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2002.10.06 : 2002.10.12
Saturday, October 12, 2002
Blab. A spammist writes, in part:
Don't want this newsletter
any more? visit the site above, at the bottom under subscriptons.
This leaves us wondering if subscriptons are a new kind of elementary particle,
and whose bottom might be under them. The spammist's, prolly.
Blab. A reader asks the expected question, making us waver in
our belief in free will.
why DOES she sell sea shells
by the sea shore? I mean, who'd wanna buy them if you can just pick them
up right from your feet? Maybe hers are special shells
Hey! We don't have sea shells in our feet! Do we?
Blab. One of our legion of misspelling stalkers writes:
You don't live in appartment
27B!
Yes we do.
Blab. A reader who has been away writes:
So I've been away, had to
re-find you since a French separatist separated me from my notebook at
Grand Piquey. (If you're a reader, Mr. Voleur, please send the photo disk
in the D Drive to my address, which you also have, mon vieux.) Interesting
stuff going on here.
We are to let Dubya go to war when
he is piqued and trust the FBI but maybe not the CIA, that non-team spirited
gang, and spend trillions of dollars to secure the oil for the friends
of Dick Cheney. Am I right so far.
Meanwhile, this brilliant government
can't do a thing about some talented nut with a rifle and a good scope.
Or bring the tallest man in Afghanistan in from the caves. Seems
rational to me. Right on, Dubya.
You are about as far right as it is possible to get.
 Blab.
A reader succeeds in confusing us.
PS...love your plaid
Thank you.
And we are equally delighted with your beets.
 Plurp.
The blue dog
was made entirely
of plaid beets
Friday, October 11, 2002
Blab. A reader asks the Big Question.
how much wood would a woodchuck
chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Let's ask
Jeeves, shall we? Jeeves give us the Straight
Dope.
Dear Cecil:
This question has gnawed at me since
I was a young boy. It is a question posed every day by countless thousands
around the globe and yet I have never heard even one remotely legitimate
answer. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck
wood? --R.F.B., Arlington, Virginia
Dear R.:
Are you kidding? Everybody knows a
woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck
could chuck wood. Next you'll be wanting to know why she sells seashells
by the seashore.
So now you know.
Blab. Dave
writes:
hahahahahahaha! sworn off
gne have we? hahahahahahahahahaha!
Yeah, well. GNE has descended
into mindless, repetitive activities for us: buying all of the X
that we can possibly carry in location A and selling it off at a
10% profit in location Y. We are now the second richest player in
the game and in the top ten in "experience points". (Do you actually care
about this?)
This is pretty typical of games for us. In Phase 1, we run around randomly,
learning the basics of how to play the game without caring much about getting
killed and stuff. In Phase 2, we spend lots and lots of focussed time learning
how to play the game really, really, really well. After mastering
the game, we often go on to Phase 3, playing until we can plow through
the most difficult aspects of the game on autopilot. We can, for instance,
play through the entire Quake II demo, on the most difficult setting, using
only a hand blaster, with virtually no probability of dying. It becomes
a mindless, repetitive activity, like playing solitaire.
We are at Phase 3 with GNE. We'll let you know if we give up on it entirely,
or if enhancements by the authors make it entrancing once again.
'Cause we know you have nothing better to do than follow our mindless,
repetitive activities.
 Blab.
Ian
writes:
Is that submarine capital
or expense?
Capital. And you'll need a really, really good business justification.
Blab. Scott
writes:
Scott McNealy on Sun's network
computing strategy:
"I call it a big friggin' WebTone
switch. Marketing calls it network computing. You can start with the entire
puzzle from Sun, and take out pieces that you don't want. What we offer
is good enough. It's like my haircut: It ain't pretty, but it's good enough."
We know what pieces we don't want: Sun
stock. It's not pretty.
Blab. An astonished reader writes:
Spock's Jewish? I thought
he
was a Muslim...
Where do you people find these incredibly bizarre Web sites? Anyway? (This
one takes the baklava.)
Blab. A reader spits a few seeds before concluding that ...
It's all about the
watermelons.
To wit:
Ok so youve seen the both
the Matrix and Ghost in the Shell, and you note there are some similarities.
But how similar are they? Well with this page ill attempt show them scene
by scene. Some similarities are more striking than others, so i will have
a Conspiracy Rating for each comparison topic, from 1 to 10. "1" being
having no relevancy whatsover, and "10" being a blantant rip off. Remember
that Ghost in the Shell was made about 4-5 years before the Matrix.
