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2003.05.06 : 2003.05.10

Saturday, May 10, 2003

Blab. A reader pretending to be game guru Mark Nau trots out certain suspect credentials.

"Now we wonder what the most common misspelling on the Web is."

I researched this long ago in response to something Jay Nodlinger wrote in his online column.

It's near the bottom. 

We are deeply impressed, as "Mark" uses Google to search for misspelled words on the Web.

Millennium vs. Millenium: 4,110,000 to 1,290,000, 23.9%
Accommodate vs. Accomodate: 1,960,000 to 210,000, 9.7%
Occurred vs. Occured: 6,030,000 to 366,000, 5.7%
Desiccate vs. Dessicate: 3,860 to 1,190, 23.6% 
Supersede vs. Supercede: 155,000 to 38,400, 19.9%
Noticeable vs. Noticable: 597,000 to 71,000, 10.6%
Minuscule vs. Miniscule: 114,000 to 57,900, 33.7% 

Very nice, especially as compared to:

Pictures vs. Pitures: 64,100,000 to 156,000, 0.2%

Percentage error ( P_wrong / [P_right + P_wrong ] ) does seem like the right metric. We note that Minuscule vs. Miniscule is now 207,000 to 116,000, or 35.9%, implying that Web content providers are even dumber than in the past, which we find very believable.

Can anyone find a word that is more than 35.9% misspelled?

Blab. And the answer to that is: Yes!

common misspellings are comon weblog fodder these days. 

Among the ones they note are:

Transsexual vs. Transexual: 1.66M to 2.85M, 63.2%

Pretty good. Or, rather, pretty bad! Can anyone do better. Or, rather, worse?

Blab. Our Boston correspondent challenges our cultural experience.

What,you thought TAPAS were Greek?  Have you ever been to Spain?  You should go, especially to Andalucia. And have TAPAS.  They have parts of the bull you need to taste. Not sure if Dr. Plurp can get them here in the USA... I doubt it :).

MAVA 

Yes. No. OK. OK. That seems doubtful. It is likely.

Why do we get the feeling that we are turning into the Magic 8-Ball?

Blab. Harvey the giant invisible pooka writes:

Steve seems to forget a delightful Spanish restaurant in San Francisco where we enjoyed tapas with our best friends a year ago.  One of the better meals we have ever had.

Harvey seems to forget a delightful Greek restaurant in our neighborhood where we enjoyed tapas with Helen. One of the better meals we have ever had. Maybe he wasn't there after all?

Blab. The following is attributed by a reader to Jay Leno or, more likely, Jay Leno's writers.

In a speech President Bush said if Iraq gets rid of Saddam Hussein, he will help the Iraqi people with food, medicine, supplies, housing, education ? anything that's needed. Isn't that amazing? He finally comes up with a domestic agenda ? and it's for Iraq. Maybe we could bring that here if it works out.

We feel so out of step with mainstream society, with humans elsewhere in North America. It would appear that these other humans think that is funny.

Blab. A reader explores the nether boundaries of free speech.

For Sale:  hyperactive Pinch of Puppy Poop.  Guaranteed to annoy (and stink!)

$5.00 or nearest offer 

Sounds like we have high-priced competition.

Blab. A reader reminds us of the great steaming heap of reader input which accumulated during our recent abduction by aliens.

I sent you a helenism when you were on your excurion. Did you see it yet? 

Uh, would that be this one?

Helenism from a lab talk today:

  "... so there's two camps of thought on this..."

   * two schools of thought
   * two camps 

Or maybe this one?

Helenism heard on a BBC DIY programme:-

  "Put your best face forward."

  -put your best foot forward
  -put your best face on 

No? Then surely it must be this one.

Helenism:

  It's like pulling an arm and a leg.

  Combo of:

  It's like pulling teeth.
  Costs an arm and a leg.

Cinnamongrl

Thank you Dear and Treasured Reader or Readers, for your fine and continued contribution to the world's fastest growing ... whatever.

Yak. And now, from Helen herself.

Grabs your face

• Grabs your attention
• In your face

Plurp. British doctors stole thousands of human brains over a period of nearly 30 years. This strikes us as deeply ironic.

Plurp.

Your chance to be creative. See 10 things? Send us a link to the picture.

Plurp. The MIT Media Lab has often been the brunt of jokes in the research community. Dilettantes, they say. Hucksters. Flashy PR with no underlying substance.

But recent work positively refutes this crass image. As evidence, we present You're In Control (Urine Control), which allows you to play a video game by directing a stream of, well, urine into the, um, urinal.

