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2002.08.25 : 2002.08.31
Saturday, August 31, 2002
Blab. A reader sends us amusement.
Asylum
Sand Art
We keep trying to write our name in the sand.
Blab. A reader tries desperately to send us something.
This is a special good tool
I hope you would like it.
Sadly, our email client seems to have gotten all confused about attachments,
and won't let us see them any more. And we are too stupid, or perhaps too
lazy, to figure out why. So we may never know what special good tool our
Treasured Reader sent, or whether we would like it.
 Blab.
Knowing our love of perversion, a kindly reader offers this.
Also available from Amazon's
toy chest of perversion:
Bloody
Sword
by Fun World Inc.
(Wasn't this part of an old SNL skit?)
What a lovely kid's toy! We anticipate a whole line of similar products.
Kiddie stomach pumps. Chewable needles. Exploding kitties.
Hey - that last one's not bad!
Blab. Our readers check in on the Great Photoshop Debate.
If you have to pay for it,
forget about Photoshop. What an overpriced piece of....
You can get a whole lot more for less
$ by getting CorelDRAW Graphic Suite 11, which includes PHOTO-PAINT 11
(easier to learn and just as powerful as Photoshop) A Photoshop guru
even gave it a
decent review.
Sorry about the long link. (He's
wrong about it not having Dodge/Burn btw.. it does)
We never dreamed a mere graphics program could be so stimulating!
Blab. A second reader puts us under hypnosis and compels us to
...
Forget Photoshop... switch
to the Gimp (or the
Windows version). Not only is it free, you get lots of hand-eye-coordination
training trying to select things from its hugely nested and hysteresis-free
menu system.
That's the ticket! We always choose new applications for their demands
on our hand-eye coordination and their hugely nested menus.
Blab. A third reader addresses the contents of our large intestine.
Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop?
Paint Shop is a perfectly fine little
program if you don't have access to Photoshop. I'm not sure how it compares
to Photoshop Essentials, the basic introductory version of the software,
but then I'm not sure how Photoshop Essentials compares to the full package.
Photoshop is a great thing if a) you
have a buttload of money you need to get rid of and/or 2) you're a professional
graphic artist doing professional level print work.
Something else that may be a factor
is whether Paint Shop Pro supports Photoshop filters; I'm not sure about
that, either.
L.
Paint Shop Pro doesn't support Photoshop filters, as far as we know. It's
just this limitation of function that makes us wonder if Photoshop might
be cooler.
Plurp. So we really tanked up the old Sleepmobile last night.
Yep, pulled right up to the SomaStation and said, Fill 'er up, Yogi,
and make it Premium. We're not even gonna open our eyes between here and
Kingdom Come.
And we didn't, either.
Plurp. A friend calls to tell us that he's decided that IBM is
more Brave New World than 1984. Good to know.
Plurp. Harry
Potter for slightly older folks. Is it just us, or is the whole idea
a little odd?
Yo. Angelina
cliques. Cliques
in general. The Web is a very strange place.
Yo.
Chained
to Evolutionism: Pokemon's pro-Darwinism propaganda is inescapable
Yo. Ted Nelson, "the inventor of hypertext", is starting
over. He just got a Ph.D., for instance. And a new Web site. Of sorts.
Interestingly, his current
manifesto highlights his problem.
There are a lot of people - and we know a few of them - who start out,
early in their careers, as brilliant, even gifted, visionaries. They have
an extraordinary dream, and they get lots of other people excited about
it.
Then something happens. Or, rather, nothing happens. They don't manage
to make their vision into reality. Some parts of it may become real; others
don't. The world moves on, but the visionary doesn't. He or she hangs on
to the dream, unable to make it come true, for decades.
They're doing it all wrong, says the visionary. I told them
so and they didn't listen. Those in charge are preventing my brilliant
ideas from catching on.
It's easy for them to blame others. It's clear to them that they are
not at fault. Their ideas are brilliant. They should have caught on. It
must be those evil people who are preventing that from happening.
It's sad. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe the world just doesn't work the way
they would like, and they prefer to blame the world instead of themselves.
 Plurp.
The blue dog
had a recurring dream of
being a chewable vitamin
Friday, August 30, 2002
Blab. A reader sends us a trip report of its own.
The wind whipped through
the fire from every direction, spiralling up into the night sky.
Dancing all around us were the fire-cast shadows of the twisted trunks
of the darkwoods.
In the distance, Dark and Evil things
could be heard scrambling about and devouring one another with the ravenous
hunger of a mindless evil that cannot be controlled. But none
would come near this place, as the light cast by the burning darkwoods
was death to the evil beasts of this Forest. Still, there were greater
evils not so easily warded away, and for that we had with us Morgana, priestess
of the dark goddess Kai'yed.
We recommend the coast of Maine. Less windy. But do give our best to Morgana.
Blab. A doubly vain reader redirects our attention.
Holy sh*t! I'm sorry...
I sent you the wrong link the other day. The blog about cannibalism
is here. It's my blog,
but I thought you might find it a hoot. Godd*mn that's embarassing.
