Plurp: A Weblog

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2001.02.18 : 2001.02.24

Saturday, February 24, 2001
Blab. A reader concerned with cosmology writes:
But are they *turtles*?
In the year 657 of the Reign of Ch'Ulthammon, Trearoth of Calumny returned from his designated explorations and submitted this report.
Most Honored D'Ulmannots,
It is with great respect that we report the results of our explorations over The Edge. Of the nine hundred and seventy-three of us who began this noble journey, astrologers, cooks, bearers, scribes, reptologists and military adjuncts, only we three remain. Yet we report with one voice that it is not turtles all the way down. Contrariwise, after the four hundredth and sixty-third turtle, it becomes aardvarks for quite some time, then switches to lemurs, hop toads, then platypuses. After that, it is turtles again.
Submitted in Humility,
N. Trearoth, late of Calumny

Blab. A reader who follows modern culture to a much closer degree than we are able writes:
That's "the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince", you know.
Ah yes, The Once and Future Prince.

Blab. A reader concerned with the omnipresent H writes:
And H reads this stuff, eh? Bet you're in trouble, you naughty individual!
We were in trouble long before whatever cataclysm the reader references. Even so, we will admit only to being individual.

Blab. A reader who might be the same reader as yesterday gives us something to do on the weekend.
Assigned activity # 23: Laugh inappropriately.
No problem. We were planning on doing that anyway. We were thinking of sitting in the back row of the movie theater and doing that during the sad or tragic scenes. Would that be OK?

Blab. A reader seeks to make his or her mark in Google with the following.
w00t
And sure enough, the next time the Google-bot comes a-pokin' around Plurpland, it'll pick up this very page and introduce it to the other 13,000 pages which, for some reason, have w00t on them.
It's a strange world in which we live, is it not?

Blab. A reader concerned with Cardinal succession writes:
Cardinals don't have sons, methinks. They're uh, celibate or something. So I hear. (I'm not a Catholic).
Perhaps we should distinguish here between papal law and reality. Let's suppose, more innocently than other cases which we might rightfully consider, that J. Fred fathers a child within the bonds of holy wedlock, later joining the clergy, taking the vow of celibacy, and becoming a Cardinal. J. Fred's son (from that holy wedlock thing) then grows up to ... and recursively for seven generations.
But what do I know? I'm not a Catholic, and I don't play one on TV. Readers?

Blab. A reader who pays attention to absolutely everything writes:
What is a "sit of silliness"? Is that what happens when you sit on a whoopee cushion?
And we thought that Mispelling Day would pass without a single contribution this week!
Yes, gentle reader, a sit of silliness is what happens when you sit on a whoopee cushion, and thank you for asking. Note that, contrary to popular belief, such a sitting is seldom accompanied by expressions of joy such as whoopee.

Blab. A reader writes:
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!
What you say!!

Blab. A reader wishing to convert us to his or her cause writes:
Users will aid the "Alliance" in their pursuit of the truth and uncovering a massive conspiracy with the use of real time clues disseminated through conventional instant messages, email, fax and yes, telephone calls. The Alliance is made up of a confederation of online groups, individuals and organizations. The purpose of the Alliance is to encourage people to use the power of the Internet to find each other and create a new society, based upon those new principles that emerge through this new immediacy.
How wonderfully nostalgic! We get a 60's kind of tingling. But maybe that's a flashback.

Plop. Get this.
Don't Read Aloud This Version of Alice in Wonderland
A children's book that you're forbidden to read aloud to your kids? What is this, Alice in Wonderland? Well, actually, it is Alice in Wonderland. However, the inspired nonsense in this tale did not spring from the mind of Lewis Carroll. Instead, it arose either from the greed and reflexive possessiveness of e-book publishers or, more likely, from the confusion and metaphoric excesses of an esteemed cyberlaw professor: Lawrence Lessig.
[The e-book version] came with a permissions list that read as follows:
No text selections can be copied from this book to the clipboard. No printing is permitted on this book. This book cannot be lent or given to someone else. This book cannot be given to someone else. This book cannot be read aloud.

