Plurp: Because ... well, just because

Bigger!

2003.06.01 : 2003.06.07

Saturday, June 7, 2003
Blab. A reader tickles our fancy. Well, it's not that fancy.
[link]
Our favorite advertising slogan from this link is:
Every Bubble's Passed Its Plurp.
We've always said that.

Blab. A reader diagnoses our illness. At long last.
Re: Sponge Bob Squarepants cheese nips
Parents will instantly recognise Sponge Bob as a warm, silly, animated TV character. He occupies a niche somewhere in the (Yogi Bear) X (Bullwinkle J Moose) space.
Diagnosis: Insufficient TV watching
RX: Watch Nickelodeon TV next weekend
Yes, but while there is ample precedent for human consumption of both bear and moose, we are unaware of sponges as a widespread dietary mainstay, and hence we remain confused.

Blab. A reader who may have some experience with drug use informs us that:
One can only begin to appreciate the wonder that is Spongebob Squarepants when one is slightly off one's head
We could certainly believe that. But what dangerous drugs must it take to want to eat a sponge?

Blab. Perhaps in response to one of the above readers, a psychic reader leaps to the defense of an imaginary character.
Hey... don't dis SpongeBob.
Far be it from us!

Blab. Finally, a reader makes a useful suggestion.
Sponge Bob should be the spokessponge for Twinkies
Now you're on to something!

Blab. That chicken linker is back, this time with a link that works.
Chickens can now bite and this will cure baldness (eventually).
Aha. A gene dormant in birds for 70 million years has been found to be still capable of making either teeth or hair. So, if we want hairy chickens with teeth, we're pretty much all set.
Good to know.

Blab. A reader with a mysterious connection to us says:
First saturday of June....time for a cookout.
Grilled tri-tip? That's a cut of meat found only (as far as we know) in the immediate area of our pasty home town. Some errant butcher long ago, we suspect.
Sounds yummy nonetheless, but we can't cook out this weekend. Ironically, we're about 75 miles from said pasty home town at the moment, and a mere 50 miles from the even pastier Lompoc of the recipe.
But if you're BBQing tri-tip this weekend, Dear Reader, please do invite us over!

Plurp. Observations from a very nice dinner in Santa Barbara.

Money + California = Stereotypically beautiful women

Whoever's selling peroxide in California must be very, very wealthy

Plurp. Today: breakfast with brothers, popcorn while Finding Nemo (highly recommended, by the way; the close-to-the-surface oblique shots of the water are astonishingly good), dinner with Angela Belcher and other smart people.
Tomorrow: Commencement.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was pretty much totally freaked
by the tri-tips,
peroxide
and CGI

Thriday, June 6, 2003
Blab. A reader writes:
What gives, hey?
Thursday's child is solemn and sad. The reason for this is clear: Thursday once again failed to show up on time, despite the rather large amount of material that wanted to be posted here yesterday. We find this behavior bitterly disappointing.
So we locked Thursday in the basement with the goats until the rituals are over. We doubt that Thursday will learn a lesson even from this, but we'll see. In the meantime, we have desecrated its name on this week's Plurp entries.

Blab. A self-identifying reader proclaims:
Felis Lynx writes: It wasn't me
Yes, we know. It was Thursday.

Blab. Felis Lynx writes:
Imposters....
And, if nobody answers the call for psychoanalysis, are you going to take a shot? I'm really curious if control of ones own dreams are common, or if it's just another sign of my abnormalities....
- Felis Lynx
We gave our Dear Readers the choice of answering Señor Lynx's question, or some other question. They seem to have chosen the latter, unanimously. As usual, this leaves us with all the work.
Rather than doing all the work, we will simply point our Treasured Reader to the voluminous literature on lucid dreams. We've had lucid dreams ourself, but we can't do it consistently or control them indefinitely. Our reader seems to be special in this regard. And perhaps others.

Plop. Help us understand this.

Who - please tell us - who would buy a snack cracker based on ... sponges? Sponges! Fleh!

Plurp.
The blue dog
was a lucid dream
about goat-based
snack crackers

Thriday, June 5, 2003
Blab. A Treasured Reader, in inimitable form, enters a different contest than we posted.
Knock Knock
Who's there?
Interrupting Zen Master
Interrupting Z..
Mu!
And the student was Enlightened
This wins the award for Best Zen Knock-Knock Joke, a narrow but self-satisfied category.