I really dig Plurp, by the way. The blab thing adds a whole new dimension
to the whole blog idea, I think. I mean, it's essentially glorified
commenting, but it's the way you use it. Very cool. Just stumbled
across you. Please don't hold my shameless self-promoting against
me!
You think this is glorified? Interesting.
[Asterices added above. Treasured Readers are reminded that they are
speaking in public, and that a certain decorum is expected.]
So, OK. Once again, we follow our Treasured Reader's pointers to blogs
that are allegedly about cannibalism because, uh, well, we dunno.
This time, though, we find more
meaty content. Very funny. Go
look. Honest.
Blab. A reader accuses Mia.
In Latin.
Mia culpa! Mia maxima
culpa!
Is she? Is she really?
Blab. A NwN fan with lots of free time writes:
"But, in this regard, how
does it differ from Doom, or Quake, or any of the other zillions of games
that (a) have single-player modes, (b) have multi-player modes and (c)
let you design your own pieces of a world?"
Doom, Quake and such have had mod
tools available for a long time, true. However, these sorts of games are
really just nervous-twitch shooters -- go into a room, kill everything
that moves before it kills you, and that's the end of it. Even games like
Half-Life, a mod of which spawned the popular Counter-Strike and which
is known for its story elements, is really nothing more than a shooter.
Neverwinter Nights, in comparison,
is a roleplaying game. It allows you to create a character and to develop
that character over time. You can play the same character in multiple modules,
just as in a real roleplaying game. In shooters, even ones with some roleplaying
elements like Deus Ex, this isn't an option.
Because its a roleplaying game with
a fairly hefty set of skills, feats and so on, a module in Neverwinter
Nights does not have to be just a twitch-fest of virtual violence (although
it certainly can be that, as well). It's possible to create modules that
are centered around other skills. The series of modules I'm working on
now, for example, has a modestly complex mystery as the driving force of
the story. Players will have to read books, speak to NPCs and so on in
order to solve that mystery, not just kill everything that moves and take
all their stuff. One set of modules I've seen available for download off
the NWN site were inspired by Terry Pratchet's Diskworld novels, and look
to be just downright goofy and fun. In Quake and that lot, you pretty much
just have variantions on virtual characters shooting each other to hell.
A big difference between the mod tools
available for most games and the NWN toolset is the ease of use. I've looked
at the mod tools for games in the past, and for the most part, they simply
baffled me. The amount of effort needed to do the most basic scene was
just outrageous. The NWN toolset, in contrast, is comparable in complexity
to, for example, Macromedia Director or Flash, or creating a website with
a little JavaScript. A novice can get something workable in a relatively
short time, and with some dedicated effort can create some amazing and
original work.
In the end, what makes NWN interesting
to me is that it gives me tools for telling my own stories, and sharing
those stories with others, within the framework of a computer game. Even
better, those stories can be about something more than just killing each
other and looting the bodies, although that can be fun, too. If you have
no desire to tell your own stories, you still have the option of enjoying
other people's, and perhaps even sharing the enjoyment of that story with
other players.
It's not perfect, by any means, and
it's not for everyone. Honestly, I really don't think that it's your sort
of thing, based on your comments on such matters. Some of us, though, will
take any excuse we can find to get out of bed in the morning, or not drive
into oncoming traffic.
L.
Hey! Let's not defame FPS games, all right? After all, FPS rocks.
Or r00lz. Or whatever things like that do. And those who make excuses to
not drive into oncoming traffic have never really tried it. It's the ultimate
twitch game. Yee haw!
But, whatever. So NwN is an RPG. OK, great.
We spent several idle days some time
ago playing Baldur's Gate II with our friend Steve,
incurring the deep concern of our various wives for neither bathing nor
communicating intelligibly with them for quite some time. That was fun.
BG II is an isometric god's-eye-view RPG with drooling attention to the
many and obsessive Gygaxian rules of traditional D&D. All of the play
time is used up by Magic Users trying desperately to figure out which spells
they
can cast and which spells they should cast. Just like
good old D&D.
If NwN is pretty much that, it might be fun (though we have never (yet)
obsessed over a single-player RPG).
Blab. A reader thinks that something terrible hasn't already
happened.
Something
to contribute to that sinking sensation you get in your stomach when
you realize something terrible is about to happen.
L.
To wit:
Support for the First Amendment
has eroded significantly since Sept. 11, and nearly half of Americans think
the constitutional amendment on free speech goes too far in the rights
it guarantees, according to a poll released yesterday.
The sentiment that the First Amendment
goes too far was already on the rise before the terrorist attacks a year
ago, doubling to four in 10 between 2000 and 2001.
The poll found that 49 percent think
the First Amendment goes too far, a total about 10 points higher than in
2001. [...]
Among other poll findings:
-
About four in 10 favored restrictions
on the academic freedom of professors to criticize government military
policy during wartime.
-
While 75 percent considered the right
to speak freely to be "essential," almost half, 46 percent, supported amending
the Constitution to prohibit flag burning.
-
Sixty-three percent rated the job the
educational system does in teaching students about First Amendment freedoms
as "fair" or "poor."
