurp. What century is it, anyway? I'm so confused.
Can we start over?
Plurp. There's a snowstorm in New York. The record-breaking snowfall
is 11 inches today already, and it's still coming down. 27 degrees predicted
tonight.
Which makes us just astonishingly clever, as we're in Florida
to spend New Year's with Steve &
Pat, where it's sunny and definitely not snowing. (Though Helen would
object. For some unfathomable reason she loves blizzards. To me, snow is
something that you go to or, in this case, from. It's not
something you live in.)
Yo. It's potato season in Florida. Sort of.
Steve, it seems, decided he needed a potato gun. Being the clever and
inventive guy he is, he designed and built his own. Early testing indicates
that this thing can penetrate tank armor. I think. And he did this without
even knowing that I loved the idea of these things. Heck, he didn't even
know what a BFPG
9000 was.
And, as a welcome present, Steve presented me with - get this - a Bonsai
Potato kit (Zen - Without the wait ™), again without knowing that
I stumbled across these things in wonder a
while ago. Now we're not sure whether to meditate on them or fire them
through concrete walls.
Choices, choices.
Plurp. We woke up this morning and, for reasons unknown, invented
Trailer
Trash Love:
-
Sweetie, I'll stick to you like Saran
Wrap sticks to leftovers.
-
My darling, you're like a Blue Light
Special - worth running for but not always there.
-
My love for you is as strong as a tow
chain.
-
My love for you is as solid as a '63
Buick.
Readers are encouraged to submit
similar trash in this genre.
Yow. Pretty good Flash logo
sequence from a Web graphics designer.
Yak. Some "normal" person on TV:
It's time for them to wake
up and smell the coffee grounds.
Eeewwww!
Yow. Some cool little animations
from synj. He's so clever!
Yow. Ladies and gentlemen, he's a little embarrassed to be here
but he's a great guy, he's my first animated character, please, a big round
of applause for ... Shy Eddie!
And, not far behind, Ralph the Wonder Dog!
Rant. I just don't get the Nobel Peace Prize. I really don't.
The other Nobel Prizes make sense to me. You write some amazing novel
that changes the way people think about themselves and you get the Nobel
Prize in Literature. You make some amazing discovery that changes the way
people think about the nature of the universe and you get the Nobel Prize
in Physics. These are enduring accomplishments that make permanent changes
in the intellectual firmament.
Not so the Nobel Peace Prize. Looks to me like all you have to do is
get two warring parties together, get a picture of the three of you shaking
hands on the cover of Time Magazine and - poof - you get the Nobel Peace
Prize (which, oddly, isn't called the Nobel Prize in Peace).
In the sciences, at least, the Nobel folks usually wait a while - usually
a long, long while - after your discovery before nominating you
for the Prize. Why? To make sure your discovery sticks. To make sure there
wasn't something wrong with it that's discovered later. To make sure it
really does have a lasting and fundamental influence on the world.
Not so the Peace Prize. Boy, get that Time Magazine cover and you're
On The List. You did it, kiddo, you're in the Big Leagues now. None of
this nonsense about seeing if it all comes unraveled tomorrow. Let's not
bother seeing if it really has any lasting influence on the world. No siree!
Let's hang that medal around your neck and have a party.
Heck, it's not even important if war starts up again right after the
party. Look at Kissinger with Vietnam. (Well, it did get more peaceful,
in a sense, but only after North Vietnam won the war against South Vietnam.
And even then it depended a lot on which faction you supported.)
Or how about the Mideast? Is my memory fading, or haven't multiple
folks gotten the Peace Prize for what was essentially the same conflict?
And, unless I read different newspapers than you do, it looks to me like
this same crock-pot is still boiling over today.
It's as if they gave the Nobel Prize for Physics shortly after some
grubby grad student winced at the readouts at 4 AM and said "What the heck
is that?", then gave it again for the same discovery the next year,
and the year after that, and the year after that, as they realized that
each "discovery", in turn, had been junk, hadn't been right after all,
couldn't stand the cold light of day or the test of time. It would
make the Nobel Prize for Physics a lot easier to get, I suppose. I guess
that's my point.
The Nobel Peace Prize. The gift they keep on giving.
 Plurp.
On Saturday, the
blue dog had a
rare day without internal
conflict, and was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize.
