Plurp: The surrogate blog

Bigger!

2001.07.15 : 2001.07.21

Saturday, July 21, 2001
Blab. Ever eager to score 100% by answering a different question, a reader writes:
The blue dog's first attempt at meme mixing giving the answer of "Marmite cures coulrophobia" to Homework Assignment #1, if by "first" Steve meant "most recent."
Homework Assignment # 2: Find the first mixing of the memes in Plurp, where by "first" we mean "earliest". Sigh.

Blab. A reader from AOL forwards to us a much-forwarded note, attached to which is a muchforwarded picture.
>Subject: read the text before viewing the picture
>
> > Dear Sue,
> > You must check this out-- unreal!!!!!!!!
> > >
> > > > Tokyo Water Park, where their slogan reads:
> > > >
> > > > "Get away from the hustle and bustle of city-life as
> > >we welcome you
> > >to the
> > >breathtaking Tokyo Water Park where you can wash away
> > >the pressure and
> > >stress of the overcrowded city and relax with your
> > >friends in the
> > >soothing
> > >enjoyment of sun, fun and splashing".
While we would like to reproduce the picture here for your everlasting enjoyment, we are unable to find it on the Web and hence we doubt its veracity. Readers are encouraged to surmount our inabilities by finding a picture and sending us the URL.

Blab. A reader suggests:
The blue dog
cured world peace
with Marmite
Similarly, no doubt, to the use of the Corbomite Device.

Blab. A person from AOL writes:
where u at man, holla, cause i want that and1 mixtape vol. 1 unopened
We observe that many of these are English words.

Plop. Our very nice host here in Bethesda drove us all over Monument City (aka D.C.) tonight. We were pleased that the people who worked there have large, clean, well-guarded, expensive, monumental buildings in which to ply their bureaucratic trades. At least, we where, until we released that they gleefully absorb over a third of our income in doing so, after which their neatly scrubbed marble edifices seemed a bit less useful to us.

Plurp.
The blue dog,
having survived the Tokyo Water Park,
took up residence in a clean,
well-guarded, expensive, monumental
Weblog.

Friday, July 20, 2001
Blab. A reader who has not been paying attention writes:
The blue dog's meme separatist attitude giving way to the blue dog's own laudable, if clumsy, first attempt at meme mixing.
Homework Assignment # 1: Find the first mixing of the memes in Plurp.

Blab. A person desperate to relate a message to us writes:
inter nagy basel kb heck
ox fork cask frail quote
Why does google answers with the same page?
What's the secret behind this no. 1 link?
We give up. Perhaps our readers can guess?

Blab. A Tamarian after our own heart writes:
Steve... his weblog updated.
The blue dog ... at rest.

Blab. A reader tries its hand at writing advertising jingles.
Accidentally spilling the cold water on yourself;
it is very refreshing!!
We like it. It's got a beat. We can dance to it. We give it a 7.

Blab. A reader recently returned from Frankfurt ensures us that:
toffis. toffis toffis toffis toffis. tofffffffisssssss.......
Indeed.

Blab. A creative resume padder writes:
Regarding your "Things a human being should do" I scored an 11, but I get 16 if you count Lego's and Risk toward accomplishing engineering or military feats.
We predict a promising career as a U.S. Senator.

Blab. A reader who might be a sadistic clown (and we know lots of them) writes:
"Send in the coulrophobes"
Aren't you rich? Ain't that a pear? Me on the last of my rounds, you with that hair?

Blab. A reader with far too many problems for us to cure pleads:
I hear eating Marmite cures coulrophobia, is this true?
Yes, unless the Marmite is delivered by a clown, in which case it worsens it.

Plurp. A Helenism lept from our own mouth the other day.
That's hot on my mind

That's a hot topic

That's been on my mind

Plurp. What is a goat rodeo? This term was popularized around work a few years ago by a colorful marketing guy we knew. But what does it mean, really?
An article about Burning Man claims that a goat rodeo is:
... tech-speak for a screw-up involving too many factors to manage.
In the lingo of emergency medical personnel a goat rodeo is:
Any scene which goes badly and thus resembling a bunch of people riding goats.
Heck there's even a goat rodeo web site.
But we're still not sure we understand what it means, deep down in its essence. Perhaps a reader who has participated in a goat rodeo can relate the event to us.

