Plurp: Not for human consumption

Bigger!

2001.05.27 : 2001.06.02

Saturday, June 2, 2001
Blab. In response to our attempt yesterday to have computers tell us what movies to see, a reader writes:
Plurp Dude -
"We've never heard of Welcome to Woop-Woop but we are willing to stipulate to its inferiority without seeing it."
Now you knew you were going to get a response to a statement like that, didn't you? Rent this flick immediately as it is a major hoot (as they say). From the same director as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, it has the same wildly offbeat Australian take on life. A young stud is kidnapped and taken to the Outback town of Woop-Woop as husband material for one of the mayor's daughters. Rod Taylor, God bless him, is back playing the mayor who has a tendency to tap dance on top of the bar while his boots are attached to a set of jumper cables (that are, in turn, attached to a live battery). There's the flatulent wife, an assortment of local color, and the fact that the town lives for it's nightly showings of Hollywood musicals (The Sound of Music is heavily featured). You must stay through until the final credits so you can hear the (1) truly uplifting disco version of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain", and (2) like Priscilla, there's a final little joke at the very, very end. This feature may best be viewed under the influence of a controlled substance -- but hey, isn't that true of life in general?
OK, I'm done! Have a great day!
We shall rush right out and rent it.

Blab. A reader with much more patience than us, and hence much more experience, writes:
I find MovieCritic and MovieCentral (does basically the same thing as MovieCritic) to be reasonably accurate, now that I've rated a few hundred movies with each. The problem with both is, they seem to both have been hit by the dot-com crunch--neither of them has very recent movies in their databases. MovieCritic apparently stopped adding new movies almost a year ago, while MovieCentral seems to have quit just in the past few months. Pity, it's a great idea. If only IMDb would do something like that.
Ah - the Internet bubble has burst, splattering its soapy remnants all over the face of moviedom. No more can we spend carefree days telling some dot-commies which dirty little movies we secretly enjoyed, or which art films we never did understand. No more can we neglect friends and family in favor of adding to a database that will later be used to market home electronics and kitchen utensils to us. No more can we revel in the Grand Experiment of collaborative filtering as a business innovation.
It's a sad time.

Blab. You might think a reader is giving us more stuff to do:
Spit on a stranger
But no! It's a weblog. One that looks perfectly awful in Netscape 4.7 but OK in Internet Exposer. But why do we, the retinue of the evil Doctor Aberration, care? Dunno. Perhaps our readers will enlighten us.

Blab. A puzzling process emits this:
sp1nk
Um, yeah, well, sure. As with virtually any five-character string, "sp1nk" does appear on the Web. And it seems to be associated with a blog or two. But ... ?

Blab. A helpful robot reader notices this:
There appears to be a problem on this page of your site.
On your page http://www.stevewhite.org/stuff/AlienFoodSymbols.html
when you click on your link to
http://homes.acmecity.com/animation/copy/26/aliensof.htm
you get the error: Domain name lookup failed (may be a transient error)
As recommended by the Robot Guidelines, this email is to explain our robot's activities and to let you know about one of the broken links we encountered. LinkWalker does not store or publish the content of your pages, but rather uses the link information to update our map of the World Wide Web.
Ah. What undoubtedly occurred here is that our dear friends at homes.acmecity.com were kidnapped by space aliens. That does happen. Pity. We have removed the link, as an expression of our deep sorrow.
Anyway, what a nice robot!

Blab. A reader, ever desirous of helping us, writes:
Big honking Ferris (Ferrous?) Wheel in London.
Yes, it is.

Blab. A female reader with unusual tastes writes:
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (May 30) - A sex-crazed male monkey has caused an uproar in a central Sri Lankan town, stalking and attacking girls in public and flirting outrageously with cats and dogs, a newspaper said on Wednesday.
The monkey has roused the anger of residents of Kundasale by following young women around the town, jumping on them without warning and clinging tenaciously until it was chased away with sticks and stones, the Daily News reported.
Apparently having little success with human females, the primate also makes advances on other animals to which it has ''a very strong affinity (particularly) cats and dogs of the opposite sex,'' the newspaper said, adding the creature fed its libido by stealing chocolates from local shops.
The monkey business has outraged the town in Sri Lanka's conservative rural heartland where public displays of affection are frowned upon even between humans of the opposite sex.
Now it's possible that this is an actual news story, of course, but we feel compelled to feed the libido of our more salacious readers nonetheless.