Blab. A reader attempts a Difficulty 9 maneuver: Generalizing the Generic Koan contest.
Anonymous Person X asks Person Y a question referencing the primary goal obtainable in the philosophy/religion/belief system of Person Y. Person Y replies, "word or phrase with no obvious relation to Person X's question!" and induces a mental state in Person X which said person believes to be the attainment of the primary goal in Person Y's philosophy/religion/belief system.
Sounds a bit like a patent claim to us, but maybe that's just our induced mental state. On a related note, we're having difficulty appreciating this particular approach. Maybe it's a bit dry? We're not sure.

Blab. A minimalist with a talent for post-mortem editorialization writes:
OK, I'll attempt a minimal Generic Koan:
A student and a master interacted. The student was enlightened.
(I think I've just demonstrated the principle that the minimal form of a certain type of Generic Literature is not the most beautiful example of that type of Generic Literature. So it's not a great entry for the contest, but I think that is an important principle.   I'd like to take credit for this principle by naming it after myself, but that somehow seems contrary to the spirit of Generic Literature, so let's call it Reader's First Principle of Generic Literature.)
Now that latter bit is funny! (We'd have to agree with our Generic Reader, however, that extreme minimism does tend to squeeze the humor out.)

Blab. A deformed rooster writes:
A deformed rooster asked the master of the barnyard, "Old Goat, how is it that you can eat anything and still keep your present state of being?" The master goat answered, "When I'm through eating you, you'll understand." And the deformed rooster was enlightened as he was engulfed by the master.
How's that?
A pretty fair surrealist chicken joke, in our humble opinion. We assume that our Treasured Reader is fully aware that this is not Generic in any sense.

Blab. A similar reader mixes the memes.
Q. Why did the <(insert noun) e.g chicken> cross the road?
A. To <insert amusing activty here>
So ...
Q. Why did the protocol cross the road?
A. To stick its fingers in its ears and wag its tongue.
OK. Madlibs. We agree that this is generic, in the sense of parameterized. Somehow, it misses the heart of the matter, though, doesn't it?
What is it that makes Generic Literature qua Generic Literature, anyway? Many entries are self-referential rather than generic in the strict sense. Others are more parametrized than strictly generic.
What are we talking about? We don't know. Do our readers know?

Blab. A Googler lands here with a thump.
So - I was searching for IPA translation of the Canadian National Anthem in French - and I came across your site.
And it makes me sad - because Google lied to me.
If you stick around here for a while, we'll give you plenty to be sad about.

Blab. A reader appreciates a recent Plurp entry.
We liked the piture of helen in the collar and black top from
yesterday's postings. She shines up REAL nice. We were impressed.
Dorian
Yep, she's a honey, ain't she?

Blab. A reader accuses us of international espionage.
You stole "Dog Eat Dog" from us here in England. It wasn't much good here either...and i'm not sure the contestants were "sassy"
Well, not us personally, you see. We don't actually produce TV shows. We simply mock them. Come to think of it, we probably did steal mocking from England. But, you know, it wasn't nailed down, and no one was looking, so ...

Blab. One of our groupies suggests something that sounds downright kinky.
Cutie,
An interesting conversation on TTOL about carry-ons and cork screws. Seems they are now legal.
H
Oh, but wait. This is just noting a recent revision in the U.S. policies about what you take in your carry-on baggage on a plane. That's not nearly as interesting.
Our kinky reader is correct that you can now take corkscrews onto a plane (no mention of cork screws, so we won't go there), along with knitting needles, nail files and toy transformer robots.
We know. You're curious about what is specifically forbidden. Well, that list includes swords, spear guns, axes, cattle prods, hand grenades and plastic explosives.
We can hear you all groaning that now you have to go repack your bags. But that's the way it is.

Blab. Dave commits the Ultimate Presenter's Sin while at a meeting we forced him to attend. We chide him in his reader input box. Rather than counterpunching us in his own blog, he replies here.
'You said "these aren't actually my slides" while showing my slides?! You are such a creep!' Only so I could tell the Moses joke! And because I figured they'd carry more weight being yours than being mine. But I admit I didn't actually give it much thought...
Oh yeah, the Moses joke. That is pretty funny!

