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2001.01.21 : 2001.01.27
Saturday, January 27, 2001
Blab. Well here it is Saturday again. And you know what
that means, kids? That's right! It's Mispelling
Day, that joyous day of the week in which we indulge our cherished
readers in their desire to dote upon real and imagined misspellings and
grammatical issues with
Plurp.
This week, we seem to have just one entry.
You misspelled "tergamentation"!
And indeed, we plead guilty. We never could spell that properly.
Blab. Adding to our growing collection of California
electricity regulator jokes is this reader contribution, which
looks like an entirely new joke rather than an adaptation.
How many California electricity
regulators does it take to change a light bulb? It doesn't matter, the
light won't come back on anyway, since there's no electricity.
Bravo, reader!
Blab. A reader who somehow shares our own internal experiences
with us writes:
<<For
lunch today? We had something that tasted like chicken.>>
I thought it tasted more like
veal, lamb and pork............
We bow to our reader's superior knowledge of the qualia of our experience.
Malkovich,
Malkovich, Malkovich.
 Plop.
We were all set to go to the symphony today, then go have dinner with a
friend. But I decided it would be much more fun to increase the world's
population of rhinovirus, so instead I'm staying in bed with a husky voice
that Helen describes as "sexy" (until it turns squeaky later, I'm sure),
a nose that feels full of toothpicks, and a drooly expression on my face
whenever Helen asks me a question. Whuuut?
You viruses out there better appreciate this!
Plop. Double plop! Triple plop!!! As if that weren't bad
enough, I'm pretty sure the screen on my laptop is about to join the Choir
Aetherial. The image keeps developing single-pixel horizontal lines, or
jiggling to the right just a bit. Very intermittent, but very definite.
And you know what that means. At best, be without a computer for a couple
of days while Other People handle it. (Urk!) Or, worse, give up
on Old Nellie here and get a new machine. But that leads to the most major
possible bit stirrage. Argh!!!
This is not turning out to be a good day.
Yak. At work. Friday night. Long after all of the normal people
had gone home.
Bill: Time to watch
the Super Bowl this weekend!
Steve: Yeah, I dunno, I'm
not really a sports person.
Bill: The commercials.
Steve: Oh yeah - that's right!
Cool!
Yo. OK. You're going to have to follow this closely. Let me see
if I can get it right.
Everquest is a game, see? Basically, you play a character in a stereotypical
Medieval fantasy world. You know, mighty swords. Fearsome monsters. Wizards
with an underdeveloped sense of fashion who grow long, white beards. That
kind of thing.
And, since its a game, you play it on your computer (duh) and
you play it over the Internet. That means that you get to interact, in
a sort of artificial and geeky way, with lots of other geeky folks just
like yourself as you play the game.
We had a guy in our group at work a little while back who was into Everquest.
Um, really into it. He had spent many hundreds of hours online,
exploring that imaginary world, learning its quirks and amassing a huge
pile of virtual swords, armor, spell scrolls and such.
It turns out that there were quite a number of people just like him
that were completely consumed in the game, and they had all amassed
a similar pile of hard-won virtual stuff. And one of these enterprising
geeks had a clever idea - sell some of that virtual stuff on eBay
to other geeks who were desperate for a Wand of Demon Tongues, but didn't
want to spend the three hundred hours online that would be required to
earn one the honest way (by poking demons with sharp sticks, of course).
Let's review. There's this imaginary world in which people immerse themselves
for way too long. Just as in the real world, they get greedy for things
in this virtual world, and they seek short-cuts to acquire them. In this
case, they buy imaginary things (for real money) on eBay.
OK. My mind is already boggled. But it gets better. There developed
such a lively market for these virtual goodies on eBay that there were
pretty standard prices for a full set of imaginary plate mail or a Wand
of Demon Tongues. I'm
not making this up!
But it gets even better. Sony, who runs the Everquest servers (and in
that sense "owns" the game) decided they didn't like people trading imaginary
stuff associated with the game. So they contacted eBay and said "Hey, that
imaginary stuff belongs to us! It's illegal for other folks to buy
and sell it." I won't pretend to understand what law applies where in all
of this but, in situations like this, eBay ducks, says "Whatever", and
bans
people from selling the items.