Now, let's see. Do we have to say anything else? Nah, guess not.
 Yow.
Clever Caterina links to a
whole bunch of very cool sketchbooks. We are jealous beyond description.
We wish we had some artistic talent. Any artistic talent. Any at all. Instead,
our doodles look like this.
It's so sad.
Plurp. Should we leave Paint Shop Pro, our current graphics program,
in the bitbin of history, and switch to everybody-uses-it Photoshop instead?
Please tell us.
Yak. Lunchtalk.
Midgets are a small segment
of the population.
Plop. And about our optimism yesterday
that the U.S. Constitution still exists? Not if you're one of the 200
people under constant surveillance. Of course.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was one of the
Dark and Evil things
under constant surveillance
Thursday, August 29, 2002
Blab. A resourceful reader reveals another of our little
hobbies.
"On several occasions, the
Sound
Sculpture Ensemble has been joined in concert by Steve White  (Blue
Man Group, NY)"
Looks like our secret's out! Yes, we are one of the enigmatic characters
in Blue
Man Group.
Come and see us at the Astor
Place Theater. Sit in the front row; we'll throw you a Twinkie.
Blab. A reader objects to our perceived ignorance.
funcall?
I suppose you are fully aware of this
stuff.
But anyway a
reference for your treasured readers
See also APPLY.
Lisp, automatic for the people.
Right. Let's review. Having used the word apply in a sentence yesterday,
followed by the token funcall, our reader expresses surprise that
we didn't understand. See, funcall
is a function in Lisp, as is apply.
Aren't you ashamed for not seeing that earlier? We certainly are.
Blab. A kind reader seeks to pull us gently back from the brink
of suicide.
One good thing about Neverwinter
Nights is that once you've finished the single player game, you can download
modules created by others and keep on playing. True, most of these modules
are as mindless and pointless as the one put together by my 14-year-old
stepson, but several I've played through are better than the officially
released content.
Of course, this is only an appeal
if you like the basic gameplay in the first place, which is very much just
D&D on a computer, and not even a complete and faithful implementation
of D&D.
It's something to do to fill in the
long, miserable hours before sweet, sweet death.
L.
We suppose we'll have to look into it further. But, in this regard, how
does it differ from Doom, or Quake, or any of the other zillions of games
that (a) have single-player modes, (b) have multi-player modes and (c)
let you design your own pieces of a world?
Blab. Coincidentally, a reader sends us a ...
[link]
... to something that we just heard about at lunch today.
 OK.
Are you sitting down?
Kids can now "fly" a Nimbus
2000 broomstick just like the members of their favorite Quidditch team.
A replica of the broom Harry uses in the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone, the Nimbus 2000 features a grooved stick and handle for easy riding.
Enhancing the excitement are the vibrating effects and magical swooping
and whooshing sounds the broom makes when on.
A customer review:
When my 12 year old daughter
asked for this for her birthday, I kind of wondered if she was too old
for it, but she seems to LOVE it. Her friends love it too! They play for
hours in her bedroom with this great toy. They really seem to like the
special effects it offers (the sound effects and vibrating). My oldest
daughter (17) really likes it too! I reccomend this for all children.
Amazon says:
Average Customer
Reviews
Fun: 
Educational: 
Durability:
Odd. We would have thought it would score higher on Educational.
Blab. A reader suggests:
Dungeon
vs Ivory Tower
... which is a game called Sim University.
You are a young professor
who just got tenure at Calisota State University. Your objective is to
establish a program in computer games within three years. You can play
the role of Humanist, Computer Scientist, Visual Artist/Designer, Social
Scienctist, Psychologist, or choose a hybrid background. Within each breed,
several subclasses (eg. sociologist, linguist, film theorist) are available.
Against you are the Public, the University Board of Directors, the Funding
organizations, your department colleagues, Politicians, your computer lab
admins,and one or two alien monster races. As allies you have undergraduates
and industry designers. Neutrals: The gaming press. Your job is to
create a multidisciplinary task force (you will have to convert members
of the opposing factions to be successful), gather and balance resources,
forge alliances and battle the aliens (the easy part). A secret deathmatch
level is included to help your credibility with the undergrads and increase
morale. Confrontations with the Board of Directors are not playable, but
shown through cut scenes only. Unfortunately the game rules are not fully
documented or debugged; please register online for an update soon.
Shoot. Sounds like Sim Life to us.
Yow. Did you notice that the U.S. Constitution still exists?
Well, it
does. At least for
now. Tell your friends.
Plurp. Top search strings on Plurp's own Massive
Search Engine in some recent week?
- "helen naked pitures"
- "whitman"
- "ko"
- "my savage plurp"
Someone must explain that last one
to us. Really.
Plurp. Weblog
ethics. Ahahahahahahaha! Yeah, we'll get around to obeying these
right away. Oh, yes, we certainly will.
Plurp.
The blue dog
didn't understand that
Nimbus thing
Wednesday, August 28, 2002
Blab. A couple of our readers may be stuck in a time
warp again.
WE WANT OUR PLURP BACK!!!
And ...
It's been over a week, for
Christ's sake! What happened? Did you fall in?