Well, OK, it might be that Bozo Lessig misread a note intending to prevent the e-book from being run through a text-to-speech product named ReadAloud. But what about all that other stuff? Can't be lent to someone else? I guess I'd better lock up my e-book lest someone else accidentally read it. Or touch it. Or something. Eek.

Plurp.
Oh, the places you'll go.
With your head full of brains
and your shoes full of feet,
you're too smart to go down
any not-so-good street.
-- Dr. Seuss, Oh The Places You'll Go

Yow. Zombie dog. Must-love-zombie-dog ...

Yow. McSweeney's is busy again. This time it's the not-quite-PC Proposed Indian Names for Certain White People. I guess I'm pretty clearly Wonders About The Future, i.e. What It Will Be Like. Someone I know (and you know who you are) is quite obviously Forgets To Take Meds. (lorem ipsum)

Plurp. There's a joke about a gynecologist who decorated his hallway through the letterbox, but I don't remember what it is.

Yo. He Who Must Not Be Named exhibits several consistent behavioral adaptations to his new quarters, and to those who share them. We offer the following as explicit documentation. Read This, Feline Mammal.

Cut flowers are to be eaten exclusively at night, when the resulting knocking over of the vase and vomiting on the floor will have the greatest effect.

If the humans are in bed, leaping onto the bed must target their feet specifically, not as an attack (too obvious), but rather in the style of Who put that there? It goes without saying that this is more effective if the humans are asleep.

Licking is generally good, especially licking exposed human flesh, and especially if the humans regard this as annoying. It is particularly effective to lick the back of the neck of a human who is asleep.

It is forbidden to play with objects specifically purchased by the humans as "cat toys". Such objects are to be ignored or, when asserted, run from as if in great fright. Instead, rubber bands are preferred, not as toys, but as a ruse in furtherance of chewing up the expensive living room rug. Said chewing shall not be deterred by humans removing the rubber bands.

Any new human in the environment is required to supplicate itself by petting, until such time as they are dismissed by biting.

As wet food is clearly preferred, loud meowing shall accompany its absence or exhaustion. If the humans point instead to the dry food, act as if it were a Martian artifact.

Humans wearing shoes, slippers or pants are to be regarded as scratching posts.

Humans who are sitting may be kneaded and, optionally, their clothing sucked upon, as if feeding.

Humans typing on computers are not to be distracted. Walking across their keyboards is, however, required.

Yow. Our favorite letter to the editor of all time.
Dear Sir,
You stink.
Signed, A Friend

Rant. OK, let's talk about the media. These folks have a tough job. They basically don't know anything about anything, and yet they have to learn about something entirely new several times a day and write something engaging, hopefully even entertaining, maybe even captivating about it for an audience of people whose intellectual peak was back in eleventh grade. That's a tough job!
I, personally, have had my fifteen minutes of fame. Actually, I've probably taken a second or two from you, for which I deeply apologize. There is an elderly woman in Thompson, Illinois whose entire fifteen minutes I have consumed. I cannot even tell you her name as a result. OK, maybe the entire town of Thompson is off limits. Whatever.
I can tell you, without fear of useful contradiction, the shocking fact that the media gets stuff wrong. In fact, they get most stuff wrong. In fact, it is an amazing coincidence when they get stuff right, and even that often requires lots of work on the part of the interviewee.
If you've ever been present at an event about which the media reported, you already know this. Huh? you said, Where the heck was that guy? But they were doing the best they could. They were!
When I give an interview, and the journalist asks really great questions and wants to go in the direction I want to discuss, and makes points to me that I would have made to him, I figure it was a pretty good interview. And, if I'm lucky, the resulting article might be 80% correct.
There are people, though, who think that journalists will write articles that are 100% accurate. And not just on the objective facts, on documented chains of scientific deduction, but on the subtle meanings and subjective experiences of the subjects of the article.
Consider, for instance, Dave Eggers, author of the best-selling A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Smart guy. Good writer. Obviously committed to his art.
A guy from the New York Times wanted to do an article about the reprint of his book. Why did he do it? Why with that publisher? Why with that format? Standard stuff.
Dave had long, long, long, email correspondence with the journalist, some of which he deemed "off the record". He apparently expected the journalist to print exactly the Q&A that they had that was "on the record".
Maybe Dave had never talked to a reporter before in his life. Maybe he doesn't read the newspaper. Maybe he doesn't get out much. I dunno. But the idea that he could write the reporter's article for him strikes me as, um, unschooled. The notion that written correspondence (or, for that matter, any conversation at all) with a journalist is "off the record" is, well, inexperienced.
The Times reporter tells Dave he's writing the story, when to expect the draft, and invites comments on it. In my experience, this is very rare and very generous. Dave decides to be asleep when the draft comes in, it being later in the day than he had hoped, and the article gets published before he responds.
You may, if you wish, read the article here, (free registration required, sorry) and Dave's (really long) rebuttal article here. Make up your own mind.
Frankly, I find Dave naive and petty, ready to blame the minor irritants of his life on the vile, corrupt nature of others rather than face up to the fact that the world does not work precisely as he might wish if he were god.
Hey, Dave, it's a game. There are rules. You can play it or you can lose it. It's like writing. You can complain that the book refuses to write itself or you can lock yourself in a room and write the damn thing. The former does not accomplish what you wanted to accomplish.
But what do I know? Dave is a best-selling author, and therefore god. I'm just some bozo blogger. With really good press.