Blab. A reader delves deep into the meaning of the memes.
Isn't the popularity of the search result 'Helen Naked Pictures' kind of self perpetuating? Or is that the whole point?
That's Helen naked pitures, and yes. We think. Though, actually, now we're not sure any more. Why are people looking for Helen naked pitures here?

Blab. A reader accuses us of not thinking.
Don't you think being a mensa member is actually contraindicative of intelligence? I mean, really, you need to join a club to tell you that you're a genius? PUleease - the only bright ones are the ones running it, they make money out of all the suckers who cough up their member fees for being told that they're really really bright!! Have some more snake oil dear.
Why, thank you! We looked into joining Mensa once, but didn't find anybody interesting there, at least not in the local chapter. We decided that we were already in an environment where there are lots of smart people around, so we didn't have to do anything that was, you know, social in addition.

Blab. A link-following reader becomes impressed with our onomastic investigations.
Dear Captain Plurp,
I was so impressed by the definition of your name and the aviary connection. It all makes sense. I believe Steves are also known for Giving Peas a Chance.
Your Midwest Correspondent
That's all we are saying.

Blab. A reader points excitedly at:
The 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference
And we can see why.
Like most Nigerians, you're probably finding that it's increasingly difficult to earn a decent living from email. That's why you need to attend the 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference.
With a registration fee of $995, it seems hard to pass up.

Blab. A reader claims that ...
Chickens can now bite.
When we click on that link, however, we are told this:
You are about to subscribe to The Times E-paper package.
Since we didn't want to be about that, we went back to reading Weblogs instead. No doubt that will come back to bite us.

Plurp. Our new hobby, WebStalking^TM, causes us to react to no reaction on the part of our current stalkee by exhibiting this excerpt.
Stabbing my coworkers, or worse, stabbing the members of the residential community here, is likely to get me fired, so I don't physically maim or even threaten anyone.
It's good to see social feedback mechanisms working, isn't it?

Yo. What's this?

Yo. Chari Daignault. We're not going to say any more.

Yo. Bruce Sterling, our own personal superhero, who once deigned to link to our humble blog, says stuff about the très moderne trend towards Zero Privacy Anyway.
[Q:] And if the Bush administration overcame congressional objections and got a deep data-mining system working?
[A:] An insane information-hungry KGB or a relatively open and decent government? Vote with your feet. Get the hell away from those lunatics. Who the hell wants to live in a USA with a TIA [Total Information Awareness] in it? Why would you want to invest it that country? The currency would crash. The political elite would annihilate one another.
He's so shy.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was shocked to hear that
toy transformer robots
could now be taken on board
planes.

Wednesday, June 4, 2003
Blab. Felis Lynx writes:
I'd love to be called Felis Lynx
Congratulations.

Blab. On the recent revelation that the expansion of the universe was previously slowing down but is now accelerating, a reader writes:
<monty python>In an amazing and expanding universe</monty python>
Actually, it's in this amazing and expanding universe. But, yeah, these are strange times when we turn to Monty Python for our physics updates. Strange times.

Plurp. The usual list for this past week.

helen naked pitures

imani

nathan maddox

catriona

furries

get an elephant in a refrigerator

mia

albert the squirrel

angelina jolie

backstage

We turn out to be Google's favorite reference for get an elephant in a refrigerator. We're so proud.

Plurp. With all the recent interest in our Generic Literature section, we're feeling pretty guilty for not having updated it in quite a while. Consequently, we are forced to announce this week's Plurp Contest: Generic Koan.
Now, we know this is a touch on the obscure side, so we thought we'd get you started with a very weak entry of our own, which you can easily outdo.
An anonymous student asked a Zen master whose name holds great significance, "Master, how do I reach a state of consciousness which cannot be reached by asking stupid questions like this?" The master replied, "Consider a statement of superficial absurdity or contradiction that is not like this one." And the student was Enlightened.
See? That's just awful. More self-referential than generic. Not at all good. So do better. The very best responses will be accorded all of the fame that our Generic Literature section can muster. Hey - it's all we can do.