Compare and contrast. With pretty
much anything.
Plurp. That
sniper guy has shaken all the nuts loose from the trees. A nutter on
NBC this morning was just sure that the sniper learned his deadly skill
by playing computer games. (The segment was replete, of course, with screen
shots of sniper games where you kill people.) I've been trying to tell
the authorities about this for a week now, but nobody returns my calls,
he said. We wonder why.
Anyhow, our own brilliant and prescient predictions:
-
Mister Sniper did not come to his current avocation via computer
games. Duh.
-
Mister Sniper did not leave that
dopey Tarot card lying about. That was some other joker.
-
Mister Sniper does not drive a
white van. Look, there are twelve zillion registered white vans in
the U.S. At any given time and place, there's a very high probability of
a white van being around. One is driving by our window right now. That
doesn't mean Mister Sniper is in our parking lot. Don't think about elephants.
-
The media will continue to plaster stories about Mister Sniper absolutely
everywhere.
We wonder how long it will be before we can purchase our very own Mister
Sniper plush doll.
Yow. Oh yes! Kung
Fu Grippe has the gol darn funniest Cafe Press stuff we've seen. Warning:
some of it is socially inappropriate; we like those the best. (rebecca)
Yak.
Helen: Hello?
Phone: ...
Helen: What apartment are you calling?
Phone: ...
Helen: Well, this is apartment 27B.
Phone: ...
Helen: OK.
[Hangs up]
Steve: Who was that?
Helen: The desk. Michelle is here.
Steve: Send her up!
Helen: They had the wrong apartment.
Steve: I'm answering the phone from
now on.
Plurp. It rained today.
Plurp.
The blue dog
called it a big friggin'
woodchuck
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Blab. These tough economic times do not discourage our
readers. Nossir.
Let's
buy
Well, OK. But let's go with the low-end model so as not to be thought extravagant.
The
smallest of our luxury submarines, the four passenger Discovery has a pressure
hull composed of transparent acrylic and is the most advanced small submarine
in the world today.
Blab. Our meme mixer returns.
Operation! The Surgical Strike
Game for the Whole Family!
We like this very much. It is at least as tasteful as a game in which you
slice somebody up for points. And that's a
real game.
Blab. On the curious incident of the
falling statue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a reader writes:
Adam fell? I blame Eve.
That would be the Eve who installed a collapsible plywood base beneath
the statue?
Blab. A reader who might know something about the mysterious
disappearance of Beth writes:
Beth is out of commission
for a while.
-daniel (3e.org webmaster)
We hope she is recommissioned soon.
Blab. A forgetful reader, intent on defeating XML by using up
all the angle brackets, writes:
> >> > I am curious. Why
is your view that people are bound by the decisions
> >> > of Congress, because some
people two hundred odd years back voted for a
> >> > document saying they would
be, not "religious poppycock?"
> >> Because the Constitution is
a living document subject to change.
> >> Pretty simple actually.
> >
> > So any living document subject
to change--say a book by me on what the
> > law should be, with provision
for my heirs to change it after my
> > death--is binding on everyone?
What an odd religion you have.
>
> This Constitution was "ratified"
by those who would be governed
> by it.
I can't remember ratifying it. No
women or slaves or non-property owners got to ratify it. You didn't ratify
it, although presumably you would have if asked. Lots of male property
owners didn't ratify it either, although lots of others did. So why should
the majority vote of a minority of the population of the eastern seaboard
a few centuries back be binding on me, today?
Still sounds like an odd religion
to me.
We figured it was an inverse link to something interesting. But it's
not. Whatever could it be? Have our secret telepathy devices become
misaligned again? Shoot.
Blab. Then we received a piece of spam that began thusly:
To all New York-area flaneurs
... which struck us as odd, for some reason.
Plurp. In other news, Harry Belafonte decides that racial
slurs are good.
"Colin Powell is permitted
to come into the house of the master, as long as he will serve the master
according to the master's plans," Belafonte said. "And when Colin Powell
dares suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will
be turned back out to pasture. And you don't hear much from those who live
in the pasture."
That thump was the former president of Harry's PR firm dropping dead of
a heart attack.
Plurp. In yet other news, Spock
is consumed by the Pon Farr.
The Jewish Federation of
Greater Seattle has dropped Leonard Nimoy from its Oct. 23 fund-raiser
because of images in the former Star Trek star's art photography book of
naked and partially dressed women, some with Jewish ritual items.
Oy.
Plop. If you're as old as us, you don't have to wait for Iraq
to use chemical or biological weapons on you. The U.S. government already
did that.