So ... geeks obsessed with a game have been forbidden to sell things
that don't exist on a virtual auction by a company that makes games that
are just bits, under threat of law in the real world.
Is it just me, or is that confusing?
Yow. Synj is at it again.
Eat
me.
Plurp. We updated our FAQ
to include common Plurp questions. As if you care.
Yow. Yet another Web site has linked
to our humble Plurp. Astonishing. This time it's some guy named
Chuck
Carroll. Not a blog but, hey, we'll take whatever meager rations we
can get. Fame, it seems, comes one link at a time.
Thanks, Chucko!
 Plurp.
Before the infection the
blue dog was a collection
of minnows and sheet music.
Friday, January 26, 2001
Blab. One of the many satisfied, paid subscribers of
Plurp
writes:
>> We
do, in fact, publish Plurp at noon every day for our paid subscribers.
<<
Baby, I pay! I pay and I pay
and I pay.........
We appreciate your continued patronage.
Blab. A reader suggests uncomfortable connections with the recent
vandalism of the Clinton ex-staffers.
<<'W'
keys weren't just pried off more than 40 keyboards, some were glued on
with Superglue; some were turned upside down and glued on.>>
Sounds like some pranks from UC Santa
Barbara in the 70s. Who's THAT about? And where is Donald Segretti when
you REALLY need some creativity??
Hey! My roommates and I did not make master keys for all of the
buildings at UCSB in the 70s. We did not use them to party in the
Faculty Club pool late at night. We did not take midnight jaunts
to the top of the carillon. How dare you?
But the Clinton staffers? And little Donald Segretti? No imagination,
I say. None at all.
Blab. A reader kindly - or oddly - interested in our eating habits
asks:
And what did you have for
lunch today, pray, tell? Can only wonder at what a Fortune 500 Corporation
feeds their employees...........
Well, those were the good old days, weren't they? In the last several years,
we have been required to feed ourselves as a cost-cutting measure.
For lunch today? We had something that tasted
like chicken.
Yow. Caterina introduces
us to stichomancy.
No, it's not magic with twigs. Nay, madam!
Stichomancy
is the practice of seeking metaphysical insight into the world by reading
a random passage from a book. An important type of Stichomancy is Bibliomancy,
which restricts itself to holy books.
Now, we know what you're thinking. That sounds like work. You have to find
one or more of those old analog book-things, figure out how to open them,
struggle with their user interface, etc. etc. But would we have even brought
this up if someone hadn't already put stichomancy
on the Web? Surely you jest.
So I asked the obvious metaphysical question:
Who moved my cheese?
And got this enlightening response, selected automatically from Through
the Looking Glass:
By the way, Kitty, if only
you'd been really with me in my dream, there was one thing you WOULD have
enjoyed--I had such a quantity of poetry said to me, all about fishes!
To-morrow morning you shall have a real treat. All the time you're eating
your breakfast, I'll repeat "The Walrus and the Carpenter" to you; and
then you can make believe it's oysters, dear!
Works pretty good! The search for the cheese culprit now seems pretty clearly
focussed on the kitty. We suspected that kitty from the very start.
Go try it yourself.
Yow. Lileks once wrote a
Star
Trek novel about 24th century culture.
I had a scene where some
24th century film geeks were discussing the works of Chaplin, but it wasn’t
the 20th century Chaplin; in the 22nd century a team of dramatists and
comedians had used a computer-rendered Charlie Chaplin for a series of
films that were far better than anything the original ever did. It was
a brief scene, but you got the impression that the entire 20th century
was regarded as a raw-materials storehouse, that all the really interesting
stuff came later.
Too much 20th century chauvinism in
Trek, I always thought.
Did I mention that the book didn’t
sell?
And, ever so curiously, his much-blogged Gallery
of Regrettable Food will be made into one of those retro analog book-things
later this year. As far as I can tell, you won't be able to click on it.
Weird.
Yow. Glial cells, long thought to have merely a supporting role
to neurons in the brain, and that outnumber neurons by ten to one, have
now been discovered
to be "directly responsible for how many connections neurons form so they
can talk to each other".
