Plurp: Proving Human Stupidity

Bigger!

2003.02.09 : 2003.02.15

Saturday, February 15, 2003
Blab. A reader achieves that sublime mental state to which all true Plurpologists rightly aspire.
I'm so confused.
And give Helen all my Survivor-obsessing-watching love.
Congratulations. And, as Helen has enough obsession to last her several lifetimes, it would be uncharitable for her to take yours. Not to mention unbearable to us.

Blab. A reader threatens legal action.
the poem you posted is not by Mary Oliver, but rather from the pen of noted New Mexico poet and foodie, Judyth Hill. your link goes to a site that credits her.
a friend sent it to me, and i immediately recognized it as Judyth's poem. maybe you can issue a disclaimer or an apology or something?
We shall do both.
Disclaimer: Sometimes, Treasured Readers send us information that is - how shall we say? - not entirely well considered. Given the choice between honoring our Treasured Readers and embarrasing them, we naturally choose the former course. In the particular case cited, rather than rudely pointing out our Treasured Reader's innocent mixup, we simply included a subtle link to the correct author as a service to our readers.
Apology: We're so very sorry that you didn't notice.

Blab. A reader seems to have been programming. How very distasteful.
Python 2.2.1 (#34, Apr 9 2002, 19:34:33) [MSC 32 bit
(Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more
information.
>>> from __future__ import generators
>>>
>>> def Mia_forever():
..   while True:
..     yield "Mia"
..
>>> i=0
>>> for she in Mia_forever():
..   print she
..   i+=1
..   if i==5: break
..
Mia
Mia
Mia
Mia
Mia
>>>
In the future, do try to control yourself.

Blab. Yet another reader expects us to do all the work around here.
Bear in mind with me here (helenism or near-miss?)
Oh, good gracious. We are simply too weary for it all today. Readers are invited to figure it out for themselves. If they have sufficient energy left over, they can even tell us.

Blab. A reader provides all the proper context, which puts us simply all atwitter. And speaking of atwitter ...

And, as to news you can understand, we recommend clicking on our links. You may not understand it, but at least you can read it. You can, uh, read, we hope?
Yup. Links are a big clue normally. And as for Charlie, can you really trust anyone who swears that talking to flowers helps them grow?

Now, be nice. Charlie is the future leader of the British Empire. Imagine the dashed hopes of all those Britons.

Blab. A reader points us to something that appears to be merely funny.
[link]
To wit:
Jim and Tim, the Duct Tape Guys, call duct tape, "Homeland Security on a Roll". In fact, they submit that no home is truly secure without duct tape. In light of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) recent advice for Americans to ready themselves for possible chemical and biological warfare strikes, The Duct Tape Guys have put together this helpful list: [...]
If you are going to choose one room of your house to make airtight for three days, Jim suggests the kitchen, "That's where the food is."
Tim disagrees. "If you have to hold it for three days you're gonna be in a world of pain! Make your airtight room the bathroom."

But then, a little further down, we find this:
Cover the whole country with a large sheet of plastic and duct tape it securely to the east and west coasts and along the Canadian and Mexican borders.
Genius! Somebody tell Dubya. Or Dumsfeld. Or whoever's supposed to be in charge of Fatherland Security today.

Blab. A reader seems puzzled by recent events, in which U.S. officials once again believed an apparent fabrication about upcoming terrorist attacks, leading (in part) to the country now being orange-flavored.
So, let me get this straight. We can give lie detector tests to angry, detained Muslins in Cuba and believe those results but we can't give lie detector tests to scared people facing the LEGAL American judical system and believe THEM.
HUH??
What's more fun is when lie detector tests aren't given to those angry, detained Muslims, and they are believed anyway.

Plurp. Let's see. Whom else can we offend today?

Plurp.
The blue dog
was all grumpy from
having been exiled
and all

Friday, February 14, 2003
Blab. Our Germanic reader suggests, well, something.
Der Blaue Hund went 18 times the speed of light and broke up.
Well, I would.
We have been known to break up for far less.

Blab. A reader states a truism.
Every cause has an advocate
Our reader points to the Institute of Draped Clothing, of which we are a founding member.
In an age of commercialised global monoculture, many people are working to preserve our vulnerable cultural heritage of ancient arts and crafts. Of these, the beautiful art of draped clothing is especially at risk. Draping is ephemeral--a draped garment loses its unique form the moment it is taken from the wearer's body. Draping is also almost entirely unrecorded: the techniques exist only in the minds and hands of skilled individuals, and are passed on by demonstration alone. The Institute of Draped Clothing exists to preserve this ancient body of knowledge, now swiftly vanishing, and to convey to the world the beauty, practicality and unique individuality of draped clothing.
We suspect that this is the pinnacle of its publicity.