We direct the attention of our readers to that most excellent Reload
button on their favorite browser.
Blab. After digesting our recent comings
and goings, a reader asks:
Did you ever remove poor
Helen from the trunk????
We knew there was something we forgot to do this week.
Blab. And on that topic, a reader claims that:
the trunk is not that big!!!!!
Which is, we think, a very rude thing to say about Helen. How dare you?
Blab. Our readers like to talk to each other. This one is talking
to that reader the other day who figured we were
lazing on the beach in our absence.
What beach????? Did
I miss something?
We consider it an honor and a privilege to be your passive transmission
medium.
Blab. That bureaucrat asks one more question
about our grant proposal.
$53,000 for sushi.
Is that for a month?
Thank you for the opportunity to correct this ambiguity. No, $53,000 for
sushi is not for a single month. That would clearly be out of line. It
is for two months.
Blab. A reader who wishes us to die of cholesterol poisoning
recommends:
Clam
strips. Very very good, and slightly less time on I-95 than Mystic.
(a plus or minus, depending on the Miata index)
 We
will check it out (ever anxious, as we are, to increase our cholesterol
and contribute to the untimely demise of shellfish). And as to I-95, it's
a serious minus. Being stuck for hours in stop-and-go traffic on a six
lane highway with trucks but without significant curves or hills? Contraindicated!
Blab. A reader highlights our ignorance.
"Here's where we confess
that we have never played one of these massive multiplayer games online."
Um... Neverwinter Nights has a excellent
single player mode and a network multiplayer mode. But it's not a
MMORPG.
We turn out to be even more ignorant that we thought.
Blab. A second reader joins the mockfest.
"Neverwinter Nights" isn't
a massive-multiplayer online game. It's great fun as a single player game.
The appeal of the game is that it
gives you the tools for creating and playing your own game modules rather
than relying on some corporate minions to do it for you.
And you can play with other people
if you want to. The appeal, of course, is to be the DM, so you can toy
with the other players and drive them insane before eating them.
L.
So let's suppose, hypothetically of course, that we are far too lazy to
do any world-designing of our own. And let's suppose that we just can't
stand
the idea of interacting with people in a computer game. Then, hypothetically,
of course, what's special enough about NwN that we would be drawn compulsively
to it? Please enlighten us.
Blab. Plurp's own Staff Editor writes:
"One of our most attentive
amateur copy editors tells us why we used renown when we should have used
renowned."
The sad thing is that I'm not an amateur
copy editor. It's (at least part of) how I keep the cat in catfood.
Man, it sucks to be me.
But if there are any girls there,
I wanna DOOOO them!
L.
OK. But first, you have to explain why you keep the cat in catfood. Sounds
messy to us.
 Blab.
Moving on to new business, an eagle-eared reader contributes this:
Helenism picked up by my
delightful boyfriend - It's not rocket surgery you know. And vice
versa, I guess it's also not brain science. --kar
Good one, and duly recorded!
(The one about rocket
surgery, that is. There really is such a thing as brain
science.)
Blab. A reader whom we have never met sends us this.
I feel cold and weary and
I don't want to keep feeling that way and I'm doing it to myself but if
to stop caring is what I need to do to stop feeling that way then I don't
think I want to do that...
I don't know what to do. You're
more important to me than any friend I've ever had and there's absolutely
nothing I can do to help you or understand you or even spend time with
you. I want so badly to find some way for us to really relate, but
I'm lost now.
I would still like to try to make
your life better. If I let myself I'd just keep pushing all my energy
into figuring you out. But neither of us seems to have the energy
to be friends right now, and I can't afford to let myself keep spiralling
downwards.
If I'm just being crazy right now
and you think I'm wrong, please tell me. I want more than anything
for there to be something I can give to you. I don't really want
to give up, I just... can't... anymore... without anything from you.
Don't think I'm abandoning you.
If there's ever anything I can do for you or if you ever need me, I'll
still be here. I hope someday you'll have figured yourself out and
I'll have figured myself out and things will be okay and we'll find each
other again.
Isn't it odd the turns life takes? We were feeling just these same things
about our anonymous reader, but we were unable to express them so eloquently.
Or, as we just said to Helen, There's no need to feel threatened;
whoever it is just broke up with us, after all.
Blab. A reader with unusual taste urges us to ...
Check this out. A blog
devoted to cannibalism.
This proves that we are not motivated by tales
of paleontologists with Visa cards, but we are motivated by cannibalism,
or at least voyeurism, to check out some random blog.
Blab. A reader covers its eyes and sends us a ...
[link]
A blog that orders us to do various things each day? We like it!
(Caution, though, if you're offended by words.)
Blab. Another visually impaired reader sends us a completely
different ...
[link]
And we quote from the NASA press release:
"NASA does not have the capability
to read minds, nor are we suggesting that would be done," said Robert Pearce,
Director, NASA's Strategy and Analysis Division in the Office of Aerospace
Technology in Washington. "Our scientists were asked to think outside the
box with regards to ideas that could aid the nation in the war on terrorism
and that's what they are doing. We have not approved any research in this
area and because of the sensitivity of such research, we will seek independent
review before we do."