Plurp. Truth. (/usr/bin/girl)
Killing twenty-six and withering all crops for a mile when first read out from a newly discovered sliver of parchment in a rush, the name Steve was originally used cumbersomely to refer to a breed of goose, before being pulled from a fire that killed its variants and diminutives.

Plurp. You have to wonder what ad NBC placed that resulted in Brooke Burns (and what a great name, eh?) becoming the host of the reality TV series Dog Eat Dog.

Actually, you don't have to wonder, because we wondered for you. Then we broke into NBC and found out.
WANTED: Freakishly tall, white cultural beauty icon with great body, exhibitionist tendencies and an ability to read from idiot cards. No experience necessary.
Anything for our readers.

Plurp. We note that there are no representatives in the Miss Universe ~~contest~~ pageant either from the Klingon home world, or from the UK. Now the former we understand, as the ~~contest~~ pageant organizers are all human. In fact, one of our shadowy contacts has given us a clandestine copy of a memo from the ~~contest~~ pageant organizers to the Klingon Miss Universe representative, which says, in part:
Can I be frank with you? You're ugly. Your ~~contestants~~ pageant participants are ugly. Your whole freaking species is ugly. So bug off. OK? It's just not going to happen.
Whatever. But we can't seem to apply this same logic to the UK. Perhaps our Treasured Readers can explain this strange omission.

Yow. Oh. My. God. Despite all current efforts to the contrary, some small semblance of rationality seems to persist in the U.S. government.
A federal appeals court gave the video game industry a big boost Tuesday, reversing a controversial lower court decision and ruling that games are protected by the First Amendment.
Last April, Senior U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh ruled that computer and video games had "no conveyance of ideas, expression or anything else that could possibly amount to free speech" in a St. Louis County case that sought to limit children's access to mature video games. [...]

"If the First Amendment is versatile enough to 'shield [the] painting of Jackson Pollock, music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll,' we see no reason why the pictures, graphic design, concept art, sounds, music, stories, and narrative present in video games are not entitled to a similar protection," the court said in its ruling. "The mere fact that they appear in a novel medium is of no legal consequence."
So there, bozo facists!

Yow. Ayn Rand answers the question, Why did the chicken cross the road?
Really good!

Plurp.
Creating the golem from clay will take several hours. Be sure to start early in the day.

Plurp.
The blue dog
answers the question,
"Master, how do I reach
a state of consciousness which
cannot be reached
by asking stupid questions like this?"

Tuesday, June 3, 2003
Blab. On the topic of Russian women looking for Mr. Right, Helen writes:
Nobody needs to go looking for Mr. Right. No Russian women should be looking for Mr. White either. I found him almost 23 years ago and he is now lost. I have the map............
It's all true. We are forever lost. It's amazing we ever get anywhere on our own.

Blab. An NTK reader chides us.
I think you've underestimated NTK a bit, Steve. Take some pride in your achievement!
NTK is neither a minor blog nor, in fact, a website at all; it's an email news letter of some serious renown, for the Brits at least. It's up there with Declan's Politech list and Dave Farber's Interesting People as one of the major sources of Things You Need To Be Aware Of (Or Tickled By). OK, most of its content is funny rather than scary, but it's a pretty significant linkage. Many sites would give their Right Server to get onto NTK...
T
See? They don't let us out of the lab much. Our abject apologies to all the NTKers of the world.
In other news, our log in the last few days shows that nearly three times as many people came to our Web site to look at Generic Literature (the thing that was linked by NTK) than to look at Plurp. It's sad, really.

Blab. Another reader agrees.
Slashdotting or even a MINOR slashdotting is terribly complicated ........ don't break my brain!
If your brain is that fragile, we recommend not reading Plurp. In fact, we strongly recommend it.

Blab. Yet another reader, perhaps also newly lost from NTK, tells us the sad tale of ships passing in the night.
Heard a politician on the BBC wireless this morning using the analogy of ships passing in the night. He then said that the ships could be side by side, and that they could be heading in the same direction. Defeats my concept of naval topology...
Like your work. Couple of things made me laugh yesterday. Now can't remember what they were.
Ed
Neither can we. Aren't those Mind Control Lasers great?