Pure, unfiltered genius. (usr/bin/girl)

Plurp. Speaking of things that can't possibly be true, let us all revel in the tale of Mike the Headless Chicken who, it is claimed, lived for 18 months after having his head chopped off.

As if.

Plurp. Wave bye-bye to former e-commerce high flyer i2.

Yow. Finally, there's a position open for you, Dear and Treasured Reader.

Position Available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon. 

[The Klingon language] is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County. 

"We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 mental health clients. 

You knew it would come in handy some day. Next: Lojban.

Plurp.

The blue dog
was a giant invisible
pooka
whose head had been cut
off

Friday, May 9, 2003

Blab. Our Boston correspondent is back after a long absence. What's the occasion?, you ask. It's the momentous discovery of the strangest thing.

Strangest thing: my link to Plurp says PLURP - Source of All Truth.  Well, all I can say is HA! to THAT! - after falling for your Justice Dept. post before you left for the BVI. I'll never believe anything you say again. Source of All Truth indeed :(

MAVA - who DID care

To us, the strangest thing is that anybody ever believes anything we say. No, wait. That's not the strangest thing. That's the second-strangest thing. The very strangest thing is that our vaunted employer sees fit to pay us obscene amounts of money to say all manner of unbelievable things. It's a continuing source of wonderment for us. 

Now that I've expressed my disappointment over your Dept. of Justice "joke", I want to tell you how good it is to see you back here, Dr. Plurp, and how glad I am that it wasn't true.  Thursday's Plurp is really funny stuff.

MAVA 

Well, that's awfully nice of you to say, but you've only ended up confusing us. We thought this whole week's Plurp was pretty pale, us having been too busy to do much of anything here. Oh well. We resolve to write more inattentive, shoddy prose. Anything for our readers.

Blab. We've been trying to subtly modify the behavior of our blind linkists by not saying anything about their links. But in this case, we must.

[link]

What we'll say is: Go click on that link. It's really very funny! Well, we think it's funny. You probably won't. You'll just do that clucking thing with your tongue, wrinkle your nose to indicate that you think us odd or distasteful, and wonder why you ever come here anyway.

But we think it's funny.

Blab. Yesterday, we suggested that the Spanish role in the recent Iraq war was to furnish the nachos. An expert on snacky food educates us.

Sir: Wouldn't it be tapas and not nachos or nachos? 

We're pretty sure we meant nachos in your latter, not your former, sense. But anyway, we also formerly thought that tapas were exclusively Greek. Today seems to be a learning day.

And we learned more! It turns out that nachos really did originate in Mexico (though just barely). They are named after their creator, Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya (Nacho being the common nickname for someone named Ignacio), who first served his nachos especiales in 1943 at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, which is just on the other side of the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.

Blab. A reader, still lagging on the path towards enlightenment, falls into the trap of dualistic thinking.

So am I considered one of your Dear Readers or one of your Treasured Readers ? ? 

You are Dear. You are Treasured. You are not-Dear. You are not-Treasured. Consider this deeply.

Blab. A reader is shocked at our behavior.

Steve!  You use contrapositives???  I didn't think you believed in safe plurp! 

Wouldn't that be condominiums?

Blab. A reader addresses our father, but we answer anyway as he's been pretty quiet lately.

Mr. White,

Have you ever heard of this Helenism?

"I don't give a flying rat's ass."

This is an example of how a Helenism could be used to "devulgerize" one's vernacular.

Although a have a passion for the vulger, Helen should be congratulated for her cultural contribution.  Are there any statues of Helen in the making?  Naked?

We hadn't, but lots of other people have.

We will congratulate Helen on her contribution. We do not have a statue of her at this time, but we do have some nice pitures.

Plurp. Wow! It turns out that pitures is an amazingly common misspelling. Now we wonder what the most common misspelling on the Web is. Readers are invited to submit documentary evidence.

Plop. Humor illegal in Scotland.

Hyperactive kid for sale, good at vacuuming, not great at washing dishes ... guaranteed to annoy. 

£5 or nearest offer.

The poster was forced to remove the ad, which was posted two years ago, after a complaint to Scottish police from a Web surfer in "Canada".

We're in big, big trouble if that "Canadian" ever finds us!

Plurp.

The blue dog
also discovered
the strangest thing

Thursday, May 8, 2003

Blab. A reader successfully manipulates our will through a devious combination of politeness and cryptic orders.

Sir: Look at this?  What could it be? Is it a type of site that you were proposing?  Wahtever it is, it certainly is interesting.

Um, well ...

The US Department of Art and Technology is the principal conduit for facilitating the artist's need to extend aesthetic inquiry into the broader culture where ideas become real action.

Normally (whatever that means these days) we would have thought it quite impossible for anyone to be taken in by such silliness. It's cute and all, but really!