Amazing, isn't it, how we can overlook stuff that stares us in the face
for decades?
Plop. Researchers
at Tufts University suspect that people who horde animals - living
in squalor with hundreds of cats, some of them dead - may have psychological
problems. Must be some pretty clever people at Tufts, eh?
Yo. Benzene
has been found around an old star that is on the verge of becoming a white
dwarf. OSHA has fined the star $15,000 a day for violation of the Industrial
Safety & Materials Act.
Yo. Snake robots?
Hmm. (Alamut)
Plurp.
In the 24th century
the blue dog was much
better than the original ever
was.
Thursday, January 25, 2001
Blab. A reader deluged by feelings of terrible urgency
writes:
OK! Enough of this
be-lated Plurp! I check daily for your latest issue.
Soooooo, where is it????? Maybe I will look elsewhere for my cheap
thrills.
We do, in fact, publish Plurp at noon every day for our paid subscribers.
Regular publication times (and our unique pyramid marketing scheme) differentiate
our paid service from our free service. Thank you for your attention.
As for cheap thrills, please examine each of these
sites in order.
Blab. This was running through a reader's fingers, and perhaps
also his or her mind.
"Cerulean blue is like a
gentle breeze... Cerulean blue is like a gentle breeze... Cerulean blue
is like a gentle breeze..."
Cyclical memes are best in groups of threes.
Blab. A reader with an economic sense of humor writes:
How does a California electricity
regulator ensure adequate supply? By *artificially lowering prices*!
hee hee hee hee!!!
And what's even funnier? They do this by forcing companies to run at a
loss or by taking the difference in dollars from the already-beleagured
taxpayers. Roll on the floor laughing my assets off!
 Plop.
Those wacky folks in Redmond; they're so funny! After being off
the Net for nearly 24 hours - I mean seriously off the
Net - the Microswifties are blaming
"technicians" for their problems.
Microsoft blamed its own
technicians for a crucial error that crippled the software giant's connection
to the Internet, almost completely blocking access to its major Web sites
for nearly 24 hours.
In a statement issued late Wednesday,
Microsoft explained that a "router configuration error" had caused requests
for access to the company’s Web sites to go unanswered.
More articles here.
Is it true that Microsoft also makes electricity policy in California?
(And - oh look! - Microsoft was off
the Net again today, apparently with symptoms much like yesterday's.
It's sure a good thing they don't make systems that people rely upon for,
say, running their businesses.)
Plop.
Those wacky ex-presidential staffers; they're so funny! They had
such a good time vacating their White House offices. Here's
some of the fun stuff they did:
Phone lines were cut, rendering them
inoperable.
Voice mail messages were changed to obscene,
scatological greetings. One Bush staffer had his grandmother call from
the Midwest. She was horrified by what she heard on the other end of the
line.
Many phone lines misdirected to other
government offices.
Desks found turned completely upside
down and trash deliberately left everywhere.
Computer printers that were filled with
blank paper but interspersed with pornographic pictures and obscene slogans
that would be revealed only as items were run off the computer.
'W' keys weren't just pried off more
than 40 keyboards, some were glued on with Superglue; some were turned
upside down and glued on.
Filing cabinets glued shut.
VP Office space in the Old Executive
Office Building found in complete shambles. Mrs. Gore had to phone Mrs.
Cheney to apologize.
Lewd MagicMarker graffiti found on one
office hallway.
Is it true that these staffers recently took jobs as Microsoft network
administrators?
Yow. Ever wonder what a George W. Bush weblog would look like?
Try
this.
(Really. Click on it. You'll like it. I promise.) (Beth)
Yo. Castro hopes Bush is "not
as stupid as he seems". We predict disappointment in Cuba.
Yo. Some people come so
close to a Darwin Award.
 A
Pennsylvania construction worker accidentally cut off his hand with a power
saw and then shot himself in the head with a nail gun several times, apparently
hoping to end his pain ...
 [He]
had at least a dozen 1-inch nails protruding from his scalp, police said.
He underwent surgery to reattach the hand and was hospitalized in stable
condition Wednesday.
Hey - could be a new fashion look.