The United States secretly
tested chemical and biological weapons on American soil during the 1960s,
newly declassified Pentagon reports show.
The tests included releasing deadly
nerve agents in Alaska and spraying bacteria over Hawaii, according to
the documents obtained Tuesday. [...]
Earlier this year, the Defense Department
acknowledged for the first time that some of the 1960s tests used real
chemical and biological weapons, not just benign stand-ins.
The Defense Department has identified
nearly 3,000 soldiers involved in tests disclosed earlier, but the VA has
sent letters to fewer than half of them.
Our tax dollars at work! More info here
and here.
Yak.
I just don't understand this
email.
There you go, trying to understand
things again. Just engage in mindless, repetitive actions like everyone
else. OK?
Yow. Friend Jim invents just what we need for our endless conference
calls: Remote mute.
Plurp.
The blue dog
lived in a
yellow submarine ...
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
Blab. A reader corrects our markup.
you forgot to add the http
in your link to Mouse wannabe site and so it was treated as local.
Not that there's anything to see there now.
How did that happen? Must have been alien viruses. Anyhow, we fixed it.
Blab. A reader suggests, belatedly (but we still love you) a
name for the upcoming war.
Operation Exxon Storm
dorian
Very nice! (We do not, ourself, find it plausible that this is all about
oil. Otherwise, Dubya would be invading Saudi Arabia. But whatever!)
Blab. Another reader writes:
A friend of mine suggested
these:
How about "Operation Daddy's Revenge"?
or "Operation Red Herring"?
I propose:
Operation My Wish is Your Command
We always liked Operation Don't Make Me Come Down There.
Blab. A reader gets all worked up about theory.
Pressure at 8000 ft is "roughly
half" pressure at sea level? I don't think so. Try about three-quarters.
See the table here.
(Scroll down.)
Fine! Whatever!
Theory is fine, but we demand empiricism. We insist that readers report
to us the results of dumping several pounds of dry ice into airline
toilets, but only if it was entirely their idea in the first place 'cause,
you know, we don't want to actually be responsible for initiating anything
here.
Blab. A reader writes:
Please do tell me more about
to generate responses to reader input for several years now
Perhaps you think that please do tell you more about to generate
responses to reader input for several years now.
Yo. What happened to Beth?
Dunno! Must be a New Moon phenomenon, though, as Dave
has been similarly (but differently) infected with oddblogitis.
Plurp. Ronald Smothers, of the world renown New York Times, must
be insufferably pleased with himself at this
opening paragraph.
A Newark man and his son
were charged with desecration of graves and possession of stolen property
today after a police search of their home turned up a cauldron holding
human skulls and other bones that investigators suspect came from a spate
of recent grave and mausoleum robberies here.
'Cause, you know, it's like mid-October and stuff. And this kind of pap
sells.
Plop. You expect this
in some back road of Tuscany, says Helen, but not at The Met.
We are forced to agree.
 A
15th-century marble statue of Adam by the Venetian sculptor Tullio Lombardo
crashed to the ground in the Velez Blanco Patio at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art sometime Sunday evening, scattering its arms, legs and an ornamental
tree trunk into dozens of pieces. [...]
[T]he 6-foot-3-inch statue fell to
the ground when one side of the 4-inch-high base of its pedestal apparently
buckled, tipping over both the pedestal and statue. [...]
The pedestal beneath the Adam was
described as four feet high, and about two feet deep, made of medium density
plywood, packed in layers but hollow inside. The bottom of the pedestal
rested upon the square four-inch-high base, of which one side apparently
gave way under pressure.
We wonder what other important works of art are perched precariously on
plywood platforms at The Met, prepared to prove their purveyors to be far
too fond of rubber noses and floppy shoes.
Plurp.
The blue dog
does that question
interest you?
Tuesday, October 8, 2002
Blab. A reader spots what we hope is not a trend. But
- hey - we never know.
Speaking of Mouse, check
out the latest craze... evil bizarro Mouse
wannabe site!
The linked page has been changed but, as mouse
her own self points out, the offending
rip-off pages are still in the
Google cache. All hail Google.
We are, like, so insanely jealous! There's no one pretending
to be us out there. Sniff!
Blab. As to that bridge outage, a reader writes:
And, as to the bridge outage
until 2050.... Just hope it doesn't turn into something like the
Big Dig in Boston. At least New York isn't as corrupt as Boston,
right?
- Felis Lynx
Yeah. Thank goodness for that!