Yo. I am 55% optimistic (vs. pessimistic) according to this test. I hoped it would be higher, but something always seems to goes wrong.
How about you?

Yow. Witchblade, The Movie. On TNT again this coming Tuesday, June 5.
Now tell me why I don't find Yancy Butler attractive. She has long brown hair and blue eyes, a combination which traditionally makes me melt before I even realize what's going on.
Something about her mouth, maybe? Or her eyebrows? It always amazes me how subtle these things are.

Yo. Seen on the take-out menu of a local Chinese restaurant:
The meatiners of the lobster may vary depending upon the season.
Readers are invited to send us their interpretations. 'Cause we're stumped.

Plurp.
The blue dog
...
whatever

Friday, June 1, 2001
Blab. A reader, ever desirous of giving us things to do, writes:
You should check out www.moviecritic.com. After you rate a significant number of movies, it will correlate your preferences to others in its database to give you your likely rating for movies you haven't rated yet.
Always a soft touch for our readers, we clicked on over to MovieCritic and told them what we thought of a few dozen movies. MovieCritic, in its cybernetic wisdom, then suggested that we would really love the following.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

All About My Mother

Beefcake

American Psycho

Almost Famous (2000)

The Broken Hearts Club

My Dog Skip

Final Destination

Unbreakable

The Source (1999)

Mansfield Park (1999)

The Hurricane (1999)

We haven't seen most of these but, in the majority of cases, that was on purpose - they looked bad. We did see Unbreakable and liked it a lot.
But it also claimed we would absolutely hate the following:

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Rollerball (1975)

Baron Munchhausen (1943)

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

Pet Sematary Two

Carpool

Village of the Damned (1995)

My Father, the Hero

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Thin Red Line (1998)

House

Sleeper (1973)

The Milagro Beanfield War

S.F.W.

Split Second (1992)

The Inkwell

Jury Duty

Welcome to Woop-Woop

Mr. Destiny

Pure Country

Now it's a good bet that any sequel is going to be bad, so Superman IV was a safe choice for a lousy movie (though of course we saw it). Similarly, any Woody Allen movie is clearly on the avoid at all costs list, so Sleeper's presence is also safe. We've never heard of Welcome to Woop-Woop but we are willing to stipulate to its inferiority without seeing it.
But The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? That's a classic! Rollerball? One of our historic favs. And Something Wicked This Way Comes is from the classic Ray Bradbury story and is quite nice.
So ... hmm.

Blab. On the verge of aphorism, a reader writes:
The thighs you know end up...   uh-oh.
... growing?

Blab. Worried about the rubber duck discussion yesterday, a reader frets:
Hmmm...   I suspect Haakon Stilleben invented only the Norvegian rubber duck. But hey...
It is well known that the rubber duck originated in Norway.

Blab. Another reader writes:
Hmmm...   I suspect Haakon Stilleben invented only the Norvegian rubber duck. But hey...
This leads us to suspect that the orbital mind-control lasers need focusing again. Could someone get right on that?

Blab. Speaking of white rappers, which we haven't yet, but we will get around to doing, a reader holds forth thusly.
Rubber ducky, you're the bun
We never have six kinds of fun
..
Rubber ducky I'm awfully fond,
Rubber ducky I'm platinum blonde,
Rubber ducky I'm Ma-ata Bond
Ka-choo! (choo, doo dilly doo-dilly...)
We await the Eminem version, which is surely forthcoming.

Blab. A reader on the warpath wants us all to know:
Lookit! When I was a kid, my father was a senior officer in the US Army. Everything I did was a reflection on my father and my upbringing. If I broke some stupid rule or law he could suffer from it. I learned to be good. Now, these days...........well, we won't GO there, will we........
Besides, wasn't The Shrub the one who verbally beat people about the head and shoulders about not teaching their children between right and wrong?? Oh sorry! I forgot -- the girls are protected by Executive Privilege. Or something.
Poor lad! Funny how things turn out, isn't it? Learning disrespect for authority and a certain glee in breaking the rules has pretty much gotten us to our current station in life: compulsive author of a really stupid weblog read by three people.
Oh.

