Plurp: The Morolian

Bigger!

2003.01.12 : 2003.01.18

Saturday, January 18, 2003
Blab. A reader knows the obvious.
We always knew the blue dog was the brains of the outfit anyway. That one is obvious.
Absolutely. We are just the color commentary.

Blab. Every so often (typically, several times a day), readers send mysterious collections of words to us, from which we would, no doubt, benefit greatly if only we understood their context.
Obviously, Bush wants to stop Dorothy from getting to see the Wizard.
See what we mean?

Blab. A reader examines the leaflets that the U.S. has been dropping on Iraq and offers its own unique perspective.
If you engage coalition forces you will become a giant, spectral head glowing over a tornado, even more resolute in your determination.
Which means, we think, that you will be Oz the Great and Powerful. Is that an Arabic story?

Blab. A reader sends us another one of those annoying, blind ...
[link]
... things. But this time, it's a reader looking out for our better (or baser) instincts, and we like that! In this particular instance, our Treasured Reader ferrets out information about our much-anticipated and soon-to-be-favorite game.
“Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth” is currently on schedule for release in Q3/Q4 2003
Of course, it will turn out not to work on our stupid PC, leading us to a spectacular cerebral detonation, or at least to create a vast army of clones to assault the IBM laptop manufacturing facility.

Rant. The various indignities visited upon us today include:

Being forced to get up at 5:30 AM, a time at which, we were sickened to discover, the outside world is pitch black.

Being the only person awake (or at least visibly awake) as we trudged through the lobby of the romantic San Jose Hilton to the grimy parking basement.

Having a couple with two kids sit down near us in the terminal of the romantic San Jose International Airport, whereupon one of their kids proceeded to practice his brain-piercing soprano scream for several minutes. Unnecessarily, as it turned out, as the kid was already a Zen master screamer.

Having a second couple with two kids sit down right next to us, and having one of their of their kids proceed to spit out its (inappropriately named) pacifier onto our luggage and begin competing in the screaming contest.

After all that, sitting on the runway for two hours without taking off because of the heavy fog that enveloped the airport after we arrived.

Being packed like a string bean in a can, along with our fellow string beans, except that this can was hurtling seven miles above the ground for five hours before falling back to Earth.

Airline food. OK?

Will someone please invent teleportation? Don't make us ask you again.

Plurp. There haven't been very many times in our life when we've gotten up at 5:30 AM in the morning, and fewer still when we were required to do it under our own ambulation. (In most cases, the wild horses obviated the need for ambulation on our part.) Offhand, we can think of only two other circumstances in which this has happened. One was the first time we went SCUBA diving in the open ocean as a scrawny teen. The other was, well, a very memorable circumstance which did not actually involve getting out of bed.
Other than those, though, 5:30 AM in the morning is not our favorite time.

Plurp. Bilingual signs are all over the place these days. The plane in which spent most of today is a good example.

NO DIAPERS IN TOILET
NO PAÑALES

We would guess that pañales means diapers, and that Spanish-speaking folks are smarter than English-speaking folks in that they know, without being told, that this is not a universal prohibition but rather applies solely to putting the diapers in the toilet.
We always try to guess what the words mean, given the clues of the English phrase with similar meaning. You don't do that, though, do you? We might guess that most people do not.
And it is with those people in mind that we recently replaced all of the Spanish translations on signs across the country with Pig Latin, just to see if you'd notice.

NO DIAPERS IN TOILET
ONAY IAPERSDAY

Admit it. You didn't notice.

Plurp. In this weekend's Secret Reader Contest, you are invited to submit a paragraph describing the new reality TV show, Celebrity Ferret.

Plop. And we mean that literally.
Suzanne Lewis was in for a shock when she sat down at home one recent night to watch television.
On came a commercial for Metamucil, the laxative, that showed what looked like a National Park Service ranger pouring a glass of it down Old Faithful and announcing that the product keeps the famous geyser "regular."
"My eyes got bigger, and my jaw dropped," Ms. Lewis said. That is because she is the superintendent of Yellowstone and the chief steward of the park and its geysers.