Blab. A reader recurses.
Those who think that those who think George Bush is stupid are themselves stupid, are themselves stupid. So nyaah.
Those who think nyaah, are themselves nyaah.

Blab. A reader embarrasses itself.
"The text is old, the orator to green."
- William Shakespeare (Venus and Adonis)
Sadly, our reader falls victim, not only to bad grammar, but to a site that goes to great lengths to prevent you from linking to anything but its front page. Ah, well.

Blab. Our Most Clever Reader solves this week's Extremely Puzzling Puzzle.
Marc Schiller is CEO of electricartists and is googlable and from the first link we discover that he does viral marketing and (question 7) his girlfriend's name is "Sara".
"Mia" can be found here at electricartists.
Excellent! This is, most exactly, how we found Mia this week. Our most severe congratulations.

Blab. A reader creates constructs that no one understands.
from __future__ import generators
def Mia_forever():
   while True:
     yield "Mia"
Okaaay.

Blab. On the topic of badgers, a reader writes:
Yes, follow Helen to the UK. I'm sure you'd get on with Prince Charlie and it would be nice to know what you were talking about regarding the news for once!
Yes. Well. We're afraid we'll just never get along with Charlie. His architectural taste is simply appalling, after all. Not to mention those ears, which really belong in the Ozarks.
And, as to news you can understand, we recommend clicking on our links. You may not understand it, but at least you can read it. You can, uh, read, we hope?

Blab. A reader is foiled. Again. And this time, not by us. At least, not exactly.
Arrrghhg! They took it down. My sad attempt at humour is foiled. Again! -AJL
It seems that eBay, upon which our Treasured Reader's sad attempt at humour apparently depended, removed the items which our Treasured Reader linked from their auction site. Could it be that our Treasured Reader's sad attempt at humor involving human body parts? How distasteful!

Blab. Yonder yahoos yak.
yes, young yuck of yarn, yield your yawning yipe, you yo-yo, yours yearns yearyly, yeah yenta, you yawled, yet yeast yellow your youngling!
Feckless fools!
flagellators funneling to feast at the folicle: a formidiable fallacy founded by fruitless fanticies of filth and phlegmatism!
Fine.

Blab. A reader groks Helenisms. Congratulations all around.
GOOD GOD; GOD DAMN; GOOD DAMN!
Yes, quite. And, if you had heard someone actually utter that without realizing that it was odd, it would be a Helenism.

Blab. A reader, perhaps that same grokky reader, writes:
"DON'T LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH"
and,
."beating a dead horse"
and,
"as productive as milking a bull"
could yield a tertiary helenism:
Don't milk a dead gift horse in a bull's mouth.
Got tertiary helonisms?
So. Helenisms are spontaneous utterances. It is easy to create them, but it's not the same, now, is it?

Blab. A reader mixes the memes in a most delightful way.
Well, if the idea of a valid Helenism is so compelling perhaps we should involve Dubya and distract him from destroying the whole world.
It would be good if some part of the world were not destroyed. We vote for New York.

Yow. These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be Displayed
Painfully funny. (Ian)

Plop. As far as we know, some of the information that led to upgrading the terrorist alert status to the second highest level last week might not have been fabricated.
As far as we know. Maybe.

Plurp.
The blue dog
flogged a dead gift horse,
which looked in the mouth of
a good damn
yawning yipe

Thursday, February 13, 2003
Blab. We discover an interesting fact. Our readers would rather talk about marginal Helenisms than anything else in the world. For instance, the campaign manager for Cthulhu writes:
well, isn't saying that someone is "green" implying that they are amateurish or inexperienced? I think the question becomes whether or not it is possible for a helenism to contain an aphorism made of one word...
"Vote Cthulhu: why choose a lesser evil?"
We're not sure that there's such a thing as a one-word aphorism.

Blab. A reader argues with us. We think.
I didn't say that the person reporting the helenism had spotted a genuine one or that the one. I tried to give an explanation that was plausible.
OK. Whatever. We're tempted to go back and figure out what you're talking about but, you know, it's getting late ...

Blab. A reader unearths a completely unanticipated find.
Just scroll down to green as an adjective.
Now that's ridiculous: a dictionary that thinks that green around the gills is a proper expression. Except that, oh my lordy, so do over three thousand other Web pages.
What's happening to educational standards, anyhow?

