Plurp: What the voices are saying

Bigger!

2002.01.06 : 2002.01.12

Saturday, January 12, 2002
Blab. A reader presents us with a logic puzzle.
If you don't come home soon, you won't have sushi!
Curiously, we did come home soon and we didn't have sushi. Readers are kindly requested to submit a proof, in first-order predicate calculus, of the consistency of these two statements.

Blab. A reader suggests that Dick Button actually had it easy in third grade.
You think Dick Button has it bad? There's a NASCAR driver named Dick Trickle! If my name is Richard Trickle, "Dick" is not a nickname I'm gonna let stick.
We have just one thing to say: Dick Butkus. If that's how it's pronounced.

Blab. A reader teeters on the sharp edge of realization.
hmm... i had a life before I started reading this and blogging on my own blog. Someone then turned on their mind control lasers (MCL's) and the rest (including my life) is history. (His story!)
So where you gonna go, where you gonna run, where you gonna hide? Nowhere, 'cause there's no one like you left.

Blab. A reader checks in with another Mia sighting. (Two, actually.)
Her holidays were hard.
We don't quite know what to think about that. It makes us very sad.

Blab. A reader falls under the sway of the false god of Flash.
This is one of the most entertaining web sites I have have seen. Makes me wish I was young again. De La Guarda.
Now there's a brilliant idea. Locate your Web site in Argentina. Known for digital infrastructure, stable governments, don't cry for them, stuff like that.
In any event, somebody ought to cut that guy down. Poor guy.

Yak.
I found a little screw on the floor today.
Oh?
It turned out to have dropped out of my PC.
Then you really have had a screw loose, just like I've been telling everyone?
It wasn't loose; it was lost.
You lost your screw?
Yeah. Is that a Helenism?
Yeah ...

Yo. Those guys at Microsoft are so funny!
A federal judge Friday rejected Microsoft's offer to donate computers and software to schools to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of overcharging for its products.
"The agreement raises legitimate questions since it appears to provide a means for flooding a part of the kindergarten through high school market in which Microsoft has not traditionally been the strongest player (particularly in relation to Apple) with Microsoft software [...]."
Next, they'll suggest that the suit be settled if they carpet bomb everyone else in the software business. It's billionaires doing stand-up comedy.

Plurp.
Windows XP is Microsoft's most secure operating system.
Andres Pastrana is this week's longest-lived Argentinian president.
Dubya is America's most recent president.
Him With Name Unspoken is somewhat less annoying when asleep.

Plurp. So the latest Survivor TV show is over and somebody won. But more interesting (to us, anyhow) was Bryant Gumbel hosting the wrap-up show.
This is the same Bryant Gumbel whose career pinnacle was as a sports commentator, after which he somehow finagled a position on the Today show, and then for some reason figured he was god herself. He wrote nasty memos denigrating the other stars of Today, trying childishly to position himself as the one and only star, as the valuable owner of the Today show franchise.
Ultimately everyone saw him for the small, mean-hearted man that he was, and he "decided to leave" the Today show.
Now he's doing after-game analysis for really dopey reality TV. We can't wait to see him doing play-by-play on Big Brother.
Bryant Gumbel ... the tribe has spoken.

Plurp. Which reminds us of a recent and surprising TV favorite of Helen's: BattleBots, in which geeks build violent remote-controlled vehicles whose job is to mash competitors' vehicles into inactivity.
But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part (to us, anyhow) is the beefy, no-neck sports-like commentators that narrate the geekfest. These guys were, we're quite certain, the glad-handed captains of their high school football teams, Most Likely To Get Laid, the frat boys who coasted through third rate colleges on sociology majors and beer blasts.
And now - get this - the best they can do is play-by-play on a third rate TV show whose heroes are the bespeckled geeks these guys used to slam into lockers and pour wastebaskets full of water onto. And the geeks have day jobs.
Revenge.

Plurp. Last night's fortune cookie:
The nature of the struggle may matter more than the outcome.
Yeah, and then again maybe not.

Plurp. We were wondering if there might be a market for surrealist fortune cookies.
You will meet a tautology made entirely of butterfly fingers.
A hooded religious figure in time saves nine.
The kidneys of arrows fly straight to your submarines.
The egg yolks of feral maidens are broken on your fire hose.
The sins of serpents are engraved on your eyelids.
Strip the fur of lizards before it strips you.
Your bathtub is full of brightly colored machine tools.
We didn't think so.