Friday, December 29, 2000
Plurp. Helen, inspired by the physics
of catboxes, hunted down this Kitty
Latrine Tent for our kitty-to-be. Might work! Or maybe this hooded
thing (though it looks more like a badger trap).
Hmm. If charged dust from the clay litter is
the source of the problem, maybe we can reduce the problem with something
like cedar
or even paper
litter (though paper might be similarly susceptible to charging).
Who ever knew that cat poop could be such a complicated technical subject?
I must get a new plaque for my door:
Steve White
Doctor of Feline Poopology
Yow. Make the Z.
Silly. But funny!
Plop. Today's Internet Oxymoron, cited innocently by Jane
Duvall as an option on new cars: digital cable radio. That's
right - wireless cable. Sigh.
Yow. More 3D Java games
from Dave Brackeen, the guy who wrote that Doomesque game from yesterday.
(Hold the mouse down on the picture of Dave to draw on it.)
Yow. Saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon last night with
some friends. Very, very cool. Just examine the demographics of the people
streaming into the theater ahead of you and you know it's not a Jackie
Chan movie.
It is, in fact, a really interesting movie about China (filmed, I think,
entirely in China) - its culture, its myths, its people. It is one part
period piece, one part love story, one part mythic adventure and one part
heroic battle. Stir well. Add the director of The Matrix. (Leave out Keanu
Reeves, thank god.) Sprinkle with cello work by Yo Yo Ma. Serve hot.
That said, there are some incredible martial arts sequences, some breathtaking
in their complexity - among the best choreography I've seen - some hilarious
in their cartoon heroism. Notable are the bird-like chases over rooftops
(best line: "There's been so much traffic on your rooftop lately, it took
me a while to get here"), the fight in a bamboo forest (on the top of
the canopy of a bamboo forest), and a penultimate battle in an enclosed
courtyard between two very strong and very surprising characters. Oh yeah,
and a side-splitting sequence wherein a young hero takes on a few dozen
hefty and pretentiously-named locals ("I am Iron Arm of Wu") in a restaurant.
(The restaurant is now quite out of business.) And have you ever seen someone
take on an actual Mongol horde? Pricelessly sly.
Recommended.
Yow. Have you seen Blue Man
Group, in performance? These are the three blue guys (no relation)
who are doing the Pentium
III commercials lately. You should. Wonderfully imaginative mute alien
intelligence and social commentary, with some great percussion. And funny!
Plurp. For those of you keeping track of my obsessions, I am
lately addicted to wasabi
peas. They'll put hair on your tongue!
Plurp.
Who
Man
Group?
Thursday, December 28, 2000
Plurp. Are you like me? Probably not. I have this severe
personality problem. I think my own jokes are funny. No, worse than that,
I chortle at my own jokes. Worse! I fall on the floor, turn purple, wheeze
and choke, laughing so hard at my own jokes that I think I'll pass out.
Take, for instance, those Network Associates "news"
stories yesterday. OK. I admit it. I may have had some small role in
their creation. And I even knew that some of my friends at Network Associates
(whose stock tanked yesterday) might not think they were the funniest stories
in the whole world.
But you know what? I still thought they were funny. In fact, I spent
at least an hour yesterday reading and rereading them, turning purple,
tears streaming down my face and laughing like a maniac. I'm doing that
again today.
You may not think they're funny. No one in the world (besides me) may
think they're funny. Doesn't matter. I still ROTFLMAO. I really do.
Hopefully, at some time in the distant future, there will be a treatment
for people like me. In the meantime, I must admit I'm having a pretty good
time.
Plop. Time to play Plop Art. In the first part of our
game you are invited to guess the institution from whose brochure these
notes were transcribed.
-
Matter investigates the new role of materials in the fine arts and
design, as well as their force in inspiring and guiding the creative process.
-
White Spectrum features a selection of white monochromatic works
in various mediums.
-
Actual Size examines the work of artists who have addressed the
issue of scale in exacting, literal ways by creating works in a one-to-one
relation with the thing represented.
-
Untitled (Placebo). Silver-cellophane-wrapped candies, endlessly
replenished supply, ideal weight 1,000 lbs., dimensions variable.
You guessed it! It's MoMA. We know,
pretty easy.