Blab. A resourceful reader frightens us.
Re: green behind the ears, I asked google and found this among the 843 hits. (this site collects isms, some a little strained) More isms here.
In regular discourse, "For example, if your are green behind the ears, and planning to retire in 2030, you could select the Freedom 2030 fund."
A film called Trixie where Emily Watson speaks almost entirely in fractured cliches, malapropisms, and probably some helenisms as well.
It is more than we can bear in our delicate emotional state.

Blab. A spammist writes:
Do you have problems with your septic tank?
If so, the folks on the eleventh floor are going to be incredibly unhappy!

Blab. A reader hurts our head with a ...
mia sighting at the bottom of the page!
And indeed, it is quite a mysterious (and nostalgic) addition to the mythos.
Plotting is the implausable bit at the place, deformation of the Mia fairness excessively is easy, but, all everything this is the family movie whose good moral is good to the story
Fan. Tastic.

Blab. A reader finds ...
pilot Mia
A different Mia, we think?

Blab. This week's puzzle (don't make us explain it again!) continues to puzzle.
It's not another connection to Sara Beard is it?
Are you guessing?

Blab. A reader finds a clue, then puts it back and wanders off, dazed.
this seems relevant
"[Boyfriend Name deleted], my boyfriend, is the viral marketer ([Company Name deleted]). And, he is quite googable. You can dump on him all you want - you have never met him - and the press has been after him before. "
Are you guessing?

Blab. A reader guesses as follows.
plausible chain?
Sara Beard ->
[Boyfriend Name deleted], my boyfriend, is the viral marketer ->
([Company Name deleted]) ->
http://www.electricartists.com/
-> Mia!!!
Without a Web reference indicating such, who can tell?
Speculators and guessers would be well advised to search for evidence.

Blab. ... or confuse us mightily, as does this reader.
So electricartists (likely "he") talks to mia who talks to 13000 books lovers (each week).
And you talked to google (better google painfully read you) whhich talks to everybody (when they listen) and the viral message was that "his" "Sara Beard" should be everybody's Sara Beard (as far as google searches go).
You know what they say: The message is in the middle.

Blab. A reader knows right from wrong, and contributes as well.
This => RIGHT
That => very very Wrong and out of target.
Ooh! Out of target!

Blab. Consumed by the madness, a reader retreats to what once appeared, by comparison, sane.
Plurp talks to (incredible number) of Plurp lovers each week.
We talk to Plurp.
Too late.

Blab. In a temporary spate of lucidity before being committed, another reader mutters this.
After much tiresome Usenet debate, talking to Plurp seems sane.
We know. We're sorry.

Blab. (A reader, hobbled by British spelling, misses one of our minor attempts at humor, as well as confusing ciliophora with bacteria. But we don't want it to feel bad about it.)
Isn't that a bit too close to paramaecium, a small single celled bacteria. Not to like, rain on your parade or anything. -AJL
You're right. Absolutely right. Thanks for pointing that out.

Blab. A reader sends us nostalgia and invalid items. We feel so blessed.
Normal minds would apparently appear stranger than ever.
Of course, I would never have thought of it, unless it was a leek.
-AJL
Well, we understand the Plurp part, anyway. Should that worry us?

Blab. Zumma zumma, rolley polley.
If 73 percent of the universe is dark energy then *I* plan to go over to the dark side. Darth Vader fer president! (Actually, anybody but Bush and company. I'm voting for the Hillary and Sharpton ticket).
Dorian, the overlord.
Bush is the dark side, young Jedi. And Sharpton is Jar Jar Binks.

Blab. Trimwalley dornistover.
You could declare "green behind the ears" as a near miss. Near misses define the category to which they do not belong. You might be used as an example to define the category female (but I suspect that, being such a geek, you'd hardly be considered a "near miss", let along a "near Mrs").
Dorian, the overworked.
We have always enjoyed being near miss Helen. Overwhelmed by the logic of Dorian, the overworked overlord, we hereby declare Green behind the gills to be a Near Miss Helenism.

Blab. On the caption writing geniuses at CNN, a familiar reader writes:
If the shuttle traveled 18 times the speed of light then the 4:30 PM ET must refer to the "Extra-Terrestrial" timezone. Damn, who said NASA is behind the times? Ya think they'd ANNOUCE faster-than-light travel, at least in the recruitment brochure. "Powie! Zounds! Join Now! Be younger than your children!" Of course, you'd be a bit more massive but most people can't distinguish mass from weight anyway.
Dorian, the overwrought.
Younger than your children? Heck, you could arrange to be their great-great grandparents. On second thought, maybe that's best left as is.