Yo. Ever wondered what it would be like to play you as an AD&D character? Well, go find out. We did.
Str: 7
Int: 13
Wis: 14
Dex: 10
Con: 7
Chr: 12
In other words, we are a perfectly hopeless AD&D character, one that we would instantly reroll from scratch instead of play. We would be really worried about the Int: 13 bit if that part of the form had not been entitled Inteligence. (/usr/bin/girl)

Yak. Just this morning ...
He's reaching at straws.
Good one.

Yow. After some confusion about whether we were really Helen (and we still don't think we are), Helen's terrific picture is finally up at the Mirror Project.
Yay!

Plurp.
The blue dog
was given to understand
that the tribe had
spoken

Friday, January 11, 2002
Blab. A reader asks:
Take your parents, for instance..
..Isn't that a broken joke?
Oh - that's funny! Asexual reproduction. Get it? Get it? See, ...

Blab. A correspondent gets us in on the ground floor.
An ordinary story about a Ponzi scheme run by a teenager. The interesting bit is near the top, where the article says that some people search the net for new Ponzi schemes so that they can get in near the top of the pyramid and cash out while the cashing is good.
We always figured the way to Get Rich Quick was to sell little pamphlets on how people can Get Rich Quick. Or maybe that's the suggestion?

Blab. Taking up our challenge to participate in anonymous exhibitionism by telling us something incredibly intimate about yourselves, a reader writes:
I always smile when I get home to find my boyfriend already there, not because he borrowed a key, but because he lives there.
Yes, we have that same experience. With your boyfriend, that is.

Blab. This reader must really trust us when we say we don't know who our Blab contributors are.
I'm a 30-something male, and I like the show "Gilmore Girls."
That's as deep as I can go.
That's probably as deep as anyone can go, and you have our condolences. (To avoid hurting the feelings of our Treasure Reader, we will avoid noting that we have never heard of "Gilmore Girls".)

Blab. A reader attempts to tell us something intimate about someone else.
I know B quite well, and she never reads weblogs.
Maybe there are some things you don't know about B. Or, at least, that's how the story goes.

Blab. A reader reveals itself to be even more excruciating than previously suspected.
10-01-2002 01-10-2002 - These are not palindromes unless you are in the habit of only using half the date (which seems rather wasteful). Now, I thought I'd explained this in excruciating detail previously. We forgive you though, since it gave us the opportunity to write excruciating twice in the same day. We do though absoultely forbid you to get excited about palindromic dates until 20-02-2002 (when you can bask in the reflected excitement of our English date only Palindromic date). -AJL
It looks to us like even 20-02-2002 isn't palindromic, what with those hyphens and all.

Blab. A reader reveals these intimate details: (1) it really must get a life, and (b) it is upside down.
            \ \ \ ||| ///

          .                 .

                    .

          \\               //
            ===============
   _ _
    | _|_ \-/ -
BTW, even if you sign your name, we still don't know who you are. That's how amazingly anonymous that Blab box is. Durn fine technology, if you ask us ("us").

Blab. A reader reveals that it consistently misses the big picture.
AAARRRGGH!! Those cosmologists have hit on one of my pet peeves. Mint chocolate chip ice cream is that pale green color only because food coloring is added to it!! Do yourself a favor, and get a high-quality all natural mint chocolate chip ice cream, and marvel at the dark brown chips in WHITE ice cream.
Ah. Perhaps they should have said that it resembles pistachio ice cream.

Blab. A reader reveals a secret ambition to know all the answers.
Sleepy
Copper
Caelian
Wrath
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
Indigo
Antarctica
Six out of seven. Not bad!

Blab. A reader reveals that it has been listening to way too much news on Enron.
ENRON ENRON ENRON!!!!!!!!!!!! I have had enough!
We recommend a nice, relaxing computer game.

Blab. A reader reveals an existential confusion with the world.
HUH? You make no sense!
It is not our job, Treasured Reader, to make sense. It is our job to confuse you mightily until the orbital mind control lasers lock on. That is to say, excuse me sir or madame, but your snood is full of eels.