Plop. We're down in Bethesda, searching for an exhibition on the architecture of Disney that we somehow foolishly missed when it was in New York. We fear that it is not a good setting for it. D.C. is, of course, one of the worst examples of the Monumentalist School since ancient Rome, and its burbs are just as bad, stuffed, as they are, with brick saltboxes and brick Colonials, most built just a few years ago and/or added onto by yuppie architects in no known style. Driving around tonight we saw perhaps 500 houses, not one of which we could bear to occupy.

Plurp.
The blue dog had
previously thought that
all U.S. Senators were
sadistic clowns

Thursday, July 19, 2001
Blab. A person who probably sends out lots of email writes:
Live 1-on-1 chat with a girl of your choice, just YOU and HER!
Plus, tons of free pics as well!
Click NOW to see it all!
We already have live 1-on-1 chat with the woman of our choice, so we decided to pass.

Blab. It might be a week for Helenisms.
Helenism heard on the radio the other day. A person was commenting on a news story wherein someone had done something exceedingly stupid and embarrassing. "This guy could come up with a cure for world peace, and he would still be known as the guy who..." ("Cure for cancer" or "world peace" each denoting a tremendous accomplishment.)
Nice one, and fairly complicated at that! Duly recorded.

Blab. A book written by long dead hop toads with severed limbs contains the following notation that is too small to fit in its margins.
The dying severely admonishing the blue dog's meme separatist attitude!

Blab. A reader makes a comment that sounds sensible but turns out to be puzzling instead.
"inter nagy basel kb heck"
google will give you the answer
Loyal Plurp readers already know all about inverse links - phrases that, when looked up in Google, point to a page that the contributor intended you to read. So if we said:
"dathon's plan worked"
You would discover that we were pointing you to the Darmok Dictionary, a wonderful reference work for recent Plurp entries about Darmok, Tanagra, Shaka, Temba and all the rest.
So we figured that "inter nagy basel kb heck" was an inverse link even before our treasured reader came right out and said it (creating a minor breach of protocol in the process).
But no! Google has never heard of it. In fact, Google has never even heard of all those words in one place in any order, except for a couple of random wordlists and a few PDF documents that are unlikely to be what the reader is pointing us to.
So we are puzzled, and we await enlightenment.

Blab. A rare triple dip:
Darmok and Yog-Sothoth at Tanagra... in bed.
It is not a pleasant image.

Blab. On the topic of Presidential IQs, a reader writes:
Funny chart rows indeed.......I would think that for LBJ to take the IRT down to Fourth Street USA would require more IQ than just 126.
Yes, but did he ever complete the task successfully?

Blab. On the subject of stupid sports commentator comments, a reader writes:
Subj: Stupid sports commentator comments
Heard once by Boomer Esiason on Monday Night Football, immediately following Steve Young of the SF 49ers being sacked so hard he didn't get up for several minutes.....:
"Well, Al, the 49ers certainly did NOT want THAT to happen!"
We are always suspicious of the intellectual abilities of anyone named Boomer.

Blab. On the topic of the twenty things Mr. Heilein thinks you should do, a reader writes:
impending tasteless remark:
Anyone scoring 20 out of 20 here is either lying, or Shondra Levy.
Or both, we assume.

Blab. On the subject of that apparent accident the other day, to which emergency vehicles (ambulances, hook-and-ladder trucks, fire emergency vehicles and state troopers) sped in pairs, a reader suggests:
-- perhaps they were on their way to the ark. The tow truck and the flat-bed truck were just there to make sure they made it on time.
We await the torrential rains.

Blab. A reader writes in horror or triumph:
it fits!!!!
Imagine our fear or delight.

Plurp. As usual, we're missing something.
The fictional kingdom in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" will be re-created for cell phone users sometime this summer as part of a first-of-its-kind marketing campaign targeting wireless devices in the United States. [...]
Cell phone users first register on a Web site, creating a Tolkien-like character for themselves. Then by dialing in a special number on their phones, they can interact with other characters, receive news updates and, in the future, actually do battle in virtual games, according to New Line Cinema.
Let's review. We're all going to play D&D with people we don't know on our ... cell phones?
Perhaps some reader more in tune with modern sensibilities than we seem to be can explain this to us. Please use small words.

Plop. Breathe deep, Baltimore.

Plurp. Note to self:

Change name to Puff Stevie

Agree to world tour and album

Take the money

Run

Yo. On the heels of recent studies of prophylactic mastectomy, in which a woman at high risk to develop breast cancer has her breasts removed as a preventative measure, doctors have found that prophylactic encephalectomy can be a useful preventative measure for those at high risk of brain cancer.
That's great, and we're sure this represents an important medical advance. But we have to wonder who would actually do that.