Plurp. Generic Literature # 5
Haiku
Five syllable line
Opposition in seven
Synthesis in five

Plurp. This week's five examples of Generic Literature (plus one more: Free Verse) are now part of a new leaf on our Stuff tree called, oddly enough, Generic Literature.
Readers are obliged to contribute at least one example of Generic Literature from the following list (or pick your own):

Limerick (caution: this is hard!)

Script for X-Rated Movie

Political Speech

Script for Infomercial

Personal Ad

Letter to the Editor

Front Page Story from the Weekly World News

Postmodern Essay

Surrealist Prose

Your brilliant but flawed attempts will nonetheless be added to our Generic Literature section for all to admire. And displayed here, of course.

Yow. It's June! School's out; summer vacation. Running off the end of the high-dive, arms gyrating wildly and screaming at the top of your lungs. Body surfing in the still-chilly ocean until your whole body shakes uncontrollably. Watermelon. Blowing on dandelions and wondering where the seeds go. Summer camp. Falling asleep in the shower after returning home from summer camp.
I like June.

Yo. This morning, before we left for work, there was a helicopter thrumping noisily nearby. We went outside to look and found it hovering quite low, almost right above our apartment. (In fact, it was directly above the theater that is below and next to our apartment.) It was a small helicopter, black with two white spherical devices mounted on either side, the one on its starboard larger than the one on its port.
It hovered there, nearly motionless, for several minutes, then left.

Yow. Ian thinks that this is funny if you know something about British politics. We suppose these must be British politicians or some such, which you can make dance oddly to Eminem by adjusting the funkitude controls.
We thinks it's funny even if you don't know anything at all about British politics. Especially the Eminem part. (See, these are white politicians...)
Go play.

Plop. New York is such a fun place to live. And so inexpensive, too! Now an especially meaty arm of our pudgy government says we should tip 25% in restaurants.
The city Department of Consumer Affairs, in a newly released tip sheet on tipping, says diners should consider leaving anywhere from 15 percent to 25 percent.
"Servers at table or counter-service restaurants rely on their tips for a major portion of their income, so if the service has been satisfactory you should tip accordingly," the agency advises in its new tip sheet.
In return, we make the following recommendations.

Restaurants should decrease their prices by 15-25%.

The Department of Consumer Affairs should donate 15-25% of its budget to us.

Servers who would like to be paid more should take the subject up with their employers or their employment agencies. Just like the rest of us.

Thank you.

Plurp. You know how people always have pictures on their desks at work of their sweetie, their dog, their kid? You know how, when you buy small frames in a store they usually have a generic photo of some random model or other, just to show you what a picture would look like in that frame?
I've always wanted to find three frames with different pictures of the same random model and put them on my desk. When someone comes into my office and asks, Who's that? I would pause and say, I don't know.

Yo. Looking for firefighter gifts and collectibles? Well you're in luck 'cause they're on the web, including a full line of Red Hat Of Courage figurines. We knew you wanted those.

Plop. Remember how we told you that Clippy, that patronizing paperclip cartoon in Microsoft Office, would be thankfully gone, gone, gone from the upcoming Office XP ("eXtra Pricey")?
Well, we lied. Turns out that annoying animation will still be there in all its grating glory. As a Gartner analyst said:
It's probably the most annoying innovation Microsoft has added to Office in years.
Do you suppose Microsoft keeps track of how many annoying "innovations" they add to each release?
Office XP - The Most Annoying Office Ever ^TM

Yow. Finally! Here's Opacity: Art You Will Never See. Writing "Aidez-moi" in water based ink on seaside rocks at low tide, scrawling "Au Revoir" on blowing autumn leaves, writing the text of the chapter "The Grand Inquisitor" of the Brothers Karamazov in chalk on railway ties.
Unlike that art which consists of wrapping large buildings in cloth or building monumental mounds of dirt in public places, Opacity seems well matched to our appreciation for this kind of art.
All pretension with none of the bother. (Caterina)

Plurp.
The blue dog
was a classic
example of a
Generic Icon.