Blab. A reader reveals its fondness of cold, dark places.
Thought this was particularly interesting
Maeshowe latest pictures 1999
Now that's a big clock!

Blab. And speaking of clocks, a cheerful reader writes:
Now find out the truth!
The ensuing Death Clock assures us that we are going to die on Saturday, April 11, 2026. Assassins, take note.

Blab. A reader sends us a ...
[link]
... to people who look like dogs (or vice versa - we're not sure). We think it would be interesting to have a similar contest in which readers submit pictures of people and microorganisms that look like each other. Readers ... ?

Yow. Another trinary date, this one non-palindromic. In fact, we seem to be in the middle of a triple of trinary dates. Surely that must be important.

Plurp.
I awoke this morning only to find that I was in the same body as when I went to bed. Miffed, but determined to make the best of it, I shaved my head and spent a lazy hour making eight tentacles, complete with suckers, out of construction paper and stubby crayons, and then taped them symmetrically around my head. I allowed myself a small moment of vanity, smiling at the results in the mirror, before beginning the Ritual of Gathering, this time remembering to remove the batteries from the various remote controls before arranging them in the predefined pattern. Given recent events, it seemed prudent to perform the Ritual of Counting today, adding together the times shown on all of the clocks (mod 19). Today was 17, a very propitious sign. So I ordered Mu Shu Pork and Crystal Shrimp. When the nice man arrives, I will invite him to come in, pretending to fumble for change.

Plurp. There's a former ice skater guy, now a skating commentator, named Dick Button and our question is: How did he survive third grade?

Plurp. We have heard that there are people who are sexually attracted to Calista Flockhart. We think this indicates an emerging case of necrophilia.

Yo. Our blogger code is:
B5 d d-- k++ s+ u f+ i+ o+ x-- e l c--
If anyone knows why they would possibly care, please do let us know. (Dave)

Plurp. In a very technical meeting yesterday, there was a short debate about whether rabbits dream. The tenor of the discussion was that it was a stupid question, either obviously false or obviously irrelevant.
Funny. We thought it was a great question, fraught with subtle challenges both to the philosophy of consciousness and to modern neurophysiology.
But, you know, it was a bunch of computer scientists. (Computer "scientists".)

Rant. Oh we simply cannot stand it any more. That story yesterday about the universe being the color of mint chocolate chip ice cream? What disreputable crap.
We took some random set of 2d data, put it through an arbitrary transformation to map it to frequency and luminosity in the visible spectrum, decided what scalar color humans would see it as, and issued a press release.
Would you people either kindly do science instead, or at least admit that your career path ends up involving red rubber noses and floppy shoes?
Thank you.

Plop. The Central Intelligence Agency (whose amusing name contains two out of those three accurate terms) says:
The United States is more likely to suffer a nuclear, chemical or biological attack from terrorists using ships, trucks or airplanes than one by a foreign country using long-range missiles, according to a new U.S. intelligence estimate.
Let's see. This brilliant conclusion is based on ...

Yow. This terrific self-portrait of Helen is now on display at the Mirror Project. (Well, not exactly right now, but as soon as the Mirror Project folks are done to moving the bits from one place to another.)
Applause!

Plurp.
The blue dog
couldn't think of
anything
intimate to reveal

Thursday, January 10, 2002
Blab. A reader accidentally asks a question.
You say your cat food bowl is an alien? That's astounding. My cat food bowl is an alien, too. (When I was your age, I was seven also!) Take a latter: Dear Sir, this is not the first time you have made this error. Please be more careful in the future. It is not enough to fight a war against terrorism; we must also fight a _war against ourselves_. 97.43% of security compromises are committed to parchment by in-siders. Remember that. Keep that in mind. No crusade too small.
We once went to a cat food bowl and came away with tuna stains on our snood. We went back the very next day, as we so enjoy repeating our mistakes, but left unsatisfied.

Blab. A reader tries to duck the question.
Explain speciation in asexual organisms?
Define speciation in asexual organisms.
Take your parents, for instance.