Blab. A reader mystifies us. Though, around here, it's a low bar.
Extropian mouse, well, transmusian at least.
Did you mean: transmission.

Blab. When the cities are evacuated, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will leave no one behind.
FEMA Disaster Kits for Kids!! It's FUN!
And don't forget your FEMA Kids Activity Survival Kit.
You may have to leave your house during a disaster and may sleep somewhere else for a while. It’s smart to put together your own Kid’s Activity Survival Kit so you will have things to do and share with other kids. [...] Some suggested items for your Activity Survival Kit:

A few of your favorite books

Crayons, pencils or marking pens and plenty of paper

Scissors and glue

Two favorite toys such as a doll or action figure

We especially recommend the Nuclear Nick action figure.

Plop. We are in exile, banished from the city we love by the deadly rain of images of radiological bombs and nerve agents that the media (at the behest of various delightful U.S. government agencies) have insisted are likely to be unleashed upon New York and Washington this week (or, at least, Real Soon Now) as the Hajj ends.
We have fled to the remote hinterlands around the lab, the contamination of which would bring no terrorist fame, until all this blows over. Or up. Or until we get bored and go back anyway, which is what has happened every previous time we have tried this.
Our City friends think we're nuts. That's OK; we think they're nuts. Odd are we're both right.
On the off chance that there are any terrorists among our readership, could we ask you a small favor? Turn your attention to some more deserving city. Los Angeles, for example, simply rife with American culture, and long a media center, would pay lots of attention to you in return. Imagine the impact you'd have on the oil industry if you picked Houston instead. Or Mobile. We never much liked Mobile.
But New York? Darling, it's been done already.
Thank you.

Yak.
Helen: We have to check into the hotel by eight tonight.
Steve: We don't have guaranteed late arrival?
Helen: Uh, Survivor's on.

Plurp. In the midst of world crisis, the British Royal Family keeps things in perspective.
Princess Declares War on Badgers
Helen wants to move there.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was exhausted by all of those
puzzling ... things

Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Blab. Our Most Treasured Reader writes:
Steve White! You come home RIGHT now!
Nothing would please us more. As we type, we are in a conference room in Raleigh, between Meetings, sitting in on Yet Another Conference Call, having winged our way here last night. In a few hours, we will slipstream back home. So, while we are unable to do so right now (for some odd definition of now, given the asynchronous nature of this communication), we will oh so very happily do so then.

Blab. That same reader makes a wild claim.
"If a Helenism sounds right, it probably is."
....thus says Helen
Next reading......?
Yes, most certainly true, but the rest of the world still needs objective criteria that define a Helenism. We find ourself in the position of Humble Keeper of these criteria. We're just here to help.

Blab. A reader goes ballistic.
Whaddaya mean? "Wet behind the ears" and "green around the gills" clearly combine Helenistically to give "Green behind the ears: ill, disturbed, vexed, or otherwise operating suboptimally, due to inexperience". Sheesh.
So that's barfing due to inexperience? Good! That comes up in conversation for us pretty much every day. ("Comes up.")

Blab. A reader seems discouraged by our high standards.
I was thinking of just "green" for the other half. You'll probably disqualify that too because it's only one word.
It's so hard to know what to do! Our well-meaning readers have certainly found an edge case. But we worry that single words are really more just terms rather than aphorisms, and we fear the linguistic pit into which our precious Helenisms might descend were we to admit mere terms as their constituents.

Blab. This distinction is echoed by another reader.
I'd suggest that the other half of the pseudo-Helenism is simlpy green(note defs. 9 & 10 for the adjective). Since a true Helenism requires that both halves be aphorisms and not just single words, this is not a true Helenism, although it does have many of the same qualities.
What to do? What to do?

Blab. A reader attempts to invoke discourse representation theory.
Clearly if you look at the green question in terms of syntax it does not fit the criteria for a helenism. However if you consider the conceptual structure of helenisms which are a sub-genre of puns it is clear that the "concept" of greenhorn qualifies as a valid part of the construction of a helenism regardless of its surface syntax. Surface syntax is too shallow a criteria to judge the mixing of meme-centers. I vote yes.
Dorian
Wow! Those are all, like, words, aren't they?

Blab. A venerable reader suggests a plausible solution to this week's conundrum.
Green behind the ears -
Wet behind the ears.
Still very green.
will that do?
-AJL
Hmm. Only 306 hits on Still very green (as opposed to nearly 17,000 for Wet behind the ears) but at least it makes sense to us. If only we knew what to do in this, the most difficult case of borderline Helenismization ever encountered in Plurp.

