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2002.06.23 : 2002.06.29
Saturday, June 29, 2002
Blab. Ed McMahon writes:
I think I'm becoming your
Ed McMahon on this here Plurp! thing. You link to me constantly and publish
every little blab I blab into the box. Is this some sort of mind control
experiment? If it is, it must be asked, who is controlling who? Or, you
know, whom. - Kafka
True, true. But be of good cheer. We are fickle, a serial obsessionist
if ever there was one. The milk of our constant doting over your every
word, though it currently fills our heart to overflowing, will soon sour
to resentment, or boredom. Or cheese.
Blab. A reader mythes the mythos.
Technically, the stars were
never in the alignment they are in today -- even today. Too much
distance between us and them.
So ... if we were closer to them they'd be in the
same alignment? Good to know.
Blab. Our persistent correspondent L. writes:
"Our persistent correspondent
L. seems to have developed an unhealthy focus on the trivia of life."
You started it.
(And turn off those damn lasers. They're
making my brain tumor hurt.)
L.
Mom! L.'s Blabbing at us again!
We hope our Trusted Readers don't mind us taking them out of their boxes
and playing with them now and again. It is one of the few amusements we
have left in the waning years of our humdrum life, and we only taunt you
because we love you.
Something like that.
Blab. A reader with a mathematical bent (or bent mathematics
- we're not sure) writes:
if you take a sequence of
times approaching noon from the morning you will not reach an afternoon
time. if you choose a sequence of times approaching noon from the afternoon
you will not reach a morning time. since the function is discontinuous
at noon you may choose any value to try to eliminate the discontinuity.
12 seems a terribly arbitrary choice but i guess it might work, provided
everyone agrees (which clearly they don't). being a fan of higher literature
i'd have chosen 42.
t
That would be 42 M. In Chicago, at least.
Blab. One of our readers makes the headlines.
Having just been laid (off)
by Worldcom I had a never-before-experienced deja vu thingie. I now know
how the survivors of the titanic felt. My ex-fellow worldcommies are standing
at the handrail feeling bad for the people leaving in the lifeboat.
t
What an awful experience. What a wonderful metaphor.
Blab. A reader slips up.
pink. and i was the only
one at the party wearing one. i guess i shoulda shaved my legs. and back.
i did get 8 weeks of severance but it will be paid out on a bi-weekly basis.
hope the company doesn't go bankrupt until the pay runs out :-)
t
We recommend depilatory. And a company that tries to make money the old
fashioned way.
Blab. A reader speculates on games that might be fun when played
backwards.
Diplomacy might be good for
retrograde.
The board game or the international struggle?
Yow. Chasing down various items on chess and Cthulhu yesterday,
we ran into this
rather cute story. Go read.
Plurp. In the wake of Enron, WorldCom and Xerox, we find ourselves
spectators to the most cognitively dissonant event of the century: Politicians
who insist that corporations be honest.
We'll call it Kettlegate.
Plop. In another astonishing display of political correctness
going raving mad, falling on the floor and drooling spittle onto the nice,
clean carpet, a British theater company changed the name of its production
of The Hunchback of Notre Dame to The
Bellringer of Notre Dame. Why? So as not to offend the hunchbacks,
of course.
Predictably, London's Scoliosis Association applauded the move. No word
yet from the Bellringer's
Association.
Readers are humbly requested to send
nominations for politically correcting other classic works, giving
both the classic title and your significantly kinder revision.
 Plurp.
The blue dog
was looking for a more politically
correct
color
Friday, June 28, 2002
Blab. The Spew Award for our contest, Food That Does
Not Make Sense, goes to this reader.
Lessee here...food that doesn't
make sense.
How about that bubble-tape stuff?
And eggplant. That doesn't make sense
to me at all. Besides the whole George Carlin bit about it, it's just so
damn aesthetically pleasing, I would never want to puncture its pleasingly-hued
skin to get at the soft meat within. That and the fact that it doesn't
taste the slightest bit good.
Oh and those fist-sized gobstoppers
they sell at some candy stores (we had a place called Farrell's when I
was a tot) that result in an inability to close one's mouth and a prodigious
amount of drool being unleashed onto the sucker's shirt.
Habaneros. Pork skins. Shrimp flavored
snack puffs. Maraschino cherries. The green and red candied fruit you put
into fruit cake if you are so inclined. Wax lips. Starfruit. Uni sushi.