Plop. There's something about the rhetoric of war that disturbs us deeply. See if you can guess what it is.
"You're not going to be able to deal from the air with weapons of mass destruction," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told lawmakers last week. "It would take deep penetrators and would require capabilities that would have some effects that would not be nice."
Rumsfeld's allusion was to nuclear weapons, which would be needed to blow up deeply buried bunkers.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was the anus of
the outfit

Friday, January 17, 2003
Blab. Having not done much with the many missives from our Treasured Readers in the past two days, we now serve penance by drowning in them. We hope you're happy.
Our Flush the Phoney puzzle, in which you were asked to identify the bogus military operation name from a group of five, seems to have drawn some response. We begin with a reader that accidentally guessed the phoney on the first try.
"Operation Piercing Knife" is the phoney because it sounds like a real name, whereas the others sound goofy and thus were chosen for that reason.
"Operation Piercing Knife" was randomly generated by the always-useful American Military Operation Name Generating Device from the always-useful Ftrain. We said it was quasi-random because we selected it from among dozens of absolutely preposterous names, like Touchy Leopard, Choleric Lilac and Very Mad Anaconda. Our Treasure Reader points out that we would have been better off not to be so selective.
A second reader wins the award for best supporting reason.
I vote that "Exercise Early Victor" is the phoney, because the only Victor I ever knew was always late for everything.
L.
See? That makes so much sense! Finally, and as predicted, this reader could not resist ignoring the question altogether.
I suspect that "Flush The Phoney" is a fake operation. It's more of a front for the CIA to determine who's hacking their system to extract operational material.
And to think that you almost got them....
- Felis Lynx
Remember, as with all puzzles and contests here on Plurp, there are no right answers, only opportunities for us to mock you further.

Blab. Speaking of which, a reader, slogging through ancient issues of Plurp, mistakenly interprets our innocent curiosity as irreverence, and accuses us of sarcasm.
Dear Mr. White,
I sincerely believe that this may have been a more appropriate choice of photograph for your blurb on the late Pte Richard Green. It is, Sir, in my estimation, exceedingly disrespectful to make light of this gentleman, especially considering the manner in which he died. It was anything but friendly fire that prematurely ended his young life, quite the contrary!
I have no idea what you were doing at 21, I was in university studying biology, how fortunate we were. A mere 3 years earlier, had I not escaped the US, I would have been in Vietnam slaughtering people in the name of peace. Perhaps one day we will know the real conflict that is taking place in Afghanistan. It may have something to do with the control of their major crops which have always been of interest to the US and other governments.
Regardless, you do have an interesting site, albeit sarcastic, on rare occasion; intelligent!
Regards,
Stephen Black
PS: No doubt, you can plainly see that this young man's features are reasonably proportional.
We can see that you feel deeply about the issue of Pte Richard Green's appearance, and we will respect those feelings. In the meantime, we would be very interested in learning more about the U.S. government's desire to control the Afghan poppy farming business, presumably stemming from its desire to have a ready source of heroin. And here we thought the whole thing was about Al Qaeda.
So, do tell, Treasured Reader.

Blab. A reader helps us solve our stereo-to-mono problem by spending all of our money. Isn't that nice?
About the dvd thing. You're clearly missing the whole "home theatre" meme. Just shunt that nice, happy stereo signal where it wants to go, namely into the stereo. Problem solved. Oh, what you, say, you don't want to turn on another bit of electronics, and fiddle with another remote (if your stereo is fancy enough) to adjust the volume? Now, if you have a nice 1982 tuner, you'll probably end up routing the dvd's sound in through the old "tape" input, and having to actually stand up and turn the physical knob thingy to control the volume. But, hey, such is the price of progress. (He sighs, knowingly)
Of course, you'll stuff that Star Wars disc into the player, crank the stereo, and suddenly wonder if the real answer isn't a 5.1 full home theatre audio component, complete with a proper sub-woofer. Gotta really have that space destroyer rumble by. One isn't quite sure where to stuff two more speakers and a sub-woofer, in a spare, modernist NYC apartment, but that is left as an exercise to the reader; or possibly the Blue dog, who might well enjoy such an exercise.
You'll be pleased to know that we're even more paleolithic than that. The TV in the bedroom, where we're trying to put the DVD player, has no separate amplifier associated with it, stereo or otherwise, and no speaker other than the tinny little one in the TV.
Scary, huh?