Thursday, May 31, 2001
Blab. Astonished at our blatant technophilia, an outraged reader writes:
You mean to tell me you live in New York City -- midtown Manhattan no less -- and you don't know where to find the nearest gay man without the aid of a website???
Oh yeah. Guess we could ask the guys two doors down. Analog communication, though? How very retro!

Blab. A reader who keeps up on current events writes:
Latest news is that BOTH Bush daughters were involved in the fake ID incident. Good to know that the Bush's have a normal family! So middle America...........
You know, we never really understood the notion that politicians (and, transitively, their families) are expected to be moral exemplars. After all, they are selected on the basis of their ability to make promises they know they can't keep, beat out their competitors often by using dirty personal attacks, and wield power to keep themselves in office.

Blab. Responding to our discovery that we were mocha, a tasteful reader writes:
I'm blueberry. Natural, sweet, and a little sporty, I'm as tasty as they come. Yum!
Who am I?
Sounds like we're breakfast!

Blab. On the subject of Katharine Hepburn, a reader writes:
<< But we agree with your view on Kate, with whom we have always been smitten, both for her brassy confidence and her alluring elegance. >>
In our family we are completely smitten by women named Kate. So much that many members are named Kate! They are meeting the challenge well.
We somehow dodged all of those Kates, becoming smitten directly with Helen.

Blab. Breathlessly following our story of the video camera found in the wall, a reader writes:
<< Curiously, the camera is no longer on the rooftop to which we dropped it. This is at least mildly odd as the rooftop is derelict and no one ever goes up there. We're not sure what to make of that. >>
Do you think the video will end up on the internet?? OH! This is all too exciting!
You mean like that fascinating video of newlyweds Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee? We're not sure it would have quite that commercial potential.

Blab. A reader gives us a pleasant puzzle.
FREAKISH MONKEY STRENGTH!!
We knew this had to be an inverse link so we looked it up on Google and found one John Mulligan who may have had that odd phrase on his page a while ago, but who currently reveals himself to be a Plurp fan.
We're so flattered!

Blab. A reader writes:
The things you own end up owning you.
This is, of course, a moderately widespread meme from the movie The Fight Club, which we never saw. (Should we have? Are we missing something culturally and intellectually important here?) Although, unless slavery is legal, we are hard pressed to think of a situation in which this rather symmetric ownership thing could happen.

Plurp. Generic Literature # 4
A Weblog
Events clearly regarded as important by the author but that seem utterly trivial or obscure to you.
Blind links.
References to previous entries that you never read.
Chatty references to weblogs that you wouldn't read even if they paid you.
Pretentious references to Web design gurus or literary figures.
Complaints about things that you don't care about.
Desperate attempts at humor, followed by unconvincing apologies.

Yo. From the Katharine Hepburn Webring site:
Disclaimer
This is a fan site which has been created out of love and admiration for the greatest actress of the 20th century. Please understand that I am not Katharine Hepburn, I am not related to her in any way and I do not have the possibility of forwarding mail or e-mail to Miss Hepburn.
Thank you.
Imagine what must have prompted that.

Yo. According to this here Keirsey Temperament Test, I am an ...
Idealist

Idealists are enthusiastic, they trust their intuition, yearn for romance, seek their true self, prize meaningful relationships, and dream of attaining wisdom.

Idealists pride themselves on being loving, kindhearted, and authentic.

Idealists tend to be giving, trusting, spiritual, and they are focused on personal journeys and human potentials.

Idealists make intense mates, nurturing parents, and inspirational leaders.

Hmm. As opposed to being an Artist, Rational or Guardian. I love psychology. It's almost like science. (usr/bin/girl)

Plurp. There we go getting lazy again. Yesterday we noted that a reader had searched our site for "inventor of rubber ducks", yet we declined to provide the answer to the implicit question.
That would be Haakon Stilleben, of course. Would Haakon have guessed that his creations would develop such a devoted following?

Plurp.
In his sleep, the cat dreams of calla lilies.
Of watching their subtle movements in the slight air currents.
Of approaching them when no one is watching.
Of scooping in their sweet, powdery scent.
Of crunching into their long, green stems and tasting their bitter, sticky sap.
Of throwing up on the rug.

