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2001.04.01 : 2001.04.07
Saturday, April 7, 2001
Blab. Once again the stars are in alignment: it's Mispelling
Day. And this time, we have a grammatical contribution, though it's not
clear if it's an intended correction or yet another mistake.
All Your All Bases
Yes, yes. It's time we set
this straight.
In A.D. 2101, war was beginning.
Captain: What happened?
Mechanic: Someone planted
a bomb on board.
Operator: We are getting a
signal.
Captain: What?
Operator: Turn on the main
screen.
Captain: It's you!!
Cats: How are you, gentlemen?
All your bases now belong to us. You are on your way to destruction.
Captain: What are you saying?!
Cats: You have no chance of
surviving. Your time is up. Ha ha ha ha ....
Captain: Launch all of the
fighter spacecraft! You know what to do. Launch the fighters. We will have
justice.
We can't have an entire generation growing up getting that wrong, now,
can we?
Blab. A reader of great creative resource contributes the first
new Broken Joke in a long time.
How do you stop a rhino from
charging?
Shoot it, ideally several times with
a large caliber weapon. Alternately, use a tranquilizer gun if keeping
the rhino alive is important.
And a good one at that! Duly recorded.
Blab. A reader suggests:
The red dog thought he had
had contritiousness just recently.
You bet!
 Plop.
Those astonishingly clever people at Microsoft have figured out an astonishingly
clever cure to the plague of fast spreading computer viruses that they
enabled with their astonishingly clever email software and scripting software
and etc. etc., designing it as they did with no sensible security whatsoever.
And what is that astonishingly clever cure? By default, the next version
of Microsoft Outlook (their email program) will strip
off attachments with any of more than thirty file types, including
executable files, Java and Visual Basic scripting files, photo CD images.
You don't like that idea? You'd rather get some of those files anyway?
No problem. All you have to do is edit your Windows Registry in ways yet
unspecified by Microsoft. And everybody knows how to do that, right?
Yak.
Helen: Slap the pony.
Steve: What?
Helen: Slap the pony. Isn't
that the expression?
Steve: Spank the monkey.
Helen: Oh. Yeah. Thanks.
Yo. Those of you interested in Tolkien may also be interested
to know there's a new movie, or rather, a trilogy of movies, of The Lord
of the Rings. The first one
is being released this December.
 Plurp.
The blue dog once
stopped a rhino
from charging.
Friday, April 6, 2001
Blab. Plurp's very own Meme Cuisinart churns
out this:
The gray dog took on every
noseless dog from the primitive mud huts.
Richard Ford is in alignment. Do you have your aluminum foil? Iä!
 Plurp.
OK. It was fun for a while to watch to diplomatic gyrations between the
U.S. and China. We were amused by these two governments repeatedly painting
themselves into corners and then blaming the paint.
But it's gotten old. So we've asked these two august bodies to knock
it off, as follows.
-
China will declare that it "Accepts the contrition of the United States
over the incident in the South China Sea".
-
The U.S. will not issue a formal apology but, when questioned, will not
deny China's apparent interpretation that it has. Rather, it will say "We
stand on our public record and we just want to move on."
-
The U.S. surveillance crew will be returned to the U.S. but their plane
will be kept in China for several weeks where it will be meticulously disassembled
and examined by learned Chinese technicians. At the end of that time it
will be returned to the U.S.
-
No sanctions will be issued against China, and China will retain "favored
nation" status.
And we've told these folks to get it done by this time next week. They've
had their fifteen.
Plurp.
The blue dog thought
they had had their
fifteen a
long, long time go.
Thursday, April 5, 2001
Blab. Out of the briny blue, a reader gasps:
Subj: The real origin of
the broken joke...
Extract from
http://www.stevewhite.org/stuff/BrokenJokes.html
"My dog has no nose."
"Your dog has no nose?"
"Nope, no nose."
"How does he smell?"
"He can't; he has no nose!"
- Richard Ford
If you are in touch with Richard,
you may like to tell him from me that I'm pretty sure I first heard that
at BRJ - probably from Andrew MacGarvey. He'll know what you are talking
about.
:o)
Regards,
Stephen
Hmm. Quite a mystery, as Google is completely uninformative about any Andrew
MacGarvey at all, and equally about whatever BRJ might be. We might actually
have to ask Richard.
How embarrassing.
Blab. A reader who has been, for many years, raising cubical
cats, writes:
If you haven't read the reader
feedback at the bonsai kitten site, it's howlingly
funny.
