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2001.03.25 : 2001.03.31
Saturday, March 31, 2001
Blab. Golly, here it is Mispelling Day and we've been
saving up this juicy reader contribution ever since Monday.
I can't resist---is "contritious"
really a word, and even if it is, why prefer it to "contrite"?
Well, there's contrite,
from the Middle English contrit, meaning feeling regret and sorrow
for one's sins or offenses; penitent. And then there's contritious,
from the Latin contritus, meaning of or having to do with contrititude.
The latter is preferred whenever we feel like it.
Blab. A reader reacts, and we love it when this happens, to our
sly little Plurp reference the
other
day.
Pardon me for correcting
you, but the song in question (regarding driving in NY) is Englishman in
New York by Sting. Take care! :)
It is we who must seek your pardon, dear reader, for pushing your buttons
with such unabashed glee.
Blab. A reader contributes to the useful
phrases to utter when en car.
Also on the subject of driving
monologue (considering the other drivers generally don't respond, making
it a conversation):
- When someone sits too long at a
light which has just changed to green: "It doesn't get any greener!" -OR-
"The green light means 'Go!' you dork!"
- Behind a slow-moving vehicle: "Come
on! It's the vertical pedal, on the right!" (Stolen from the movie
"Dragnet", starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks)
Good stuff. Along these lines, here's another favorite of ours, for use
when someone is thinking (but not very hard) about making a left turn across
light traffic, passing up opportunity after obvious opportunity to go.
What are you waiting for,
an engraved invitation?
Blab. A defender of Britney Spears writes:
Methinks you sell Ms. Spears
a little short ... behold...
The
Britney Spears Guide to Semiconductor Physics!
Yowser. That is, indeed, a classic. The exposition of physics looks, at
a quick glance, pretty accurate, if not the most pedagogic we've seen.
We were not previously aware that Spears was a theoretical physicist.
We will look to her for further revelations.
Blab. Something that writes remarkably like a bot remarks on
our world-famous Alien Food
Symbols exhibit.
Hello,
I was checking my site stats
and your URL popped up as a referral. Now, I'm the curios sort, and
like to know where my hits are coming from (I AM NOT paranoid), so I surfed
your site.
I must say I quite enjoyed it. "I
quite enjoyed it." There, I have said it.
For these and many more reason (213
reasons, by my last count) I am pleased to offer you an official "Elvis
Hunter Odd Persons Link" to appear somewhere on my site. Probably the "Links"
page but let's not worry about semantics.
All I need you to do is tell me if
you have a banner and if you do, well.. you know, give me the damned thing.
I'll happily display it on my site
of insanity and the traffic will just come rolling in for you and
yours making millionaires out of all of you! Or my Mom will see your site
and ask me questions about it later. But one or the other are guaranteed!
Thanks again for the hits and the
wonderful website ("I quite enjoyed it.") you've made.
Have a nice day and thanks for helping
us at ElvisHunter.8k.com in our
efforts to find the "King."
Thom Britain, Elvis Hunter
"The Truth Is Out There"
From this, we learn that Thom's bot collects curios, making it a rather
conceptually advanced bot. And we are impressed.
Flattered, we responded with the HTML necessary for this high quality
bot to display our exclusive Plurp banner.
(Now who was it among you who clicked on that link from our Alien
Food Symbols page? Fess up.)
Plop. Have you seen those commercials where there's a talking
pink piggy bank with sunglasses? Do you know what they're a commercial
for? Yeah, that's the problem. It's CoolSavings.com,
yet another dot-bomb.
They say that CoolSavings Provides a comprehensive set of e-marketing
services used by online and offline advertisers to build one-to-one customer
relationships. You might suspect they have had some problems since
online ad revenue tanked. You'd be right.
They IPOed at $5.50 last May and peaked at a bit above $6.00 in July.
They closed last Friday at $0.50. That's right. Fifty cents, qualifying
them as a "junk stock" pretty soon, if not already.
Wave bye-bye to the pig
Yak. On the street today, an unbathed man with a paper cup containing
coins, repeating, almost chanting, to those who walked by:
Do you have a penny?
Even a penny would help.
Do you have a penny?
Even a penny would help.
Do you have a penny?
Even a penny would help.
Do you have a penny?
Even a penny would help.
Do you have a penny?