Yo. Ya know what I had for lunch yesterday? Seven
crab rangoon. Seriously. Seven little fried thingies with some kind
of crab stuffing. Bag lunch? No, blog lunch. Weird.
Yow. It seems that nasty hacker type folks have hacked the digital
satellite scrambling and have been viewing TV programs without paying for
them. Naughty, naughty! The new news is that the DSS folks recently
launched
a counterattack. (Bill)
One week before the Super
Bowl, DirecTV launched a series of attacks against the hackers of their
product. DirecTV sent programmatic code in the stream, using their new
dynamic code ally, that hunted down hacked smart cards and destroyed them.
The IRC DirecTV channels overflowed with thousands of people who had lost
the ability to watch their stolen TV. The hacking community by and large
lost not only their ability to watch TV, but the cards themselves were
likely permanently destroyed. Some estimate that in one evening, 100,000
smart cards were destroyed, removing 98% of the hacking communities' ability
to steal their signal. To add a little pizzazz to the operation, DirecTV
personally "signed" the anti-hacker attack. The first 8 computer bytes
of all hacked cards were rewritten to read "GAME OVER".
We find this amusing.
Plurp.
The blue dog awoke
suddenly from a dream about
Brussel sprouts to find
his pixels mysteriously reprogrammed.
Wednesday, January 24, 2001
Blab. A reader too excited to suggest the context for
his or her urgent remarks remarks:
*I* didn't make it up, the
*ancient Greeks* made it up! (And no fair suggesting that I made
up the Ancient Greeks; that's another universe of discourse entirely.)
We assume this is in answer to our solicitation
for useful excuses for not doing stuff. This is a pretty good one: Blame
it on the ancient Greeks. We'll try it out ourselves and let you know
how we do.
Blab. A reader concerned with our continued attachment to our
liver suggests a method of coping with blogs while
netless.
Leave behind a Perl script
that will post random strings to Plurp for the duration of your
supposed absence. Sleep under glass. Curl.
Golly. That sounds like work (except for that curl part, which we
have added to our agenda).
Oh! But maybe we can find a Web service that already does this. Seems
like something that should already be out there, doesn't it? In fact, reading
other peoples' weblogs recently, ...
Blab. Continued adaptation of old saws for political hacks inspires
a reader to write the following.
How did the California electricity
regulator get hurt raking leaves? He fell out of the tree!!!!
hahahahahahahaha!!!!
Other contributions to the soon-to-be-burgeoning corpus of California
electricity regulator jokes are gratefully solicited. Those of you
in California can write down your contributions on pieces of paper and
send them via Pony Express. Please write legibly and try not to drip candle
wax on your paper.
Blab. Shedding light on yesterday's doggerel,
a reader writes:
My guess is that "cerulius"
is related to the English word "cerulean"
Ah, of course. From the Latin caeruleus, meaning dark blue,
akin to caelum, meaning sky. We have the best readers!
Blab. Responding to our solicitation for amusingly named dishes
(ala our favorite Dog Hair Rice), a reader
using the name Beth writes:
Re: Amusingly named dishes.
In college, my roomie made some cake with her Auntie that they called Better
Than Sex cake. It was indeed a yummy chocolate cake, but I'd have to say
the name is only partially correct. I'd call it more precisely "Better
Than *Some* Sex Cake". -Beth
Well, in my experience, that would have to be some pretty dang good cake.
Blab. Returning to the wily return receipt trick that
spammers use to identify live email accounts, yet another reader using
the name Beth writes:
Here's
my own personal take on return receipts. In short, they suck, and I
consider them rude. If you're using Lotus Notes, I can tell you how to
alter your mail file so that you can see which messages come with RR requests
embedded in them, and also make a button to remove the offensive matter
from the message. -Beth
Hey - that's great. Please do! (I'll warn you, though, that I am an ILA
- Incredibly Late Adopter - when it comes to mucking around with my software.
See my rant on Stirring the Bits.
But hey, I'm happy to look at stuff that might make my life simpler.)
Plurp. A davidchess
reader suggests that I am a Big
Blab Box. Hmm. Never thought of it quite that way.
