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2002.12.01 : 2002.12.07
Saturday, December 7, 2002
 Blab.
An officious beet eater writes:
Your task for today: Think
of another word to replace 'reader' with.
Done. In your case, anyhow.
Blab. On the topic of the many relatives that, like the ghosts
of Xmas past, have visited themselves on us in the past week or so, Helen
writes:
<<Rather, it's like
French pastries. They are, in isolation, quite delicious. But only in small
quantity. A steady diet of people, like a steady diet of rich pastries,
soon overwhelms us.>>
Well, there goes our social calendar.
Prepare for many quiet lonely nights this season. And no material
for Plurp. And no cream puffs!
Promise?
Blab. On the topic of the many Katies in Helen's family, Helen
writes:
You forgot KT4 (cousin) and
a little girl in Hungary who became the first great grand child and was
supposed to be named KT5 but someone screwed up. Oh, and by the way,
KT1 is only 93. She would be very cross to know you made her a year
older. She IS very prideful, afterall.
See? We can never remember them all. And that off-by-one error with KT1?
We chalk it up to a programming error.
Blab. On our worry about smallpox vaccine and eczema, John Asscroft
writes:
SEVERE eczema. You
have only a light case. Trust me......I know.
Thanks, John. We would be greatly relieved to know that, when your government
prompts a smallpox attack on the U.S., we are nonetheless allowed to receive
a vaccination.
Still, we are concerned. Despite your infallible statements, lacking
as they are in any authoritative reference, the CDC
and WebMD
don't appear to make this qualification. Indeed, our reading of these sources
is that lots and lots and lots of U.S. folks will be ineligible for any
future smallpox vaccine.
And that means ... well, we don't want to think what that means.
Authoritative Web references are ... desperately
solicited.
Blab. Someone who really better be Helen (or we're in big, big
trouble) writes:
Happy 22nd Anniversary (yesterday)
you cute thing. Um.
Oh yeah! We did miss that one (of many). The ensuing conversation:
You're right. We should celebrate.
Would you like to go out to dinner tonight?
"Out"?
Uh, well. We're outside the bedcovers.
Are you saying that that counts as "out"?
It better.
I'll order pizza.
Yo. Santa is actually in Snowmass, Colorado. Honest. FedEx
has proof. (/usr/bin/girl)
 Plurp.
The blue dog
survived on a steady diet of beets
and French pastries
Friday, December 6, 2002
Blab. A reader writes:
I found the Blue Dog at the
Borders on 57th and Park. How did he get there? - Morton
The blue dog popped down there for a book on cyanocynophagia. And hey -
since you're in the neighborhood, you should drop by!
Blab. A reader who pines for the reconstitution of Mispelling
Day writes:
which should actually by
KT1, if we're serious about it
Steve White spelt something wrong. The end is nigh
We value your contribution.
Blab. That reader who suffers under the iron will of Sir writes:
Here I am again, at school,
being illegal. The wonder of supply teachers. Deaf supply teachers are
interesting... 7 minutes to go...
Adventures in being a schoolkid, interesting
eh?
On this side of the pond, we usually call them substitute teachers.
And yes, we are fascinated with your adventures, quite beyond our ability
to describe.
Blab. A reader sends us a ...
superliminal
message.
Fabulous. Citizens United for a Decent Internet. The picture shows a bunch
of very old, very white folks who might have never touched a computer in
their lives. We offer the following evidence for this radical premise,
from that self-same site.
We are an organization dedicated
to cleaning up the Internet and making sure it is safe for children and
represents the values of decent Americans.
This new medium of the Information
Superhighway--created by brave Cold Warriors in the struggle against Communist
aggression--has been handed over to us--the citizens that helped fund it
with our tax dollars--to use for education, community, and commerce.
However, some people have sought to
abuse this medium by using it for child pornography, hate, and the undermining
of the family. These abuses must be met with resistance if our society
is to survive this brave new cyber-world that we are entering.
Let's do the math. Americans constitute around 0.3B out of the Earth's
6B humans, or 5%. Decent Americans can't be more than 60% of the population,
at best, which reduces that to 3%. Add a bit more for the American kids,
decent or not, and we get maybe 4% of the world.
So there you go. The Internet has been handed over to some very old,
very white, very decent American folks and their kids, which constitute
about 4% of the world.
The rest of us should stop using it now. OK? Thanks very.
Yow. More from that fabulous Citizens
United for a Decent Internet site, this time decrying the non-Wintel
machines that Wal-Mart is selling for $199.
Not only is Wal-Mart targeting
our youth with prurient and outright pornographic "reading" material, but
they are also facilitating hackers by selling so-called "naked PCs" on
their website. While this sounds like more computer pornography, naked
PCs -- or computers of questionable legality sold without an installed
and licensed operating system -- are actually more pernicious in that they
are used by members of the Free Source cult to create hacking tools for
disabling filtering software. Walmart.com even promotes the use of these
hacking tools (popularly known as "Linix") in conjunction with the naked
PCs they sell.
Ya gotta love very old, very white folks. Ya gotta.
Yo. Today's curiously refreshing site: halfbakery.