Even a penny would help.
Do you have a penny?
Even a penny would help.
 Plurp.
The blue dog
didn't have a penny,
didn't know music or
physics or fancy language, and
felt the sting of it
every day.
Friday, March 30, 2001
Blab. Concerned about our exposition of driving
conversations, a reader writes:
hPlurp-Dude
Maybe you should check out www.roadrageiq.org
before you get into trouble!
We took their test, but
it's really rather silly. They don't even ask you if you write down all
of the things you say to other drivers in your blog. They do, however,
say this:
Traffic is a cooperative
activity. When you behave cooperatively, you get repaid in kind. If you’re
aggressive, you trigger others a natural instinct to fight back and drivers
will often try to thwart your progress ( not let you into a line of traffic,
for example). If you’re diplomatic, you will be able to move through traffic
with amazing ease. Sometimes drivers will go out of their way to help you.
Driving in congested traffic is really a challenge to your diplomatic skills,
and your ability to communicate with others.
 Now
that's funny!
We're sure it must be nice to drive the De Soto around the rolling hills
of Norwalk CT, where the author of that little ditty lives. We recommend,
however, that he avoid New York. The culture shock alone would make his
head explode.
Blab. A reader who pretends to know us writes:
Your
judgment is seldom swayed through your feelings.
That's YOU!
Is it? Are you sure?
Blab. A reader whose buttons we do so love to push rants:
(Sung
to the tune of Illegal Alien by Phil Collins.)
What ARE you???? A MUSICAL moron?????
It's STING! How many times do you need to be told??
Oh, how about three or four more times?
We're having too much fun to stop just now.
Blab. A fan of obscure ad campaigns vaguely related to techno-nerds
writes:
They've come from a parallel
universe on a mission.
They're codernauts. And they crave
software that can turn any business into an e-business. IBM e-business
software. It's a different kind of world. You need a different kind of
software. See them now, click here.
Oooh, ick. DoubleClick comes to Plurp. We're so ashamed.
 Blab.
A reader with questionable taste writes:
Excuse me Dr. Plurp, but
I can't seem to actually taste the blue flavor crystals. I've installed
every browser plugin I could find, including "FakeFlavorFlasher (tm)",
"CrystalineCranker" and "TotalTongueTwister." Are you sure you are sending
streaming taste output?
Did we fail to mention that streaming taste output is only available in
the paid subscription version of Plurp? Sorry.
Blab. Our masked URList comes up with a doozie this time.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-020.asp
Basically, our friends in Redmond have a security hole in IE big enough
to drive a planet through. Anybody who sends you Microsoft email, or whose
Web site you view in IE, can do absolutely anything they want on your PC.
Read your files, delete the pictures of your darling froo-froo dog Cuddles,
change all of your investment files to have the wrong information, send
death threats to the President in your name. Anything.
Yes, it is that bad. Yes, they are that bad.
Blab. And perhaps a different URList contributes this:
http://www.thoughtpolice.com/bayboyz/1040.html
It's a tax return form for certain recently laid-off dotcom employees.
How do you know if you qualify? Well ...
To determine if you are a
recently laid-off dotcom employee with no job prospects, please complete
the following worksheet. Check all that apply.
-
I was recently asked to place all the
contents of my cubicle into a cardboard box, and was forced to surrender
my ID card and Palm Pilot.
-
I was born on or after Jan. 1, 1973.
-
I hold a liberal arts degree from an
Ivy League school.
-
Within the last year, I rode a scooter
to work at least once.
-
My job title included a trendy word like
"Guru".
If you checked four or more of the above,
you qualify to use this form.
Plurp. We've developed a new management style around work that
we call Management By Insane Neglect. Readers are encouraged to
provide examples.
Yow. The aurora
borealis is at a new high, pumped up by the sun being at its 11-year
cyclical peak of sunspot activity, sunspots being humongous nuclear storms
on the surface of the sun.. One currently active sunspot, the largest in
a decade, is 13 times the size of the earth. Quiver in terror! Or just
go
look at the pretty pictures.
Yow. While I'm not usually a fan of jokes circulated via email,
I couldn't resist this lovely example of the Orange
Theory of Ideas.