Blab. Another Francophile writes:
Personally, I am very much in favour of asteroids which are 'large enough to destroy France' being given free rein to do so. Clearly, some form of early-warning system will be necessary, coupled with a mechanism to adjust the spin of
the earth to ensure that the asteroid directly strikes the centre of France, but the effort expended would be well worthwhile, in my opinion.
We could also consider adjusting the flight path of the asteroid, which might conceivably be an easier method to ensure accurate asteroidal targeting than modifying the spin of the earth. After all, to deflect the path of an asteroid,
all you need is a couple of space shuttles and Bruce Willis, which are available (although at a price that may work out to be). Some precision will be required, though, as we really don't want another tedious asteroid impact in Tunguska, when one in the first arrondissement would be so much better all round.
How could we agree more wholeheartedly? We suggest that your former method should be called an Early Encouragement System. Lighter weight versions of it could be used to implement our previously touted List of People Who Should Be Smited.
It is widely speculated that this method was used to eliminate a similarly annoying culture that, at the time, had its center in Tunguska. So maybe the equipment is still available for use, albeit with a little DIY polishing.

Blab. A reader has been eating again.
Me: Is the club sandwich made with real clubs?
Waiter: Yes, sir. It is.
Me: I'll have that, then. And could you hold the mayo?
Waiter: Where would you like me to hold it, sir?
Me: Between Jack Nicholson's knees.
Waiter: Very good, sir.
We appreciate the reader's attention to healthy cuisine. And to Jack Nicholson's knees, which never seem to get enough attention.

Blab. A reader is off its meds again.
Bovine Virus Infection? Beast with Vast Interior? Bountiful Valley of Iguanas?
Yes. Certainly. Why don't you just take a seat over there by the television while we make a short phone call, hmm?

Blab. A reader has been smoking something again.
In email today :-
"It's better if everyone smokes from the same peace pipe"
Not sure if it's a Helenism or not, but it certainly made me smile.
-AJL
Seems to us that this aphorism is limited to applications wherein peace can be achieved sequentially. World peace, in particular, seems an unlikely match.

Blab. A reader has been reading Forbidden Texts again.
The vision of environmental justice is the development of a holistic, bottom-up, community-based, multi-issue, cross-cutting, and integrative, and unifying paradigm for achieving healthy and sustainable communities--both urban and rural. In the context of ecological peril, economic dysfunction, infrastructure decay, racial polarization, social turmoil, cultural disorientation, and spiritual malaise which grips urban America at the end of the 20th century, environmental justice is indeed a much needed breath of fresh air. Tragically, many positive developments have been rendered invisible behind the curtain of a sensationalism-oriented mass media. However, there is no denying that great resilience exists in the economic, cultural, and spiritual life of America's communities. There are many stellar accomplishments, entrepreneurial successes, and significant victories--both big and small. Hence, an abiding goal of the Public Dialogues on Urban Revitalization and Brownfields was the constant search for authentic signs of hope.
Frighteningly, it really does say that. Whatever that is. We seem sure that whatever Brownfields was, their constant search for authentic signs of hope went unrewarded.

Yow. Another trinary date. And this one's a double palindrome! Wherever are the chirping speedways now? Triple time!

Yo. Osama bin Laden video games? But of course. Mods are good. We like mods.

Plurp. Demonstrating the infinite ability of humans to create categories out of any random collection, we present ... tight skirt art. Honest.

Plurp. Universe discovered to be the color of mint chocolate chip ice cream. We are not making this up!

Plurp. Frankly, we used to fantasize long into the night about a time, in what was then the unseeably dim future, when a woman might leave her toothbrush at our place. Even today, the sight brings a smile. But maybe that's just us?

Plurp. We have noticed a drop-off in reader contributions lately. We attribute this to (a) the ongoing tragedy of mistreated circus elephants, and (b) the fact that we haven't polished the mind control lasers in quite some time. Figuring the latter might be the big effect, we hereby request all readers to tell us something insanely personal about themselves.
G'head - we can't tell who you are anyway. Think of it as anonymous exhibitionism.

Plurp. It doesn't have any right to be a lazy day today. But it is.