Poke around. There are amusing thoughts there.
Plurp.
The blue dog
wanted to personally monitor the
thoughts
of all of the very old
very white folks
Thursday, December 5, 2002
Blab. A reader sends us a ...
subliminal message
Of course, we don't know what it is.
Blab. A reader who is clearly related to Helen (or maybe even
is
Helen), writes:
Binge 2002 in now over.....Long
live Kate1.....
It's good to have that official news. But we probably have to explain that
Kate1 thing (which should actually be KT1, if we're serious about it).
You see, Helen comes from poor family that couldn't afford many names,
so most everybody is named Katie. Her mother is. Her sister is. Her niece
is. There are probably several others that we're forgetting as well. (Oh,
and everyone who is not named Katie is named Elisabeth. Except Helen.)
To keep things straight, they've numbered themselves. Helen's mother,
being the matriarch at 94 astonishing years, is KT1.
And yes, this will be on the test.
Blab. A reader insists that we ...
Befriend a tiny African bird
with whom you can develop a symbiotic relationship in which he picks fragments
of food from your teeth.
Fortunately, we already did that last year.
Plop. Here's some bad
news.
[R]esearchers are becoming
reacquainted with the unpleasant -- often severe -- complications of the
[smallpox] vaccine. [...]
At the University of Rochester Medical
Center, researcher John Treanor saw a wide range of reactions, from a small
rash to swelling the size of a grapefruit. About 5 percent of the 170 participants
had rashes that spread to other parts of the body. It took time and experience,
he said, for the team to get comfortable with the natural course of the
vaccine.
Here's some really bad news.
Pregnant women, babies, people
with eczema or weakened immune systems should not receive the vaccine.
We have eczema.
Plop. Dave
relates a really
scary story in which he is unable to apply a critical security patch
to his computer. This is scary because (a) everybody needs to do stuff
like this and (b) Dave is god; if he can't do it, nobody can do it.
Computers are just too fricking complicated.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was all that was left
after the Game Neverending
wiped out all of its
state
Wednesday, December 4, 2002
Blab. A reader asks the Question O' The Day:
That's it?!
Yes, in fact. Wonderful how simple and compact the universe is on some
days, eh?
Blab. A reader needs our help.
Steve,
I need your help! You're the
only google hit for "dermophagia"! Can you believe that? Anyway,
what about people who eat their own skin, like Goldmember? What's
with that? Or, you know, fingernail clippings and somesuch?
Lookee there! We really are the
only Google link to dermophagia. (As well as nasophagia
and dentophagia.)
Perhaps that's best.
But anyway! Our Treasured Reader is really asking about autodermophagia,
a particularly nasty variant. We were unaware that it was a topic of contemporary
culture but, sadly,
it
does seem to be. We once read a really disturbing piece of Japanese
fiction in which the practice of autodermophagia was carried to its ultimate
limit.
All we can say is: Don't do that. Really.
Blab. A reader sends us one of these things.
[link]
A mathematician has catalogued every possible way of lacing shoes. Your
tax dollars at work. If you're Australian.
Plurp. From this here Multiple
Intelligence Inventory (sic), we conclude that we are good at:
Understanding self, focusing
inward on feelings/dreams, following instincts, pursuing interests/goals
and being original.
And bad at:
Physical activities (sports/dance/acting)
and crafts.
Big surprise. (/usr/bin/girl)
Plurp. As you have come to expect, we continue to obsess about
what you search for when you're poking around our sad little site. Last
week, it was (most popular first):
-
helen naked pitures
-
aaliyha
-
beets
-
chihuly
-
helen naked pictures
-
kosher symbols
-
mutatis mutandis
At least you're learning how to spell. Well, some of you.
Yow. 20th Century Fox (which really should update its name) is
doing a big screen adaptation of I,
Robot.
Shooting is to begin in April.
Alex Proyas, whose last large-canvas projects were "Dark City" and "The
Crow," will direct the film. [...]
The movie is a futuristic thriller
in which a detective investigates a crime that might have been perpetrated
by a robot, even though that seems an impossibility given [the three Laws
of Robotics].
We were pretty impressed with the visually eerie world of Dark
City. This could be cool. And Wil Smith is starring in it.
Plop. Um
...
A North East writer has been
given a grant of £2,000 to use sheep to create random poems, which
also utilise the deepest workings of the universe.
The money has been provided by Northern
Arts for Valerie Laws to create a new form of "random" literature.
Each of the animals has a word from
a poem written on their backs and as they wander about the words take a
new poetic form each time they come to rest.
But the exercise is not just an attempt
to create living poems, it is also, according to the poet, an exercise
in quantum mechanics.
The difference, here, is that physicists have some idea what poetry is.
Plop. Here
we go.
U.N. inspectors searching
for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction are really U.S. and Israeli
spies, Iraq's vice president said Wednesday. [...]
"We consider the entry of the presidential
sites as unjustified and really unnecessary," said Gen. Hossam Mohammed
Amin, chief Iraqi liaison to the inspectors.