Plurp.
The blue dog considered
laughing at turtles
inappropriately,
off the record,
out of context,
but was too smart
to be read aloud.

Friday, February 23, 2001
Blab. A reader wishing to give us more work writes:
Assigned activity # 61: Use the word glabrous properly in conversation with three co-workers.
We'll get right on that.

Yow. Use that Blab box. It is nutritious. It is delicious. It has the unearthly power to transform your random gibberings into universally worshipped reference material. (Imagine - a Google reference of your very own!) Honest. Try it. Say anything.

Plurp. Stolen unashamedly from rebecca. Note the possibly-accidental humor in that the link is severely broken, depriving her of an excuse for this sit of silliness.
Back in my day, we didn't have hugging. Nope, we kicked each other in the shins, and we LIKED it. Yep. Oh, it hurt, sure it did, but we did it and we didn't complain, we just did it. That's just the way it was. None of this newfangled hugging.
More revealingly, when I first read it I thought it said licked. I think I like my version better.

Plurp. Where, exactly, is hog heaven?

Yo. Jenny & Dot. Review. Discuss. (Bovine)

Plurp. That Pope guy just appointed a whole bunch of people (all men for some reason) to the honorific position of Cardinal. One of the disadvantages of this position is that you have to change your name, and in a rather odd way.
Normally, if you get some title like Doctor, you paste it in front of your name, so J. Fred Shirley-Harold becomes Dr. J Fred Shirley-Harold. Sometimes the titles are postpended: J. Fred Shirley-Harold, Esq.
Not so this Cardinal thing. That gets plopped right smack in the middle, as in J. Fred Cardinal Shirley-Harold. It's the oddest thing.
We talked about this at lunch yesterday, and got ourselves pretty confused about how this works in some of the nonstandard cases. Maybe you can help us out.
What do you do, for instance, if the person only has one name? Is it Eminem Cardinal or Cardinal Eminem?
What about cultures, such as Japanese or Indian, in which the family and given names are in the order opposite from what they are in the U.S. or Italy? Mahatma Cardinal Ghandi? Ghandi Cardinal Mahatma? Mahatma Ghandi Cardinal?
Or cultures such as in Mexico, where people can have a great many "middle" names. Where does Jose Garcia Esteban Ingracia Gordo Problemo put the Cardinal? There are so many possibilities!

What do you do with people who don't quite have names, such as the artist formerly known as Prince? Do you say the Cardinal formerly known as Prince?
What happens if the resulting name sounds, well, odd? Imagine a Native American Cardinal named Screaming Eagle. Could be a problem.
And what about sons of Cardinals who themselves become Cardinals? Would a seventh-generation Cardinal be J. Fred Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Shirley-Harold?
Are there any Catholic authorities out there? Blab us.

Plurp.
This server contains links to servers not under the control of Microsoft Corporation.
Imagine that. Must be a temporary condition.