Blab. A reader tries to fool us a third time.
For more on the dangers of unchristian rock chip repairs that the previous treasured reader alluded to, please see here.
Look. We're not falling for that Objective: Christian Ministries thing again. It was too embarrassing the first two times.

Blab. A reader explains a previously unexplained dish from Le Dictateur.
Ham & Pickle = Hammer & Sickle. There, confusion cleared up.
Whoa! How extremely obscure.

Blab. Our polite reader decides not to suggest a new reality TV show after all.
Sir: I do not watch those shows, but I am suspicious. Therefore, I believe that the "superficial man" has knows that the "superficial women" are only pretending to like him for all that moola. He can now play them. I just spent too much thought on that.
As did we all, Treasured Reader. As did we all.

Blab. A reader sends us a great puzzle, but could not resist sending the solution at the same time.
PLURP
SLURP
SLURS
SLUTS
SLATS
SEATS
BEATS
BEETS
Pretty scary!

Blab. A reader questions our decisions.
I don't think
Looking behind everyone's back
- looking over our shoulders
- going behind everyone's back
really qualifies, the two aphorisms are supposed to share a common meaning, going behind someones back means to do something in an underhand fashion, looking over our shoulders is an expression of nervousnes. However, by way of replacement - I offer this, said in remonstration to my son, only the other day
Chill down
- Chill out
- Calm down
your declining correspondant
-AJL
So, two points here.

It is a bit obscure, but in context, it makes sense. The discussion was about office skullduggery resulting in everyone figuring (rightly!) that everyone else was running around behind their backs.

Thank you for your wonderful contribution, which has the added benefit of not being obscure.

Blab. Mistaking us for a psychoanalyst, a reader writes:
I'm trying to figure out if the way that I dream is as weird as my wife says it is. So, what better place to go, hm?
I have not had a "scary" dream since I was about 12 years old. At that time, I had been having a recurring nightmare about being chased by something through a compact maze of Escher-ish stairs. One night, in the middle of the dream, I got sick and tired of it.   So I "stepped out", placed a group of other people in my place, and watched them get chased around a bit. It was MUCH more entertaining....
Since then, any time anything's be going bad in a dream, I realize "this is a dream", change it a bit, and keep going. And it's not that I'm waking up, because it's still pretty bizarre after I change something. For example, the old "nude in public" dream occured last week.   I just gave myself some clothes and kept going.
Is this a common thing?
My wife, on the other hand, gets into these dreams which cause her to wake up screaming. Never pleasant. Wish I could teach her my trick....
As a side note, I had a dream with Cthulhu this past weekend. And, without any changes, it was actually a good dream. Probably just a by-product of those horrible movies on Sci-Fi....
- Felis Lynx
Gosh. We have lots of things to say about this. But in a rare moment of lucidity and self-control, we refrain. Instead, we ask our Gentle Readers to answer the question posed above. Or some other question. Your choice.
(We have only ever had one Cthulhu dream. The notion of a "good" Cthulhu dream seems quite impossible, unless you are one of the Old Ones. This thought frightens us, so we're going back under the stairs now. Thank you.)

Plurp. We're pretty sure we don't know what Dave is talking about, making a trivial negation of Lao Tzu and expecting enlightenment. Our recent experience, though, tends to suggest that this is not The Way.
What is The Way?

Yak.William H. Macy.
I was a Scout, until they turned into a homophobic organization.
Nice.

Yow. Well here's a surprise.
The findings, reported here at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which ended Thursday, supported the idea that once the universe was expanding at a decelerating rate but then began accelerating within the last seven billion years, scientists concluded.
That strikes us as entirely too weird. Naughty universe. Stop that!

Plurp. This is not a good idea.
A man running late for his flight to Phoenix called in a phony bomb threat Monday in hopes that the plane would be delayed long enough for him to get on board.

Yo. Where are those pesky Weapons of Mass Disappearance? An interesting article in Time suggests that they might have been hallucinated by Dubya and his merry men.
Well, not hallucinated, exactly. It asserts that the merry men came in knowing what they wanted to see, and then interpreted ambiguous and contradictory intelligence information to support their desires.
So, yeah, that is hallucinated. Exactly.

Plurp.

Plurp.