On the contrapositive, we have the following pieces of evidence.

1. The frighteningly large number of readers who thought we were ceased and desisted by Mr. Ashcroft and his Band of Renown.

 
2. A story. Our current answering machine message at home is this:
   
   

Steve: Hello?
Some Electronic Thing: Beep.

During our recent two week abduction by aliens, our answering machine recorded thirteen callers. Guess how many of them figured out that they were talking to an answering machine. If you guessed only one, you would be right.

Given this, we are unable to be surprised if the entire population of the Earth (other than, maybe, us) thinks that the US Department of Art and Technology is for real.

In any event, we are changing our answering machine message to this:

Steve (drippingly):This is an answering machine. If you don't know what to do, you're not allowed to leave a message.
Some Electronic Thing: Beep.

Any of you who call us should pretend to be utterly confused. Just to preserve continuity.

Blab. A fan of backwards butterflies writes:

Mary Ann, you're better than the world

Why, thanks very much! But please don't call us Mary Ann in public.

Blab. A regular who is once again regular, and we're all happy about that, writes:

Greetings.

Now that everything seems regular again, I must bring the mountain to the molehill.

Oh, for the love of goodness sake, how does one weigh anchor?  My top-loading balance is too small.

Any technical guidence in this area will be welcomed, but perhaps not appreciated. Have a go to hell of a time.

Peace, love and cosmic wisdom for all!!!!!@

Cabron

Google sayeth:

This nautical "weigh" comes from the Anglo-Saxon root "wegan," which meant simply "to lift, carry, bear or move." So when seadogs say that they are "weighing anchor," they're really just saying that they're raising it.

So it must be true.

Blab. Because we're trying not to dwell so much on politics here these days, we are forced to classify this reader's contribution as humor.

"War continued in Iraq.  They're calling it Operation Iraqi Freedom.  They were going to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation until they realized...that spells OIL."

Yesterday the president met with a group he calls "the coalition of the willing."  Or, as the rest of the world calls them, Britain and Spain.

CNN said that after the war, there is a plan to divide Iraq into three parts: regular, premium, and unleaded.

President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to wage war, and I'm thinking, hell, he didn't need the approval of the American voters to become president, either.
-David Letterman

A lot of students around the country protested the war today.  The National Youth and Student Peace Coalition sponsored an anti-war organization called "Books Not Bombs."  President Bush said, "Why do you want to drop books on them?"

We were unaware that Spain was involved. Perhaps they catered the affair? (Nachos for 200,000, please.)

Plurp.

The blue dog's
original content
was still buried
beneath a mountain of
lack of evidence of
WMD

Wednesday, May 7, 2003

Blab. An HTMLish reader writes: 

<impersonation voice="Professor Farnsworth">
Good news everybody!  Plurp is back.
</impersonation>

Well, that's just an awfully nice sentiment.

Though we admit to a certain amount of confusion about announcing it here ("here"). 'Cause, well, ...

Blab. A reader explains the depressing lack of lack of traffic on this site even though we didn't post for two weeks. 

We only visited just as often when you weren't posting because we wanted to know when you were back! Glad you're back!  Tell us when you're planning to de-plurp next time!

But, but ... we did! Well, after a fashion.

Blab. A psychotic mutant writes: 

Hello Humans.  Greetings from Hetero Erectus.

What's the deal with bumper stickers?  They seem to serve the purpose of revealing the platform of ignorance with which one is aligned.  Or is it more practical-like hiding an ugly spot on the bumper?

This psychotic mutant would like some answers.  Thank you.

The embedded circuits will not allow us to reveal the actual purpose of bumper stickers in human society. Suffice it to say that the words and images inscribed on them are only camouflage. Their purpose lies elsewhere.

Plurp. You duct tape fetishists out there (don't even think about denying it; we have pictures) are required to study this site in great detail. Whether you like it or not. (usr/bin/girl)

Plurp.

The blue dog
was busy, busy,
busy

Tuesday, May 6, 2003

Plurp. Several things happened in the past couple of weeks.

1. We went on a nice, relaxing vacation with no TV, no phones, and no Internet access. Unplugged is good, sometimes.
2. We resolved to spend less time ranting about politics in these here parts. It's just too easy.
3. We resolved to be nice (well, nicer, anyway) to our dwindling population of Dear and Treasured Readers.

And we want to tell you, Dear and Treasured Readers, that you are not making that last resolution easy. Sure, most of you saw right away that our blatant reposting of our utterly hilarious April Fool's edition was just that, and you chided us for being lazy, shiftless, lacking altogether in humor, and all the rest.

Most of you.