Help! I can't stop!
 Hey!
No fair defaming wax lips! They were a mainstay of our kidly diet. We still
remember their greasy sweetness, the noisy way we sucked the spittle back,
the wet and disgusting pink mess that remained after we chewed all of the
sugar out of them.
Those were the days, weren't they?
Blab. Another reader can't make sense of ...
"Chinese smorgisbord" at
a Chinese resturant. (Scandinavian) an assortment of foods starting with
herring or smoked eel or salmon etc with bread and butter; then cheeses
and eggs and pickled vegetables and aspics; finally hot foods; served as
a buffet meal
Personally, we think all oxymorons make sense. Must be the way our brain
is wired.
Blab. Finally, more in line with the generally cognitive paradigm
of this blog, a reader suggests:
Food that does not make sense:
sneakers.
You mean the footwear, we assume.
Blab. Only a single reader was up to yesterday's retrograde
chess challenge.
c2-c4
b4xc4(ep)+
b3-c3+
cool.
-pTang
Yeah - great fun, eh?
 Blab.
It's bad enough that those evildoers with time machines stole the idea
of retrograde chess which we conceived so brilliantly yesterday. Now it
seems that they have written a book about it.
A Raymond Smullyan book of
"retrograde"
chess puzzles. I remember enjoying it.
-pTang
So let's generalize. Which games are interesting when played in retrograde?
Go
is likely to be too hard, we suspect. Guess What Number I'm Thinking
would be too easy. Anything with dice might be pretty much impossible.
Tic-tac-toe, maybe? Checkers? What do
you think?
Blab. A reader notices a worrying anomaly.
So in talking about reverse
chess, you link to some second-rate X-Files fanfic on the topic, but not
to the venerable Chess Variants
Pages, which describe more chess variants than you can shake a stick
at, including Retrochess?
Yes, we seem to have done just that. Why do you ask?
Blab. Using Carnivore
to read the previous reader's Blab as it was sent, an Agent of Homeland
Defense writes:
On those Chess Variants pages,
the Lovecraftian variant Nemoroth
is not to be missed, except perhaps by those who wish to retain their sanity.
Not being in this category, we read it in detail.
The Wounded Fiend begins
the game on the Rook's square, and moves Rookwise to empty squares; but
of course it may never approach a Ghast too closely, and if it attempts
to cross a square seen by a Basilisk it will be petrified. The Wounded
Fiend [oozes] copious amounts of fetid ichor which drench every square
it lands on or crosses. No piece, neither friend nor foe, will dare venture
upon an an ichorous square until the ichor evaporates five moves later.
We are discussing whether we dare play it on the Giant Chess Board.
Blab. Bob the Purloined Sock
Puppet makes a surprise reprise.
Bob has been sneaking away
again -- but this time, he's been caught, red-handed, in his new gig.
A correspondent, just back from Cornell
(where she saw Bob on TV, no less), informs me of this
...
{inw}
The world is a very
strange place.
(Pleasanton, Calif., Jun.
25) 1-800-BAR NONE, the top-rated loan vehicle for consumers with less
than perfect credit who are in the market for auto financing, today announced
the formal partnership of 1-800-BAR NONE with the Sock Puppet.
It worries us that your correspondent found this.
Blab. Our persistent correspondent L. seems to have developed
an unhealthy focus on the trivia of life. We deny that the mind control
lasers are responsible, but we are amused nonetheless and wish to encourage
this mental aberration. Let's see how we do.
"It's a mean world out there."
AM, as I'm sure you know, means ante
meridiem, literally "before noon." Likewise, PM means post meridiem, or
"after noon." Therefore, by definition, noon itself cannot be either AM
or PM.
As for midnight, well, I think it's
thrown in there because we like things in pairs.
My AP Stylebook tells me that midnight
(do not preceed with a 12) is in fact part of the day that is ending, not
the day that is beginning. Personally, I think that's rubbish, but it would
make midnight 12 PM.
"We do note with sadness, however,
the 1,580,000 other people out there who seem to think you are completely
wrong about the lack of existence of 12 AM and 12 PM"
Are these the same people who thought
the 21 century began in 2000?
L.
So here we are, reduced to citing Authoritative Figures in order to Be
Right. Fine. If it's that important to you, then you must be right. Far
be it from us to challenge the deeply held personal beliefs of our Treasured
Readers.