"Howlingly." Get it?
Blab. A reader with Vernal celebration rites even more curious
than our own writes:
This morning I removed the
aluminum foil cover from the kitchen exhaust fan -- Spring has arrived!
That's MY "taking the car top down" celebration of the season!
We imagine a throng of swarthy people, streaming out of primitive mud huts,
their hair matted, waving squares of aluminum foil in their gritty fists
as they dance around the fire pit in apparent glee.
Thank you for sharing.
Blab. Typing into the Blab box in this
old issue of Plurp, a reader writes:
Cat's Game
Referring to what, exactly? The cat playing with the wrapping paper? The
game of naming the cat? We just don't know.
Blab. A reader refers to an unknown reference and asks an unprompted
question.
I don't care what you will
be doing in fifteen years ---- what will you be doing in fifteen days??
Truth be known, we care a lot what we'll be doing in fifteen years.
But we don't expect our life to actually be important to our readers.
Whatever.
In fifteen days, we predict that we will be learning about recent neurophysiologically-based
models of brain organization and consciousness. Why do you ask?
Blab. An old Ghostbuster's fan writes:
All the monkeys aren't in
the zoo
Ev'ry day you meet thirty-two
Something else could happen to you
Unless you'd rather be a Zool.
To which we can only add:
Would you like to fall into
tar
Carry loons home in an old car
And be better near than far
Or would you rather dance a jig?
Blab. That incessant meme Osterizer splatters us with this:
The green dog once practiced
conspiracy plainsong.
La-la-la-la-la-la-la.
Blab. And again ...
Take off every unspeakable
horror from the abyss! You know what you are devouring!
To which we believe the correct response is:
Move unspeakable horror from
the abyss! For great insanity!
... but we're not really sure.
Blab. On the topic of advertising targeted
at the Elder Gods, a reader suggests:
We put the "a" in "arrrrrggggghhhh!"
Good one! That puts us in mind of yet Others.
R'lyeh - Divers wanted.
Cthulhu - Bet he can't eat just one.
Azathoth - He's everywhere you want
to be.
The Old Ones - New World Orders don't
upset us.
We don't make the things that call
the Elder Gods. We make the things that call the Elder Gods better.
Yow. The reason for the two previous reader contributions become
apparent. Devoted servants of Cthulhu, tremble! The stars have aligned
and the Great Chaos emerges again.
Scientists are monitoring
what they say appears to be an underwater
eruption in the Pacific Ocean about 100 miles off the coast of Oregon
and California ... perhaps 2 miles down.
Iä! Iä!
Yo. A correspondent points us to a site via which you can help
cure
cancer at home. A reasonably cool idea, though somewhat self-serving
for Intel, who's pushing the idea as part of its P2P (peer-to-peer computing)
program to help build demand for - guess what - PC chips.
Yo. Wanna buy a used Cisco router from some painfully dismembered
dot-gone? There are lots of them for
sale on eBay. Or how about a nice Sun server fresh from a bankruptcy
sale? eBay
again. Heck, you can even use Pay Pal for some of them.
Maybe this explains the plummeting prices of Cisco
and Sun
stock. If your primary revenue generators show up in great number on eBay,
I guess you're in trouble, revenue-wise.
Yow. Another Plurp link! That makes - oh - three so far?
Wow. This time it's the very narrowly formatted bhask.
Fame at last!
Plop. All Your Base Are Belong to TIME.
Dudes! It's the old media! It is so over!
Plurp.
The blue dog took
off every unspeakable
horror from the zoo.
Wednesday, April 4, 2001
Blab. Possibly on the subject of San Diego banning
the word minority, a reader writes:
Hyeh, now they'll just say
"those people that Federal Law requires us to be extra-nice to".
That'll at least be clearer!
It has gotten complicated, that much is clear. Around work, we refer to
"women and underrepresented minorities," because women are the majority
of the population in the U.S. and there are groups (e.g. Asians) who are
a minority of the population in the U.S. but who are a large fraction of
the population at work.
Even using the idea that you want to treat differently people like those
who have been treated poorly in the past, there's the odd case of a person
moving from one country to another. In India, there are similar Federal
programs to try to overcome the caste system. But an Untouchable, given
special status in India, does not get special status upon moving to the
U.S. I guess that makes sense, in a way. Still ...
In California, "non-Hispanic whites" are now
a minority. What happens in a future when formerly disadvantaged groups
are the great majority, and formerly advantaged groups are the distinct
minority?
Maybe we need a new word. How about "favored"?