Sadly, there were a number of you (and dare we characterize it as a surprisingly large number of you?) who didn't get it. One person thought that we were trying to fool you again. We would have thought that to be impossible. But no! A number of you got your knickers all atwist and thought that we had actually been shut down by Mr. Ashcroft. You expressed outrage. You offered help. But you didn't get it.

In our new mode of being nice to our Dear and Treasured Readers, we can only say that we are delighted by each and every one of you. And it's good to be back.

Blab. We do greatly appreciate the large number of reactions that we got to that blatant reposting, but we're not going to post them all. We'll limit ourself to just this one, and then move on.

If you go to jail, would Helen be available for dating? 

We love our readers. Our grasping, mercenary, treasured readers.

Blab. Well, OK, we have to include this one as well, if only because we know it to be from the very first Plurp reader ever.

Re:  Not_Plurp_Writing expense report:

Dear Dr. White,

The joint department of Agriculture and Defense not_Plurp_writing grant agency has received your latest expense report for the month of April. 

Unfortunately, processing of your expense report will be delayed while we work with the OMB to sort out an internal dispute with the department of Justice regarding their position that the DOJ is also entitled to funds earmarked for the not_Plurp_writing program. 

Although we acknowledge DOJ's immense contribution to the entire not_Plurp_writing field, our position is that the grant funding is restricted to non-governmental entities.  Further, as discussed in our earlier communications to you, it is restricted to non-governmental entities conducting not_Plurp_writing activities on earth.  We trust that you have remained on this planet during the month of April.

We hope to get this matter resolved in the near future.  In the meantime, please note that your request for 51% time for your consultant, Osama bin Laden, has been disallowed. The grant specifically states that no consultant may be reimbursed for more than 49% time. 

Sincerely,

Departments of Agriculture and Defense. 

We are not able to confirm or deny that we were kidnapped by extraterrestrials in April.

Blab. A reader blasts us for activities that we do not understand.

If you weren't sucking your thumb in the corner doing an imitation of David Whatshisname without shingles, you would be making note of stuff.  Yes, the old bad haircut nuts are back going after the colored boys and anyone else who doesn't know how to hide in front of a flag. 

"Colored boys"? We have to wonder in what century our Treasured Reader last interacted with civilized people.

Blab. A new reader writes:

I happened upon your commencement address while surfing the web for pages on "how to change the world".  I'm teaching at a local University and will be lecturing tomorrow on that subject to a group of environmental science majors and I wanted to say that your commencement address was very good.  Not only did you talk on one of the primary points I want to make in tomorrow's lecture, but you also did it very well.  Being in a college community, I've heard a lot of commencement addresses and most of them are not even close to as concise, as well written, as important, and as interesting as yours.

In our very private reply, we have given this particular reader permission to gratuitously flatter us whenever she wants to.

Blab. A self-reproducing reader writes:

From my almost three-year-old:
  "Knock-knock!"
  (who's there?)
  "Becca"
  (Becca who?)
  "Becca funny joke!"

<several days later>
  "Knock-knock"
  (who's there?)
  "Banana"
  (Banana who?)
  "Banana you glad I didn't say orange?"

We find this funny beyond imagining, and spent several dangerous minutes turning purple and wheezing today. We don't know why.

Plurp. Paradoxically, you folks came to our humble web site pretty much as often during the two weeks in which we showed no signs of life as you do when we work our fingertips off posting every single day. This is deeply depressing to us.

And, while you were here, you searched for things. Mostly the same old things, but there were some surprises. Here's what you searched for, by week for the past three weeks, with the most searched-for items highest in each list.

Week One

1. helen naked pitures
2. mia
3. naked pictures of helen
4. imani
5. ian naked pictures
6. aged beef
7. argulians
8. backstage
9. batman
10. brock enright

Week Two

1. helen naked pitures
2. imani
3. mia
4. naked pictures of helen
5. angelina jolie
6. j fred shirley harold
7. mouse naked pictures
8. quap
9. virtual helen naked pictures
10. who was the first person to milk a cow

Week Three

1. imani
2. helen naked pitures
3. sarah kozer
4. naked pictures of helen
5. angelina jolie
6. mia
7. pitures on your lungs after smoking
8. sarah kozer pictures
9. statistics repeat child molestors

We see that Imani, for reasons that remain mysterious to us, is a sudden and rising interest of yours. Those cow people are still around; that makes us nervous. But who would search for J. Fred Shirley-Harold who didn't already know who he was?

Yow. We had not previously thought of librarians as revolutionaries.

Plurp.

The blue dog
wondered how hermit crabs
made shells disappear

© 2001-2003 Steve R. White, All Rights Reserved