Expect a bit more of this circus before All Hell Breaks LooseTM.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was horrified to learn about
cynophagia
Tuesday, December 3, 2002
Blab. Wondering about the boundary cases, a reader writes:
If random people and relatives
are like French pastries, and work people are like sushi, what is Helen
like?
Helen is ambrosia. She is milk and honey. She is the sui generis sine
qua non of life. Not just of our life, but of all life, of life in
general, of the universe, of all possible universes.
Did that answer your question?
Plurp.
The blue dog
wondered
where everybody went
Monday, December 2, 2002
Blab. Despite our continual warnings, a reader thinks.
I thought you might have
fun with this.
Right. A game in which you direct Santa across a rooftop, picking up glasses
of Champagne until he is so inebriated that he trips off the edge, presumably
plummeting to his death.
Yeah. Just the kind of fun we want to pass along to the kiddies. Happy
holidays.
Blab. A reader convinces us that the mainstream media gets all
their good ideas from blogs.
More evidence that Dave
Berry reads your stuff? At least you had the guts to make comments....
- Felis Lynx
Ah. Dave Berry recommends, as Xmas gifts, those inspirational Jesus sports
figurines that first mystified us a
few weeks ago. He, like us, has very little of an editorial nature
to say about them.
We are happy to have contributed to Dave Berry's creative fame, which
is well deserved, and we hope he continues to watch this blog in the coming
weeks. We have a couple more dandy items in mind that he's sure to like.
Blab. A reader sends us a polemic ...
[link]
... to bin Laden's tract about why it's just perfectly fine to blow up
buildings full of innocent people. Read it. It's quite an insight into
the mind of an Islamic radical, not to mention an interesting variation
of Simon Says.
Plurp. Tonight we celebrated Binge Day IV: The Relatives - chicken
and dumplings and cousins from the West Side. It's not that we don't like
people. We do! These people, in particular, are intelligent, intriguing,
and good conversationalists.
Rather, it's like French pastries. They are, in isolation, quite delicious.
But only in small quantity. A steady diet of people, like a steady diet
of rich pastries, soon overwhelms us.
Work people are somehow different. They are the sushi of social interaction:
spare, perfectly balanced, and delightful day after day. Random people,
and random relatives, are entirely different.
So here's to a hopeful end to Binge Days, at least for this year. All
hail and hearty, and good riddance! With a few days of nothing but sloth
and sleep (though we have no idea when that might happen), we just might
get over our low-grade cold, warm up again to the notion of rubbing constant
shoulders with humanity, and shed the dour mask that now obscures our social
face.
In the meantime, if you're a random person, you would do well do avoid
us for a few weeks. It's for your own protection.
Plurp.
The blue dog
recommended obeying
every possible
radical Islamic tract
Sunday, December 1, 2002
Blab. A reader gives up. Finally.
The challenge to find a transitive
usage for "flummox" has flummoxed me.
As it has us all, Treasured Reader.
Blab. That reader who seeks to avoid further punishment from
Sir writes:
Not my goal, more a benefit?
Do let us know of your further lessons. We're sure our readership is very
interested.
Blab. Another of our obsessive, copy-editing readers writes:
"Protracted": don't you mean
"Inconceivable"? hahahaha! Definitely overwork.
Actually, we meant neither. Circumscribed, or perhaps attenuated,
are probably close to what we meant, though we are pleased to have brought
some levity to your sad life in the process.
Plurp. While it was not strictly a Binge Day today, we did have
turkey, stuffing and gravy ... for breakfast. Then, after another bolus
of family, a long train trip back to NYC with Helen and her mother.
And after all this fun? Why, back to work tomorrow, of course, followed
tomorrow evening by Binge Day IV: The Relatives.
What do we want for Xmas? Solitude and isolation.
Yo. In the wake of the many and various sexual abuse scandals
in the Catholic Church, it seems that the Boston Archdiocese has a
new strategy.
The Archdiocese of Boston
is contemplating filing for bankruptcy protection to shield it from the
estimated 450 clergy sexual abuse victims who have filed civil lawsuits
against it, the Boston Globe reported on Sunday. [...]
Filing for bankruptcy protection in
federal court would halt action in the civil lawsuits against the archdiocese,
would prevent new lawsuits from being brought against the church while
it reorganizes its finances and would combine the hundreds of plaintiffs
into a single group, the paper said.
We think this is a dandy idea. Once they're in receivership, we would be
happy to take over as executor. We're pretty sure that we could whip these
guys into shape pretty quickly, if you see what we mean.
Yow. Good
news from Norway.
A Norwegian-based group launched
a novel baseball-style cap this week to shield users of mobile telephones
from radio emissions that some people fear can trigger cancers. [...]
"The cap has a layer of woven silver,"
Walter Kraus, head of the Handy-Fashions group that produces the headwear,
said. "It's no heavier than a normal cap." The blue or black peaked caps
have flaps that fold down over the ear.
We've been using this technology for some years to avoid the alien mind
probes. Ours is a rather less expensive version made of aluminum foil,
though.
Yo. Presenting a substantial collection
of images used at one time or another here in Plurp. Great stuff.
(Sponsored in some mysterious way by Google.)
Plurp.
The blue dog
sought to sell the Boston priesthood
on eBay
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