Blab. That meme stirring reader attempts self-contradictory trump
with:
Don't stir the memes!
Blab. Looking for an evil, vile computer? So was one of our readers.
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1224111964
And he, she or it found such a thing on eBay.
This laptop is absolutely
guaranteed to be slower than your cousin Elmo or your money back.
We love the Web.
Plop. Dining suggestion: Now matter how tempting it may seem,
do not eat half a box of Wheat Thins just before bed. Bleh.
Yow. Now here's what I want for Christmas: Bonsai
Kitten! (Wicked)
At only a few weeks of age,
a kitten's bones have not yet hardened and become osseous ... [T]he flexibility
of the kitten's skeleton means that if the bones are gently warped at this
early age, they can be molded into any desired shape. At Bonsai Kitten,
we achieve this by placing the kitten into a rigid vessel soon after birth,
and allowing the young cat to grow out its formative time entirely within
this container. The kitten essentially grows into the shape of the vessel!
Once the cat is fully developed, it is removed (or the vessel broken to
remove it!), producing the lovable, furry pet you've always wanted, but
it remains in the shape you've always dreamed of!
Yow. Advertising
Slogans Targeted at the Lovecraftian Elder Gods. (Ian)
Campbell's Soup: M'm! M'm!
Aaagughguuggh!
Priceless! Readers are invited to submit even more entries in this
genre.
 Plop.
You have to stare, slack jawed, at Dubya's negotiating
prowess.
China better send our electronic
eavesdroppers home immediately or we'll ... uh ... uh ...
Amazing.
Yow. For those of you who were asking the other day, UDDI,
the new Internet business-to-business "yellow pages", is scheduled to go
live this month. For those of you who don't know what this is, don't
worry about it. High-tech e-commerce Internet mumblety mumblety.
Yak. Last night, as I passed by, a young woman stood on the sidewalk,
trying to be heard above rush hour traffic, shouting into her cell phone.
THIS IS A PRIVATE, INTIMATE
EVENING !
Not any more, I thought.
Plurp. Last night we listened to Scottish plainsong, sung a
capella by a young woman (or perhaps a very young man) in a minor key
(or maybe a key not known to Bach) entirely in Gaelic, a language very
different from our own. I thought of a time when this was song,
when this was music, and oral tradition, and culture, and the bonding
force of a people, outlined against a bleak, rainy countryside, the spine
of the world protruding between fields of peat, of large, low, misty bogs
separating one people from another, of stone circles meant to keep time
and eternity, of a civilization born before the stone age, stubbornly surviving
the Roman invasion, only to end with the genetic onslaught of the English.
And a part of my heart cried out.
Plurp.
Video: The Skulls
Demographic: People who like
badly written suspense movies and who pay no attention to plot details.
Plot Summary: Freshmen at
<unnamed Ivy League college> hear that various secret societies (like
frats, but more secret and less fun) are the Big Deal. A boy from the wrong
side of the tracks is recruited for The Skulls, rumored to be the most
powerful of them all, and of course he leaps at the chance, abandoning
his best friend and his girlfriend. Did I mention that The Skulls get free
money, free Ferraris and free women? It reminded me of Eddie Murphy's great
SNL bit where he dresses up as a white guy on a bus, only to discover a
hitherto unknown white culture in which rides are free and martinis are
passed out like water. Oh yes, and the Skulls are all white guys. The best
friend (a black guy) gets killed investigating The Skulls and the girlfriend
(a woman) is pursued murderously in the aftermath. The boy takes on The
Skulls, who turn out to Run Everything in the grand tradition of conspiracy
theories. Surprise: the boy wins. Or, again in the grand tradition, does
he?
Distinguishing Features: Requires
greater suspension of disbelief than most giant insect movies.
Academy Award For: Most Ridiculous
Conspiracy Theory. No one can tell who The Skulls are. Except, that is,
for the one inch skull branded into the skin of their outer wrists, covered
coyly only by an expensive watch. After 200 years in existence, and purloining
the emblem of a competing secret society each year, they still have one
left to get, implying that there are around 200 secret societies at <unnamed
Ivy League college>. Since they each induct around eight new white boys
a year, there must be (4 years)*(8 secret folks/year)*(200 years)=(6,400
secret folks) at any given time. That is, pretty much all of the
white boys enrolled in that college, or maybe more. And The Skulls, with
an average living membership of (8 people/year)*(54 years)=(432 people),
seem to control absolutely everything, from the college administration
to the local police to the U.S. Senate and Supreme Court. Makes the Trilateral
Commission look pretty ineffective by comparison, doesn't it?