Blab. It's Ballistic Reader Day here in Plurp.
Fireball yelling guy is only bugging you about hotlinking images and stealing bandwidth because I busted him for doing it. He learned it from you! You are setting a bad example! Think of the children!
Ah. Then it's your fault. Tsk! As to those children, we understand that Michael Jackson is setting enough bad examples for all of us.

Blab. A reader attempts to solve the mystery of the origin of this week's Mia reference.
Is it a picture of Sara Beard?
Sara Beard is Mia? Interesting theory, but we don't think so.

Blab. A reader wakes from private reverie and shouts:
I know! That's Sara Beard in the picture!!!
We are impressed with the subtly of our puzzle, it having stumped everyone so far. So, no, it's not the famous Sara Beard. (At least, we're pretty sure it's not the famous Sara Beard.) And yes, with sufficient attention to recent Plurp entries, and a bit of digging around on your part, it is possible (though apparently pretty hard!) to figure out why we were led to discover that Mia picture.
Should we give you a hint?

Blab. One of our many A.D.D. readers couldn't focus long enough to worry about the puzzle.
Click on the link for more info? Hell, I barely ever read anything longer than four lines here!
Yeah. Us neither.

Blab. A reader has been slumming.
Hey, I gave a talk at the George Bush Center for
Intelligence once! They have a good gift shop.
The George Bush Center for Intelligence is the new name for the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. The old name (we seem to recall from long ago) was the Department of Agriculture. These fanciful names were presumably intended to obscure the fact that it was the CIA, though everyone knew it anyway. Oh, you want the Department of Agriculture? Snicker. (We feel certain that similar phrases are uttered today.)
We will resist the obvious comparison.

Blab. A reader states a fact. F.A.C.T. Fact.
Those who think George Bush is stupid are themselves stupid.
This is, of course, a corollary to the well-known theorem:
Those who think x is y are themselves y.
As is Those who think George Bush is the name of the CIA headquarters are themselves the name of the CIA headquarters.

Blab. A reader sends an alleged CNN screen shot.

Would you care to comment, Mr. White?
L.
Helen says she believes this. So do we. Journalism majors never, ever take physics.
(BTW, we should caution the author of the referenced page that his or her archival links - like this one - do wacky things in our browser, trying to download a file and stuff. Icky icky.)

Yow. This rather puts it in perspective, we think.
[T]he universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus one percent; a recent previous estimate had a margin of error three times as much. By weight it is 4 percent atoms, 23 percent dark matter — presumably undiscovered elementary particles left over from the Big Bang — and 73 percent dark energy. And it is geometrically "flat," meaning that parallel lines will not meet over cosmic scales.
So us atom-based things (humans, planets, stars) are almost an afterthought, the dust that no one bothered to clean up. The vast majority of the universe is Not Like Us. And we don't know what it is. That is, we have no idea what the vast majority of it is.

Plurp. If we ever discover a new chemical element, we have a name all picked out: paramecium.
We like to be prepared.

Yow. We've been saying it over and over again. Now "researchers" are saying it, so you can finally believe it.
Computer games are good for you, say researchers who studied the complex social interactions in the popular shoot-em-up Counter-Strike.
Those of you who haven't played a first-person shooter today, go play. For your own health.

Plurp.
The blue dog
never, ever
took physics

Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Blab. A reader has no trouble surpassing us.
Steve Noted:
"We marvel at the deeply scholastic environment in which our Treasured Reader lives - an environment in which people driving down the highway naturally indulge in philosophical and political discourse with each other through the medium of signage."
Ah, Steve, it's so good to know that you recognize and understand our special environment! Your words brought me great comfort today as I cruised down the GW Parkway past the George Bush Center for Intelligence. I know, I know, this center is dedicated to the other George, but still and all--the gene pool thrives! Such a revelry that inspired in my tortured mind. . . .
Darla
The George Bush Center for Intelligence. The George Bush Center for Intelligence.
It boggles our small mind.

Blab. A reader attempts to salvage that alleged Helenism from yesterday.
"green around the gills" - that's the other half.
Um. But green around the gills means sick, as from the motion of the sea, whereas wet behind the ears means young or naive. You might want to review what a Helenism is. 'Cause that ain't it.
Sorry.

Blab. Proving that not only great minds think alike, a second reader writes:
Could it be: Green around the gills and wet behind the ears?
See above.