Researchers Shocked to Finally Find
Virus That Email App Doesn't Like
Atlanta, Ga. -- Scientists at the
Centers for Disease Control and Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center today
confirmed that foot-and-mouth disease cannot be spread by Microsoft's Outlook
email application, believed to be the first time the program has ever failed
to propagate a major virus.
"Frankly, we've never heard of a virus
that couldn't spread through Microsoft Outlook, so our findings were, to
say the least, unexpected," said Clive Sarnow, director of the CDC's infectious
disease unit.
 Yak.
We know how thrilled you were with our fascinated discussion of the physics
of kitty litter. So today, we are pleased to have with us the world's
foremost authority on feline poopology, Dr.
Poopsalata Kittifecus.
Plurp: We understand
that you have a breakthrough in feline cleanliness technology.
Dr. K: That's right, Plurp.
Imagine a kitty litter that does not scatter fecally polluted dust throughout
your living space, does not coat your home with substances best kept inside
cats in the first place. Wouldn't that be amazing?
Plurp: What you're suggesting
seems impossible ...
Dr. K: Exactly! That's why
we didn't tell anyone until we had the Web sites up.
Plurp: You figured that people
wouldn't believe a respected Doctor of Feline Poopology but they would
believe some arbitrary Web page?
Dr. K: Naturally. And of course
we had to get the wacky marketing slogans right. That took some time.
Plurp: Marketing slogans? There's
more than one?
Dr. K: Yes! To give the appearance
of competition between small, struggling, innovative companies. There's
Feline
Pine®, The Healthy Cat Litter™. It's made of pine sawdust that
has been compressed into little pellets. When the cat, uh, uses
the litter, it falls apart into sawdust again, making it easy to cover
up the crime.
Plurp: That's very clever.
Dr. K: Then there's World's
Best Cat Litter® The Litter That Works ... Naturally.™ Don't
you love the double entendre? It's made from dried corn kernels that are
ground up and, again, compressed into pellets. It looks like Grape Nuts,
though it doesn't taste as good in milk.
Plurp: An important safety
tip. But what's the big deal? Kitty litter is kitty litter, right?
Dr. K: Most litter is made
of clay. So it's ceramic based and generates a surprising amount of silica
dust. When the cat scratches around in the box, the dust, covered with
very bad stuff, flies out of the box and coats everything around it - the
floor, the walls, your kids. It's really quite disgusting.
Plurp: I was just thinking
the same thing.
Dr. K: These new litters are
made from wood and corn. That is, they're cellulose based. They don't generate
dust at all. The bad stuff stays where you, or in this case, your cat,
puts it.
Plurp: And I assume you're
here to tell us that customers think this is the cat's meow and that business
is booming.
Dr. K: Soon we will rule the
world.
Plurp: Well thank you, Dr.
Kittifecus.
Dr. K: My pleasure, Plurp.
Plurp.
The blue dog was
once thirteen times the
size of the Earth.
Thursday, March 29, 2001
Blab. A student of the fashion sense of the rich and
tasteless writes:
In response to your March
26 "Yo" concerning the woman in the swan dress at the Academy Awards...attached
please find the official Bjork website
to answer any and all of your questions. What she was doing with
it (the dress, that is), however, is anyone's guess, but not mine!
Please note that she is the Icelandic Bjork, not the Swedish Bjork
(and didn't you enjoy that upbeat little number she performed? I
like to call it a "wrist-slitter").
What a bizarre site! It suggests the existence of a whole precognitive
world, possibly parallel to our own, populated by people in white
swan dresses calling themselves Meester
Fly, posting amateur pics of themselves on badly
designed Web pages. No! Say it isn't so! Shore up my crumbling sanity
by denying that there are such people!
(Is it really fair of me to imply that she is tasteless if I have not
yet tasted her? Hmmm.)
Blab. On the subject of the 85 ways to tie
a necktie, one of our more challenging readers writes:
No, they didn't quite prove
it, because I would challenge their assumptions. They pretty much
assumed that 9 was the maximum number of crossings for a tie knot, and
gave absolutely no empirical evidence to back that up. All you would
need to do to prove them wrong would be to get a sufficiently long and
thin tie, and tie a 10-crossing knot.
And you'll get right on that and send us a picture when you're done? Great.
Thanks very.
Blab. A curious reader asks:
Did you get your PhD
five months after turning 19, or when Britney Spears was born; enquiring
minds want to know...