Yo. Here's John Gilmore's fairly
well-reasoned opinion on why there shouldn't be legislation restricting
what you can do with digital content (e.g. copy protection). (Bill)
Yak. Today's oxymoronic statement, lurking on my whiteboard from
a conference call quite a long time ago.
It's the same, but smaller.
Plop. Microsoft was, well, sorta off
the Web today. Big time. Their entire microsoft.com
domain was down, dead, unfindable (as well as their msnbc.com
domain, their hotmail.com domain,
their msn.com domain, their zone.com
domain, their expedia.com domain
and several others).
Ian and Dave
looked into this and discovered that the Microsoft DNS was down. Worse,
all four of their DNS systems were down.
And here's the funny part. All
four DNS systems are on the same subnet, so virtually every Web presence
that Microsoft has can be taken down by a wastebasket fire, a leaky toilet,
a clumsy technician in a wiring closet, or just about anything else. D'oh!
So, here's my new phrase for Microsoft-based e-business:
"24 x 7 x 0"
Do you like it?
Plurp.
The blue dog almost signed
up to provide content for Plurp
before
remembering a certain lack of fingers.
Tuesday, January 23, 2001
Blab. The intellectual neighborhood here in Plurpdom
becomes substantially more brightly painted with the addition of this fascinating
response. Could it be from Camille Paglia herself?
To the editors,
Jackson "Scruffy" Wittfield's protean
missive in your January 18th number
was, like the floating sense of despair and post-Jordian acclamation that
inspired it, flawed in numerous ways. The most obvious, of course, visible
even in the numinous light of lost erudition and "plonk", the missing object
for the innocent (Darbian) word "that". I suspect that Mr. Wittfield
(still the doyen of missing overcoats) meant to point out the irony of
the fact that, in a political climate where even the lowest climbers on
the pontifical rungs of media and the government can have their opinions
channeled and so on and so on, that _in_ this political climate it is still
possible for a man dressed entirely in lycra (the simalcrum of a Son of
Texas) to mount to the highest podium in the carefully-arranged Bower of
Democracy, and not once mention (effulgent that he is, not smug but closer
to oblivious, yours mine and ours, a cardboard dummy) the results of his
own polling numbers.
But that is neither here nor there.
The _true_ irony (Mr. Wittfield's plaints to the contrary notwithstanding)
must lie in the tangled expectations of the legitimate courtiers, the _enfranchised_
constructors of the social reality that surrounds us, and their hastily-gathered
hatboxes, collections of jewelery, and entrenched micromanaged electricity
markets; transforming as they will the anguished face of an earthquake-ravaged
village (stim-by-jowel with the third horseman itself) into a twenty-year-old
woman named Mia in a pink sports-bra on the jogging machine at the Get
Fit Center and Coffee Bar, flicking her hair out of her face, and wondering
vaguely if her SUV is bad for the environment.
_That_, Scruffy, is the true irony!
Respectfully,
Jeffy the Football, R.N.S.
Readers are invited to diagram these six enigmatic sentences in a vain
attempt to extract from them their geometric significance. Alternatively,
the bravest of our readers are encouraged to submit additional texts in
this genre, whatever that might be and, for extra credit, to set them to
music. The judges, whose decision will be finial, will be asked to differentiate
amongst these contributions on the basis of the number of references to
obscuriana from the contents of various weblogs whose names must not be
mentioned. Thank you.
Blab. A reader addresses us with an important technical support
issue.
That moderncat.com
image doesn't seem to be loading...
The response to this desperate plea can, of course, be found in the stevewhite.org
FAQ
(which our readers have, we trust, memorized by now):
Q: One of your Web pages doesn't look right in my browser.
When are you going to fix it?
A: Oh
sure. And then you'll want us to fix your toaster, and figure out why
your front door doesn't close properly when it rains.
It's not that we don't care about the many technical difficulties encountered
by our cherished readers. It's just that, um, ...
Blab. An unreformed reader of questionable
upbringing writes:
'Would you like our incredibly
fabulous recipe?' Of course. Get to it. Please.
Sigh.
Blab. A reader seeks to flatter our taste
in interior design (or photography, we're not sure which) ... in Latin.