Interestingly, the Chicago Manual of Style claims that there are three
proper temporal designations: A.M. for ante meridiem (before noon),
P.M. for post meridiem (after noon) and M. for meridiem (noon).
They would seem to insist that noon is 12 M., and give no guidance at all
about midnight.
NIST
tells us that the terms 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. cause confusion and should
not be used.
So much for Authoritative Figures, eh?
Blab. Another hapless reader is unable to resist the mind control
lasers.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
I finally looked at the Bughouse Chess
link. And in case nobody looked, or if they looked, in case they didn't
report to you, or in case they looked and have never been heard from since,
it isn't about bugs, it IS much worse. It appears to be clever team chess
with two opposing colour boards playing under tight time control at once.
Much Much worse it HAS CLEVER RULES. Before my brain began to steam (After
about 3 seconds at the site) I could tell it is clever.
Shudder - Well I was warned.
Muahaha! The rules are, in part:
Any piece can be placed on
any unoccupied square on the board, with the exception that pawns may not
be placed on the first and last rank.
Pieces may be dropped to check one's
opponent or dropped to deliver checkmate.
Plus, it's speed chess, and you don't have to declare check. Sounds hairy.
Blab. At lunch today, Ian
came up with a dandy Helenism,
which he then asked Dave
(who had the laptop with the wireless link) to Blab
to us:
The 11th minute (ian)
It's all so complicated!
Plurp. Hey, here's some good news. If all human life is obliterated
from the Earth, through either our own stupidity or an encounter with a
random asteroid, it might only take a
million years or so for life to redevelop. (That's as compared with
the mere hundred thousand years that humans have existed at all.)
That's a relief!
Plurp. And speaking of relief, our dear friend Kafkaesque
is still, for reasons unknown, looking out for us, this time in the guise
of pointing us to the Cthulhu
Hymnal.
Pardon me boy,
Is this the Lair of Great Cthulhu?
In the city of slime,
Where it is night all the time.
Great stuff. Treasured Readers get Extra Points for telling
us when the stars were previously in this alignment.
Yak. We like
meetings.
I'm not going over your back.
Yo. A Secret Correspondent informs us of the hitherto unsuspected
existence of Daypop, which claims
to Search 7500 News Sites and Weblogs for Current Events and Breaking
News. It's the blog part that's interesting, of course. Do you really
go to blogs for Current Events and Breaking News? That would be
pretty scary.
But it does allow us to find the
strangest things in blogs. And that's a plus.
Yo. OK, raise your hands if you knew that Bruce
Sterling has a blog. No? Well, he does anyway. And it just might be
more interesting than, say, Wil Wheaton's
given that Bruce (a) knows how to write and (b) is clever.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was the result of retrograde play
starting only with
wax lips
Thursday, June 27, 2002
Blab. A misconfigured reader
seems to be beaconing on a subject with which we're sure you'll all be
completely entranced.
"Nah. We don't think it'll
catch on. At any rate, 12 PM is midnight. Always has been."
"12 AM" and "12 PM" don't exist. It's
"midnight" and "noon," respectively.
If 12 PM did exist, however, it would
be noon, not midnight.
L.
We are certain you are correct, of course. Far be it from us to disagree
with our Treasured Reader. We do note with sadness, however, the 1,580,000
other people out there who seem to think you are completely wrong about
the lack of existence of 12 AM and 12 PM (not to mention the clocks), about
half of whom seem also to disagree with your interpretation of these two
non-existent times.
It's a mean world out there.
Blab. Our only entrant in the Food That Does
Not Make Sense contest (and, really, where are the rest of you?) is
this.
 English
food - this obviously requires no explanation as it is a known oxymoron.
As opposed to an unknown oxymoron. And speaking of which, could the rest
of you please suggest something
along these lines? Or different lines? Or something?
Yak.
What is that?
It's H.P. Lovecraft's Great Cthulhu
rendered as a plush doll in a Santa Claus outfit. Why do you ask?
Uh, could you, like, pay attention
to what we're doing here?
Oh. Yeah, sure.
Plurp. Walking past the Giant Chess Set today after lunch, we
stumbled into the idea of reverse chess, in which you start in a checkmate
(or stalemate) position and play backwards. Naturally, other people have
already
thought of it (though, in that case, with rather odd starting rules).
There are even chess
puzzles in this genre.
It is Black to play - what
were the last 3 moves? The only hint is to say that some moves are captures,
and there is only one possible solution.