Yo. Sign over a copier at work:
For proper operation, lay on glass only.
Not being desirous of having an operation, proper or otherwise, we did not try this. Others are warned, however.

Plurp. Encouraged by Bovine Inversus inducing children to get into the cars of strangers, I decided to try an experiment.
Every weekday for the past two weeks, promptly at 3 PM, I went by a particular elementary school in Chappaqua, a rather well-to-do suburb north of New York. Stopping by a clot of kinetic tikes outside the school, I stepped out of my car and offered twenty dollars to the first kid who would take a ride with me in my Miata.
Interestingly, it was pretty easy. The first day, I had a delightful time with an eight year old named Truman Hepplewort on a pleasant drive up to Breakneck Ridge and back. I told Truman that I would come back to the school the next day and offer rides to other kids.
As I drove up the next afternoon, there was a writhing pack of cherubic freeloaders, each more anxious than the last to hop in my little car. I chose one who caught my eye, and had a fine drive with a very cute kindergartner named Tristine (she wouldn't tell me her last name) down to the seedy part of Ossining where we took a short walking tour of the exterior of the state penitentiary and discussed what Tristine might do with twenty dollars.
The following day there had apparently been an unfortunate pushing incident just before I arrived, and two kids had been carted off to the principal's office as a result. As the others swarmed around, shouting Take me! Take me! I put my hands on my hips, looked as disapproving as I could, and told them there would be no rides today because they had gotten too rowdy. I told them that the next day, the lucky child would be chosen by number. I spent several hours that evening cutting yellow construction paper into small squares with a very sharp razor blade and numbering them with a material I keep for this purpose.
That next afternoon I passed the numbered paper squares out to the gathered throng, announcing that one of the squares contained today's lucky number. I chose sweet number 16 and spent a delightful time driving down to some old toxic waste sites in northern New Jersey in the company of a small boy with dark eyes named Enrique. He was a quiet lad, but paid close attention as I discussed the various medical conditions that arose from chemical seepage into the water table.
The next day, last Friday, I decided to study the effects of social conditioning. I picked lucky number 7, an eleven year old girl named Emily and spent the better part of two hours listening to her describe in some detail the difficulties she was having with her hamster Norman. By this time, we were well into the forested, and rather unpopulated, hills of rural New York State northwest of Chappaqua, across the Hudson River. I stopped along a particularly untravelled road, opened the door for little Emily, gave her the twenty dollars, and told her she'd have to find her own way home. I knew this would work because, as a child, we kept trying to get rid of our dopey Schnauzer, Voodoo, in this same way. Even though we tossed him out of the car quite some distance from our house, he would always show up again the next day, muddy, tired, and ready for a long nap. So don't worry, Mr. and Mrs. Trufflemeyer. I'm sure Emily is fine, and you can expect her home just as soon as she gets her bearings. You might try putting a bowl of cereal out in the back yard. That always worked with little Voodoo.
Emily didn't show up for school last Tuesday, and I was anxious to see how this would affect the eagerness of the students to hop into my car. Counterintuitively, it didn't seem to matter at all, and I found the usual crowd of bubbly children, waiting patiently for their carefully-cut paper squares, all awhisper about what number I might pick that day. As we drove off, I asked little Charley Huggens if he knew what had happened to Emily. He said he didn't and immediately changed the subject to methods that he had heard could be used to make bottles explode. I was pleased to find this kind of aptitude in a child so young, and did my best to encourage it by taking him to a hobby store that has been helpful to me in the past in this regard.
Here it is Friday, and the week has been curiously uneventful. Emily does not seem to have found her way home yet, but that fact has not deterred the little ones from clamoring each day for rides. I worry that, after two weeks, I may have compromised my status as a stranger, and have resolved to take my experiment to a new school next week. I am considering ways to increase the social pressure on the wee ones to see if they will turn down my offer. It appears that it will have to be something more memorable than the mere absence of a classmate. I'm sure I will think of something.

Plurp.
The blue dog wouldn't
know what to
do with twenty
dollars.