In the second part of our game, you are invited to send in short descriptions
of imaginary exhibitions or single works of art in this same breathless,
pretentious, nearly contentless style. Blab
at us!
Yow. Sorry for not finding this in time for solstice ceremonies,
but here it is belatedly: the Cthulhu
hymnal.
God
Rest Ye Scary Great Old Ones
God rest ye scary great old ones;
Let everything dismay.
Remember Great Cthulhu shall rise
up from R'lyeh
To kill us all with tentacles
If we should go his way.
O tidings of madness and woe, madness
and woe
O tidings of madness and woe!
Yow. Movie
of a prospective scene from Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
Note the realistic physics and breathing. Very cool. (Note: It's 5 MB.)
Yow. Yikes! Another blogger has linked to Plurp. This
time it's geekish.com, which
I read anyway, but I guess not as religiously as I will have to in the
future. Check out this
amazing flattery:
plurp
:: think all weblogs are the same? craving some really different &
funny, with intelligent writing? check it out yo... in addition to a log,
he's got other fun things like an alien
food symbols page - uncovering the truth about those cryptic little
markings hiding on the labels of your food.
I have to get back to work on those alien food symbols now! (Actually,
I have quite a collection of junk food packages all over the desk in my
office, waiting patiently for me to extract their alien contents. Visitors
think I'm just collecting garbage. Ha! What do they know?)
Rant. Yes, there is a rant coming. But first, this long and complicated
buildup. I will eventually come around to saying Very Rude Things about
marketing and sales people, and pose an interesting theory about the physics
of catboxes. Stay with me.
Helen wants to get a cat, which I think is a fine idea. Except for one
thing: they are messy little beasts. Not that they intend to be! Our previous
feline (Thomas, Spawn of Satan) was quite fastidious. The problem is the
catbox, and Manhattan apartments.
Manhattan apartments (at least the ones that cost < $10M) are small.
How small? Let's just say that we got rid of our desktop computer because
there wasn't any place to put it. Then think even smaller than that. So
where do you put a catbox? There isn't any good place.
In our previous apartment (the one Thomas ruled), the catbox was in
the corner of a little nook between our kitchen and living room. And this
corner became ... well ... disgusting. There evolved the most vile coal-smoke
stain in that corner, tapering off across a good three foot radius from
the box. Yech.
In our new apartment, the walls are white, adding to the problem. Worse,
the only place we can rationally put the catbox is right outside the kitchen,
in full view of God and everything. The plan is to sort of hide it with
a screen, but still.
I figured it might be clever to put an air purifier by the catbox and
filter out all that noxious goop. And where am I going to become a local
expert on air purification devices? Why, the Web of course.
Here's a site that wants
to sell you ionic air purifiers. They work by emitting negatively charged
ions (and, oops, ozone), which somehow magically remove the crud from the
air. Here's
how the marketdroids at indoorpurifiers.com
say they work:
Most floating contaminates
and allergens are positively charged, and of course, negative ions are
negatively charged. In environments where high densities of negative ions
exist, they are able to reverse the charge of floating contaminates to
a negative charge.
This results in a magnetic attraction
among the floating pollutants in the air, causing them to aggregate, or
clump together.
As a result, they become too heavy
to remain floating in the air, and fall harmlessly to the ground.
Keen, eh?
But before we buy, let's do the math. A typical crud particle is about
1
micrometer in diameter. A typical atom is 0.0001
micrometers in diameter. That means a crud particle consists of around
10**12 atoms. That's a lot of atoms. And - let's think about this - the
addition of one more atom (from the air cleaner) to that crud particle
will only make it 10**-12 heavier. Hmm. That's not enough to get it to
fall to the ground, now, is it?
The marketdroids claim that the crud particles aggregate by "magnetic
attraction", forming heavy crud. But that can't be right either. Never
mind the "magnetic attraction" gaffe; maybe they were being poetic. But
the crud isn't charged to begin with, despite the gentle insistence
of the marketdroids. And a bunch of negatively charged crud particles are
going to repel each other, not attract. Hmm.
You know what? I bet it works differently. First of all, crud particles
are not inherently charged. The negative ions are attracted to the crud
particles because charged particles are attracted to just about anything.