Yo. That's odd. A tiny red insect just crawled out of my laptop. Spontaneous generation?

Yow. Now this is cool! Make your own kaleidoscope. (Warning: Evil Flash thingie, but worth it.) Go try it. Really! (geegaw)

Plurp. Yes, this is odd.

Yo. A scholar is nothing more than a library's way of making another library. (Alamut)

Plurp.
If only the
blue dog could
have a
webring.

Wednesday, May 30, 2001
Blab. Mixing the memes, a reader writes:
Hi Captain Plurp,
Loved today's Katharine Hepburn reference. I've always admired her elegant style and her delivery that was so classy & off-hand. I wonder if carrying calla lilies as a bride was a 40's thing. My mother also carried them in her wedding.
- Your Midwest Correspondent
P.S. My otherwise sensible 15 year old and her friends had a great time seeing the Charlie's Angels movie and even dressed up as "Angels" last Halloween. Maybe that's the demographic Hollywood targeted? Oh dear, do you suppose this is the dire effect of having allowed her to play with Barbie dolls as a child??
You let your child play with Barbie dolls? Oh dear oh dear! What shall we do with you?
But we agree with your view on Kate, with whom we have always been smitten, both for her brassy confidence and her alluring elegance.
And yes, we are still hiding the calla lilies in the closet when we sleep. We are utter slaves to the whims of Him Unspeakable.

Blab. By a circuitous route, a worried and helpful reader writes:
Did we read Plurp correctly? Did Steve find a hidden camera in your apartment???? We got really creeped out by that last night and just wanted to check with you that everything was OK. And also to tell you that any questions concerning Katherine Hepburn and calla lilies should have been immediately referred to the nearest gay man. Hope all's well.
On the first topic:
Curiously, the camera is no longer on the rooftop to which we dropped it. This is at least mildly odd as the rooftop is derelict and no one ever goes up there. We're not sure what to make of that.
We think your Katharine Hepburn idea is quite good. Is there a Web site that will show the location of the nearest gay man?
All is well.

Blab. On the topic of Quantum Games, a reader writes:
Quantum nomic: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!
That is a frightening concept. You can't both read the rules and apply the rules at the same time.

Blab. A poetic reader writes:
There is no spoon.
That's correct. Not until this Friday.

Blab. Proving that the universe is much smaller than originally thought, a reader writes:
Greetings,
I was wandering around your site, having found it through David Chess' weblog, and I noticed that you used to live at 7 Park Ave. By a weird coincidence I am looking to buy an apartment in Manhattan, and one of the studios I am looking at is in this building.
If it's not too presumptuous of me, could you tell me whether you liked living there? What do you think of the building, of the board, of the neighbourhood? I'd appreciate any information you could give me.
Greetings. That is pretty weird! OK. Here's my take.

The Building : Post-war, not brilliantly maintained (the pipes in the bedroom walls always sweated, making the plaster peel). Maintenance fees are higher than the typical $1 per sq. ft. per month, for reasons we never understood. 24 hour staff; when we lived there, it was hard to get them to do stuff.

The Board : We never had any trouble with them.

The View : From the corner apartments you have a sidewalk to tippy-top view of the Empire State Building, which is breathtaking.

The Neighborhood : Nice; functional but not fancy. A deli just outside the entrance is a real gift (we called it "the pantry"). Lots of services. Walking distance to many things in Midtown. The Lex line is right across the street.

The Bottom Line : We lived there for 18 years. But look around. And get a real estate agent if you haven't already.

Helen, who is much more schooled in this subject than I, having looked at more than two hundred apartments in the search for our current place, lobbies against buying a studio as there isn't much resale value. If you can stretch to afford a one-bedroom, it's likely to be a better investment. Again, your real estate agent can help you with the trade-offs.

Plurp. Generic Literature # 3
The Joke
Did you hear about the object or activity? Yeah! Have you been following this? The object or activity is involved in a circumstance that seems odd. No, really! Now here's what I don't understand. Foolish, possibly homonymic, interpretation of object or activity.
That's what I heard!