Plurp.
Today, I want to tell you a story. The story is about a person, whom we will call A., who runs a weblog and a person, whom we will call B., who is said to read the weblog.
In the story, A. has an encounter with B. in which certain requests are made and certain responses are elicited. A conversation ensues, though we do not turn out to know enough of the context of this conversation to determine its significance. Mutual assurances, however, are given.
Through the use of clever plot ambiguities, the reader is made to wonder if the conversation is related to certain topics that were raised on the weblog by a person whom A. believes to be B., or perhaps to A.'s insistence on certain interpretations of either the conversation or the weblog entries.
In order to retain the reader's interest, the story includes intimations of sexual relationships that are known to both A. and B. Several salacious details appear to be related to the aforementioned requests and responses.
The story ends with A. considering writing about these events in the weblog. But, it being a lazy day, he does not.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was finally discovered to be
a spiritual malaise which gripped urban
America at the end of the 20th
century

Wednesday, January 9, 2002
Blab. A reader whom we definitely suspect of being Helen writes:
I don't want to move to the Bahamas. I want to move to the BVI. Get it right!
Move to <warm place starting with B>. OK. Fine.

Blab. That same reader relays a Helenism.
Heard on Oprah:
"Let's cut to the bottom of the chase."
Good one! And similar to the already-recorded, Let's get to the bottom of the chase.

Blab. On our recent exposé of more Alien Food Symbols, a reader writes:
Hula Hoops? Even my beloved Hula Hoops??
Yes, dear reader, though it saddens us to say so.

Blab. It's such a tragedy. Wendy's Hamburger founder Dave Thomas, after undergoing liver cancer, kidney dialysis and quadruple bypass surgery, died yesterday of undisclosed causes. And, as a thoughtful memorial, a Treasured Reader sends us this ...
[link].
OK, we would have to agree that this is pretty meaningless and, in context, rather tasteless. That is, it is in our own particular, well, idiom.
We would apologize, but would you really believe us?

Yo. Here's a tear-jerker. MIT Media Lab Tightens Belt. It seems that the lavishly overfunded lab is feeling the pain of the recession that has put so many thousands out of work..
Among the things [Executive Director] Bender says won't be paid for out of the laboratory till: cell phones, limos, first-class flights and furniture. [...]
"I realize that some of the guidelines outlined below might cause frustrations or difficulties for you," Bender wrote, "but I believe that they are necessary to restore the financial health of the lab."
The belt being tightened is a Gucci belt, of course.

Yo.
An asteroid large enough to wipe out France hurtled past the Earth at a distance of about a half-million miles just days after scientists spotted it.
Missed!

Yo. Friend Bill notes a possible recent addition to the Gallery of Regrettable Food: Meat! Frightening memories from our grease-laden childhood.
And for that matter, there are also these conceptually dismembering images of Jello, out of which nothing edible was ever created.

Plop. It seems that the great state of Virginia was officially involved in forced eugenics for quite some time.
Virginia's policies of selective breeding during the 20th century [included] the forced sterilization of 8,000 mostly poor, uneducated men and women for supposed "defects" of heredity.
The [eugenics] movement sought to use government power to breed away such social problems as poverty, immorality, crime, alcoholism and ignorance.
The movement flourished mostly before World War II, although sterilizations continued on a very limited basis into the 1970s.
They may not quite have succeed in breeding away ignorance. We won't comment on immorality or crime.
Fortunately, the Virginia legislature has now "expressed regrets". There. All better.

Yo. Lunchtalk yesterday briefly visited the new rifle being developed for the Army that uses "air bursting fragmentation munitions" (bullets that explode near a target without having to hit it).
The question was: How do they know when to explode? The answer turns out to be: The gunner tells them by using a laser ranging sight, similar to the way you focus an autofocus camera. You aim the ranging sight at the guy you want to kill (who is cleverly hiding behind a rock), then aim above his head and shoot. The ranging information is relayed to the bullet, which knows to explode just as it gets above the guy's head.
The gunner can also set the bullet to explode upon impact, or delay the explosion slightly after impact, the latter being good for shooting people on the other side of "weak" barriers like car doors.
While the lethality radius is classified, an educated guess is that it's around 3m. And the fragments can pierce standard military body armor.
So hiding behind things is pretty much useless.
Scary stuff.

Yow. You cannot know how much it pains us to admit that we looked at Wil Wheaton's blog today. But we must. We must! After all, how else could we show you the coolest digital Medieval torture device ever created? You too can be an Evil Puppeteer! This is just one heck of a of a lot of fun to play with, so do!