Blab. As it turns out, the above reader used a wide-area mind-control laser, also causing the following.
Speaking of consumer electronics....
I joined my wife on her trip to the grocery store, convincing her to stop by Circuit City on the way back. Our TV is dying (vertical scan going caput, resulting in a single horizontal line), and we'll need a new one soon. I just wanted to price them for online comparison.
Three hours later, we ALMOST bought a 42" plasma flat panel for $6500. Ouch. Ended up with 36" flat screen CRT. Much more reasonable. And I found out that my wife is VERY good and haggling.
- Felis Lynx
How greatly relieved you must be to have only spent $2000 on a TV. And we thought we lived an extravagant life style!

Blab. That reader that squeezed sound out of a video card has a rare lucid moment.
did I really say video card? man, that sounds stupid. I'd just like to point out before anyone else says anything that I do know my video card from my sound card. Thank you.
Our pleasure. Really.

Blab. Observing recent lapses, a reader writes:
Did the eagles get Ian?
Very nearly, but Ian lucked out. The eagles were busy eating Beth's liver (how very sad) and circling Dave's house (though he, too, escaped intact). We decided we better get around to posting tonight lest they find us too.

Blab. A reader donates an amusing link.
Your readers might find this site amusing. (Sorry if it is well-known, I just stumbled onto it today...)
--RS
We did stumble across the Half Bakery recently. It's interesting. You submit a partially-baked idea. Other readers vote on your idea, saying its cool or dopey.
Spend some time poking around. There are some wild ideas there.

Blab. Earlier this week, we wondered how the U.S. military could figure out where buried Iraqi optical fiber cables are, seeing as how they are, well, buried and all.
Naturally, our readers know.
The cables are detected from afar using a special remote cable detecting machine, of course! That or the plan is carpet-bomb the whole of Iraq, just to make sure...
And if they don't have one handy, this reader has a good backup plan.
Well, obviously, they drop random bombs all around Iraq then wait until Iraqis wearing jumpsuits saying "Fiber Optic Cable Repairman" show up to one of the bomb sites. Then they bomb that site some more. The leaflets are simply to inform the repairmen that they are no longer needed.
That's so clever!
One thing about certain readers, though: they never do their homework.
FOR YOUR SAFETY
The oddest thing I see about the pamphlet is that it's printed *in English*. Shouldn't they be printing them in Arabic, if they were really interested in getting the message across.
Then again, perhaps they're working under the assumption that they understand what we're saying; they all do.
L.
We're not sure we understand. Like this reader.
Oh, I thought you said "The U.S. military has been dropping various leftists on Iraq." Hahahahahahaha!
In any case, to find the buried cables they're probably just looking at the maps that the cable companies had to file at town hall before burying them. That's what regulation's all about, after all.
Tense and dangerous!
So, they drop a bunch of leftists on Iraq, the leftists pass all sorts of regulatory legislation, and we let Nature take its course. Insidious!
Along those same lines is this.
as for those pamphlets, I don't think we would necessarily have to be planning to bomb fiber optic cables in order to drop those. It seems like it would be more effective and less costly to get iraqis to stop repairing the cables rather than bomb them.
Here, the military drops incompetent fiber optic cable repair people on Iraq, and ...

Blab. A reader sets a low bar for us. We like that.
There are definitely things we miss about California. The sunsets, as the sunset tonight, are beautiful beyond belief. The ocean, as the ocean outside the restaurant tonight, is both hypnotic and reassuring. And the weather, as the weather today, is soft and inviting.
Wasn't that poetic
We think of it as Plurpetic.

Blab. A fan of savage documentaries writes:
So, we're going to see "Bowling for Columbine" at the flicks on Monday. It's a documentary about the freeness of guns in America and stars George W. Bush and Marily Manson. Will you be going to see it?
~The Sch**l Student~
Is that an invitation?