Living room with flowers
looks great! Congratulations. Picture does not reveal presence of Canus
Argentus Pixellii.
All bestest, Turi
Et un follow-upus.
Oops! Squeeze me while I
extract my foot from my mouth. I meant to say "Canus Cerulius Pixellii".
How do California (blond) price regulator
brain cells die? ....alone.
All betterest, Turi
We will pass on your kind offer of interpersonal interaction, intriguing
though the image might be. We were amused by your sly reference to stevewhite.org
in
your original posting, and we appreciate the attempted correction to
cerulius,
if only we knew what that might be.
We do like that California brain cell joke!
Blab. A very suspicious reader writes:
Hm, if Time magazine's publishing
the theory, it can't be right. So what's *really* going on?
A man with one shoe and a dog with blue fur go into a bar. The bartender
has been told by a blind man that one of them is a liar. Oh my god,
says the man with one shoe, the roof is on fire! The dog orders
a gin and tonic, and proceeds to pee on each chair in turn.
Blab. A reader far too informed about Internet transgressions
writes:
Re: Spammers and return receipts.
Requesting a return-receipt is one
of the more primitive ways spammers can use to find out if the address
to which they sent their doggerel actually reached a real person.
If the message doesn't elicit a return-receipt, they haven't learnt anything.
If it does, however, they have learnt that there's almost certainly a real
human there, reading. Important information for a spammer, ummm?
[Aside: this very morning, at the
mailserver on a domain I control, I saw that a spammer had tried the 'send
messages to random first names @ domain.com' technique. He must have
tried a couple of hundred.]
Aside from spamming, I personally
dislike the return-receipt concept on email. Firstly, I like
the ability to pretend that that message I didn't like "got lost on the
'net", or "disappeared somewhere in the aether", that sort of thing.
Secondly, it's a bodge of a system, it's poorly supported (many many sites
either don't have the functionality, or turn it off), and it increases
network traffic.
Return-receipt: just say oh no God
please no no ARGGH.
Yes. Quite.
We thoroughly agree that it is pleasant to pretend that our own inattention
to our critical email is the fault of the vile and unreliable Internet.
We enjoy making similar excuses for our behavior on the basis of the weather,
various imagined physical infirmities, and the recurring desire of our
dog to relieve itself inappropriately.
Readers are encouraged to submit their own, similar excuses for stuff.
Blab. Obsessing over his referrer logs, a gentleman whom we defamed
just
yesterday writes:
Ulp... urp... glub...
Help me, help me, I've been "plurped!"
Thx for the link on your most amusing
page, Mr. White!
--Dave Hurley
perpetrator of the "A Ginger Theory"
site
We fear there is no saving those who perpetrate such foolishness within
the all-seeing gaze of Plurp.
Plurp. I have been asked to serve on the board of the Chimney
Institute of America. Please send your suggestions.
Plop. The persistent mystery of the kidnapping
of Bob the Sock Puppet may be close to solvage. A slip of the fingertips
from Beth reveals that she
is holding
Bob captive! Call 911 !
Yo. The
human brain has been genetically wired to encourage religious beliefs.
Or so say the neuro-theologists. (rebecca)
It's clear that something fairly universal about humans encourages religious
belief. I always figured it was an attractive collection of memes - afterlife,
moral duty, the Great Father, a way of making sense of a chaotic and historically
nasty cosmos. This article suggests that religious experiences (a
feeling of oneness with the universe, etc.) have neural origins. Could
be.
Yow. You have, of course, seen the Relentless, Web-crawling,
Geek-tracking, Zombie Android CancelBots
of Doom. Gotta get me summa dat! (Even if the artist completely misinterprets
the whole idea of cancelbots. Artistic license mumble mumble.) (Bill)
Yak.
You should take a vacation
from Plurp.
I can't do that. The eagles
would circle, they'd eat my liver, stuff like that. It would be bad.
Do eagles really eat livers?
Yeah.
Why?
Uh, because that's what Dave
said originally?
No, I mean is there a scientific explanation
for it?
Umm, it's not actually true? He just
made it up?
Oh.