Well, that's a relief. We hate competition.
Blab. Meanwhile, a reader who is orthodontically impaired writes:
Bling
bling!
Mr. Bling sells quality gold caps for your teeth. With diamonds in them.
Honest.
We've already got ours.
Blab. A reader suggests activity.
The blue man group has decided
to add an animal act. Perchance the blue dog could apply. Or at least funcall.
dorian
Funcall?
Blab. An extremely rude reader writes:
Six
found shot to death in rural Alabama.
Police say they were playing russian
roulette with a fully loaded revolver.
We don't think it's proper to make fun of people from Alabama just because
they're too stupid to live.
Plurp. At last, the flood of reader contributions subsides, leaving
us to mop up the mud and dry out the clothes. After that, we might even
manage some original content.
But don't count on it.
Plurp.
The blue dog
decided to at least
funcall
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Blab. There's still a steaming heap of reader input
left over from our sojourn in Maine. And, curiously, more continues to
dribble in. We've decided to expose them to you in an order both subtle
and mysterious. See if you can guess
the connection.
The first little lump serves only to confuse us.
CDE... that's Cthulhu Desktop
Environment, right?
Does the reader mean this CDE?
Or this
one? We may never know.
Blab. Speaking of words with Ds in them, a reader alerts
us to ...
Dead
Alewives on D&D
Now this is hilarious. And sad. And very, very accurate.
Go
listen. Really. And have some Cheetos.
Blab. A long time ago, we
asked why "they" called "them" the Dog Days of Summer. Naturally, "they"
told "us".
Why are they called the dog
days, you ask? You can't be Sirius!
But "we" were, so "they" persisted.
They're called Dog Days because
the star Sirius is high in the sky. Sirius is, of course, also known as
the Dog Star, and is the (apparently) brightest star visible in the night
sky.
L.
Yeah, right. But then, "they" provide "us" a link. "We" love it when "they"
do that.
re: dog days of summer
Probably at
least as reliable as anything else on the web, and certainly sounds
credible.
Couldn't sound more credible if "it" were a WAV file, eh?
Blab. One of our most attentive amateur copy editors tells us
why we used renown when we should
have used renowned.
Renown
"World renown" is properly used in
a sentence such as:
Plurp sought world renown.
A tortured construction, I know, but
you get the idea.
The adverbial (that's right, I think)
phrase, however, is:
Plurp was world renowned.
I'm just guessing, though. In the
interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I pretty much flunked
out of Journalism school.
L.
Yes, yes, of course. We knew that already, so now we ...
Blab. On the theory that
people fall asleep on planes because they (the planes, not the people)
are kept at a much lower pressure than sea level, one of the large staff
of people constantly observing our activities via satellite imaging writes:
So much for the theory.
At sea level on Cooper Island Steve sleeps more than he does on a high
floor in NYC.
No doubt video clips are available on request. Much like Andy Warhol's
Empire
State Building.
Blab. A reader reveals unsatisfied
desires.
Funny. I thought that
the "wired" picture in yesterday's Plurp was Steve's ponytail painted blue!!
I was hoping he was becoming an actor in Blue Man Group. Maybe finding
his true mission in life.
Readers are invited to submit an authoritative Web reference verifying
(or refuting) the notion that we are already part of Blue Man Group.
Blab. On that technology
for turning a picture into something that looks like an oil painting, a
reader writes:
".. rerenders it as if it
were painted in oils by an artist ..."
That technology seems to have gone
mainstream really fast; chances are that at a Mall Near You there's a machine
like a photo booth, except that instead of just taking your picture for
a dollar, it _sketches_ a sketch of you, and you can watch the "pencil
strokes" while it's doing it.
At least there's one at a Mall Near
Me...
We don't seem to have any Malls Near Us, but we do have quite a population
of Asian folks who will paint your name in dragons or flowers. Does that
count?
Blab. On the building next door
to us, a reader claims:
I watched them build the
Citicorp building as a kid. As a 10 year old structural engineer I didn't
think it would stand. And then I heard about the humongous concrete block
they put at the top and I made a wide berth around it. Unfortunately my
school is the one you can see from your appartment :-(
-- Morton
Did if fall off the top of the Citicorp building?
Blab. Speaking of unlikely constructs ...
|\_._._/|
| o o |
\ ´.` /
Der
blaue Hund is trying to stand
|`---´|
on
three legs with a large concrete
|
| block on his head.
|`___´|\_
/|
|\
##
##
Indeed.
Blab. A reader reminisces.
the Great Cthulu's political
positions.
Ah yes. Why vote for the lesser evil?
Blab. A reader thinks we make decisions. Where did that
come from?
Neverwinter Nights. Savior
of D&D? Or poor excuse for pen and paper? You decide!
Here's where we confess that we have never played one of these massive
multiplayer games online. We just don't understand the attraction. We play
computer games to submerge our consciousness beneath the digital waves
of computing technology, to disappear in the silicon shroud for a few of
the waning hours of our life, to isolate ourself from life and the swarthy
masses who live it..