Blab. A reader chastises us.
You were in L.A. and didn't tell me in advance?! We could have gotten together and done something, like pray to Allah at the airport.
We would have loved to notify this Treasured Reader, if only we knew who it was. (Actually, we're pretty sure we do know who it is, which is pretty darn frightening all by itself. Next time, we'll have to arrange for a series of mysterious and controversial rituals.)

Blab. The latest Mia sighting, and it has been a while, comes from a very interesting place indeed.
We dreamt of pineapples, mia and dragons last night...we're worried
Don't worry. We had that same dream. Have some milk.

Blab. A reader celebrates a recent philatelic discovery.
Angelina Jolie stamps and systematic cannibalism. Welcome to the Democratic Republic of Congo!
To wit:
A U.N. inquiry confirmed systematic cannibalism, rape, torture and killing by rebels in a campaign of atrocities against civilians in the forests of northeast Congo, with children among the victims, U.N. authorities said Wednesday.
After all that exertion, maybe they were just hungry?

Blab. A reader discusses our recent encounter with ourself.
"Isn't that awful?"
Perhaps it wasn't that the fellow was a Muslim that bothered you. Perhaps it was just the blatant display of religion. Personally, I'm bothered by any public display of this superstitious nonsense, no matter what flavor it comes in.
In this sense, religion is rather like homosexuality. I may respect people's rights to do as they like, but that doesn't mean I want to watch.
L.
It wasn't the fellow that we thought was awful. You should read more carefully, especially with your proclivity to embarrass yourself in public.

Blab. But fear not.
Fear not, citizens! Orca Boy will save you!
Somehow, we suspect that any adolescent male who goes swimming in this outfit will not be out to save you. But you're right, it's just our aged cynicism talking.

Blab. And finally, the news from Oakwood.
"Where Are They Now?" blurb from Oakwood Community College newsletter.
Edwin Plurp, who has adopted the stage name "Steve White" for his escapades with the Blue Man Group entertainment division of IBM, is busily amusing literally tens of fans with his very clever website. What makes the website stand out is that it is wholly driven by a variation of the ELIZA program. Every day, text is posted automatically from reader input, accompanied by algorithmically generated text purpordedly written by the fictitious author, a cliche-ridden persona too absurd to be believed.
We knew they would catch up with us sooner or later, those meme-mixing snoops from college. Dang it!

Plurp.
The blue dog
was the brains of
the outfit

Thursday, January 16, 2003
Plurp.
The blue dog
had no idea where all of the content
went

Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Plop. What does one do on a beautiful California morning when the sky is blue, the air is just slightly cool, and the ocean is inviting? Why, attend a three-hour conference call from inside a shuttered hotel room, of course. Well, if you're us.
Then one is too busy, the rest of the day, to even write a sensible blog entry. It's just criminal.

Plurp.
The blue dog
thought Jack was a
dull boy

Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Blab. On the mystery of stereo-to-mono conversion, a reader with some experience writes:
I plug my tv's stereo audio out into my computer's line in port with just a splitter. And it hasn't caused any damage yet. Of course, one thing to remember is sometimes those little cables are pretty smart. For instance, the y-splitter coming out of my video card separates the dolby digital mode data from the quad mode data and it basically just looks like a cable.
Ah. Then your y-splitter is not just a splitter. Sounds like we will have to investigate various lumpy cables that might do what we need.

Plop. We have a sad story to relate. We were sitting in a terminal in LAX today, waiting for a puddle-jumper to Santa Barbara. A man walked up to the table in front of us, deposited his jacket and computer case, knelt down on the floor, and bowed, presumably towards Mecca.
And that worried us.
Isn't that awful?

Yo. We have another puzzle for you, and we don't know the answer to this one! The U.S. military has been dropping various leaflets on Iraq. This one shows planes bombing the ground where a fiber optic communications cable is buried.