Steve Teaching Class

Plurp.
The blue dog
benefited voluminously
from
all-day meetings

Monday, June 2, 2003
Blab. Helen is back with a heartwarming topic.
Subj: Helen Thinks
We are calling Christopher's new buddy "Willie" because I just couldn't bring myself to use the name "Bill." It would have been wrong but now I wonder if I made a larger mistake by deciding to call him "Willie Boy." You CAN imagine what Steve is doing with THAT name........
Readers will be pleased to know that Him Whose Name Fell Over Mysteriously at 6 AM This Morning and Woke Us Up has overcome his initial disdain towards his new companion, apparently encouraged by liberal doses of our ... er ... perspiration as a pheromonic inducement.
It is comforting to us to see Him Whose playing with his Willie.

Blab. Helen's checks in. Yet again!
Subj: Helen Thinks
There is one of those "dating shows" on TV right now. We are watching. I suspect because neither one of us really believes that we would ever have been qualified for it.
At 22 I was never fascinating though I was able to hold a conversation. I was never talented though I was able to sing to a crowd. I was never smart though I was always able to bring a shy person out of a corner. Never was I offered a million dollars to fall in love. Even after I met Steve, I knew money was never an issue.
Hell, he was a grad student and I was the one from a wealthy family.
I was never beautiful…….
We are here to certify that, sad to say, all of Helen's nevers are completely wrong. (It has long been our role in our relationship to point this out.)
We too, however, watched in horror the first episode of said Reality TV show, in which various superficial women competed for the affection of a superficial man, with the hook that whichever superficial woman wins the affection of said superficial man wins a million dollars (or, more likely, we suspect, being a reluctant student of Reality TV as we are, gets to choose between said superficial man and said million dollars).
So, yeah, this is unbelievably dull.
And, naturally, we wondered how to spice it up. How about this?

Unbeknownst to the superficial women, the million dollars is Monopoly money. Sorry!

Unbeknownst initially to the superficial man, but discovered just before he makes his choice, the superficial women are all lesbians.

Unbeknownst to the superficial women, but discovered halfway through, the superficial man is married.

Unbeknownst to the producers, the mansion in which the series takes place has been sprayed with anthrax, and they are liable.

We encourage our readers to suggest similarly poignant Reality TV themes.

Blab. A spammists wants us to know about ...
Russian women looking for Mr. Right
That's Mr. White. Don't worry about it; we get that all the time. Nonetheless, this is an interesting meme mixing: Russian Brides + Am I Hot or Not. It's very compelling: you can both judge women on superficial, chauvinistic criteria, and select them for marriage based on these very same criteria.
Readers are encouraged to suggest similar meme mixings.

Blab. Our horror writer is back. Just in time, too!
As several others may well have already done, I can cast some light on last Friday's spike. Your self-referential literature page was linked in 'Need To Know', "*the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the uk." As most of the stuff it links is entertaining in one way or another, I was one of the horde who decided to drop by -- and, as I said last time, kinda got stuck. I still blame the Mythku.
Love 'Ho Chi Mints' and 'Irish Qadaffi'. Have been thinking a bit about Che Guava, too. :)
T.
PS: Nope, I'm afraid I'm really not famous. Yet. "Heute Die Welt, Morgens Das Sonnesystem" and all that...
Well lookee there! We've received a minor Slashdotting (scroll down). Imagine how badly it makes us feel that a single such reference doubles our readership.

Blab. A reader reiterates.
Re: Traffic Increase: Your website was refered to on NTK. NTK is updated every friday. Nice site, btw. Dan
Thanks, Dan. And how depressed we are that a site that is updated once a week has a readership several thousand times what ours must be.
Now, where's that nail gun?

Blab. A reader wonders about something we wondered about.
Ham & Pickle Sandwich       hmm
Ah. Yes. This is a sly reference to the Evil Dictator Horatio Pickle, who slaughtered thousands of Ruritanians during the Vinegar Conflicts.

Blab. A reader sends us a blind link. We would like to mock, if not entirely depreciate, this noncontextual contribution. But we cannot.
[link]
Why is Plurp better than a beet? Or even two beets?

Blab. Someone wonders this:
Oh, Mia. How _could_ you?
Since this is not an inverse link (as far as we can discern), we will (until contradicted) consider this as the shortest Mia sighting ever. How _could_ she?