Readers who care can send us a solution.
Yow. A correspondent of some
renown introduces us to the modern concept of warchalking.
[W]e hit upon the idea of
creating a hobo language for wireless access points. Find a node, and leave
a chalk symbol for others to find the node with a minimum of all that tiresome
netstumbler business.
Good stuff if you're looking into doing a drive-by hacking of some insecure
corporate net in Manhattan. Which, of course, you do all the time.
Also, as if that weren't enough, we learn about hobo
signs and firemarking.
We feel so educated!
You can even get the official pocket hint card (PDF).
Plop. Having not paid much attention to it this week (we've been
busy), we were kinda hoping that the WorldCom mess was just a result of
their misunderstanding the incredibly complex and Byzantine rules of corporate
accounting. But it turns out that they were just stupid
fraudsters. Oh well.
Plurp.
The blue dog
wondered why Dave was now doing his
blog
from home
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
Blab. Well, now that we're back in the Land O' Bandwidth,
it's time to see what you've been up to in our virtual simplex absence.
Here we have a reader with an unhealthy desire to involve bivalves in board
games.
An artist's
rendition of what playing chess with giant clams might be like.
A painting of people at Morro Bay (near where we were sprouted) playing
Giant Chess in the rain. And it can be ours, all ours for a mere $76k.
We'll put it on our Wish List, so our readers can buy it for us.
Blab. This reader has been traveling the world, trying to verify
our report of giant chess sets.
There's a big chess set (or
was) at Kabul Airport
We will have to take your word for this. Google
is silent on the subject.
Blab. A reader, blaming it all on Slashdot,
claims telepathic powers.
So, now we know why you REALLY
went to Scotland.....
Scotland:
Aliens' Official Favorite Destination
When do we get the pictures?
t
 That's
interesting.
[Scotland,] better known
as the home of legendary Loch Ness monster -- has the highest concentration
of UFO sightings on the planet, according to figures released Monday.
Figures.
Blab. A reader sends us a rather
long excerpt from the NYT, which we nonetheless reproduce here in order
to, well, you'll see.
Dear Diary:
My friend Matthew was on a Fifth Avenue
bus recently, and a young woman in a business suit was talking loudly on
her cellphone. People around her were frowning and otherwise trying to
signal that she should pipe down, but she ignored them. She called her
father to complain that he had made a doctor's appointment for her at the
wrong time, called her mother to complain about her father, called the
doctor's office to reschedule the appointment for a few months later and
then called her mother again to complain about how hard it was to get an
appointment.
She finally got off the bus, at which
point a young man pulled out his cellphone, called information and then
the doctor's office. Unfortunately, the young woman would not be able to
make the appointment, he said. Whether he should have done it is open to
question, but fellow passengers applauded.
We're not sure why, but we like this stuff! We challenge our readers to
tell
us their own True Life Stories of punishing anti-social cell phone
bozos or, Mitty-like suggest creative
ways that other people could.
Blab. During our brief hiatus, a reader thinks we have somehow
regressed to a Sophomoric slumber party.
If you had $1000 to give
to any charity, who would you give it to and why?
We would donate it to the Holy Church of Steve, for furtherance
of its sacred mission of pleasing Steve. We're thinking sushi here. Really
amazing sushi. Or London. (Not both. Clearly.)
Oh, and why? We dunno. But please send your $1000 as soon as possible.
We're all excited now.
Blab. A reader returns to its rut.
I *did* warn you that the
internet connection were suspect in Ireland. Why did you expect any different
from Virginia?
Indeed you did. We should not have set our expectations differently from
yours. Really we shouldn't. We apologize. Abjectly and completely. We'll
never do it again. Really. Sorry.
Blab. A reader who seems to have spent its time obsession about
Alien
Food Symbols writes:
I think you are right if
you have anything on these symbols. email me back
david I got more and a good story.
So. David. Here's where we have to confess to a terrible disability. Our
fingers are unable to type email to our Treasured Readers, so we can't
actually email you, your back, or any other part of your anatomy. The only
thing of which we are capable is responding here in our stupid blog. We
really do apologize.
Buy hey! Don't let that stop you, David. You got more and a good story.
Please send them along. We're
sure to be fascinated.
Blab. An observant reader attempts to correct us. This is never
a good thing. Nonetheless ...