Blab. A reader, balking at doing any work at all, suggests a painfully weak theory, but at least provides an amusing picture to distract us in the process.
I was thinking greenhorn, though perhaps something having to do with green wood would also do. Sheesh. All this hard work at justification is making me a little green around the gills.
Thus distracted by yonder lovely birdie, we are unable to make up what is left of our mind. On the one hand, green behind the ears certainly sounds like it ought to be a Helenism. On the other hand, we don't seem to have a real pair of candidate aphorisms here, greenhorn being but a single word, and green wood not being an expression we've heard in common use.
So we're going to violate long-standing policy and Ask Our Readers! So, folks, is it, or isn't it?

Blab. An elderly, hat-knitting, idiot poet writes:
Yes, when that amusing Hitler fellow was doing the unpleasant things, I know I was knitting hats and having cups of tea and rejoicing. Idiot poet.
Ah, but that was in the days before the Web, so you were all alone, poor dear. Now you can join other like-minded idiots. Here, for instance.

Blab. A reader tries desperately to explain last Sunday's Mia sighting.
Sir:
Is that most recent Mia picture somehow linked to viral marketing? I'm sorry this blab is so big, but you look like you can take it.
The Theory:
A Roper Starch Worldwide study in 2000 showed that 8% of the Internet population drives the opinions and habits of the remaining 92%.
[Extremely long tract from this page deleted - Plurp]
Yes, we can take it, but we don't want to inflict such a blatant example of viral marketing on our poor readers. Those desperate to do so can click through the link and read for themselves.
Now, having found the Web site from which that picture was taken, and noticing that it was a viral marketing site, and perhaps remembering that viral marketing came up as a topic here recently, our Treasured Reader fails to connect the dots. There is a very precise connection, and alert readers can actually find a pretty authoritative Web reference to prove it. Everybody else: sit quietly and watch the really clever readers at work.

Blab. A reader breaks into (or out of) haiku.
The Blue Dog snickered,
Poisoning blue haired sailors?
Broken Lynx perhaps
The blue dog categorically denies being a candy bar.

Blab. One of our more cynical readers writes:
Interesting to note that the "staid" BBC uses highly loaded and aggressive language in their reporting of significant issues, while ABC on-line uses the neutral language of the report. Believing in the importance of words, I wonder if the language of emotion and its play on the sympathetic nervous system doesn't further the goals of aggressive and dumb personalities like Bush, Rumsfeld et cie.
What's that? Do cheap, manipulative plays on your emotions have anything to do with politics? Certainly not.

Blab. Our Most Treasured Reader asks:
Can someone explain this to me?
Perhaps! But the first order of business, it seems to us, is to find out just what this is.
The federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled yesterday that officials in Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute. Without the drugs, the prisoner, Charles Laverne Singleton, could not be put to death under a United States Supreme Court decision that prohibits the execution of the insane.
Having thus established what this is, we can easily answer your question. No, no one can explain that to you. But thank you for asking.

Plop. Us New Yorkers were told today that we should be on the lookout for the usual completely unspecified suspicious activities, of course. But this time, there are also specific things to watch for!
Cops also were told the deadly poisons sarin gas and cyanide could be contained in a list of specific household items -- light bulbs, soda bottles, aerosol spray cans, fire extinguishers, briefcases or mayonnaise jars.
We did see several briefcases in New York today. Eek!
Dave speculates that pickle jars were not on the list because, when the CIA provided various terrorist groups with chemical weapons, they did not simultaneously provide pickle jars.

Plurp. Um ...
BUILDING ON THE success of Weblogs for personal Web publishing, enterprises are starting to tap into blogs to streamline specific business processes such as intelligence gathering or to augment traditional content- and knowledge-management technologies.
Uh, right.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was augmenting traditional
intelligence gathering
technologies

Monday, February 10, 2003
Blab. A reader rises to solve yesterday's mystery, only to shout, Look, fireball! instead.
figuring out how you found that picture might be hard, if you didn't steal bandwidth by hotlinking pictures.
We'll let the reader's diversion about stealing alone, and merely notice that the task seems to have been too difficult for this reader even with that major clue.