Plurp. This does present a problem, however. Later this year,
we will be taking a vacation for a nonzero number of days at an undisclosed
location which we claim has no Internet connection. During this time, we
do not know what to do with Plurp. Various possibilities include:
-
Delete it altogether. Who cares anyway?
-
Leave it static. Tough it out. Hope the eagles won't find us.
-
Pretend that we are Katie,
and hope that Katie updates her site amusingly enough to keep the eagles
at bay.
-
Leave it static. Put big signs at our workplace and home indicating that
we are to be found at the location of our arch-enemies. Hope that the eagles
go there instead.
-
Leave foie gras all over the terrace, perhaps inside scarecrows.
Hope that the eagles get fat and happy and just don't care.
Other suggestions are gratefully encouraged.
Plurp.
The canus puteulanus pixellii
didn't actually
speak Latin.
Monday, January 22, 2001
Blab. Responding to our recent discussion of chocolate
truffles, a reader writes:
'Would
you like our incredibly fabulous recipe?' Of course. Get
to it.
Goodness! Someone didn't learn to say please, now did they? If anyone
with a somewhat better upbringing is interested, please do step forward
and we'll be more than happy to reveal the world's best chocolate truffle
recipe.
Blab. A reader fond of avian body language writes:
Is that an Eagle I see circling,
taking a look and then slowly shaking its head? I think is is!
That may depend on what the definition of is is.
Blab. A reader who may already be part of the government of California
writes:
<<
2. If you're going to control prices, it's best to make sure there's
adequate supply. >>
DAMN! I was at the grocery store
today and there were PLENTY of prices!!!! The meat dept, the can
fruit dept, the pasta dept, the toilet paper dept.........you name it and
there were LOTS of prices. I am definately shopping at the wrong
places.
We are so pleased when our readers keep up.
Blab. A reader advances a compelling theory of the ongoing electricity
crisis in California.
The problem is: they need
electricity to run the brain cells!
That would, we believe, be cell.
Yo. So you didn't believe me and my simplistic analysis of California's
electricity crisis? Go read it in Time
Magazine. They blather more, but they say the same thing.
Plop. The other shoe plops. What do those folks in the California
government who engineered this awful electricity crisis propose as a solution?
What else? The government should take
over existing power plants.
Lawmakers are expected to
announce a proposal Monday under which the state would take control of
hydroelectric plants now owned by the state's two largest utilities.
After all, who knows more about how to run large hydroelectric plants?
Plop. Astonishingly, the hoo-ha
about it is still in the news. There's even a Web
site on the whole question, while others are spinning
their own theories about what it might be. This is such a triumph
of PR over substance. Amazing. Look, folks, it's a scooter, OK?
Plurp. Did anyone else notice Dubya in standby
mode before getting sworn in as that president thing?
Yo. Who was it the other day who wanted the lyrics to Froggy
My Love? A tragic, soulful song, to be sure.
I met you long ago
And I've loved you every since.
But I will never kiss you
'Cause you'll turn into a prince.
How many of us live our our lives in just this way?
Yow. Living room with flowers.
Plurp. We ordered Chinese food for lunch yesterday. We have a
favorite dish that we call Dog Hair Rice. It's a curried rice on
top of which is a mysterious substance that greatly resembles dog hair
- short, brown and fibrous. It looks like somebody shaved a Dachshund and
spooned the results on top. We don't actually know if it tastes
like dog hair, having not had that particular pleasure.
Readers are invited to submit odd names that they have for favorite
foods, along with the derivations thereof.
Plurp. We watched the Golden Globes last night. I can see why
they called them that.
Yow. I had a funny experience last week. In the morning, I received
some random spam at my work account, a particularly annoying event as I've
tried to keep that userid out of the spam lists. I deleted it and didn't
think any more about it.
Then, in the afternoon, I received a form letter from our mail server.
It said pretty much this:
The confirmation receipt
that you sent to Whoever@Spammer.com could not be delivered. Reason: destination
is not accepting mail.
Remember: if you're a spammer, don't request return receipts; you'll get
flooded. Hee hee hee!
Plurp.
The blue dog's favorite
dish was called
Bob's Nose En Croûte.
Sunday, January 21, 2001
Plurp.
Sometimes the
blue dog just didn't
see the point of it all.
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