Why would we want to play a computer game with ... other people?
Blab. As if in reply, a reader composes a poem for us. Isn't
that nice?
the great advantage of being
alive
the great advantage of being alive
(instead of undying)
is not so much that mind no more
can disprove than prove what heart may feel and soul may touch -- the great
(my darling) happens to be that love are in we, that love are in we
and here is a secret they never will
share
for whom create is less than have
or one times one than when times where -- that we are in love,that we are
in love:
with us they've nothing times nothing
to do
(for love are in we am in i are in
you)
this world (as timorous itsters all
to call their cowardice quite agree)
shall never discover our touch and
feel
--for love are in we are in love
are in we;
for you are and i am and we are (above
and under all possible worlds) in
love
a billion brains may coax undeath
from fancied fact and spaceful time--
no heart can leap,no soul can breathe
but by the sizeless truth of a dream
whose sleep is the sky and the earth
and the sea.
For love are in you am in i are in
we
Shh! Helen reads this stuff, you know.
Blab. A reader sends us a blind ...
[image]
... to I Got Me The Blue Dawg Blues.
Which, of course, we all do.
Blab. A Color Computer writes:
I'm late, thusly:
- I'm just back from another part
of Yurp, so slow to reply to your reply.
- I'm only now reading a book I might
have read a long time ago, and it's probably a very old hat by now for
(probably) a lot of treasured readers. It just happens to be very impressive,
smart, written well and for a large part in blank verse, did anyone notive
that already? Probably. It's "The Society of Mind", of course, and while
I'm reading it I can't help but suppose it to be essentially right in the
way it supposes consciousness-like stuff might arise out of non-consciousness-like
stuff.
Also: that might be the reason that
a smart person doesn't get very far, if he thinks four centuries. That's
just too long. I get confused if I think four for minutes.
Or something.
Your CoCo(Yp). Probably.
We're not sure who notived that recently, but we do have an (analog) copy
of this same "book" in our office, largely unread. And we know that Dr.
Minsky still teaches a course on this set of ideas. Either these ideas
have remained immutably true for twenty years, or ...
Blab. A reader who collects stories without truth writes:
There is no truth to the
story that Billy Bob Thornton is auctioning his tattoed flesh in graft
slices on e-bay. He's gotten over other marriages and he will get
over this one. Thank you for your attention in this matter.
So he's giving it away free? Cool.
Blab. Spam never sleeps. It must be the sleep deprivation that
makes it so confused.
Subj: Don't miss out.
Improving biz say's higher rates
Madame Kordell Kellar,
If everybody minded their own business
Rates are so very low. Move on them before they
are gone.
asked me questions of what
Instead of
you doing all the calling, let them call trying to offer the best deal.
Best of all, no charge.
one should never consider oneself
greater
ALL LOAN TYPES AVAILABLE
includes many misconceptions.
The lights, fireworks, and all other
festivities
To be removed
please reply
suppress weeds depends on the mulch
type and the weed's
This is quite a marvel. Note the invisible white typeface halfway down,
in addition to the nearly invisible yellow one. Google can't find Madame
Kordell Kellar at all, but it does find the fireworks
and the weeds,
albeit in very random and unconnected places.
But we especially love this:
ALL LOAN TYPES AVAILABLE
includes many misconceptions.
We'll take three.
Blab. A reader has misconceptions about our fetishes.
Have you ever seen "Sleepaway
Camp?" It's my latest Blockbuster Video discovery. A twisted
little psycho-sexual portrait disquised as an inept '80s slasher flick.
Seriously creepy ending....
Umkay. Someone told us recently that all of the snuff movies of that period
were fake. That, in fact, no one was ever actually murdered on camera in
those videos. Readers are invited to prove, disprove, or salvage (if possible)
this conjecture.
Blab. In the now-ancient attempt to come up with common signage
that would be interesting as t-shirts, a reader comes up with one.
Subj: t-shirt
how about "slippery when wet"?
We like that! We imagine cars skidding across our rain-soaked body.
Blab. A reader is assaulted.
I just got a piece of junk
mail from Visa. They're showing off all the wacky designs you can
choose from for your card. Although my personal fav. is "test pattern,"
one of them has a picture of a dinosaur and is called "T-Rex."
I have some major problems with this.
The first problem is the designation "T-Rex." It should be "T. rex,"
and in italics.
The second problem is that the pictured
dinosaur is clearly NOT a T. rex. The eyes are way too large in relation
to the body, the snout is too long, and the line of the mouth extends too
far back, like a lizard.
To be perfectly honest, it looks like
a smaller therapod. A Deinonychus possibly?
It just pisses me off that Visa is
a corporation with an almost unlimited budget, and they couldn't be bothered
to hire a paleontologist. As a matter of fact, all corporations should
be REQUIRED to hire paleontologists. No use for them? Find
one. End of story.
Our Treasured Reader seems to have barely survived its encounter with the
dreaded Marketysaurus.
Blab. A reader reveals Mystical Connections.
How very odd - I happened
to be in San Francisco at around the same time as you were. The organizer
of my trip even dragged me to Lombard street, though I managed to escape
climbing the super-windy part of it. I thought the whole idea of tourists
congregating at the scene of a crime of urban design was rather disgusting,
but then what do I know?