Both, actually. The Ph.D. in Ancient Greek Literature was fairly straightforward.
Theoretical Physics took a little longer.  ?
Plurp. Thankfully, the Kabalarians
have me all figured
out.
The first name of Steve creates
a shrewd, aggressive, business nature, intent on personal gain. You are
capable of very logical and analytical thinking along practical business
lines, and could excel in financial fields, law or politics. Your judgment
is seldom swayed through your feelings. You have definite executive and
leadership abilities, however you are inclined to be too blunt and forceful
in dealing with people. There is a need to show more tact and understanding
toward others in order to moderate a rather self-centred nature. The desires
for independence and financial success have been strong motivating forces
from very early in your life. Sacrificing much for material ambition will
result in a lack of harmony and balance in your personal life, particularly
a lack of appreciation for social courtesies and things of a more inspirational
nature. Your health could suffer through ailments centering in the head.
Also, the generative organs could be affected.
That's me all right! A self-centred Captain of Industry who's sick in the
head.
Or, if I were to use the name my parents actually
gave me:
Your first name of Steven
has given you a very practical, hard-working, systematic nature. Your interests
are focused on technical, mechanical, and scientific things, to the exclusion
of interests of an artistic, musical, or social nature. You have a rather
skeptical outlook on life and rather materialistic standards. In reaching
your goals, you are very independent and resourceful, patient and determined.
You can be so very positive and definite in your own ideas and opinions
that others sense a lack of tact and friendliness in your manner of expression.
You are inclined to be rather demanding and self-centred in your personal
wants, and your own desires can be so overriding that you fail to recognize
or appreciate the feelings, opinions, or desires of others. As a consequence,
difficulties in relations within the family or with close associates can
arise. Weaknesses in the health centre in the head, and in the stomach
and intestinal organs.
Well, that's pretty different. Now I'm a self-centred nerd who's sick in
the head. Hey!
Yak. I drive a lot, mostly back and forth to work, and mostly
by myself. Driving in New York is an aggressive activity, not for the faint
of heart. Maniacal stupidity behind the wheel is the rule. It might even
be bred into the population by Darwinian forces over the past century.
And, social being that I am, I find myself talking to my fellow drivers
as I commute. The conversational form is somewhat one-sided and rather
limited stylistically, but I love it nonetheless. Here it is, pretty much
complete.
-
Hey, Martha, what say we go out on the
freeway and drive like morons?
-
Oh, I see. You're blinker's not on because
you're changing lanes. You're blinker's on because you're a moron!
-
I know it's tough, but do you think you
could find the freaking gas pedal?
-
Pick a lane! (For those gregarious
drivers who weave randomly back and forth, or think that broken white line
was intended to be stradled.)
-
Excuse me sir, but were you aware that
this is the fast lane?
-
Somebody's got to be in the fast lane,
so if that's not you could you please get out of the way?
-
Drive the car! (Typically used
as a component in larger phrases, such as "Would it be too much to ask
you to put down the freaking cell phone and drive the car?"
Or, "You too can play the handsome home edition of our game, drive the
car!")
-
Nice car. But could you please drive
it?
-
All that money and you couldn't afford
driving
lessons?
-
What is your malfunction? (Primarily
directed at people who, for reasons unknown, honk at me.)
-
You're an idiot. You're a freaking idiot.
You're an idiot in New York. (Sung to the tune of Illegal Alien
by Phil Collins.)
No doubt if physical prowess were my strong suite, my metaphors would be
more oriented towards deprecation of my fellow driver's musculature. We
all work with what we have.
So, gentle readers, what do you say to the other drivers?
Yo. Those of you who (a) have computers but (b) live so far out
in the boonies that you can't get DSL or cable modem access might want
to check out StarBand, a sattelite
network access service. It looks a bit pricey,
but it might work for you.
Plurp.
Your name of Blue
has made you systematic and practical in all you do. You have great patience
with work of a detailed nature, such as bookkeeping or accounting. This
name limits imagination, flexibility, responsiveness, and spontaneity in
your nature. It also limits your sense of humour. Weaknesses in the health
could affect the intestinal tract with constipation and related difficulties.
Wednesday, March 28, 2001
Blab. A reader transcribes:
Phleeeeeeew, thump. Phleeeeeeew,
thump. Phleeeeeeew, thump.
hahahahahahahahaha!