Thursday, February 22, 2001
Blab. Chastising us while simultaneously engaging in blatant commercialism, a reader writes:
Dude -
Have been out of touch of your website lately and come back to see a take on "Illegal Alien???" I believe you're parodying "Englishman in New York" by Sting ("I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien, an Englishman in New York, etc, etc, whoa-a, etc,). The song was inspired (ta-da) by Quentin Crisp which is why it is featured at the close of Act I of RESIDENT ALIEN playing now through February 25 at the New York Theatre Workshop. Hurry, for tickets call 212.460.5475.
Oops, sorry...professional life spilling into personal...must get more coffee...
Indeedily-doodily, and we stand corrected.
On that blatant commercialism stuff, we actually encourage readers to go see Resident Alien, a poignant, hilarious, well-acted one-man show about Quentin Crisp, a very, um, colorful individual.

Blab. On what might be a similar note, a reader writes:
Phil Collins, my Aunt Sadie!
Though perhaps this is a joint disclosure about both Phil Collins and the reader. It's hard to know!

Blab. A reader confused on several levels, and in several languages, writes:
What do you think of the inevitable distance between person and person? Are other people a foreign country? I'inferne, est-ce les autres? Or is Hell within oneself? Within one's elf?
Imagine! Such a transparent attempt to raise the intellectual level of this adolescent blog. How dare you, sir! And anyway, people are organic life forms whereas countries are government-delimited land masses. Different. I did once play an elf once in D&D who had terrible digestive problems ...
Readers are invited to submit learned reactions to this. Or anything else.

Plurp. Lots of twos in the date today. I wonder what that means.

Rant. It seems that ex-president Clinton's brother-in-law represented a couple of nasty people that Clinton pardoned in his flurry of setting free dire criminals prior to scurrying out of office. The odd thing is that people are all worked up about this.
Why do folks think that criminals retain the services of Clinton's brother-in-law to get a presidential pardon? Is it that Hugh-baby is just the very best lawyer in the world? Well, no ...
Why do they think people give hundreds of thousands of dollars to campaign war chests, or as expensive presents to folks like Clinton directly? Are they just nice people? Do they get a really great T-shirt for it? Um, no ...
Hello?! This is how politics works. It won't get fixed by trying to poke your wringing fingers into the leaky dike of campaign finance and insider lobbying. That dike is leaky by design. The only way it will ever be fixed, if that ever happens at all, is to take the incentive away - to remove the ability of our frail, corruptible politicos to wield such awesome power so capriciously
So there.

Yo. Are you having fun hacking into other peoples' Web sites? Replacing their dull corporate graphics with your very own hack3r d00d logo? If so, you are now a terrorist in the U.K., and the authorities there intend to treat you as such. Have a nice day.

Yow. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. No, I haven't looked. No, I don't notice that kind of thing at all. Of course not. (And don't miss the stalker vids.)

Plop. Larry Ellison, having made his billions in the computing biz, has now decided that computing is boring.
We've had three major generations of computing: mainframes, client-server and Internet computing. There will be no new architecture for computing for the next 1,000 years.
Wanna bet, Larry? Say, a few billion dollars?

Plop. Larry's such a funny guy. In one part of his presentation at Oracle AppsWorld, he says:
Our business is providing you software, getting it in quickly, without modifications
In another part:
Stop modifying Oracle Corp. applications. Stop complementing Oracle applications with third-party software. Stop building applications in-house. That's the message from Oracle's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison to Oracle customers.
Which is it, Lar? You guys already do it, or you want to beat up your customers for filling in your gaps?

Yo. Did you know that Blogger is the most interesting Internet app since Napster? Must be time to find a more fringe activity.

Plop. It's a high-security world here at Big Blue. They make us change our PhoneMail passwords every couple of months, just because. It used to be you could punch in your old password as your new password, it thanked you for changing your password, and went merrily on its way.
Well, some clever soul grew wise to this particular shenanigan and programmed the phones to see if your new password was the same as your old password. If it was, it shook a digital finger at you and made you pick another.
So I changed my password twice - first to some random password and then back to my old password. It liked that.
Sigh.

Yo. Three Plurp points to the first person who doesn't work at IBM Research who can tell us what the heck a Hawlodeck is. Manic speculation is encouraged.