Blab. We asked if Jesus or Buddha had imaginary childhood friends. We should have known better.
Dear Steve White
With respect to the question about imaginary childhood friends. The answer can only be ...of course...for obvious reasons ...The interesting question is What or Who were they?. And even more important did the Buddha and Christ pass on their messages verbatum or was it some kind of horrible reinterpretation of the messages.   And even more important did the imaginary friend know what they were talking about?   I await any thoughts by you readers or yourself on these, the real questions, with great interest
All of our own, personal prophecy, as reflected in these hallowed Web pages, is passed on verbatim from our imaginary childhood friends (or, at least, that's who the voices claim to be). Horrible reinterpretations are entirely the responsibility of our readers. Thus spaketh the voices.

Blab. A reader attempts to entreat Mia.
Mia talk to us
Clearly, this is the wrong Mia.

Blab. On Helen's desire for protection, a reader writes:
Women need protection, but they need other things as well. Such as pearls! And Jade! (Barry Hughart, Bridge of Birds)
The complete list is available here.

Blab. A reader speaks into the device.
Dear Captain of God's Own Choosing,
Amazing. You got the techno-speak thingy exactly right. And, indeed, you made me look. Another point for you.
Your MW Correspondent
Thank you for this feedback. That means that our mind control lasers are, at long last, properly calibrated. Now that we know this, you can expect more interesting dreams in the near future.

Blab. One of our dear, paranoid readers writes:
Am I the only one who wonders if this spate of cruise ship illnesses is some form of biological warfare?
- Felis Lynx
We've been keeping track and yes, you're the only one.

Blab. A reader attempts that which is, apparently, the impossible.
Helenism from Berkeley: green behind the ears.
Impossible for us, or you? We can't tell! Wet behind the ears. We got that. But what's the other aphorism? Green beneath the kneecaps?
We don't understand!

Blab. A reader urges us to ...
Wage Peace
by Mary Oliver
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don't wait another minute.
Celebrate today.
We can only hope that it is that easy.

Blab. Iä! The three-lobed eye!
[link] [link] [link]
The first of these is very, very funny. And we want it!
The second of these is an interesting way of publicizing the U.S. government's Total Information Awareness fascism.

This is the logo of John Poindexter's Information Awareness Office, home of the Total Information Awareness project. The logo was removed from the website a few days after its public launch following a torrent of criticism. The Latin motto translates to "knowledge is power". The Defense Department's Total Information Awareness project, or at least what we know of it, raises many disturbing questions regarding the privacy of Americans and the potentially inappropriate use of our personal information. The logo of the Information Awareness Office does nothing to allay those concerns with its disturbing Orwellian imagery of the all-knowing eye scanning the globe. The Total Information Awareness Gift Shop is a modest comedic attempt to stimulate public awareness and interest in an issue which could detrimentally impact our civil liberties for years to come.
Any proceeds beyond the basic cost of each product will be donated to the American Civil Liberties Union.
For Valentine's day, we recommend the Total Information Awareness teddy bear. Or the Total Information Awareness Awareness thong. Hey, you're donating to the ACLU!
We're still waiting for the Total Information Awareness urinal screen. Or the Total Information Awareness spittoon.
In today's last blind link, the Dell d00d was busted for marijuana possession. Those of you who are surprised, please raise your hands. Thank you. You're dismissed.

Blab. A particularly Treasured Reader contributes a double whammy.
A rare double inverse Helenism, heard on NPR during a trip to the other lab after lunch:
"... he's a wild cannon, a loose card, ..."
Extra points to the NPR commentator for the double inverse Helenism! In the same sentence!
("inverse Helenisms" is the best I can come up with for this phenomenon -- better nomenclature is invited.)
We don't get that inverse bit, but the doubleness is extremely impressive!

Plurp. We're sitting in the dingy offices of a law firm in Manhattan. The chairs are new, but the walls are scratched and marred and in desperate need of painting. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling buzz between warped acoustic tiles. We are waiting to close on our apartment refinancing.
On the surface of it, it seems like a great deal. Interest rates decline, and we can convert a 30 year mortgage to a 15 year mortgage at almost the same monthly expense. It's like a half-off sale on our apartment.
But the costs are non-monetary. The costs are in aggravation, in years off our lives.
The bank, which also holds our previous mortgage, has no incentive to close on the new one, as they're making more money from us at the old rate. We've been trying to close since last July.
No one besides us, in fact, seems very motivated, despite the fact that a whole herd of lawyers and functionaries will make a pile of money off of this.
It seems, as Ian once said, that no one in New York who does real estate has ever done it before. We need that XYZ form, they'll say. Don't we? I think we do. Let me check.
Last Friday, they called (again) to have us send (another) form verifying that we're still employed. Naturally, they called our work number.
Today, they want (another) form verifying that our co-op fees are paid up. They have asked for a new form every month since July. This form right here, says Helen, shows that we're paid up through Jan. 31. Yes, says the young assistant, but it's February now.
After a mountain of paperwork, we leave the small office, walk out into snow flurries on 43rd St., roll our eyes and laugh. If we ever do that again ..., we say, without completing the thought.
Helen turns left, to wait for the Madison Ave. bus home. We walk to Grand Central, where we have hot clam chowder at a metal table, and watch people go on with their lives.