Blab. A reader indulges in nostalgia.
Way back in time, before
I went into Swiss tax exile, someone once gave me an article about Blue
Ice falling from airplanes which I then posted on the door of the BlueICE
lab. I can't find the actual article online, but here is something
similar. And then there is this.
- Morton
That latter link seems to confirm what we always figured must be true:
airline lavatories do not dump their stuff overboard, so "blue ice",
allegedly formed by the freezing of said stuff as it plummets Earthward,
just doesn't happen.
And no, we don't know what that large, frozen, blue object was that
crashed through your roof. But we don't recommend licking it.
Still seeking to believe, another reader writes:
Ummm, lessee, airlines generally
lower cabin pressure to the 8000 ft level (roughly half the surface air
pressure) so the reaction at 33k feet is likely to be much more violent.
Of dry ice in the blue liquid of airline toilets, that is. So let's go
all experimental here, shall we? Readers are invited to report
on the results of their own experience after dropping a couple of pounds
of dry ice down an airline toilet.
The truth is up there.
Blab. A reader challenges our very concept of evidence.
There is no hard evidence
to prove that you actually did post plurp to the archives so we'll have
to take your word for it. Just to complete the autonomic loop, however,
I've written an eliza-like program that will complain bitterly if deprived
of new plurp. I suspect that it will easily pass the turing test as carbon
unit complaints are easily mimiced.
dorian
We've been using that same technology to generate responses to reader input
for several years now.
Blab. Exploring the combinatorial space in which we set foot
yesterday, a reader lists another node.
Sure he was a jerky architect,
but look at what a brilliant private life he had.
Imagine a building constructed entirely from dried, spiced meat.
Blab. An unappreciative reader with a Lemming hair trigger writes:
Lemmings don't *do* that;
it's
a myth!
Right. Let's review. Feeling unloved yesterday, we said:
We imagine our Treasured
Readers running away from Plurp in such number as to push and shove
each other, ultimately plummeting over the cliffs, as so many migrating
lemmings.
Our unappreciative reader cites a Snopes
article, which says:
Cyclical explosions in population
do occasionally induce lemmings to attempt to migrate to areas of lesser
population density. When such a migration occurs, some lemmings die by
falling over cliffs or drowning in lakes or rivers.
This is, of course, precisely the simile which we were attempting to exercise.
So, uh ... ?
Unless, of course, our Treasured Reader was making some other, more
astute point and we, in our stupidity, just failed to recognize it. In
which case, we will cower in supplication, bare our metaphorical throat
and take what grisly death is coming to us.
Blab. Our patriotic readers suggest names of Dubya's impending
war of aggression. We love it when they do that. Our readers. Not Dubya.
Operation Oily Maneuver
Look - a double entendre!
With horrible sinking feelings
watching the progress of these war preparations, I suggest: "Operation
Really Bad Choice".
For those who think the question of:
"Why this war now?" has something to do with upcoming elections, try: "Operation
Look a Fireball!" This one is from my childhood, where my brother and I
would use this entreaty to distract each other from something we didn't
want the other to see. It's also a variation on: "Made you
look".
Your MW Correspondent
Look - a bomb! Oh. We get it.
[P.S. We seem to recall someone stealing something from
us with exactly that line, some really long time ago. Prolly just our imagination.]
Blab. Our Treasured Readers go to bat for us by submitting zero
or more confusing and profane explications of the final (we promise; for
now) Enigmatic Image.
We start with one of our favorites, though we don't know why we say
so.
the score stood four to two
with but one inning left to play
There's something elegant about that. Must be the admirable meme mixing.
Next, a triple header.
Swing with Jesus and you're
swinging a big, big stick.
or
Jesus totally doesn't know the Infield
Fly Rule.
or
Jesus helps little Billy reenact
the Juan Marichal Incident.
sorry, Steve. That's all I got.
Were those sexual references? We can never tell. Fortunately, we also have
readers that are well schooled in Biblicalism.
After delivering the sermon
on the mound Jesus proceeded to home plate to spread the teaching. Loaves
and hot dogs were multiplied and distributed. The mets won and a miracle
was proclaimed.
By the way, you should know that none
of your images ever show up in my browser so I never look at them.
dorian
How remarkable! A reader that can make up appropriate captions without
even seeing the images. Imagine how much better our readers would be if
they could.