Blab. A reader give us good advice.
For the safety of your soul, do not be tempted by the lure of impulse rock chip repair from strangers in parking lots. It may say free, but it could cost you your soul! If you need your windshield fixed, go to a qualified Christian repair shop.
Wow. Thanks! We'll be on the lookout for qualified Christian repairers. Surely, there must be an enormous demand.

Plop. Ooh! Here's a surprise.
The Justice Department's round-up of hundreds of illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11 attacks was plagued with "significant problems" that forced many people with no connection to terrorism to languish in prison in unduly harsh conditions, according to an internal report released today. [...]
More than 760 illegal immigrants in all were imprisoned in the weeks and months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. [...] None have been charged as terrorists.
Surely this never occurred to the framers of the Constitution.

Yak. From somebody or other on (analog) TV.
let his voice be known

let his voice be heard

let his feelings be known

Yay!

Yak. From somebody or other on the (analog) radio.
looking behind everyone's back

looking over our shoulders

going behind everyone's back

Yay!

Plurp. We don't get it. The FCC is easing restrictions on ownership of analog media. That part we get.
[This allows] a newspaper to own a television station in the same city and broadcast networks to buy more stations at the national and local levels. [...]
The vote has engendered public opposition by lawmakers, consumer and advocacy groups and unaligned citizens who fear that further media consolidation will make it more difficult for those with minority viewpoints to get their message out. On Friday, the FCC's voice- and e-mail systems were temporarily shut down by a deluge of public comments. The agency has received more than 500,000 e-mails and postcards opposing the changes.
We're definitely missing something, as this strikes us as the height of irony. As powerfully demonstrated on these very pages, random blithering idiots can "get their message out" to whomever wants to read it. Apparently, a few hundred thousand opponents figured out pretty much that same thing.
We've canceled our subscription to the NYT (well, except for the Sunday edition, and only because it's fun to sit in bed on Sunday morning and chuckle about it). On a daily basis, we read The Times (London), BBC News, the NYT, the Washington Post, the LA Times, Fox News, and a variety of topic-specific news sites, including a right-wing Israeli site. News diversity seems pretty darn easy to come by these days!
All you people who are only getting your news from analog media: stop doing that.

Plurp.
The blue dog
aspired
to superficiality

Sunday, June 1, 2003
Blab. A reader helps us understand its mental state.
I noticed once upon a time a site that was called plurp, I got there and i gagged and choked and then i had a burp. Yea, im this bored
We are honored that you come here to be that bored. We shall forever strive to be worthy of your ennui.

Blab. A reader kindly suggests menu items for the soon-to-be-famous restaurant, Le Dictateur.
Il Duce de Leche
Tojo Potatoes
Ayatollahouse Cookies
Irish Qaddafi
Ho Chi Mints
Ham & Pickle Sandwich
Caesar Salad with Iron Croutons
General Sani Abacha's All-You-Can-Eat Spam Buffet
"Chicken" a la Amin
..and for patrons who take their cats out to dinner: Mao Mix
We like those a lot, at least those that are within our meager abilities to understand. We're still giggling at Ho Chi Mints.
We have such clever readers!

Yo. Last Friday, our moronic Web site had a huge increase in traffic, with about twice as many visits as we would otherwise have expected. Perusing the log uncovers no obvious clues as to why that might be. We are mystified.

Plop.
Disney's underwater comedy-adventure "Finding Nemo" doused its rivals at the box office by selling $70.6 million worth of tickets in its first three days of release, setting a new opening record for an animated film, the company said Sunday.
They didn't get our money, though! We tried but, after wading through a lobby of swirling tikes, it turned out that the show was sold out.

Yow. That's gecko, not Geico.
Scientists in the UK have created a sticky tape which works in the same way as gecko feet.
The researchers say the material clings so well to a surface that by covering the palm of one hand with the tape, a person could hang from the ceiling - just like the remarkable lizard.
Spiderman Tech^TM, coming soon!
Seriously, this is pretty cool stuff, especially given that we didn't believe this whole van der Walls force / fractal fiber thing in the first place.

Plurp.
The blue dog
didn't believe that whole
van der Walls force / fractal fiber thing
either

Top

Earlier entries Later entries