*We* observe that long hours
and constant travel are wearing on the dedication and thoroughness of the
Plurp staff, evident in the brilliantly delivered time schedule: 12 AM
is midnight, 12 PM is noon. Of course, you COULD be time-travelling as
well. We wouldn't put it past you. Then again, perhaps this is the
latest adjunct to the OMCL: changing reality through gradually overlooked
and accepted misrepresentations. Then again, we actually liked the Cthulu
jingle, so you can't trust us.
Hmm. Changing Reality Through Gradually Overlooked and Accepted MisrepresentationsTM.
Nah. We don't think it'll catch on. At any rate, 12 PM is midnight.
Always has been.
Blab. Finally, this reader comes dangerously close to seeing
the truth.
I find that I send clever
prose to you, but that upon seeing it posted, it doesn't seem so clever.
The only conclusion I can draw is that you are sucking the cleverness out
of my submissions for your own nefarious use. From now on, I'm sending
only trite prose. See what you can make of that, you evil-doer!!!!! P.S.:
Stay away fromt he soylent green.
We cannot comment on the rumor that we are planning to bottle this stuff
under the brand name, Treasured Reader Cleverness.
Yak. Today's Plurp contest: Food That Does Not Make
Sense. Our first entry is from a person named Helen who is sitting
next to us:
Fish tacos.
Yes, fish tacos. Though, frankly, that seems pretty sane to us. We're willing
to wager one that our readers can
do better. But one rule: You have to provide a compelling explanation
for why your food that does not make sense doesn't, um, make sense.
Plurp. Today we met an electrician named Serge and a plumber
named Dwayne.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was entirely made of
food that
did not make sense
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
Plurp. We're in the mood for a little midsummer merriment.
Aren't you?
He'll seize you while you're
sleeping
You'll know when he awakes
No matter if you're bad or good
You'll be dead for Cthulhu's sake
So, you'd better watch out
You'd better not cry
You'd better not doubt
I'm telling you why
Great
Cthulhu's coming to town
Iä! Iä!
With thanks to Kafkaesque,
who pointed us in the general direction of that horrifying image.
Plurp. Today's itinerary.
| 7:15 AM |
Wake up. In Virginia somewhere. I
think. |
| 8:00 AM |
Morning conference session; try to
convince brilliant computer scientists that building systems with billions
of parts is a Grand Challenge. |
| 10:30 AM |
Leave for National Airport. |
| 12:30 AM |
Arrive at La Guardia. |
| 1:30 PM |
Stop by apartment to change clothes;
tell Helen we must stop meeting like this. |
| 3:00 PM |
Give presentation on Autonomic Computing
to conference of large financial companies. |
| 4:00 PM |
Leave for La Guardia. |
| 6:30 PM |
Arrive at National Airport. |
| 7:30 PM |
Evening conference session; try to
convince brilliant computer scientists that building systems with billions
of parts is a Grand Challenge. |
| 10:30 PM |
Try desperately to catch up on critical
email through Medieval bandwidth phone line. |
| 12:00 PM |
Give up. Sleep. |
Yes, it was that kind of day.
Plurp. We observe that brilliant computer scientists know a whole
lot about computer science. We also get the sneaky suspicion that they
don't know diddly about: business, economics, law, politics, biology
or physics. But surely we're wrong.
Plurp.
The blue dog hoped
that Treasured Readers were
sending
clever prose
Monday, June 24, 2002
Plurp. You know what? Between the lousy Internet connection
at this very swank but technologically Medieval conference facility, and
the fact that we have to fly from Virginia to New York and back again tomorrow
just to give a 30 minute talk that we haven't written yet, and the 13 hours
we spent in our conference today, we're just not gonna do much more Plurping
than this right now.
Instead, we kindly request that our Treasured Readers entertain us by
sending
us clever prose (and associated URLs), which we will, when Life Returns
To Normal, surely publish here for all to gaze at and admire.
Plurp.
The blue dog
didn't
know.
Sunday, June 23, 2002
Blab. Before responding to this week's contest (state
the rules for Team Chess), a reader
parks its self-esteem at the door.
The "Rule of Thumb" for Team
Chess would be to work together to BEET the other team.
You're impressed with my wit, aren't
you?
("NO, not really" sez Steve)
Actually, compared to many reader entries so far, this one is pretty good.
Except for that beet part.
Blab. Another reader just tries to annoy us.