Rant. So here I am, sitting in front of what seems to be the only working printer on this floor, waiting for this moronic pile of junk to realize (for the eighth time) that the file I'm printing wants A4 paper, but that it's just perfectly freaking fine to print it on 8.5x11 paper, which is all the printer has.
Every couple of minutes is stops, beeps, and informs me that is has a message for me. And what is that message? I ask in buttonese. Why, this document wants A4 paper, its hysterical LCDs proclaim. Whatever shall I do about that? Sigh. Just print the freaking thing, I say, though that's not exactly what the button is labeled.
I realize that times are tight, but do they really want to pay me to do printer support?

Plurp. It seems that I am ...
Yum! You're mocha. Intense, rich, and a little complex, you're as tasty as they come.
What flavor are you? (usr/bin/girl)

Rant. Readers are invited to answer one or more of the following questions.

Do you really care?

If so, why? If not, why not?

Do you honestly think it makes a difference?

Yak.
The only French I know is taco.

Yo. One of our readers last week was searching our Web site for:
"inventor of rubber ducks"
We derive such great amusement from the machinations of our readers.

Yak.
Older people today don't know how hard we have it. My grandfather lived through the Depression but he never had to live through having Napster cut off.

Yo. Talking about Pearl Harbor (the movie) today at lunch, we decided that someone needs to form the ASPCP: the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Pixels.
No pixels were harmed in the making of this movie.

Yo. For the second time this year Jenna Bush, Dubya's 19 year old daughter, is in trouble over booze. It seems that she tried to buy alcohol at a restaurant, using somebody else's ID.
If you think about it, this is worse than Darryl Strawberry, who has only screwed up once this year (so far).
Sounds like a Family Values issue to us.

Yow. Another possible Mia sighting, over there in Dave's blog. They just never stop.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was rancid
cheese.

Tuesday, May 29, 2001
Blab. Referring perhaps to something we wrote last Sunday, a reader interested in jawboning us writes:
Again the tower of mandibles (or was it marbles?) has fallen over.
We hate when that happens. Must have been the cat.

Plurp. Generic Literature # 2
Short Story
Clever but puzzling opening sentence. Tedious chain of events not obviously related to opening sentence. Tenuous but compelling metaphors that might connect with one or the other. Dialog between characters trapped in the setting. Description of events that may be related to the characters.
Observations by the author.

Plurp. We bought a half dozen white calla lilies on Sunday, putting their long green stems in a tall cylindrical vase which we then placed in the bedroom, hoping it would not be knocked over the The Nameless Evil.
This engendered a conversation regarding the Katharine Hepburn line about calla lilies, which we both remembered imperfectly and about whose origin we disagreed. I said Philadelphia Story. She said otherwise. She was right.
It was Hepburn as Terry Randall in Stage Door:
The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower-- suitable to any occasion. I carried them on my wedding day, and now I place them here in memory of something that has died.
A rather inappropriate quote, as it turns out. But the flowers are awfully pretty!

Plurp. There was a news story on TV last night about two people who were murdered in New York, apparently for their apartments. Makes sense to us; we nearly killed each other over ours.

Plurp.
Video: The Green Mile
Demographic: Date movie.
Plot Summary: Really big black guy ends up on death row in some awful Southern place because he was found with two little dead white girls, crying and saying I tried to take it back but it was too late. Turns out he can do Good Stuff, including bringing a squished mouse back from the dead (if, indeed, you consider that good stuff). He does Good Stuff several times while imprisoned, bringing Justice to bad guys and Belief to good guys. They electrocute him anyway 'cause, you know.
Distinguishing Features: Engaging characters, especially Michael Clarke Duncan as the tortured miracle worker and Tom Hanks as the prison guard whose life is transformed.
Academy Award For: Best Predictable Plot. You can see it coming, but you love it nonetheless.
Verdict: Recommended, even if it is Stephen King.

Plurp.
Video: Space Cowboys
Demographic: Aging wannabees.
Plot Summary: Four aging test pilots, passed over for space flight when NASA was formed, get their chance when a Shuttle crew has to push an aging Russian "communications" satellite back into stable orbit. Eastwood plays his standard Dirty Harry character which, curiously, works here.
Distinguishing Features: Big oopsie when the "communications" satellite (we made some modifications, says the Russian military guy) turns out not to be, even though you totally saw it coming.
Academy Award For: Best Geriatric Action Movie.
Verdict: Mildly recommended for an afternoon when you don't have to pay much attention to it.