They repel the negative charges inside the crud, pushing them a little
bit away from the surface. The surface becomes slightly positive, and that
attracts the negative ion. So (crud) + (ion) will weigh almost exactly
the same as (crud), but will be negatively charged.
Now what happens to this negatively charged crud? It does not fall weightily
to the floor. Instead, by the same reasoning, it is electrically attracted
to just about anything. The floor, sure. But also the walls, the drapes,
your clothes, etc. etc.
That means we expect not to sweep up the crud, at least not a lot of
it. We expect the crud to coat everything, and especially those lovely
white walls in our apartment. But, oh heck, that's what we were trying
to avoid in the first place!
Other
sources on the Web document this crud-covering behavior of ionic air
cleaners. If you've ever had one, you probably noticed it yourself.
 So
what's the deal with the marketdroids? I can see three possibilities:
-
They are dumber than stumps, never took
a science course in their lives, and wouldn't know a scientific explanation
if it bit them on the BMW.
-
They are just telling stories to get
you to buy stuff, and don't care if the stories are true or not. The more
colorful pictures and quasi-science, the better! Ethics don't count one
whit.
-
All of the above.
Naturally, I have no opinion on this subject. Feh! Fortunately,
the Web allows us to check up on these dastardly dunderheads.
Now back to the catbox in the old apartment - the one whose corner was
coated with crud. Hey - wait a minute! The walls were coated with crud?
That sounds like what happens when the crud gets charged. And sure enough,
this is probably the explanation for the catbox-coating phenomenon, which
puzzled us in the old apartment.
We used clay litter, which is ceramic. The cat scratched around in the
ceramic litter, kicking up clay dust and crud, but also charging the clay
dust. This results in charged crud, which (as before) is attracted to the
walls (etc.) forming that dreaded crud coating. Nice!
But note that buying an ionic air purifier would have made the problem
worse,
not better. Heh. Glad we figured that out now.
Plop. Rats! Ian
won a Web Challenge against me. Unthinkable! There we were at lunch, going
on about who knows what, and somehow the topic of remote-controlled guns
on the Web came up. All too sure of myself, I offered our now-standard
Web Challenge. One dollar says I can find a real remote-controlled firearm
on the Web within 30 minutes. Everyone else stared at their feet, cowed
by my mastery of this particular art form. Ian, ever the innocent, says
You
can not! And off we go.
I never lose at these. But I lost at this one, and I just handed
over a dollar to Ian.
I came kinda close, though. My favorite was Punch
The Koy; go play - you'll see the connection. (Other funny Koy
games and stuff here.) Here's
a webgun that's a pretty
cool Flash thingie, but it's virtual. I found a Doomeque first person 3D
shooter in Java. There's the world's best Web site on toy
ray-guns. Very nostalgic. websniper.com
is owned by some folks in Japan, but it's not what I had hoped. And here's
a gratuitous link to a BFPG
9000 site, just 'cause I love the idea so very much.
Anyone who can find a remote-controlled firearm on the Web, please
Blab
me. I mean, it's the Web fercryinoutloud. There's gotta be one out
there somewhere. And I at least want the sour grape rights.
Yo. Ever wonder about those orbital mind control lasers? Here
are real-life
accounts of victims of remote mind control.
You'll see my skull xrays
showing how it melted down over the years from the radar or whatever it
is. [...] Also, I detail the unbelievable saga of trying to escape the
beams in the light rail tunnel under the San Francisco Bay.
I rather suspect the operant word here is unbelievable.
Plurp.
The Internet ended on
March 4, 2003, clumping
together and falling
to the ground after
being coated with
negatively-charged blue dogs.
Wednesday, December 27, 2000
Blab. A rare fan of both Shakespeare and Lovecraft writes:
Cry HAVOC, and loose the
reindeer of Cthulhu!
Bertrand took the last step to the summit of the ice mountain, and in his
final sane moment saw the source of the wild, dancing lights that had taunted
his trek across the barren polar cap for the past week. For there, around
a huge, crudely constructed bonfire, thousands upon thousands of things
moved, swayed, undulated, gyrated, danced, unholy offspring of men
and beast, rearing up on their haunches, shaking antler-like protuberances
and bellowing, bleating
in voices not heard since the Old Ones walked the earth.
Blab. A reader chides us thusly for reversing cause and effect
between solstice ceremonies and the coming of spring.