If Jesus is helping the kid
swing the bat, who is helping the unseen kid pitch (or the catcher catch,
for that matter)? Can Jesus be in two places at once, and if so, what would
be the point in this situation? Why not just play against Himself and stop
bothering these kids? And if He's only helping the one kid, isn't He helping
the kid to cheat? Isn't that wrong? Or is it right whenever Jesus says
it is? And why the preferential treatment for this kid? Are the other ones
dirty rotten Pagans? Or Unitarians? Did they forget to pray for divine
intervention? Or did the batter just call dibs on Jesus first? Or does
He only help whoever is up at bat? What would be the theological significance
of that? Did they consult with a theologian before creating this statuette?
Was the theologian properly accredited? Sane? A subversive double agent
theologian from some competing religion trying to make Christianity look
bad?
You expect *us* to *explain* this?!
Would you like us to unify physics while we're at it?
Never play baseball with Unitarians. Never. They talk too much. Sometimes,
they even say things like this.
Catholic Priests have been
encouraged to follow Jesus and try to teach boys to play with their bats
instead of their balls.
Not to mention their mitts, eh? But enough trivia about baseball equipment;
let's get all political and stuff!
A Local reference That may
have some relevance there, after a recent shooting of a black man with
a baseball bat by a policeman, very near here.
"Always remember child " saith the
Lord, "The Police can't hurt you for using a bat on them as long as you
are white!"
Or vice versa. (What does that mean, and why does it involve flying rodents?
Our reader only seek to befuddle us.)
Finally, our two favorite, synergistic entries from the Fatalist School.
Who's on first? Why, both
of them of course.
-AJL
... and ...
I don't have to try at all.
Jesus will do EVERYTHING for me!
- Felis Lynx
It's all in god's hands now.
We would like to thank our Treasured Readers for indulging us in our
fantasy that anyone reads this stupid blog.
Yak. We're buying a USB cable for our brand new printer. Helen
did the research online.
Amazon and CompUSA list hundreds
of cables with weird names. It's all geek to me.
Yow. Escher's Ascending
and Descending, rendered in Lego. How do they do that? Really - we
can't figure it out. (Kafkaesque)
Yow. At first, we thought this iMac speech synthesis example
was a Broken Joke.
Spring has sprung,
Fall has fell,
Winter's here,
And it's colder than usual.
But it's not. Funny, though. (Dave)
Yow. We went to give a talk today at a place across the Hudson
to which we had never been.  Just
before the road took a long wind up a groomed, grassy hill, a yellow sign
read, Slow Curve.
And we smiled.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was constructed entirely of
dried, spiced Unitarians
Monday, October 7, 2002
Blab. A reader sends us another odd ...
[link].
Fireworks! Pretty cool! Seconds and seconds of gleeful diversion!
Blab. A reader asks the assembled philosophical leaders of modern
times:
who invented communism?
We suspect that everyone responsible just took one step backwards.
Blab. Oh dear.
[link]
Here, we learn that Pete and Barbara (a) have an unhealthy attachment to
penguins and (b) have way, way, way too much time on their hands.
Everyone needs a hobby. We'll be the first to admit that. But there's
no place in polite society for ... well ... for that.
Blab. A dye-hard libertarian asks
Well, the FDA didn't stop
Stan Jones, did they?
Get it?
Blab. A reader mixes certain memes.
Sunday, Plurpless Sunday...
How odd! Somehow, Sunday's Plurp was posted to the
archives but not to that living document that you think of as Plurp.
Detailed statistical analysis indicates that the unreliable carbon units
were at fault. We are taking steps to eliminate the carbon units.
Blab. A reader suggests a resolution to our vitriolic diatribe
about that Salon story on dry ice in an
airline toilet.
RE: Bubbling Blue Bowl
Actually, I think the implication
is that the dry ice, upon hitting the water, would start to melt and evaporate.
This would cause all the bubbles, fizzing, and overflow without the necessary
acid/base reaction. It's still silly and stupid and hopefully a fantasy,
but it's at least possible.
Right! Just so. But, as at least our own obsessive childhood fascination
with bricks of dry ice would suggest, you get lots of bubbles, and lots
of mad scientist water vapor, but you just plain don't get a fluorescent
blue waterfall, a huge, heaving cascade of toilet fluid thrust waist-high
into the air. You just don't.
Plurp. There seems to be a recent case of semantic retardation
in the English-speaking countries, as evidenced by a growing, fundamental
confusion about the meaning of the word evidence.
Let's go to America's Chief Teacher, Dubya.