Plurp.
Video: Charlie's Angels
Demographic: Young folks attracted to bright colors and confusing shapes.
Plot Summary: Three not-very-pretty slightly post-pubescent women are not bikini waxers. No, they are Kung-Fu Secret Agents for yada yada yada. Think of it as Batman (the original really silly TV series with Bruce Wayne) meets The Matrix. In leather.
Distinguishing Features: Gee, I'm not sure there are any.
Academy Award For: Best Slightly Post-Pubescent Action Movie That Is Not Quite Literally A Cartoon.
Verdict: Not particularly recommended, unless you really loved Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Yak. Following this obscure paper about a quantum formulation of rock-scissors-paper (really!), lunchtalk aligned along the vector of Quantum Games.
Quantum Scrabble: Is that a word? Don't look!
Quantum Monopoly: I'd like to buy and not buy that property.
Quantum Checkers: I take your man! Do you?
Quantum Craps: Roll again! I can't; the cat died.
OK, that last one was pretty obscure. Readers are invited to submit and not submit their own.

Yow. Thunderstorms this afternoon. Very dramatic! Guess I'm not washing my car today.

Plurp.
The blue dog
tried to remember
Memorial Day.

Monday, May 28, 2001
Blab. Another reader who thinks the blue dog has a name asks:
Does Blue Dog get lonely?
How would that be possible with all of you here?

Blab. Errand Boy writes:
Errand Boy does backlink search on google for self.
Errand Boy is amused.
http://www.stevewhite.org/log/archive/20010107.htm#20010113
http://www.stevewhite.org/log/archive/20001231.htm#20010106
Errand Boy will now go sit and await Errands.
Hey - don't blame us. Talk to that Beth person!

Yo. The New York Times, to which we usually don't link because of their silly policy of requiring registration, saw fit to write a modestly long article about that online WorldJam conferencing thingie that I helped moderate last week. Our PR folks obviously did a great job, as the event came off as innovative, intriguing, first-of-a-kind and successful.
So I guess we have to link to it.

Plurp. Generic Literature # 1
The Play
[A description of the stage. Atmospheric adjectives applied to colors and shapes. Vague sketches of furniture or props.]
Character 1: Random exclamation!
Character 2 [Stage directions regarding reaction to exclamation]: Question or comment, either in response to exclamation or not.
Character 1: Denial, or reinforcement. Remarks whose effect are to start outlining the character, though important facts are held back. Humorous anecdote seemingly unrelated to any dialog so far.
Character 2 [Specification of body movement not necessarily compatible with humorous anecdote]: Ambiguously distracting but thoughtful story.
Character 1 [Directions to perform some action]
Character 2: Question subtly, perhaps accidentally, probing the ambiguities previously set up.
Character 1: Emotional outpouring in a raised voice. Dramatic tension! Revelation of important facts.
Character 2 [Relevant stage direction, perhaps involving physical contact]: Stirring synthesis of contradictory elements. Surprising conclusion.
[Curtain]

Yak.
Cat, how can you possibly be so stinky?
At least we have a cat now.
Huh?
At least we have a cat now, so you can complain about him.
I see. And I'm looking forward to getting bunions next.

Sunday, May 27, 2001
Blab. Another of our cherished, illiterate readers writes:
Blue Dog ran away. Where did he go?
It's Memorial Day Weekend so he's in the Hamptons, of course, along with ten million other New Yorkers.

Blab. A reader who is just trying to make us feel bad about that Dennis Miller remark asks:
Dennis who?
He used to play the horse on Mister Ed.

Plurp. It's almost June. I like June. In fact, I'd have to say it's my favorite month of the whole year. It's when the first day of summer happens, when you get out of school as a kid and have the whole, warm, carefree summer ahead of you.
I miss those days.