We're not CELEBRATING!
We're doing the Necessary Things so that the days WILL in fact start to
get longer again. Sheesh...
Ah. Then why don't we do them, well, earlier? Is it that we like
the leaves to fall off the trees, the crops to die, the roads in Oklahoma
to be covered with three inches of ice? I mean, are we stupid or what?
Sorry. Sorry. It's just that it's only a few degrees above zero out
here (Fahrenheit!) and all of the glands that usually cause us to be cheerful
are frozen solid.
Plurp. I've been reading yet more on consciousness
and the Turing test.
Here's an interesting question. Let's suppose we run across some alien
intelligence that doesn't have the same internal experience of consciousness
as humans have (or at least as I have). Perhaps it is conscious, but has
a different internal experience than we do. Perhaps it is not conscious
in any way that we can understand.
And the question is: How would that difference show up to us? Are there
things that we could observe in its actions, its communications with us,
that would be different?
Are there precedents in science fiction? I'm not sure I can think of
any!
Commander Data from Star Trek is portrayed as having conscious
experiences much like ours. The Borg have a collective consciousness, but
it seems much like lots of individual sharing their conscious experiences
rather than having a radically different one.
The various AI's in Neuromancer
are fairly different. I loved the one that, alone and mute in some derelict
space station, did nothing but put together bits of floating junk into
beautiful and heart-rending shadow-boxes. But its internal experience wasn't
developed in the novel.
Are there precedents in psychology? Are there people with radically
different internal experiences than mine? I'm not sure that even severe
schizophrenia qualifies.
Yow. Speaking of severe schizophrenia, here's another peek at
our living-room-in-progress, complete
with festive Solstice Tree. Note, on the left, the blinding reflection
from our way-too-white couch. (The pile of remaining boxes has been coyly
cropped out.)
Yo. Ever wanted to be l33t? Here's
how. Wanna be an l33t hax0r d00d? Go
here. (If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it; you're
definitely not l33t, but you probably don't care.)
Plop. Ian's going
on about Lynx again. Oh please. Text-only Web browsers? How about Morse
code Web browsers? Or Navy signal-light Web browsers? Interpretive dance
Web browsers?
Click here
to see what Plurp would look like in that stupid text-only browser.
See what we mean?
Plop. We just got a memo at work about something they call the
War
on Talent. Now it has something to do with recruiting, so we're sure
they really meant something like War for Talent. But still,
we're keeping an eye out for invading Mongrel hordes of talentless people.
Lord knows there's enough of them.
Yo. It's a sad day in Santa Clara, as the stock of anti-virus
company Network Associates sank 66% since yesterday to less than $4, off
of a high around $65 two years ago. Apparently there was news of a huge
fourth-quarter loss when a large profit was expected instead.
Oops.
And, in an "unrelated announcement", half the senior management of the
company, including the CEO, is resigning.
Having been in the anti-virus industry for many years, we know quite
a few people at Network Associates. These folks, who have waxed fantastic
about their stock options in past years, may be waning fantastic today.
So, to cheer up our friends at Network Associates, the folks at lunch
here today assembled the following possibly humorous, and perhaps not altogether
factual, news stories. (Hey - I'm merely recording them.)
Famed Quilter Accidentally
Buys Company
ONIONTOWN, NEW YORK (AP)
In a freak event during post-Christmas
e-shopping this year, Mrs. Elmeretta Philagundy, a 97 year old widow in
this small upstate New York town, accidentally bought ailing computer security
company Network Associates (NETA). Mrs. Philagundy, famous in local circles
for her quilting, was quite distraught. "I thought it said NEEDLES," she
explained ...
eBay Halts Sale of Internet Company
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA (Reuters)
On-line auction company eBay halted
the sale of Network Associates today, after a fourteen-year-old boy reported
the suspicious listing to officials. "eBay does not tolerate sales of items
in conflict with government regulation," said eBay spokesperson E.J. Huggermugger.
"We were able to stop the auction quickly, but not before the sale of an
item called 'Sell-Through Model' for $1.95." ...
Free Company With Every Purchase
(Press Release)
Network Associates, a leader in Internet
security products, announced today an innovative sales promotion program.
"We're giving the company away to anyone who buys a copy of VirusScan,"
said newly-appointed CEO Jeffie Klinger, a fourteen-year-old boy. ...