The text reads:
FOR YOUR SAFETY
Stop repairing military fiber optic cable.
You are risking your life.
The cables are tools used to suppress
the Iraqi people by Saddam and his regime.
They are targeted for destruction.
And the puzzle is this: How does the U.S. military know where fiber optic cables are buried? We might guess that they have to figure this out remotely, like from satellites, or high-altitude spy planes, or maybe lower altitude Predator drones. But what in the world can be detected remotely that would reveal where these cables are buried?
Tell us, o wise readers. And please provide evidence for what we confidently predict will be your bizarre, outlandish claims.

Plurp. There are definitely things we miss about California. The sunsets, as the sunset tonight, are beautiful beyond belief. The ocean, as the ocean outside the restaurant tonight, is both hypnotic and reassuring. And the weather, as the weather today, is soft and inviting.

Plurp.
The blue dog's
y-splitter was not a
splitter

Monday, January 13, 2003
Blab. For some reason, a reader's remark about increases in postal rates seems to have attracted the ongoing attention of other readers. We're jealous.
"If I buy a stamp, the Post Office owes me one letter delivered, no matter what the current cost may be": hm, I'm not sure if I've seen an actual copy of that contract...
Maybe it's like the Social Contract in that regard.

Blab. A reader defends that other reader's deprecation of the U.S. Postal Service's policy.
<<Send your rant to VISA>>
Difference is, when I use a VISA card, I'm spending VISA's money and they have a right to expect me to pay them back, with interest if late. When I buy stamps, the Post Office has my money and can either wisely invest it or foolishly spend it on wool shorts and zippy new eagle logos. In the hands of competent Post Masters, every day I don't use those stamps should be generating income for them. Instead, when it comes time for me to call in on THEIR dept, they expect ME to pay the interest on it. Why should I be financially responsible for their mismanagement of my funds?
Naturally, we agree with our Treasured Reader. Until the U.S. Postal Service reforms its evil ways, we recommend that you not buy stamps from it, and instead deliver your analog mail yourself. It's good exercise. So we're told.

Blab. A reader contributes excellent clues as to why communications noise is called static.
From my favorite online etymology:
static - 1570, originally a noun meaning "science relating to weight and its mechanical effects," from Mod.L. statica, from Gk. statikos "causing to stand, skilled in weighing," from stem of histanai "to cause to stand, weigh," from PIE base *sta- "stand." The sense of "having to do with bodies at rest or with forces that balance each other" is first recorded 1802. The meaning "electrical disturbances in the air" is first recorded 1913, from earlier statical (1837). Slang meaning "complaints" is from 1953.
Ah! Static, in the sense of bodies at rest, was applied to electrical charges to yield static electricity, and the discharge of static electricity creates radio waves, which in turn cause noise in radio communications.
That's obscure. We like that!

Yo. So Joe Liebermann is running for President in '04. Does he remind anyone else of Pat Paulsen? No? It's just me, then.

Maybe it's the way they talk.

Yow. Now this is funny! In an apocalyptic, genocidal sort of way. And gosh it's nicely made.

It is part of a larger collection of Gulf War propaganda and popular art that's really very interesting.

Plurp. Today's puzzle is a goodie. Four of the following military exercise/operation names are real, and have been used in recent U.S. activities. One of them, however, was generated quasi-randomly and is not, to the best of our knowledge, in use by the U.S. military. Your task is to Flush The Phoney! by telling us which one is bogus and explaining your reasoning.

Exercise Victory Scrimmage

Operation Piercing Knife

Exercise Reliant Mermaid

Operation Shining Presence

Exercise Early Victor

Note: The use of Google or other Web-based search or reference facilities is not allowed. This is an exercise for your mind, not your fingers.
Good luck, kids.

Rant. The world has gone mad. Well, at least the consumer electronics world has. We bought a DVD player recently (our first) only to discover that it's incompatible with our TV. Sure, it has a progressive scan output, an optical output, a "direct" output (using a funny cable) and a (stereo) audio/video output. But our little TV has only a VHS input and a (mono) audio/video input. Bzzt.
Two alternatives presented themselves. Go buy a fancy new plasma monitor for $1000 because they, or course, have stereo audio. Right. Or, more likely, buy something that converts stereo audio to mono.
A quick check at The Wiz verified our expectation that they don't know what an analog stereo to mono converter is. The guy at the nearby Radio Shack says, Yeah, we got that, and shows us a mono-to-stereo adapter cable. Uh, that connects a mono output to stereo inputs, we say. You can't combine two stereo signals into mono with just a cable. After the guy tries to convince us that the opposite is true, sigh, we leave the store.
(Are we wrong about this? It seems to us that plugging two stereo outputs together is a likely way to blow the output amplifiers. Or are we just terminally confused?)
Of course, we found what we needed on the Web, but really! Consumer electronics are getting as complicated as computers, and that's pretty bad.