Verdict: Best viewed in a
fevered delirium in which blatant errors are not noticed. In that state,
probably pretty good.
Yo. Music
played by elephants. Pretty cool, actually. (geegaw)
Plurp.
The blue dog once
practiced Bonsai
Cthulhu.
Tuesday, April 3, 2001
Blab. A reader of unknown poetic intent writes:
omp
omp omp
omp omp omp
omp
omp omp
omp omp omp
pmo pmo pmo
pmo pmo
pmo
omp
omp omp
omp omp omp
Or, alternately:
Mop,
Mop, mop.
Mop om Pop.
Blab. Once again, a reader indulges in the dangerous practice
of mixing the memes.
Lovers embracing blue flavor
crystals.
It is a lovely image, isn't it?
Blab. Ever desirous of doing our work for us, a quick-fingered
reader writes:
How does Dr. K. fit into
the world of Plurp and
And then:
 How
does Dr. K.
fit into the world of Captain
Plurp and Dr. Aberration?
Perhaps she's a double agent, conspiring with both and leaving us to wonder
where her true loyalties lie?! We want a storyline!
We, as you, only know such details as are revealed here in Plurp.
The various odd denizens that slip and slither through these pages have
lives that are entirely their own. Sometimes, educated speculation on the
part of our dear readers becomes part of their stories, though. So keep
it up!
Yow. Today was the first day of Spring.
It's not because we lost an hour last weekend, though we did. Nor is
it the return of the Canadian geese to the lab; they appeared last week
and did their usual great job of messing up the sidewalks and attacking
passers-by. It wasn't even the fact that most of the snow in the parking
lot at work has now melted.
 Nope.
It was that today, for the first time this year, driving back and forth
to the Yorktown lab, it was just barely warm enough to put the top down
on my Miata and feel the chilly April wind streaming through my hair. Really,
really fast.
Never mind that I had to have the heater on full blast the whole time.
That's allowed. In fact, it's encouraged, as it extends Top Down Days to
at least half the year.
What a wonderful time of year. What a wonderful car.
Yow. A new Helenism,
this time from none other than Judge Judy, one of those wacky TV judge
folks:
Pardon the pun on words
-
Pardon the pun
-
A play on words
Plop.
San Diego's City Council
unanimously banned
the word 'minority' from city documents and discussions, saying the
word is disparaging.
Fortunately, they didn't ban 'stupidity'.
Plurp.
The blue dog put
the top down today
and felt the chilly April wind
streaming through his
brain.
Monday, April 2, 2001
Blab. A reader provides us with an inverse link mystery.
Know you're Jane, jabroni!
Toe your pain, jabroni! Slow your Dane, jabronsen!
Actually, it seems to be Know your role, as uttered by someone named
Jabroni.
Very odd.
Blab. A reader wanders a bit too far into the dark jungle that
is the Web.
http://www.monkeyphonecall.com/
Yes, that's right. Monkey phone calls.
Monkeyphonecall.com offers
realistic monkey phone calls for people in the United States! For $10.00
we will call any normal phone line in the US and make a personalized monkey
phone call for you!
Isn't capitalism wonderful?
Blab. A fan of modern high culture writes:
Witchblade
on TNT! They are turning it into a series this summer... very
cool show. Try to catch the two-hour movie when they re-run it soon...
Beautiful women with knives. What could be better? We thank our foresightful
reader, and we will be on the lookout for this.
Blab. Speaking of which, check out the activity of the Knife
Therapy Association.
New
Massage Technique in Taiwan
George Pan grabs a heavy meat cleaver
from the rack, sharpens it on a wet stone block and rubs iodine over the
blade while an ailing patient waits to begin his unique therapy.
Pan taps the patient's body with the
sharp - not flat - side of a 10-inch blade, saying his "knife massage"
releases the body's stored energy, increases blood flow and washes away
harmful toxins. "You have a headache? Here, let me hit your head."
Wasn't this also practiced during the French Revolution?
Blab. A reader points us to that incredible resource site, Scoop
on Poop.
http://www.heptune.com/poop.html
Dr. K says:
This
is one of the best sites on the Web for budding poopologists. Here, you
can find non-technical answers to all of your questions. There's even a
collection of poop poetry.
As always, the Web is the source of all knowledge.
Blab. A reader who might even be telling the truth writes:
I'm Steve White, and I came
across your page because you are Steve White also.
We Steve White's need to stick together.