First Celebrity Buyout Announced
NEVERLAND VALLEY, CALIFORNIA (AP)
Exploiting a quirk in recently-passed
legislation, Michael Jackson today exercised his celebrity first-right-of-refusal
option to buy software vendor Network Associates. "I've always liked soft
things," said Mr. Jackson in a prepared statement, "and we were able to
acquire this company for three fuzzy baby llamas, which made it just right."
Mr. Jackson invited the senior management team of Network Associates to
stay the night at his Neverland estate. ...
Tuna Cannery Acquires Software
Maker
ASTORIA, OREGON (Reuters)
Reviewing his purchases for the past
month, cannery owner Sam Bellwether found something unexpected. Along with
twelve tons of Pacific tuna, he had bought a software company named Network
Associates. "I don't know much about software," said Mr. Bellwether, "but
they didn't really cost anything, and I hear they have some buildings down
south somewhere that we can use for storage." ...
McDonalds Announces Promotional
Tie-In
OAK BROOK, ILLINOIS (AP)
McDonalds Corp. announced today an
unique promotional tie-in. "Every time a customer buys a Quarter Pounder,"
said company spokesperson Elliot Drekstoker, "we will ask them if they
want to buy Network Associates for 'just fifty cents more'. We feel that
this is the most exciting promotion we've fielded in that last several
days." ...
eToys Announces Acquisition of
Network Associates
SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA (Reuters)
Beleaguered Internet toy retailer
eToys announced today that it would acquire beleaguered Internet security
company Network Associates. Said eToys spokesperson Clarice Lamb, "It was
the only company we could afford." ...
Plurp.
In a manner not yet
understood, it was the
addition of that
final pixel that caused self-awareness
in the blue dog.
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
Blab. Whether afever with creativity or just sipping
a bit of the nog, a reader writes:
Oh, is that all? I
suppose you think these are the only ones in town? Heh! What about Mia,
eh? What about the REMAINDER???
There's Mia
again!
I keep reading that last word as "remaindeer", as if Santa actually
had twelve tiny sleigh-pullers, and these were the three that were
left behind.
Mia!
Blab. A correspondent concerned with the unfortunate third-string
poets who pen the minor verses of Christmas carols writes:
I heard it "the Mistress
bless also", which does rhyme. Real genuine poery by no means rhymes
in the very strict sense, either. See "slant
rhyme", "feminine
rhyme".
The people who held the caroling party related
this verse the same way. We applaud this interpretation of Here We Come
A'Wassailing:
God bless the master of this
house,
The mistress bless also;
And all the little children
That round the table go.
Of course, it doesn't scan properly unless you wrongly place the accent
on the second syllable of also. But whatever. I'm sure we all want
to fix the egregious errors of the hack writers who butchered these Christmas
carols. And I know there's only a certain amount we can do.
Blab. Enraptured by the position of the earth in its orbit, an
exclamatory capitalist writes:
Merry Solstice!
I never understood the whole idea. Is it that we, as pre-scientific people,
are celebrating the day of the year during which the sun shines the least?
Oh, you say, it's because, subsequently, the sun will shine more. Thus,
it's the beginning of renewal, the beginning of the end of winter and the
precursor to spring, during which we grow crops and frolic in the fields
and perform strange and wonderful sexual rituals beneath the summer moons.
OK. I get that. But here's what confuses me. If we believe that there
will be a renewal of spring, why do we think so? Is it inductive, that
it has always happened that way before so, surely, it must happen again
this year, and that would be good? But, if so, why don't we do induction
on the entire cycle, and predict both fall and winter before spring and
summer? And, if we do that, why would we celebrate solstice? Why wouldn't
we just say Oh yeah, this is the shortest day; we knew that, and
go on with our lives?
Don't get me wrong. I like induction. It's a good principle. I just
like to apply it consistently.
Blab. Proving that great minds think alike, a reader writes:
I had precisely the same
reaction as you to the 'They don't make movies like this any more' quote
in the movie trailer. Also, apparently like you, I can't remember
which movie it the trailer was for...
Gosh. Maybe they don't make movies like that any more!
Plurp. Each year, I use Christmas cards as tags on Helen's presents.