Plurp.
The blue dog

Wednesday, February 21, 2001
Blab. Chastising us roundly, a reader writes:
Are you sure that you're not thinking of the Sting classic 'Englishman in New York'? The concept that this song was sung by Phil Collins is, frankly, repugnant -- and I respectfully urge the Plurp Editorial Board to publish a correction -- which is surely the only thing standing between them and the administration of some swift Vinyl Justice.
Quite so. Another one of those slippery facts!
Ah yes, Vinyl Justice, that stirring TV show of the late 1990's about which the Welcome Back to the Nineties nostalgia site states:
Vinyl Justice
Original Broadcast Years: 1998-1999
Cast Members:
Type of Show:
Description: No Description Available
Guest Stars:
Notable Episodes: No Info Available
Notable Facts: No Interesting Facts Available

Yow.Vik Muniz is a picture tease.
Vik Muniz is a cloudspewer.
Vik Muniz makes art in the sky.
Pretty cool stuff, and right above our heads here in the Big Apple.

Yak. From a conference call at work.
It's always best to eat our own children, rather than having someone else eat them.

Yak. Again, at work.
You, too, can be a script writer for Tragedy of the Commons.

Plurp. Latin Pop. La Coca Cola?

Plurp. Shouldn't Yo Yo Ma be a rap artist?

Plurp.
The blue dog
says yo
eats children
and drinks Latin Pop.

Tuesday, February 20, 2001
Blab. Introducing us to ever deeper levels of Plurpish inbreeding, our Midwest Correspondent writes:
Hi Dr. Plurp,
How exciting that Egg took his buddy to be fixed! Their enthusiasm is contagious. Speak, Ike, speak!
A reader from a (frozen) glue state
AKA your Midwest Correspondent
This is a case where ike was clearly broken before being fixed. We like that.

Blab. Regarding the dot-com bubble that seems to have burst, a reader writes:
I think a 51-year boom is not just a "fad."
Well, perhaps the reader is actually referring to the railroad bubble of the 19th century, which was indeed something like 49 years long.
We would take issue with the notion that fads must be short-lived, though. Take rock music, for instance. Or clothing.

Plop. Thank your lucky stars (and no, this does not include William Shatner) that you didn't own any Priceline stock in the past year.
Oh. You did? Sorry.

Plurp. Entirely out of context and purposefully so, as it could have come from almost anywhere in my life (Ian):
"I have conclusively proven to my own satisfaction that everything not said by me is wrong,"

Plurp. Running through my head for some reason:
Let there be peace on Earth
And let it begin with bees ...
Or maybe this:
Let there be cheese on Earth
And let it begin with Brie ...
And, ala Phil Collins' Illegal Alien:
I'm Iranian
I'm a Pomeranian
Pomeranian in New York
Whoa, oh ...

Yo. A new trend? An "online archive" (nice oxymoron!) of technical research papers. I am hopeful that stuff like this will someday (soon!) replace journals and other time-delaying ways of publishing research results.

Yow. At about 8 PM last night, Helen ran in from the terrace excitedly. Come out here! Come out here! You've gotta see this right now!
Reluctantly, I put down my game of Thief and went out to the terrace. Helen, Close-Encounters-like, pointed directly overhead.
There, above the low clouds, were lights. Three, or maybe five lights, tinted yellow and blue. They were clearly not the moon - way too small - or stars - way too bright. They did not appear to be from spotlights, as there was no tell-tale beam to them, nor were they moving around. Nor were they aircraft of any obvious kind, as they were completely stationary for many minutes. And if it was a single object, it must have been hundreds of feet long.
They've come for me at last, I said to Helen, my own voice rising. The aliens have come back to take me home. Then, at the lights, and loud enough for the neighbors to hear, I'm here! I'm here! Take me back! My mission is complete! There is no intelligent life down here!
Sadly, they did not, and I await further instructions.

Yo. A customer review of a computer game. A positive one, as far as we can tell.
"A Postivemential Optimization of Stealthatude!"
This fine example of a congragulatoryum worthy piece of software that deserves a place on your hard drive! The aspectations of stealth and hunting-nesstissity are a post havently refreshing change from the gorefamastistic games that are the standard in today's society. I was also very impressed with the fine sound and graphics which were wrentechistily entertaining and thrilled me down to my testicsensitves! You should download this demo now and buy the software when possible!