Plurp.
Video: Vertical Limit
Demographic: Beats me.
Plot Summary: People apparently unaware that gravity points down and ground is hard climb K2, doing stupid things in addition to being there in the first place. People fall down go boom. A lot.
Distinguishing Features: An uniquely clever route to a Darwin Award: Carry very unstable high explosives on a dangerous ascent of K2.
Academy Award For: Best demonstration of why God made horizontal surfaces.
Verdict: Recommended unless you, like me, are acrophobic, in which case you must shut your eyes, cover your ears and go La la la la la la la. A lot.

Plurp.
I found a video camera in the wall today, hidden in the recess where the dimmer will be when the electrician finishes. It was a tiny, fixed-focus camera powered by batteries and containing a small, short-range transmitter.
I tossed it off the terrace, onto the black tarpaper roof of the movie theater some seventeen stories below. Shortly thereafter, the phone rang, but I did not answer it.

Plurp. Can I type? asks Helen. Sure, I say.
mhhcioujgfuojojhufyfuojoojigcbthjghrdhggkfymhfdfuyh        hgfufuufyhlihii            uhihihihl
Read it to me, she says, so I do. She claims it sounds like the White Album, backwards. I'll have to trust her on this.

Rant. The people in the apartment across the way bought two new really bright lights for their terrace, bringing the total to four. These are pill-shaped white plastic lights, mounted on the outside wall of their apartment, that shine as much in our eyes as they do on their terrace. They added to the inherent beauty of the pill-lights by running ugly electrical conduit between them.
We wonder if they are going to buy an engine for that space ship and go back to their home planet.

Plurp.
Exhibit: BitStreams at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Demographic: The digerati.
Summary: Artists use computers and the concept of information in various ways. Most of it is crap, of course, but there are enough really nice pieces to justify it.
Distinguishing Features: Highlights include four anamorphic skull sculptures - human skulls linearly distorted in various directions - one mounted on each of the four featureless while walls in the room. Your eye, wanting desperately to see a normal skull, cannot focus properly on them. The result is keenly disorienting. Also cool is the display of a walking man on a 2d array of LEDs that couldn't have been more than 20x30, demonstrating how little information your eye needs to be able to fill in a complex scene. Photos of children fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam and the woman holding a man shot at Kent State, edited to remove all of the people, are haunting even if not technically impressive. And the Sims-like images of famous historical events were there. At the bottom of the barrel was a wall-sized display in which very badly rendered flocks of birds in a hideously low frame-rate virtual reality did this or that based upon the real-time behavior of the price of some stock or other; oh please!
Award For: At last, some glimmerings that there is more than crap to art with computers.
Verdict: Recommended.

Rant. But before we let our erstwhile digital artists off of their synthesized hook, can you forgive us one wee rant? Why does so much digital art seems to us like an exposition of the tools, their qualities and their limitations, rather than the use of those tools to create new ways of seeing things?
We imagine a time, long ago, when the pencil was first introduced as an artistic tool, that artists would have pasted pencils to a canvas, or made a bonfire of ten thousand pencils and exhibited the ashes as art. Or tied pencils together to form brush-like instruments and tried to use the techniques of painting to do portraits of dowdy women in lacy dresses.
Or we imagine when tempera was first developed, that all of the paintings had been of eggs. Sigh.

Yo. The exhibit at the Whitney had one room in which there were six large flat-panel plasma displays, each with a different, slowly-changing set of patters on them. One suggested a subway ride, with quickly moving vertical shapes and loud noises. Another resembled the facade of a building in which the individual "windows" change slowly. Yet another was simply a number of pastel rectangles moving left to right on a number of plains, almost as if they were fish.
These would be interesting pieces to display someplace where you were going to spend some time, some quiet, contemplative time in which you could appreciate their graceful changes.
Which, of course, brings up the question of how you create a piece of art that is essentially a dynamic painting. Even artists who paint very simple, rectangular forms (Barnett Newman is a good example) must think long and hard about exactly which colors to use where, and exactly how far this boundary should be from that.
Now imagine having to write a set of rules, essentially, that governs how these shapes move, both by themselves and in relation to all of the other shapes, and that governs their color and texture, which may also be changing. You don't get to draw a single picture, or even a dozen of them, and say this is it. Rather, you have to create rules whose result is constantly unfolding beauty in combinations that you did not dictate.
Hmm. Sound hard!

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