Plurp.
The blue dog used
a cell phone to visit
Baltimore

Wednesday, July 18, 2001
Blab. A decapitalized meme mixer writes:
a message typed into a Blab box! hints of second thoughts.
But it is too late. Too late in so very many ways.

Blab. On the subject of Shaka Cthulhu, a reader writes:
Darmok and Yog-Sothoth at Tanagra.
Temba ... at rest.

Blab. An eagle-eyed reader writes:
Genuine in-the-wild Helenism: "about as exciting as watching grass dry" (should be "paint dry" or "grass grow")
That's on the referenced page under Mistake number 2. Simply marvelous. And duly recorded - thanks!

Blab. A reader writes:
YOU ADVERTISE CARIBOU IS A GREAT PLACE TO LIVE, WORK AND DO BUSINESS ..PROVE..IT.. TELL US WHAT BUSINESS WHOLESALE,RETAIL,ETC.OUR TOWN (CITY)CAN SUPPORT AND WHO WILL HELP THEM TO LOCATE,EXPAND OR BUILD HERE?
It takes more than talk, meetings and smoke screens to have leadership. Who are your followers? When it is so easy to get our thinking done for us, the big temptation is not to think. We have become content to say and do what we've always done.
Thinking is hard work.

Blab. A reader concerned with greasepaint writes:
coulrophobia ... in bed
Seems to us that would be the most frightening place.

Blab. On the subject of surrogate blogging, a reader writes:
Surrogate blogging:
While traveling, I noticed two different convenience stores in two different states, both advertising "cigarettes at or below state minimum."
It seems to me that some people are unclear on the meaning of the word "minimum."
Well, someone is certainly unclear on something. At a minimum.

Blab. An enigmatic reader writes:
http://www.rpgplanet.com/features/rgt/
Um. It's a gaming site. ... ?

Blab. And on the subject of gaming, a reader writes:
Neverwinter Nights
... which just might refer to Neverwinter Nights, a new AD&D RPG from the folks who brought us Baldur's Gate (to which I was addicted a while ago).
It's a real-time game rather than turn based, which sounds both interesting and hard, given that it's a D&D style game.
Could be fun! But we need to focus all of our professional concentration on Thief II first.

Blab. A friend sends one of those analog letter things, which includes some old style photocopies of what appears to be a contemporary newspaper, or perhaps some kind of newsletter, from a community known only as Newtown, Illinois.
Darell and Evelyn Fritshle: Darrel came to S.S. and church Sunday morning. Jake Gier came and tilled their garden and strawed their tomato plants one day. On Friday Darrel came to Newton and got groceries and got their dinners at the Senior Center and brought them home.
Pearl Smith and Delphine Crouse: Delphine went to the dentist Wednesday. Her and Pearl came to S.S. and church Sunday.
Lloyd and Helen Galloway went to Edgewood to the Opry Friday night. They came to S.S. and church Sunday morning. Cathy Shew sent there Sunday. Then Sunday evening Lindell and Joan Galloway; Matt and Emily; Greg and Cheryl Giner, Ross and Paige came and had supper with them. Cathy Shew was there also. Helen and Lloyd went to the music at Ingraham Monday night.
The article went on like this for two full pages, but I just couldn't stand it.
Helen: Oh, Steve! It sounds like Our Town.
Steve: I prefer to think of it as Their Town.

Plurp. Good-bye, Kathryn Graham. I will leave the eulogies to others. I will simply say that you were a hero of mine, a person who found herself in incredible, unexpected and historic circumstances, and who rose to the challenge. Not only rose, but blossomed into greatness. You changed the course of a nation with your bravery. And you inspired me. Thank you.

Plurp. A postcard from a friend who is visiting Beijing.
Thinking of you at the Gate of Mental Cultivation.
Chop chop!

Yak. Another in our series of Things We Say To The Other Drivers.
Sure, buddy, I'll drive your car for you.
Just let go of the wheel.

Yo. Mumble mumble ... Dubya ... mumble mumble ... Internet security ... mumble mumble ... but there's a great quote:
"The bad news is, nobody will do anything about critical infrastructure protection until there's a global catastrophic failure," said Rasch. "The good news is, there will be a global catastrophic failure."

Yow. Heh. Dueling inverse links. So cool.