I'll run and get the glue.
Regards,
Steve White.
Curiously, we received at work yesterday a missing from a woman search
for a Steve White who, in the mid-1980s, had saved several people from
a lightning strike on Half Dome. While we longed for such an exciting life,
it was some other Steve White. She was writing to us because that Steve
White worked for IBM was back then and, we assume, she found us the Web
as working for IBM.
Another Steve White who works for IBM, also contacted by her, beat me
to the punch. He wrote to all of the other Steve Whites who currently work
for IBM and, amazingly, turned up that Half Dome Steve.
We wonder if the above reader was somehow connected with this search.
Plurp.
Video: The Watcher
Demographic: Guy movie.
Plot Summary: Keanu Reeves
in canonical black clothing, this time as a serial killer, enters from
the left and, rather than exiting to the right, explodes. Requisite number
of car chases, car crashes, cops in mysterious black helicopters and fruitlessly
expended munitions.
Distinguishing Features: Mira
Sorvino as canonical Damsel in Distress.
Academy Award For: Best Use
of Duct Tape in a Serial Killing.
Verdict: Snore.
Plurp. Our apologies for the lack of original content on Plurp
today. Some mysterious Biological Event occurred yesterday or this morning:
headache, no appetite, knocked flat on our back all day long, unable to
do much beside sleep. Weird.
We are grateful for the many clever contributions of our readers. We
have always depended on the kindness of strangers. And there are none stranger
than our readers.
Plurp.
Bluedogphonecall.com offers
realistic blue
dog phone calls for people in the
United
States!
Sunday, April 1, 2001
Blab. A reader refers to an unknown event.
Trolling in your own weblog.
For shame!
Ah! You must mean the interview with
Dr.
Poopsalata Kittifecus. We assure you that our relationship is purely
professional. Meow.
Blab. A reader from the demographic of WWF and Keanu Reaves fans
writes:
I'm not one often given to
road rage, but I take a cue from professional wrestling's "The Rock" when
someone starts lazily drifting into my lane, and admonish them with a "Know
your lane, jabroni!"
I also can't resist contributing a
gem from my brother, heard once behind a slow-moving car: "Good thing we're
not on a bus that'll blow up if it drops under 50 miles per hour!"
It's a good thing our reader is not given to road rage. But personally,
we're staying off buses for a while.
Plurp. We pulled a Yogi both
yesterday and today. Practicing for our upcoming vacation, that's our excuse.
Plurp.
Play: Fully
Committed
Demographic: New Yorkers,
struggling actors, those involved in the restaurant business.
Plot Summary: The reservations
desk in a four-star Upper East Side restaurant is in the basement, staffed
by a struggling actor, is both frantic and hilarious. The European Maitre
d' is flighty and self-absorbed. The Arabic porter is shy and kind. The
Puerto Rican cook is brusk and in-your-face. The chef is vain, overbearing,
demanding, irrational and insecure. And the guests, oh lord the guests,
calling in for reservations are pushy, way too full of themselves, clueless
and rude beyond belief.
Distinguishing Features: It's
a one-man show. Whew!
Tony For: Most frenetic performance
by a single person.
Verdict: Very, very funny.
A very, very difficult performance, carried off brilliantly. Recommended.
Plurp.
Video: Meet the Parents
Demographic: Lovers of mindless
slapstick.
Plot Summary: Buying the clue
that meeting the parents is a good idea before marriage, clutzy loser Stiller
meets CIA agent DeNiro. Everything goes all too predicatably wrong. Even
the dullest of you can yell out the plot "twists" ahead of time.
Distinguishing Features: Humor
involving broken funereal urns and overflowing septic tanks.
Academy Award For: Most astonishing
misuse of talents like DeNiro and Danner.
Verdict: An overflowing septic
tank. A few funny moments, but not recommended.
Plurp.
Video: Almost Famous
Demographic: Everyone who
wished they had been involved in Rock Culture, or dreamed of being involved
in Rock Culture, or just wanted to have tons of hot chicks ...
Plot Summary: Under-aged rock
journalist in the early 1970s gets hooked up with a minor bus-traveling
rock band and retinue. Drugs, women, music, adoring fans, happy endings.
It's the life, ya know?
Distinguishing Features: Line:
Please
don't feed him any more acid. Thank you. Plus lots of great period
music.
Academy Award For: Best Male
Pubescent Fantasy.
Verdict: Mildy recommended,
for what it is.
Plurp.
The blue dog spent
the entire
weekend watching
passive media.
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