Near the bottom of Lombard Street,
though, at a public library,is found a true gem
of a playground (with metal slides!) - one of the classic Timberform
variety (like the
one I grew up near in Colorado), which I took many many pictures of.
They just don't make 'em like they
used to. What a pity.
We really, really like the idea of the scene of a crime of urban
design. We hope our reader doesn't mind if we use this, over and over
again.
Blab. Responding to the story of the woman who was required to
drink her own breast milk in order to board an airplane, a reader relates
its own, rather uncommon, experience. At least, we hope so.
Re: human breastmilk butter.
It's pretty nasty, at least mine was. It was sort of translucent and greasy
and not at all pleasant. And no, I didn't create it on purpose (I shook
a bottle of milk before I realized that gently swirling it was what was
called for), nor did I try any.
I did once try making Jell-O [tm]
chocolate pudding out of some of my extra breastmilk, but it failed to
pseudo-solidify properly. I have no idea why. It turned out gross, so I
threw it down the drain.
For the record, human breastmilk tastes
sort of watery and sweet, and is not the kind of thing that I think most
cow's-milk drinkers would go for.
If it's been sitting around for awhile,
then the lipase (enzyme that breaks down fats) in it has been working for
long enough to break down some of the fats into a kind of greasy slimy
stuff that sits on your tongue sort of the way Olestra sticks to your teeth.
I don't recommend it.
But if you're an infant, it's still
much better for you than any baby formula, by far.
Well, that was a bit more than we needed to know on the subject,
but we're certain that our many infant readers found it quite informative.
Blab. A reader with breasts might be recommending:
porrasturvat
... which is probably porrasturvat,
an unlikely game involving pushing people down staircases. Enjoy, we think.
Blab. Wow.
Wow!!! Someone has finally
publically said it and an
American paper has published it!!! Go US Press Go!
Despite the insults its arguably true
and in every country in the world at least a large part of the population
suspects that this is at least as accurate a description of America than
the conventional viewpoint.
Let's review.
Go get your ten-billionth
burger, America. Fatten your already fat asses with bacteria-and-hormone-ridden
meat and do nothing as you sit stupefied before your mind-numbing television
sets awaiting the next episode of sad families being humiliated on "Cops."
Hey! We like mind-numbing television.
Blab. A reader thinks that we should ...
Buy "What
Would Jesus Do" pants.
Must we?
Blab. In
the news ...
opie and andy got fired for
broadcasting a sex act in a church. the priest involved in the act was
transferred to another church.
dorian
Our Jay Leno version:
Did you hear about the two
people who were arrested today for having sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral?
Yeah, and get this - they were both adults. No, really, they were.
Blab. "Dorian" further informs us of "their" activities.
they figured out a way to
embed a cell phone in a tooth. this is going to revolutionize phone sex.
dorian
Or tooth sex.
Blab. One thing never changes: lazy readers.
There may be some hidden
Helenisms here.
I don't know, I didn't check.
We didn't either.
Blab. The other thing that never changes:
jimmy pee
That would be, of course, jimmy
pee. Though we don't quite grok all the excitement.
Blab. A reader from long ago
asks:
How do you steal the clock
?
We assume that this is not an HTML-savvy reader. In which case, our advice
is: Buy a watch instead.
Blab. A reader who wishes neither to search for porn nor spell
Graham
correctly writes:
I am looking for the movie
Phil Graam funded - soft-core porn they say, but I do not have hte nerve
to put 'porn' in my search again, perhaps some other leftie more shameless
than I - and without a wife who uses the same computer - will do so ?
Interested readers should contact this reader directly. Somehow.
Plurp.
Faced with such reader treasures
the blue dog could only
stand on three legs
Monday, August 26, 2002
Plurp. Well, we ran out of both lobster and electrical
tape a couple of days ago, so we threw Helen back in the trunk and headed
home. Upon arriving, we discovered that more people read this stupid Weblog
when
we are away and not posting than when we work hard on it all week long.
We are considering making it infinitely popular by never posting again.
There was also an unexplained mass inpouring of reader Blabs.
So much so, in fact, that simply formatting it here is likely to be all
we can do in the way of Webloggery in the next few days. So, if you come
here for the confusing original content, you should probably read the stuff
we wrote last week about observations and
reflections on life in Maine. Then you can explain
it to us.
In the meantime, we'll start shoveling the Blabbery.
Blab. We start with the disturbing and shrill reaction of our
readers when we announced, a little over a week ago, that we had no alternative
but to invoke the mandatory penalty for
reader inaction: withholding Plurp for some number of days.
Our readership seems to have followed the usual Kubler-Ross
cycle of emotional response to a tragic event, starting with Denial.
Where the Plurp at?
Or, as kindly translated into English by another Treasured Reader ...
Plurp! Where is my
Plurp!??!
We know. It was a shock. Our third reader offers a creative denial.
Your little threat doesn't
affect me, becaue I cancelled my subscription long ago, and no longer read
Plurp anyway.