Plurp.
The blue dog thought that
mixing the memes was about
as interesting as watching
the clowns mumble.

Tuesday, July 17, 2001
Blab. Our stalker finally turns its attention to some poor unfortunate baby basher.
Parkway Toyota
100 Sylvan Avenue
Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Congratulations.

Blab. A reader shares with us a rare insight.
thinking is hard work, even you don't know with part of brain should be used. the creative or logical part? this here doesn't looks very creative and my logical part is asking me, why i'm writing it?
Personally, we find capitalization and grammar exhausting.

Blab. A reader warns of the impending ...
War of the Macworlds
Eh? We thought the G4 was abandoned by Apple due to poor sales. But, since the new machines are done in the Borg design style, perhaps that was just a rumor to throw us off until we can be assimilated without resistance.

Blab. A helpful reader writes:
missing http:// at Margit (Herzfeld)... link - this small blab is ... don't know what i've written - next time i should use the bigger one again...
How sloppy of us! Yes, it's now corrected. And thank you for squeezing this Really Big Correction into that really small Blab box.

Blab. On the topic of Marmite, a reader suggests we seek insight from our new secret project.
Sorry to hear the Blue Dog didn't understand Marmite. Perhaps Deep Blue Dog could offer some assistance.
Result here.

Blab. A reader with a certain lascivious kink writes:
Curious why you didn't tack on the ubiquitous "in bed" at the end of your fortune cookie fortune, and how that changes the significance of such a fortune.
Very well, though we are forced to play what must be a regional variant of this game.
Valuable people need to be treasured, between the sheets.
Is that so very different from the original?

Blab. A drug-induced flashback gives rise to this reader contribution.
The natural history of the chicken giving comfort to the dying.
Shaka, when the walls fell.

Blab. UnknownSender@UnknownDomain informs us of the following.
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Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 2:02:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: UnknownSender@UnknownDomain
ÈôÒªÈ¡Ïû£¬Çë»Ø¸´: cancel@btamail.net.cn
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It actually goes on quite a bit after that, but you get the idea. Now btamail.net.cnseems to be a Chinese Web site, maybe an ISP or Web host. So is this Spam From China?

Blab. A terse reader expands our vocabulary.
coulrophobia
This is, of course, the fear of clowns. And rightly so.

Blab. A correspondent with businessplace-inappropriate taste tells us:
This is humor for the day. This is a cartoon link with sound.... lower your volume. Enjoy!
Do not let anyone tell you, You dont know Jack!
Very informative.

Yo. The Great Chihuly and the Great Cthulhu - separated at birth? You decide.

Yo. Cthulhu Scouts of America. Sign up today.

Not your cup of tea? Then perhaps you'd enjoy the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu: Join now - avoid the panicked rush of the mob later.
No? Well, maybe you're one of those people who likes to learn on their own.
Yow. A real Cthulhu cave? Wild.

Yo. If they're this well prepared ... shouldn't we sign up?

Yow. For those of you dying to buy us a nice little present, this would be good. We have just the place for it.

Thank you.

Plurp. The black helicopter was flying over our apartment again last night around sunset, flying straight runs at various heights and various angles. We do not know if they were collecting data for a detailed 3D model of our apartment nor, if so, what they are planning to do with such a model.

Plurp.
The blue dog
had a phobia about
ancient mythological
horrors

Monday, July 16, 2001
Blab. In some much-emailed correspondence from my charming roommate (not the cat) comes this:
Click here: Bush IQ
The linked article claims that Dubya is the dumbest President in 50 years. Duh.
But it goes on to claim that some folks have figured out the IQs of all them Presidents based on their public speeches and written works. Now, IQ is a dubious concept to begin with, trying as it does to squash all of intelligence into one little scalar. But even so, standard IQ tests examine not just verbal ability, but mathematical ability, spatio-temporal relationships, etc., etc.
Nonetheless, we reproduce the Now Established Truths contained therein.

President Party IQ

Franklin D. Roosevelt D 147

Harry Truman D 132

Dwight D. Eisenhower R 122

John F. Kennedy D 174

Lyndon B. Johnson D 126

Richard M. Nixon R 155

Gerald Ford R 121

James E. Carter D 175

Ronald Reagan R 105

George H. W. Bush R 98

William J. Clinton D 182

George W. Bush R 91

There are some very funny rows in that table! Johnson? Hahahaha.