Yo. Steve Case is out as Chairman of AOL Time Warner, largely due to the company's dismal performance since Internet-Bubble AOL bought Worked-For-It Time Warner.
We were, quite frankly, astonished when a company whose major assets were email, IM and chat bought Time Warner, whose assets were, well, lots of stuff. We were not surprised when, having oversaturated the market with thousand-hour introductory CDs for AOL, the combined company discovered that an exponential increase in online customers was not a sustainable business model.
We think of this as New Economy's other shoe falling. Plop.

Plurp.
The blue dog
thought that puzzle was a
goodie

Sunday, January 12, 2003
Blab. Having given up on GNE last week, we are quite surprised at the following in-game chat transcript forwarded to us by one of our GNE friends.

Benny: has anyone talked to Plurp lately?
ladysera: i miss plurp :(
Selva Morales: me too :(
Benny: me too I have 499 chickens in my house for him
ladysera: whoa that's a lot of chickens. LOL you could have a chicken farm!
Benny: i am hoping plurp comes back so I can give him a chicken farm
You are sadly missed. - Loli
We find this touching, in an odd, game-obsessed sort of way. It is somehow not our self-image that random people with whom we have interacted would miss us. Hmm.
As often threatened, the alpha of GNE is closing on Jan. 31, with the real game (whatever that turns out to be) opening up some time later this year. We've gone and signed up for an account in the real game, so we can at least check it out when it opens. We might even log in on Jan. 31, if only to observe the End Of The Universe behavior.
We would like to know what happened to that 500th chicken, though.

Blab. A reader has advice for that other reader who objects to the way the U.S. Postal Service deals with rate increases.
<< Stamps are a scam. >>
Send your rant to VISA (via carrier pigeon, of course) when they dun you. No doubt they will refund you your late fines.
Fight! Fight!

Blab. A reader more resourceful than we are finds what we thought did not yet exist.
>Angelina Jolie stamps!
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Tadjikistan beat you to it.
That's hilarious! Can we use those Tadjikistani stamps here in the U.S.? (Not that we actually send analog mail anymore. Not for several years now.)

Blab. A reader defends our ability to use words.
Since we are getting all persnickety... of the three physical dictionaries I have, two list "To give a name or title to" (or words to that effect) as the first definition of "entitle", as do two of the three entries here.
Which makes us wonder how our previous Treasured Reader feels about having used the other second definition of entitled for all these years.

Yo. We just made the first 2003 entry in our archive. We are astonished at how many daily entries we have! How did that happen?

Plop. How did Dubya get into the position of starting a war of aggression against Iraq? As with many things in his life, he just stumbled into it.
"The issue got away from the president," said a senior official who attended discussions in the White House. "He wasn't controlling the tone or the direction" and was influenced by people who "painted him into a corner because Iraq was an albatross around their necks."
It's a scary article, especially when you consider that this is how the terrifying might of the U.S. military is unleashed on the world these days. You should read it

Plop. For those of you wondering why Dubya isn't planning an imminent invasion of North Korea as well, this might provide some insight.
[T]he North has "twice as many main battle tanks, five times as many self-propelled artillery pieces, air defense suites that dwarf South Korean analogues, plus many more submarines, torpedo boats and anti-ship missile craft." [...]
[T]he initial blow from the North's long-range artillery and mobile rocket launchers could devastate Seoul and fall heavily on the U.S. 8th Army. [...]
North Korea also poses a significant threat with an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons and possibly two nukes.
In other words, it would be bad. Really, really bad.

Plurp. Why is communications noise called static? What's the connection?

Plurp.
The blue dog
was
the 500th chicken

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