We don't either. Following this trend of self-contradiction, a reader writes:
This is not a Blab!
That latter actually makes more sense in French. But whatever, our Treasured
Readers continue their emotional cycle with Anger.
You're outta town for a long
weekend on some beach, and you lay blame us?
We know. The realization of your own culpability hurts. A similarly angry
reader lashes out thusly:
Are you just being lazy again?
Yes, but that's not news. Next stop on our readers' excursion on the Psychobabble
Express is, of course, Bargaining.
Talk about duct tape! -mini
MW correspondent
Sorry, our mini Treasured Reader. It's electrical tape all the way down.
The following officious reader actually makes a perfectly reasonable request.
Re: Unable to write
plurp for 2.8 to 28 days:
Dear Dr. White,
The joint departments of Agriculture
and Defense not_Plurp_writing program has received your grant proposal
to subsidize your 2.8 to 28 day not_Plurp_writing program. Before this
proposal can be processed, please fill out the following environmental
impact report (pages 1-395), and human subjects experimentation protocol
(pages 1-247). Also, please justify and explain in further detail the item
marked “Sushi, $53,000” in your proposed budget.
Sincerely,
Plurp reader #1.
Our previous acceptance of Grant 278/44b.15.963 for not_Form_filling (please
check your records) prevents us from responding in the usual manner to
your well reasoned request. We can, however, assure you that we are highly
qualified for not_Plurp_writing, and will do an excellent job of it. As
to the sushi, we appreciate your bringing this error to our attention.
The revised cost will be $57,934. (We forgot the eel-cucumber rolls.)
Combining self-contradiction, plagiarism and bargaining in an orgy of
Treasured Readerism, a Treasured Reader writes:
We have noted the spectacular
lack of recent Plurp output, less than a dozen Plurps in two days, and
we are required to inform you - and we are really sorry about this - of
the mandatory penalties that your actions have precipitated.
Because of your undisciplined behavior,
we are unable to Blab here for some number of days which shall be no less
than 2.8 and which shall be no more than 28.
We regret that it has come to this.
We have classified the following reader under Bargaining only because
the standard model for the Grief Cycle does not include a stage for Psychotic
Break.
You
**#%** You've been fidling again with that device again while you don't
have to Plurp Haven't You?? PLEASE PLEASE go back to Plurping and
stop adjusting, so I can use the web safely.
Thanks to your damned machines I found
this on the end of an e-mail to my Dad's new girlfriend, and now she doesn't
know what to think. <well she knows what to think but we don't want
her thinking that, do we?> <<No we don't>>
Names changed to protect the people
involved from further <embarrassment>... that'll do.
"P.S. I'd never question that you
love my dad.. <question her sanity yes?> <<mean thing to say to
someone>> <not talking to her, talking to HIM> <<HE
doesn't even notice we exist>> <<<Oh for Gosh sake you guys
For the THOUSANTH time, no talking in public where people can notice you!!!>>>
<<if
nobody notices us talking perhaps we don't exist>> <<<we
don't>>> <<<Look Anna ignore this.... repeat after
me "There is nobody here but us Chickens>>> <funny sense
of humour, you have.> <<do you think she's going to buy the suggestion
that we're a figment of Her imagination?>> <well we are>
<<<No NO NO guys we're a figment of Jim's imagination!!!>>> <<Do
you think she will believe that? I wouldn't>> < The metaphysics of that
are staggering> <<<Look Anna, Jim just has a funny
sense of humour, ignore us we don't exist>>> <well I exist even
if you two don't!!! > <<Anna, you are honoured, we only get
to talk to really close friends of Jim>>
<personally I'd be worried and
disturbed, but thats life>"
Our #1 Reader takes Bargaining to its creative extreme: Firesigning.
OK White, back to work!
"But it's really great shit, Dr. Mudrick!"
#1
Don't crush that dwarf.
At last, the painful truth sinks in, and our readers descend into Depression.
Oh, woe, it's a week
gone by and no Plurp to be
seen or hinted at.
L.
Or, as this Treasured Reader intones, in what the judges award the prize
for Best Mixed Meme of the Series:
O Plurp! my Plurp! our fearful
trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack,
the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear,
the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel,
the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Plurp lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Very nice. Finally, our readers reach the state of Acceptance.
+weblog -plurp
And so the healing process begins.
Fortunately, for every ten readers we lose in the grieving cycle, one
newcomer wanders by, becomes confused, and is trapped forever.
Hi,
Cool Webpage actually this is just
a test
So's this.
Plurp.
O the bleeding drops of blue,
Where on the deck my dog lies,
Fallen cold in spew.
Sunday, August 25, 2002
Observations. During this period of observation and
reflection, I did several things.
-
I ate too much.
-
I slept too much.
-
I played Clive Barker's Undying
too much, creating an odd incongruity between the placidity of my environment
and the increasing violence and weirdness of the game.
-
I read too little, completing only the first quarter of a breezy vacation
book.
-
I did too little, slothing around the little cabin rather than getting
out more.
-
I came away with no new insights on life, the universe, or anything.
These observations might be related.
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