Yow. Did you know there was a geek hierarchy? Well, there is. And we know people frighteningly close to the "top" of said hierarchy. (/usr/bin/girl)

Plurp.
The blue dog
turned out to be made
entirely of
forced eugenics

Tuesday, January 8, 2002
Blab. A reader who, if it is conceivable, might be even more cynical than we are writes:
It's a good idea, but I'm afraid you underestimate the cunning of the pundits. I believe the latter part of your conversation would go like this:
Plurp: What else do you know how to prevent but aren't telling anyone about?
Pundit: I know how to prevent terrible things A, B, and C--by doing X, Y, and Z.
Plurp: But X, Y, and Z won't prevent A, B, or C!
Pundit: Fine. Don't listen to me. See where it gets you.
[Months or years pass. Of course at least one of X, Y, and Z is not done. Eventually, terrible thing A, B, or C happens.]
Pundit: See! I told you A, B, or C would happen if you didn't do X, Y, and Z!
BTW, we know how to prevent the pundits from saying things like this.

Blab. For once, a reader follows inexorable logic.
Fact 1: Most crimes are not predicted before occurrance.
Fact 2: Once committed, it is possible to prevent future incidents of a crime.Therefore, we can assume either of two stances: It is the duty of every citizen to perpetrate as many crimes as possible in order to enable the powers that be to prevent such crimes from occurring in the future.
OR
It is the duty of government to attempt to predict all potential sources of criminal action and protect the population against all of them, regardless of infringement upon personal freedom.
Either way, I suggest moving to the Bahamas. You'll get out of the snow, at least, and the explosions in the distance should be interesting.
Helen has been an advocate of this plan for quite some time.

Blab. A reader without context writes:
I really think umbrells would have been a good idea.
Referring, we suspect, to large, flat plates of flowerheads. For some reason.

Yow. Today we announce the completion of our most recent Secret Project: an expansion of our famous Alien Food Symbols section, more than doubling its previous size, detailing yet more influence by alien races on the foods we eat, and including the shocking revelation that the most common food of the alien invaders is not human food at all!

Plurp. And if you think we're weird, we must inform you that these people are serious.

Plurp.
The blue dog
turned out to be just
another
alien food symbol

Monday, January 7, 2002
Blab. A reader finds another of those extraordinarily weird Flash/meme things, which may well prove to be the Web's entire contribution to culture when we look back on it in a century or two.
Weeeeeeeeee!
What can we say?

Blab. A daring reader once again attempts to retell well-known jokes.
Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant with a banana?
A: Elephant banana sine theta in a direction mutually perpendicular to the two as determined by the right hand rule.
It's all in the timing.

Blab. In answer to our question, What happens when you cross a blue dog?, a reader volunteers this:
Simple, you get a cross blue dog.
Correct. But don't call us simple!

Blab. Meanwhile, another reader writes:
If you cross a blue dog, you get a due blog. Sheesh, don't you know anything?!? AJL
It turns out that we do not.

Blab. On the topic of knowing everything, a reader writes:
In base infinity, everything is a palindrome.
You mean, Everything finite is a palindrome. Or ... ?

Blab. On the continuing mystery of that Helen person, a particularly perceptive reader writes:
Who is Helen? Perhaps this koan will provide insight:
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.
The monk, eating the plum, was no longer hungry, which he had previously been
due to the fact that he had spent his entire life searching and not eating.
But he was not Enlightened.

Well-plummed, though.

Rant. A pox upon demonic evildoers Ian and Helen and the rest of their Satanspawn who, through some as yet undetermined sympathetic magick, by shaking their snow globes and purchasing skiing equipment, cause it to fricking snow around here!
Look. If we had wanted to spin our lovely little Miata around on frictionless surfaces occupied by speeding SUVs with brainless drivers, we would have ... would have ... well, done something else, that's what!
We will agree with you that, in the abstract, it is aesthetically pleasing to view the starkly bare trees frosted with new-fallen snow. But we would be much happier gliding through it with the Unreal engine, watching it on (analog!) TV, or receiving picture postcards from our less sane compatriots who choose to risk their lives in such madness.
Plus, you can't put the top down in the danged stuff and we had to postpone the beach party yet again. OK? OK?
So knock it off!