The rules for team chess:
1) Teams are formed by pairing the
player with the most beets with the one with the fewest.
2) The team with the fewest geometric
average beets between them moves first.
3) A team may communicate only after
having surrendered 1 beet for every second of conversation time. These
beets go into the Trophy Pool.
4) This is the rule that doesn't
involve beets in any way.
5) Dave may not play.
6) The winner gets all beets in the
Trophy Pool in addition to the pre-arranged Bounty.
This sounds a lot like a Nomic game we played once. Except for that beet
part.
Blab. A reader haunts our old stomping grounds. Or vice versa.
We're not sure.
There's a big public chess
set at Morro Bay.
Do they use large clams as the pieces?
Blab. A reader sends us a ...
[link].
Sadly, we're stuck in a conference hotel somewhere in rural Virginia too
far away from civilization to have a real Internet connection (see below
somewhere). We have to pay $1 for every two minutes we're connected, so
we're going to have to pass on following up every Tom, Dick and Harry link
you folks send us with no explanation whatsoever.
In fact, we might even make that a Rule around here. Send us a blind
link with no clever text associated and we might post it. Blind. See if
anybody clicks on it then. Nyah.
But yeah, we prolly won't.
Blab. A reader combines confession, delusion and blind links.
But to what purpose?
I do read your Plurp page
now and then! Is this the kind of chess you're playing that takes on its
own life after a while and no one remembers how it got started so they
make up a legend based on what somebody's neighbor's kid remembers people
talking about once, late at night but it was in Italian ... or Japanese?
http://www2.whidbey.com/gerber3/Italy/Chess.htm
http://www.tendocci.com/tiea/
Yeah, we read our Plurp page every once in a while as well. Mostly,
though, it's not worth the effort. We still do it, but we can't remember
why. It's as if somebody's neighbor's kid remembers people talking about
it once, late at night but in Italian or Japanese.
Blab. A reader sends us text suggesting that odd chess rules
are an ancient tradition. Curiously, while this text appears to be from
the Web, the reader doesn't bother to send us a URL, so we won't bother
to post one.
Off the Beaten Path: Scacchi
Game in Marostica
A chess game with real people as pieces
is held in the main town piazza. A great deal of pagentry and Italian flair
is a sure thing. As per antique tradition the performance will take place
on THE SECOND WEEK-END OF SEPTEMBER IN THE EVEN YEARS [driving directions
deleted - ed.].
Recently, most of our years have been odd.
Blab. A reader, experiencing negative one G, tries again.
Rules (More Of A Guideline,
Really):
-
Position the players somewhere near the
chess set (but, you know, in the shade and all).
-
Provide beer, preferably of the sort
known as "lawnmower".
-
Await the development of special electrodes
that might be attached to the players' scalps, allowing them to move the
pieces from the comfort of their lawnchairs.
-
Await the development of an interesting
game that might be played with chess pieces.
-
Await the development of porcine aviation.
-
You're prolly out of beer by now: GOTO
1.
-G
Heck, with that much waiting around, it might as well be baseball!
Blab. A reader ignores the question, we think.
I'm partial to bughouse chess.
Check out bughouse.net....
- Felis Lynx
But, again, we haven't actually followed the link. Maybe it's about insects.
Maybe it's much, much worse. We can't be held responsible.
Blab. A bot, trying desperately to be helpful, writes:
There appears to be a problem
on this page.
When you click on your
link you get the error: 404 File not found
There appears to be a problem with the Web. People keep moving content
or, worse, taking it off the Web. We don't know why. It's cheaper than
dirt to keep it up there. Heck, it's probably cheaper to leave it up than
to pay somebody to mash enough buttons to take it down. Go tell Tim Berners-Lee.
Blab. A reader informs us that:
someone misses you.............
.........right now!
We can only hope it was that sniper.
Plurp. Due to an improbable set of circumstances too complex
for us to detail here, we suddenly find ourself at a conference, rubbing
elbows with the likes of Alan Kay, Robert Sproull and Bob Metcalf.
Bruce Sterling was the dinner speaker tonight. You know, if we ever
decide to go into the business of bottling sarcasm, Bruce will be our natural,
protected spring.
Plus there is a fabric of fireflies suspended a foot above the grassy
fields here that looks like it must have been conceived by Disney.
This is not what we expected to be doing on Sunday.
Plurp.
The blue dog
proposed playing chess
with teams of fireflies
and clams
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