Plurp. We appreciate the New York Times, a great metropolitan newspaper. They make sure we understand the subtleties of today's complex international politics.
[Colin Powell] said Iraq had to "come clean" and not have inspectors "play detectives or Inspector Clouseau running all around Iraq looking for this material." He was referring not to United Nations inspectors but to the fictional, bumbling inspector in a series of "Pink Panther" films starring Peter Sellers.
... in case you had that mixed up.

Yow. Yay, kuro5hin!
Bush Wants Secret Arrests
Here I am preparing for terrorist attacks and what do I get? I get news that the Bush White House is asking for secret arrests in the form of a Domestic Security Enhancement Act. He doesn't have my permission, and he's got a lot of nerve asking. This has gone too far. I'm flying the Gadsden flag, and I hope every American does. I am not so afraid of terrorists that I am willing to approve this usurpation of power and shortcutting of the judicial branch of American government. No way.

Yow. You know you work in Nerd Central when the trash on the bathroom floor is subscription coupons for Dr. Dobb's.

Plurp.
There was a moment of great beauty this evening, and it seemed to last for a very long time as I stood on the platform waiting for the train home. In this moment, there was no language; there were no words. The voices in my head were quiet (or could be made to shush when they tried, inevitably, to interrupt).
There was only the snow, falling in the cone of a streetlight, rebounding shrilly off my coat, wet and cold on my exposed skin, the occasional car sloshing by on the slushy street beyond, and the feeling that it was all so important, all so pure and concentrated, all so undiluted by the flood of interpretation beneath which it is so often obscured.
Helen sometimes tells me that that I am too quiet. I'm sure that's true. Sometimes, though, I am just quiet enough, just quiet enough not to miss a moment of great beauty.

Plurp.
The blue dog
expected more interesting dreams
in the near future

Sunday, February 9, 2003
Blab. Another howl of protest against those awful commercials from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Of course it's worth mentioning for those who don't watch TV (you know you're out there) how stupid the other anti-drug commercials have been... where they show horrible acts of violence with morals like "Don't let your kids play with a loaded gun" or "Don't drive under heavy influence of intoxicants" and then randomly saying "Marijuana: harmless?" at the end.
The deaths of millions of people at war is bad enough, but do our tax dollars really have to fund stupidity?
Maybe you haven't been keeping up, but that's pretty much what your tax dollars do, these days.

Blab. A reader sends us two items connected with Japan.
[link] [link]
In the first of these, we are reminded that there is a Japanese legend in which anyone who makes 1,000 paper cranes will be granted a wish. Sadako Sasaki never finished the 1,000 cranes that she was making, instead dying in her hospital bed in 1955 of radiation-related leukemia, which she developed after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima 10 years earlier. Shigeo Sasaki, her father, retold the story all over Japan, and Sadako became a legend herself.
He died this past week.
The second link informs us that the culinary madman who is the Evil Overlord of the Iron Chef Empire is, in fact, an actor. He was the first Japanese Tony in West Side Story and the first Japanese Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar.
Readers are invited to intuit the connection between these two curious stories.

Blab. A reader notices recent news.
i wonder if Bush used Cliff Notes.
We think those might have been too complicated for Dubya. Tony Blair, on the other hand, knows how to read.
The British government admitted today that large sections of its most recent report on Iraq, praised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as "a fine paper" in his speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, had been lifted from magazines and academic journals.
Hey, it had to come from somewhere. Would it have been more convincing if it had come from secret governmental sources?

Yow. We are forced to leave unexplained the mysterious connection with recent Plurp entries represented by this.

We are forbidden to explain how we found it. We doubt that even our most clever readers can figure it out.

Plop. Someone has to rescue us from this. Currently starring in that dark, decadent production, Cabaret, are Molly Ringwald and Doogie Howser.

What's the deal? Was the production bought by Disney?

Yow. A random Plurp entry on the AOL financial debacle gets a link and a drubbing at the very same time from the very famous Sylloge. Pretty scary, eh?

Plurp. The difference between dogs and cats? Dogs are cute even when conscious.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was appalled at those Broadway
casting gaffes

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