Plop. We rented Ghosts of Mars, the latest John Carpenter gore-o-rama, last weekend. What a loser! Plot: Unexplained gaseous/particulate stuff left over from previous Martian inhabitants can somehow take over human bodies and transform them into violent and ugly zombie proponents of expelling all non-transformed folks from Mars. The implausible plot is well matched with implausible casting: disturbingly thin female models that are such martial arts experts as to handily overpower huge, muscular convicts - not to mention hordes of zombies - with ease. An All Expenses Spared production.

Rant. We are in the middle of an orgy of retrospective protectionism. After any random Bad Event, a cadre of shrill authorities, ranging from politicians to radio DJs - none of them geniuses at social policy, quite frankly - proclaim how they would have prevented the Bad Event if only they had Been In Charge beforehand. More often than not, they lobby for social restrictions which they claim would prevent future incidents of the Bad Event, regardless of whether the Bad Event is ever likely to occur again. Most of the time, their social restrictions would not have prevented the Bad Event in the first place. As we said, they are not geniuses.
The most recent example is the dopey Florida teenager who decided it'd be a good idea to commit suicide by crashing a small plane into an unoccupied building. Never mind that the kid was just doing a little scrubbing of the old gene pool. Never mind that he hit a lawyer's office which, it could be argued, promoted the social good. Never mind that this has never (to our knowledge) happened before in the history of aviation, nor is it likely to ever happen again.
Never mind all that! How could this happen? the pundits cry. How did this kid get the keys to an airplane? If I had been in charge, this would never have happened! What we need is stricter control of ... mumble, mumble (something that wouldn't actually help).
Look . The kid could have done much more damage by driving dad's SUV through the local mall. And what are we going to do to prevent that, hmm? But the pundits aren't concerned about that. They are victims of the Orange Theory of Ideas: Must prevent terrorism; terrorists crash planes into buildings; hence ...
So, always anxious to promote the social welfare, we volunteer the following representative conversation with all of these pundits at once.
Pundit: How could this happen? If I had been in charge, this never would have happened!
Plurp: So you knew how to prevent this?
Pundit: Of course! It's obvious!
Plurp: And you didn't say anything?
Pundit: Huh?
Plurp: You knew how to prevent this terrible event, and yet you said nothing?
Pundit: What? It wasn't my job.
Plurp: Whose job was it?
Pundit: I don't know, but they sure should have known.
Plurp: And yet clearly they didn't, and you felt no responsibility to prevent this from happening by telling them, even though you knew.
Pundit: Well I ...
Plurp: What else do you know how to prevent but aren't telling anyone about?
Pundit: I didn't ...
Plurp: The next time something bad happens, and you come around telling us you could have prevented it, we're going to have you arrested as an accessory before the fact.
Pundit: You're what?
Plurp: And, since this conversation is on the record, it'll be pretty easy to prove premeditation.
Pundit: Premeditation?
Plurp: You might want to get yourself a lawyer.
You're welcome.

Plurp. From our collection of Bumper Stickers We're Unlikely To See Soon.
Don't Like My Driving?
Call 1-800-CAR-BOMB

Plurp.
The blue dog
could have prevented
event x by taking
action y

Sunday, January 6, 2002
Blab. On the subject of the origin of asexual species, a reader writes:
Hmmm. The God explanation seems simpler than the mitosis thingy, so by Occam's razor, I'm going with the first explanation.
If you're going to go with that God explanation, you needn't bother with all that complex Occam's razor stuff.

Blab. Not willing to let a sleeping joke lie, a reader writes:
No no no no no. It's "What do you get when you cross a mosquito with a mountain goat?", and then "Nothing; you can't cross a vector with a scalar (scaler)". That, or "Madonna iguana sine theta".
Depending.
We encourage our readers to leave the humor to us from now on. For your own safety.

Blab. A reader provides clues about the mysterious Helen.
This is Helen before she met Steve, and Helen now. She got older. I'm not sure about wiser.

Well, whoever this gorgeous woman is, we hope she at least got happier.

Plurp. Curiously, Robin Williams is right. Cloaca is a word.

Plurp. We're working on another Secret Project. More later.

Plurp.
What happens if you
cross a blue
dog?

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