The one I had the most fun with this year was a Ren and Stimpy card that
started out as a birthday card but, with some creative modification, worked
quite well:
It's YourJesus'
Birthday
Happy Happy! Joy Joy!
Yow. Friend Bill notes this
interview about an upcoming Call of Cthulhu computer game being developed
by Headfirst. Way cool!
It's going to be a first-person game, but not particularly emphasizing
combat. The designer's aim is to suck you into the game then scare you
to death.
Here's a more
extensive pre-review of the game - tentatively titled Call of Cthulhu:
Dark Corners of the Earth - including several screen shots.
Call of Cthulhu is a first-person
survival horror game, in the style of Resident Evil and Nocturne, and is
set in the 1920s. Deep Ones - "mutated human-fish things," according to
Andrew - have been splicing their genes with the human population of a
small US village, Innsmouth. "The Cthulhu stories aren't like Men in Black,
not like 'people vs. aliens, with guns' - the main theory around the mythos
is that Man is an insignificant speck on the earth, in the great scheme
of things. The creatures are far more powerful than Man, and they really
own the earth, with humans being a nasty blot on the landscape."
In the game, different things will
affect the character's sanity rating - seeing their partner carted off
by a Deep One, or fighting a particularly horrifying monster will decrease
it. Each character has weaknesses built in from the start, and as they
begin to lose their minds, their weaknesses will become more pronounced.
They might be susceptible to vertigo, or claustrophobic, and will become
more so as the game goes on. If you are standing on the edge of a precipice,
the ground might start coming up towards you, or your character could start
to sway.
Another good (if early) interview is here.
There are several
hundred more references to the game on the Web already. It's expected
around Christmas 2001. It'll definitely be on our Christmas list,
along with a laptop that has enough graphics support to play it. :-(
Yo. Perhaps you haven't yet seen ZetaTalk,
which tells you all about such things as the Zetas (aliens, of course),
the upcoming pole shift, and the Zeta-human hybrid program.
ZetaTalk leads you through
the vast amount of information being relayed by the Zetas in answer to
questions posed to their emissary, Nancy.
Even more frighteningly, they apparently have a Top 5% of the Web
award. Yo, Nancy.
Plop. China, that great, populous and terribly confused nation,
is trying to claim that registering Chinese-language Web sites is their
very
own sovereign right. That is, they want to decide who gets which Chinese-language
Web address, rather than let evil organizations like VeriSign do it. And,
naturally, they're already talking about blocking the Chinese equivalent
of .org altogether because, doncha
know, protest organization tend to use those sites, and we can't have that
now can we?
Yo. Lunchtalk last week skittered around the fact that soon-to-be-president
Bush has only been in some small number of countries in his entire life
(6?). And that includes Florida.
We all made quick mental lists for ourselves and I came up with 16.
That seems like a really big number!
Yo. It seems that a couple of guys from the Bay Area are unhappy
about SUV's, those omnipresent Giants of the Road. They're unhappy, in
particular, about their resource gobbling and pollution production. So
they're running around sticking
these bumper stickers on SUV's.
And they're not alone.
While we do not condone such creative disfigurement, it is funny.
Plurp.
"If they think SUV's change
the climate," mused the blue dog,
"wait until Cthulhu
returns."
Monday, December 25, 2000
Plurp. It's Christmas again. Helen is the religious
one of the two of us, though we are both quite spiritual. I am happy to
take this as a midwinter celebration with pretty good intentions. It's
good to see people being nice to each other, and it strikes me as both
sad and strange that they won't remember how next week.
But, still. For a day, at least, people stop cursing each other, stop
pummeling each other, stop killing each other. For a few hours, anyway,
they show themselves to be capable of peace. So there is hope.
Yow. This year's Annual Letter to Friends was particularly difficult
to write. We went through six drafts, each longer and more involved than
the last, before coming finally to a very short and concentrated letter.
If you're reading this, you must be a friend. You are welcome
to read it.
Yak. At a party last night, discussing a certain awkwardness
induced by straight couples staying at a gay resort in the Caribbean:
Still, it didn't stop anyone
from being gay.
And I rejoice in that. In fact, I told people I'd have to put that in my
weblog.