Yes, that's exactly right, with the woozy elephant
doing that first line and me doing the second. Hard to get much work done
under those circumstances.
Blab. Reacting, and we do mean reacting, to our
musings about Ms. Spears, a reader writes:
-- Sure, Spears is an attractive
woman --
WOMAN???? That "woman" hardly qualifies
for the priviledged title! I don't think she is even 19! Call
her what she is -- a GIRL.
-- Personally, I've always preferred
my sex objects more on the sultry side. --
Hmmmmmm.......really? Describe
your ideal.
Spears, as it turns out, was born on December 2, 1981, making her 19. In
our recollection of 19, that definitely makes her a woman. (And
yes, that was about five months before we got our Ph.D., and yes, we are
feeling very, very old about now. But you didn't have to bring that up,
now, did you?)
As to the description part, five foot nine. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Funny.
Witty. Tolerant of our many foibles. Plots weeks of Caribbean delight and
weekends of delirious sluttony.
Loves
it when ... well, you'll just have to imagine.
But thanks for asking.
Blab. A reader concerned about our remarks about Bob Dole and
his "dog" writes:
Does
that seem in incredibly bad taste to anyone but me?
Does anyone care what you think?
It's all about 20 year old boys. You?? YOU could be her father.
Or worse..........
We like to think of ourselves as worse. And no, in our experience,
no one cares what we think. Not ever.
Blab. A reader with a background in Zen Buddhism writes:
At this,
the monk was Enlightened.
This sounds remarkably like a marriage
proposal.........
The reader, perhaps privy to inside information, refers to a card I made
and gave to Helen some years ago. On the front of the card was written
a koan that I thought I had read somewhere, but probably just emerged from
my subconscious.
A monk searched all his life
to find his Buddha-nature.
One day he rested
beneath an old tree in a field.
A plum, sweet and ripe, fell to the
ground
and he was Enlightened.
The inside was blank. Helen opened it, looked up at me quizzically and
I said, Will you marry me?
Blab. A reader uses the facilities of Plurp to vent life's
many frustrations.
Bloody British dial tones!
Bloody American Thinkpads. Ugh.
Our culture is awash in blood, is it not? Granite Hills, Santana, Palestine,
Burger King, Hannibal, right here, right now, right here, right now. And
all the fault of the Information Culture - you know, bits for zits, blits
for ditz, bloods for suds, that kind of thing. How are we to cope?
We, the Deformation Generation, spiraling downward, aspirating our aspirations,
choking on what's left of the dots and the coms, the Yangs and the Kohms,
aping the voice of Roddy McDowell as the federal surgeons slit our throats.
That is, dear reader, we regret the turbulence of your experience and
wish, so very fervently, that there was a way for you to donate the remaining,
meaningless years of your life to us.
Blab. A very persistent reader writes:
Your devoted "chopper" here:
David Chess's blab box works fine with JavaScript turned off. And
surely turning JavaScript on is an invitation to having, at the very least,
my browser crash more often, and at worst, all sorts of security exploits
made against me by nasty people?
OK. Everybody who doesn't want to hear gory HTML stuff put your hands over
your eyes and go La-La-La-La-La.
After you submit something to Dave's
reader input box, his CGI script spits some simple HTML back at your browser
that displays the simple Lovers Embracing By a Fountain page. I
wanted to display a page that (a) looked like it belonged to my site, and
hence was considerably more complicated than Dave's Tx page; and
(b) that I could edit, if need be, without touching the CGI script on the
server.
Fortunately, Ian
had set up very much the same thing on his blog at about that same time.
Instead of spitting HTML for the whole page back at you, it simply redirects
you to a response page. So I stole it from him. You can edit the response
page without touching the script, and I have.
Unfortunately, it seems to require Javascript. I, too, used to have
Javascript turned off out of fear that Bad Things would get run on my machine
by Some Evil Web Author out there. But I quickly discovered that Javascript
(and, these days, Java and - god save us - Flash) are required by lots
and lots of Web sites. So I gave up and turned them all back on.
So call it vanity or sloth on my part, but that's the way it works.
Sorry about that!