The evidence indicates that
Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has
held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls
his "nuclear mujahideen" - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs
reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part
of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are
used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
The first sentence indicates that there is evidence of Iraq reconstituting
its nuclear weapons program. By normal literary convention, we expect the
subsequent sentences to provide support for that first sentence.  But
the second sentence, about meetings with nuclear scientists, is an allegation,
not evidence, and would scarcely constitute evidence of reconstitution
of a weapons program even if it turns out to be true. The second sentence,
about facilities being built at sites of past nuclear work, is true, if
recently released satellite photographs of these sites are to be believed.
But it is not evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Conversely, the statement
about aluminum tubes might constitute evidence were it factual, but there
is no indication if it is.
Curiously, Dubya is not alone. He is joined in the Coalition of Semantic
Retardation by British Prime Minister Tony
Blair.
Since the withdrawal of the
inspectors the JIC has monitored evidence, including from secret intelligence,
of continuing work on Iraqi offensive chemical and biological warfare capabilities.
Again, while this uses the pleasant word evidence, it is
not, itself, evidence. Rather, it is unsupported allegation.
We do not mean to suggest that Hussein is a peaceful man; we do not
suspect that he is. We do not mean to suggest that Hussein is other than
a tremendous threat; we suspect he is just that.
We are merely pointing out that the various evildoers in the Coalition
of Semantic Retardation insist on butchering their language at the same
time as they make plans for war. Perhaps it is a state of mind.
Plurp. As we watched a PBS special on Frank Lloyd Wright tonight,
Helen and we had different reactions.
Sure he was a brilliant architect, said Helen, but look at
what a jerk he was in his private life.
Sure he was a jerk in his private life, we said, but look
at what a brilliant architect he was.
Compare and contrast.
Plurp. Our recent series of Enigmatic Images for Reader Explanation
has been rather less successful that we would have preferred.
Indeed, readers have shied away from commenting on them in droves. We
imagine our Treasured Readers running away from Plurp in such number
as to push and shove each other, ultimately plummeting over the cliffs,
as so many migrating lemmings.
It has gotten so bad that Ian
received more reader response to an image of Dubya reading a book upside
down that we did to our entire recent Enigmatic Images series.
This disturbs us.
So what can we do but offer the fourth and (you'll be pleased to hear)
last
in the current series of Enigmatic Images.
And as we do, we hope, oh we hope so very fervently, that our readers
will force their cold, numb fingers from the easy confines of their pants
pockets and onto their keyboards for just the few seconds that will be
required to compose an explanation
or explication of this image.
Please. We're begging you.
Plurp.
The blue dog was
a huge, heaving cascade of toilet
fluid thrust
waist-high into the
air.
Sunday, October 6, 2002
Blab. On that hellish three-year bridge restriction
that seems like to be The End of Life As We Know It, a reader writes:
You sure it didn't mean 2005
as in 8:05PM?
Oh would that it did! Sadly, public works in NYC don't seem to have a temporal
concept as granular as minutes. Days and weeks are also right out. Even
months are on the edge, especially when it comes to deadlines. Our most
fervent hope is that 2005 doesn't slip into 2050.
Blab. This reader explains the cause of our newly hellish existence.
The answer to your 3rd Ave
Bridge problem is that Bloomberg, bless his cotton underwear, has declared
war on cars in Manhattan. I guess the closing is to build toll booths.
Get a bike! -Morton
It's a thought, but we're not sure that biking would actually reduce our
commute time.
Blab. A reader who might be that same reader sends an enigmatic
answer to a question we don't seem to have asked, perhaps having some unplumbed
relationship to yesterday's preposterous story about exploding
airplane toilets.
Easy: BlueIce - Morton (ok,
you have to be an insider to get that one.)
The weird thing is: we are an insider on this one, and we still
don't get it.
Plurp. Since Dubya seems intent on going to war with Iraq, we
figured the least we could do is show our patriotic support by suggesting
some names for the thing that military geniuses these days call an operation.
[An aside. It seems odd to us that physicians,
in order to mask the horror of slicing people open, eschew the term operation
in favor of the more ambiguous procedure, whereas generals, in order
to mask the horror of blowing people apart, eschew the term war
in favor of the term operation. But maybe there's a principle of
proportionality at work here.]
We could suggest some fairly literal operation names.
Operation Desert Attack
Operation Naked Aggression
Operation Superpower Privilege
We could also play up the ironic nature of it all.
Operation Fatal Prevention
Operation Pre-Emptive Murder
Operation International Coalition
Operation Global Mandate
Operation This Time For Sure
Readers are invited to suggest their
own operational names, within these or other genre.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was currently engaged in
Operation Blue Dog
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