Plop. And then, right after that, at this same party on Christmas
eve, one of the guests told the first racist joke I've heard in a long,
long time. It was quite shocking, and there was this amazed, wide-eyed
moment when no one quite knew what to say. You should put that in your
weblog too, someone said, breaking the silence. I can't, I said.
It
violates our standard of good taste.
But I felt like a chicken; I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell the
perpetrator that what he had said was really offensive and that, if his
internal voice insisted on coughing up such divisive phlegm, he ought,
at least, to swallow it quietly rather than spit it out in public.
Plop. Dave
seems to think he can absolve
himself of not putting entries in his weblog based on the flimsiest
of excuses. It's the weekend, he no doubt thinks to himself. I'm
busy. I've got a cold. I don't wanna.
Yeah, whatever. It's like a choir boy thinking he can absolve himself
of mortal sins out of convenience, or a judge figuring she can break the
law because she doesn't have enough time to obey it.
It's not that we don't wish him well in ducking out of his responsibilities.
We, too, would love to have such luxurious lacunae. It's just that we don't
think the eagles
take days off.
Scree! Scree!
Yak.
Actually, the Internet is
a giant mushroom living in Minnesota.
Plurp.
At the bottom of a large
cardboard
box containing brightly printed
paper, crinkly ribbon, ready-made
bows in a variety of
colors and pieces of sticky
tape, the man picking through the
trash found a small, red, velveteen
jacket.
Sunday, December 24, 2000
Rant. You probably never noticed, but traditional Christmas
carols were written by a bunch of really awful hacks. Oh, not the most
memorable carols perhaps, at least not the first verses of them. But the
less visible carols, and the subsidiary verses thereof, have some really
significant problems.
Somehow, we were of the impression that song verses were supposed to
rhyme, or at least scan. Not so those of the third-string songwriters of
minor verses. Shall we look at some examples?
The second verse of Silent Night:
Silent night, Holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight!
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heav'nly hosts sing Alleluia;
Christ the Saviour is born!
Christ the Saviour is born!
See what we mean? Afar only rhymes with Alleluia if you're
from Boston. If we wanted this to appeal to a wider population, we might
rewrite that offending third line as:
Heav'nly hosts sing loud
in the bar
A nice rhyme, it still scans, and it will still appeal to the Bostonians.
Let's move on to the third verse of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen:
The shepherds at those tidings
Rejoi-ced much in mind,
And left their flocks a-feeding,
In tempest, storm, and wind;
And went to Bethlehem straightaway,
The Son of God to find.
Sigh. Wind doesn't rhyme with mind and find in any
dialect of English with which we're familiar, at least not in the intended
definitions. If we wanted this to work, the fourth line would have to be
something like:
On luscious pumpkin rind;
But maybe that's not the image the author intended? Well, whatever. Let's
try the fourth verse of The Friendly Beasts:
"I," said the sheep with
curly horn,
"I gave Him my wool for His blanket
warm;
He wore my coat on Christmas morn."
"I," said the sheep with curly horn.
This is pretty awful! Horn and warm just plain don't rhyme.
That's all there is to it. This fourth verse was obviously the product
of some fourth-string hack. Sheesh - it even uses "horn" twice because
it couldn't find obvious rhymes. The very least we need to do it to rewrite
the second line:
"I gave Him my wool for His
blanket worn;"
Again, this may violate the ecclesiastic purpose of the hack author, but
we can't fix everything. All we can do it point out the problems. Let's
move on, shall we, to the third verse of Here We Come A-Wassailing:
God bless the master of this
house,
Likewise his mistress too;
And all the little children
That round the table go.
OK. You see the error. And I think those of you with children also see
the obvious way that fourth line started out, before some hideous hack
mangled it:
That round the table goo.
We encourage everyone to sing these and other Christmas carols as God intended
them, not as the hack authors mistranscribed them.
If need be, please make up your own verses. We do
Plurp. Another person's take on stuff.
Wackier than ours.
Plop. WWF wrestling event: Martha
Stewart vs. Kathie Lee Gifford. It's not a good thing.
Yak. Harried clerk in a very busy store today:
What do I want for Christmas?
I want it to be Tuesday already!
Yak. In an advertisement for a newly-released movie:
They don't make movies like
this any more!
Um ...
 Plurp.
'Twas the night before Christmas
and all through the house
not a creature was stirring
not even the blue dog.
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