This is a long-winded way of recommending acquiescence to the unstoppable
tide of wacky Web code that gets pushed on you for vital purposes such
as animating bad art or acknowledging Blabbery. Except for ActiveX;
that's way too dangerous.
All you La-La-ers can stop now.
Blab. A reader reads our small mind, with unfortunate consequences.
Hi Captain Plurp,
So in my dream last night, you and
I are at Disneyland. We've gone through lots of fun shops and I'm
ready to go on a cool ride. Thinking something like Space Mountain.
In the top right corner of my dream screen, you access a pull down menu
with your favorite Disney rides, in descending order. And there at
the very top is your choice: "Puke"! Great name for a ride,
huh?
- Your Midwest Correspondent
Dang! That DreamScreen thing is on the blink again. It's supposed to say
Plurp.
Can somebody get that fixed? Geez.
Blab. It seems that our meme-mixing reader has resorted to a
meme Osterizer.
I specifically ask for shoes
that don't deliver! A monk told Joshu "the corkscrew"! The
blue Bob Dole!!!!
Bob Dole's blue suede corkscrew doesn't deliver either, we hear.
Yak. I follow a co-worker into the elevator. He pushes the button
for the third floor.
Him (finger poised
over buttons): Where are you going?
Me: The third floor is fine.
Him: Oh? That's quite a coincidence.
Me: Not really. Twice a day
I like to get on the elevator and go to whatever floor the other people
are going.
Him: Uh, why do you do that?
Me: I found that my life was
too regular and predictable. I wanted to inject a little randomness into
it.
Him: You're kidding, right?
Me: No ...
Yo. It's amazing what's on the Web. F'rinstance, did you know
there are 85 ways to tie a necktie? They
proved it, they did. (Follow
Me Here)
Yo. Also on the Web, voicemail
messages left by some random guy's random ex-girlfriend, whom he describes
as his "psycho-ex", apparently with good reason. Caution: This is strong
stuff. And scary! I mean really, really frightening! Even
if this were a work of fiction it would be amazing. Here it is a day after
I listened to the whole thing and I'm still agog. (geegaw)
Yow. Kung-Fu
kitties! Widely blogged. Wildly funny. Also reminds me of an Indiana
Jones movie; you'll see the connection. (sapphire
blue)
Plurp. It's hard to know what to make of CheneyHeartWatch.com.
(Dave)
Plurp. It's also hard to know what to make of The
Washington Post these days.
It makes sense that the single
greatest menace to humankind would eventually be the cow, that heretofore
docile symbol of motherhood’s creamy goodness, of bucolic kitsch and prime
cuts. In other words, pure evil.
Does it?
Plurp. Found while digging through my wallet: a ticket stub from
the movie Bounce, on the back of which is written this list in my
own handwriting.
Spring
Fork
Spoon
Bowl
The list is suggestive, strangely familiar, even. Obviously something I
wanted to remember. It might have had something to do with the seasons.
In any case, I would appreciate it if Plurp readers could tell me
what it means.
Plop. In further wallet archaeology, we encounter a receipt from:
NYU SHCOOL OF MEDICINE
Guess we're not going back there.
Plurp.
The blue dog wrote
exclusively in Objective
Perl so that his concerns
would separate themselves.
Tuesday, March 27, 2001
Blab. With sage advice on our shoe
woes, a reader writes:
Shoes: I specifically ask
for black shoes that don't look like astronaut shoes, and walk out if they
don't deliver.
You know, I bought a great pair of shoes on Saturday. Leather, but neither
too fancy nor too casual. Solid black. Plausible.
Then I got them home and discovered that they mar our pristine light
maple floors. And, much to Helen's dismay, I took them back.
So I need to waltz into the shoe stores and say, Black shoes that
don't look like astronaut shoes, are comfortable in ways that I can't express
and don't mar floors that you've never seen. Have you ever seen a more
puzzled shoe salesperson?
Blab. A reader whose puzzling browser configuration
is, well, puzzling suggests:
You need to change the FAQ
question to: "One of your Web pages completely corrupts the nature of my
browsing universe. When are you going to fix it?" then.
An excellent suggestion. Done!
Q: I'm using an ancient Web browser
on Linux with a few special hacks of my own. One of your Web pages does
something strange when I click on it. When you are you going to fix it?
A: Let's see. We have an opening when
pigs fly and another when
hell freezes over. Which is better for you?