Blab. In the theme of Generic Literature, a reader sends us a link to a ...
Generic sports interview
... from which a relevant bit is:
Interviewer: What happened out there today?
Sports person: They're a great team & we knew we'd have our hands full & we're just thankful we were able to take advantage of some scoring opportunities.
We're glad it's not just us. We watch sports commentators say things like They've come here to play today, Phil, as if they usually come to eat Skittles, or They need to stop <the other team> from scoring so much, often coupled with the equally insightful They've got to put some points on the board. And we wonder who thinks of this profession as informative.

Blab. A reader who might likely be a cow orker writes:
Cow-related patents citing the natural history of the chicken as prior art.
Udderly ridiculous.

Blab. On the subject of Marmite, a still-confused reader writes:
I still don't get it.
Frankly, we recommend that you not get it. But you can make up your own mind after reading the relevant, if frightening, bits of the linked FAQ.
Large jars will last months—even years—without any spoilage. (Old marmite can turn hard and lose its gooey spreadability, though.) ... drug-like qualities; the more you eat, the thicker you need to spread it to get the same mouth-burning effect. Some people have even called it addictive ... pour boiling water into a near-empty jar and drink the jar clean ... he made hors d'oeuvres for a party by spreading Marmite on twigs cut from a tree outside his kitchen window ... reports that some balding men have tried smearing Marmite on their heads to promote hair growth ... produced in the UK at Burton-on-Trent by CPC (UK) Ltd ... in New Zealand it is made by the Sanitarium Health Food Company ... the addition of sugar is what gives NZ Marmite its "weaker" (some would say "less rancid") flavor ... a chemist speculates that Marmite is made by adding salt to the waste-product produced by the yeast in the brewing process, thus rupturing the yeast cells by osmotic pressure—and then concentrating the resulting sludge.
Yum.

Blab. Knowing our inexplicable love of meaningless tests on the Web, a reader proffers:
You've seen this before:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects."
But have you ever scored yourself? I have 11 of 20, counting only those things which I have actually done with at least a moderate degree of overall success.
Well! We don't actually recall seeing it before, but must have as we read Time Enough for Love, if ages ago.
But be that as it may, we only get up to 9 of 20, failing miserably on anything that requires military action, manual labor, or dying. Readers?

Plurp. Traffic ground to a halt this morning on the Parkway, a sure sign of a traffic accident ahead. Several psychotics drove backwards up the on-ramps to go somewhere else. We stuck it out, having risen extra-early so we could make our 8:30 meeting even if something like this happened. Over the succeeding half hour, the following sirened by on the shoulder: two ambulances, two hook-and-ladder trucks, two other fire vehicles and two state troopers. (Note to self: emergency vehicles, like sushi, must traditionally come in pairs.) Oh, and a tow truck and a flat-bed truck.
After some time, traffic starting moving again and, as we proceeded north, we saw that flat-bed truck coming the other way with a smashed-in SUV on it, upside down. Presumably it was that way before they put it on the truck.
Now we do hope the folks involved are OK and all, but we couldn't help thinking that there was one less incredibly dangerous driver on the road today.

Plop. Hobbies gone horribly wrong: the Hello Kitty laptop. (rebecca)

Yak.
Is there a desperate search for you in the morning to relieve the pain?
Huh?
From shaving.
Uh ...

Yak.
Hey, butter, butter, butter, butter!
Suh-wing, butter!

Plop. Rumor has it that Brooke Shields is now starring in Cabaret. Error. Error. Error.

Yo. For those of you who somehow missed The Natural History of the Chicken, fear not! It's available on video, and for a mere $19.98. Now you have no excuse.
Mark Lewis, the producer, is also culpable for Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, The Wonderful World of Dogs, and Rats.
Something must be done.
Something must be done.

Plurp.
The blue dog
got zero
out of twenty

Sunday, July 15, 2001
Plurp. Marmite. You don't understand it, do you? Now you can not understand the Marmite game.

Plurp. We had the great good fortune to stumble on a rerun of The Natural History of the Chicken today. These people - both the producers and the subjects - have too much time on their hands. We were especially disturbed by the woman who loved red and kept an exotic chicken in her luxurious suburban home as a member of the family, and by the famous Mike the Headless Chicken. No one in our little family watched in more rapt attention than He Whose Name Is Not Chicken, who sat on the edge of the bed, his ears cocked forward whenever the TV showed little puffy chicks peeping away.

Yo. Picture O' The Day, from the parking lot at work last Friday.

Plurp.
The blue dog
didn't understand
Marmite.

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