Plurp. I often find myself in a state of mortal confusion.

Plurp.
The blue dog was
neither a Pomeranian
nor in New
York.

Monday, February 19, 2001
Blab. Regarding our discussion of slippery facts, a reader who knows us far too well writes:
...Why don't we get rid of these?... Just like your remembering just about every math formula that you have ever learned, or having learned 2000 chess openings one summer long ago. You remember that which has relevance to your reality. Gwenyth Paltrow's looks are probably memorable to you, even if her lover's name, or even her own, is not :-)
It's always interesting to try to figure out who the author of a particular Blab contribution is, given that I get no origination information with them. This one portrays rare knowledge of me, especially that bit about the chess openings! It could be Helen, but the writing style is too different. What a mystery!
Having read the original entry, Helen told me (again, of course) why we still have those old bamboo chopsticks. It's because ... uh ...

Blab. Does everyone do their email, like I do? Apparently not.
I say "I read my e-mail", probably because I read rather more than I write.
So do I (I think). But I still say do. Hmm.

Plurp. Note: synj.net has moved to, uh, synj.net.

Yo. It seems that even the venture capitalists realize the bubble has burst.
Martin Fridson of Merrill Lynch said the Internet boom of the late '90s and 2000 will go down in history as a silly fad similar to other trendy investment boondoggles. Fridson and others compared the boomlet with the tulip frenzy of 17th century Holland, in which gullible investors paid the equivalent of $300 for a single bulb, to the railroad boom of 1824, whose bubble burst spectacularly in 1873.
Howard Schilit, president for the Center for Financial Research & Analysis ... berated analysts and boosterish executives who tried to persuade Wall Street that the New Economy needed an entirely new set of accounting methods. He poked fun at accountants who used such metrics as "eyeballs," market share, page views and revenue gains instead of solid profits.
D'oh!

Plurp.
The blue dog
turned out to be
one of those bulbs.

Sunday, February 18, 2001
Blab. Oops! There it was Mispelling Day yesterday and we up and forgot all about it. Shame on us! And after our Dear Pedantic Readers worked so very hard on the following contribution.
"If we simply continue to do what we're doing, will it result in systems that can do a significant part of what humans can do? I think now."
Do you now?
tupo?
Cogito ergo cogito. I think.

Yow. Another day of sluttony. Yum.

Yak.
You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens.

Plurp. American culture really does have a love-hate relationship with curse words. We use them all the time, but we can't bear to admit it. We make up homonymic replacements, so that everyone will know what word we intend, but we won't have to use the actual words.
Darn. Gol darn. Gosh darn. Dammit. Godammit.
Heck. H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.
Poo.
Behind.
Fudge. F. Effin.
Why do we do that? Is this common in other cultures as well?

Yo. Yet another Java-based game site: Boxerjam. Kinda fun.

Yo. For those of you fascinated by roadside attractions, as I seem to have been as a child, whether of my own volition or as a prisoner of my family, here are the World's Largest Roadside Attractions. Of special note is the Gallery of Huge Beings, a frighteningly complete superset of the collection of Muffler Men. Now that's something! (sylloge)

Plurp. There are certain facts that simply won't stick in my head. Why we keep our old, stained bamboo chopsticks rather than buying new ones, for instance. There is a good reason, and Helen has told it to me a dozen times, but I look at those chopsticks and think, Why don't we get rid of these? And I just don't know.
Relationships of people I don't know is another class of such facts. Whom is Gwyneth Paltrow dating these days? Has she ever been married? And who is her mother? Helen knows all of these things and is fond of telling me, often in the middle of a movie featuring one of these people. Mmm-hmm! I'll say, nodding wisely, trying to absorb the significance of the statement. But it is hopeless, and five minutes later I will not recall it.
It is as if these fact are slippery, entering my consciousness as any other but refusing to lodge in memory, instead sliding out the other side and falling, unnoticed, away. I imagine the paths of my life strewn with these slippery facts. They must seep into the ground over time, or I would surely have noticed their accumulation.

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