(By the way, Ian,
from whom I stole the HTML that does the Blab box redirection, says,
Just
turn JavaScript back on, you chopper. We'll take that as the definitive
answer.)
Blab. In the same vein, a reader writes:
When I click on "gratuitous"
on your page about Kenu Reve, I get a popup asking me to accept a "Spanish
Inquisition" from "the Grand Duchy of Smolensk". What's up with that?
In the built-in Web browser that came
with my sunglasses, all your images are full of reverse-video stoats!
Some of the pixels on your site are
purple.
I don't see how anyone who published
his own "weblog" can sincerely say he thinks that "the times" they are
"a changing". I demand a public apology.
See above. (What's a stoat?)
Plurp. There's a guy in a nearby office at work doing some kind
of refurbishing, installing new shelves or something, drilling holes in
the wall with an electric drill.
But it doesn't sound like that. It sounds for all the world like an
elephant blowing its nose - a wheezy, wet, squeaking sound - followed by
a loud thump, as if the elephant then lost its balance and fell
into the wall. Wait five seconds. Repeat indefinitely.
And now that I've got this image in my head of a congested, woozy elephant
staggering around in the next aisle, I can't stop giggling.
Phleeeeeeew, thump. Phleeeeeeew, thump. Phleeeeeeew, thump.
Plop. On the Academy Awards last Sunday, there was a new Pepsi
commercial featuring Britney Spears. All well and good. But there was this
incredible build-up, teasers running all week, as if it was the biggest
thing since, oh, say, Star Wars. Can someone explain this to me?
Sure, Spears is an attractive woman and has a nice body, probably the
best money could buy. She's sexy, even, if you go for that freshly scrubbed
girl-next-door look. Personally, I've always preferred my sex objects more
on the sultry side. Too innocent and it seems closer to incest. Maybe that's
why her handlers are trying so desperately to rid her of that earlier,
innocent image.
The navel piercing is a nice touch in that respect. Not that I like
piercings per se, which I do not, but it always seems like an indication
of a wild side that might have hidden facets. If she's willing to pierce
her navel, I'll think,
what else might she be willing to do?
How odd that self-mutilation should have a lascivious side. I do not think,
If
she's willing to smash her face into a brick wall repeatedly, what else
might she be willing to do? Or, If she's willing to pull her toenails
out with a pair of pliers, what else might she be willing to do? Only
certain kinds of self-mutilation seem to make that connection. Why is that?
But in any event, she is not an especially great singer,  nor
a particularly talented dancer. And I'm not aware that she writes her own
songs or does her own choreography, so what does that leave?
Is it an entirely manufactured popularity, devoid of any inherent talent,
like the Monkees were in my ancient youth? Or is it something else,
something I'm missing entirely?
Maybe it would help if her eyes were blue.
Plop. And another thing! (Hmm. I seem to be in old geezer
cliché mode today.) In that Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears,
there's a brief scene with Bob Dole (the poster child of erectile dysfunction)
watching Spears with a crooked little smile on his face, and saying to
his dog (his "dog"), Down boy.
Does that seem in incredibly bad taste to anyone but me?
Yak. Some introducer-person on the Academy Awards.
Whoever said You can't
make a silk purse out of a sow's ear should have turned it over to
the makeup department.
We can only hope the irony was intended.
Yow. Mr.
T vs. Britney Spears. Pity the fool. Did you know that Spears thinks
her toes look funny?
Did you care? If so, please worry about yourself.
Plurp. Would I (finally) be hip if I changed my name to S
Whi? I didn't think so.
Plurp. Helen asked me to remind her to take the cold-pack when
we go on vacation, so I emailed her this:
A monk told Joshu, "I have
just entered the monastery. Please teach me."
Joshu asked, "Have you chilled the
wine?"
The monk replied, "Yes Master, I have."
Joshu said, "Then you had better bring
the corkscrew."
At this, the monk was Enlightened.
Yow. Back on Jan. 25, Helen was on the Today Show on NBC. It
was Robbie Burns' birthday, and
Helen decided to celebrate. She walked down to Rockerfeller Center (I love
saying that) with a big sign that read:
Happy 242nd
Birthday
Robbie!!
She staked out a place behind some very loud woman and, sure enough,
that worked! Katie and Matt came over the talk to Loud Woman, and there
was Helen, sign and all, mugging for the camera.
A friend of hers taped it that day. We just got the tape, and spent
a joyous half hour watching Helen's fifteen seconds of fame over and over
and over again. It's really cool!
Plop. Conspiracy theorists have gone completely mainstream, as
evidenced by this
looney piece in Forbes which claims that Bill Gates engineered the
dot-com collapse.
Gates and Ballmer decided
enough was enough--it's time to go to war against these troublesome dot-coms.
But rather than launching a direct attack--a political and public relations
nonstarter since the DOJ was breathing down its neck--the company stealthily
set out to wreck competitors' currency.
Whew! Didn't these guys ever take an economics class? Guess not.
Plurp.
The blue dog once
lived with
Bob Dole.
Monday, March 26, 2001
Blab. A reader expresses a certain degree of exasperation.
And another thing: why is
that after typing into this thing, despite the advice to the contrary,
the Back button *doesn't* work? I'm using an ancient Netscape (4.7x)
on Linux with Javascript turned off and foolishly thought that this guaranteed
me against such nastinesses.
From our FAQ:
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 feel your pain, dear reader. It's just policy.
Blab. A reader announces a marvelous new technological breakthrough.
Using new technology, the
world's smallest Blab in enclosed between the following brackets:
[.]
Use a magnifying glass to read.
Enjoy.
We're sure that those of our readers with very small thoughts will find
this useful.
Blab. On the topic of obsessive
compulsive eating disorders, a reader writes:
I used to do roughly that
same M&Ms thing myself (ah, memories of pre-parenthood days when time
was available for such obsessions!). I'd line them up in lines of each
color, and then eat from (one of) the longest line(s).
Jelly Belly Jelly Beans?
Hmm. Anybody out there have a set of obsessive compulsive behaviors involving
Jelly Bellies? Seems harder - there are so many different kinds!
Blab. A reader who, beyond all rational explanation, trusts us
with the important decisions in his or her life asks:
Should I buy a Palm
m505?
Yes. Then you should give it to us as a consulting fee for answering your
question. Thank you.
 Yo.
I just have one question about the Academy Awards last night: Who was that
woman wearing the swan and what, exactly, was she doing to it?
Or maybe that's two questions.
Oh - and someone claimed this was Bjork. That is incorrect. Bjork is
the Swedish Chef from the Muppets.
Don't get them confused.
Plop. The gods are fickle. We performed the many disturbing Solstice
Rituals with great care this year, and noted with modest pleasure the lengthening
of the days, the proclamation of Spring and the fact that, one day last
week, it was almost, almost warm enough to put the top down.
Now this. Huge snowflake clusters the size of sliced cow eyes. Slush
everywhere. And several inches of accumulation predicted up around the
lab.
It's not fair, I tell you! Prolly all Ian's
fault, that no-good snow lover.
Yow. The Invisible
Library.
The Invisible Library is
a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library
walls you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled
tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished,
and unfound.
Very cool (if painfully slow)! (lemonyellow)
Plurp.
The blue dog was
once accused of
being an icon
in swan's clothing.
Sunday, March 25, 2001
Blab. An overly curious but nonetheless polite reader
writes:
So tell us, our Godlike Masterfulness
Sir
And then, perhaps feeling a bit less possessive ...
So tell us, Your Godlike
Masterfulness Sir, exactly how did you become a Manager?
I slit the throat of my predecessor while he slept. Why do you ask?
Yow. Oh good lord. Yet another weekend of sluttony,
interrupted only by an Academy Awards party tonight. Will this madness
never end? (We sure hope not!)
Yak. Helen and the person behind the counter at the dry cleaners.
What a lovely necklace. Where
did you get it?
Actually, it was a gift from my sister
in Katmandu.
Really? I'm from Katmandu!
You are? My sister went there to manage
Dwarika's
Hotel. She used to live in Indonesia before the economy fell apart.
I know Dwarika's! In fact, I'm going
back there in a couple of weeks. It's a twenty-four hour flight on Singapore
Air, and the first time I've been back in five years.
Let me give you my sister's name and
number, in case you want to look her up.
It was very New York. I just love this place.
Plurp.
The blue dog always
wanted to be addressed
as Your Godlike Masterfulness
Sir.
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