Plurp: The apes kept Estella in a little white box

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2003.08.31 : 2003.09.06

Saturday, September 6, 2003
Blab. A reader sends us a mysterious request.
Could you do me a favor and retroactively post the following to Plurp's [date deleted so you can't go peek - Plurp] entry:
[Text deleted to retain the mystery - Plurp]
It's part of a scavenger hunt I'm setting up.
- Daniel (of Beth Roberts fame)
It's a done thing, Daniel! We even gave you a permalink to the entry.
Do let us know when you start doing whatever it is you're doing. Sounds like fun.

Blab. A Zen reader tells us that ...
The answer is Q.
Ah. The answer is the question. The question is the answer. Break through the dualism of question-and-answer to the thing itself.
Or perhaps our reader is a Trekkie.

Blab. Why do we make such a big deal of Cthulhu? Our readers respond.
Cthulhu is, like, totally big! And he lives under the sea! He's like Spongebob Squarepants only without that whole gay vibe.
It's pretty scary when we recognize particular readers solely by the cadence of their writing.

Blab. Along these same lines, a reader writes:

Hmmm...the caption on the picture in this news article says that thing is a dog.   Looks more like a Shoggoth to me.
And thank the stars that this monstrosity is restrained behind thick, carbon steel bars. For the moment ...

Blab. A reader adds to the festive atmosphere.
Liven up your Talk Like A Pirate Day celebrations with these authentic piratical hearing aids, useful for hearing "Arrr" from even a great distance. Detachable parrot feeder/pretty bird mirror also included.
Um. Perhaps our reader is referring to this photo instead? Though we suppose a guy wearing a plastic poncho, sitting alone in the bleachers, could be used as a hearing aid. We're just not sure how.

Blab. A reader sends us an annoying blind ...
[link]
... that points to a surrealistic transportation offering. At least as surreal is this similar abomination.
Kids: Never put page text in your URL. Important safety tip.

Blab. A reader invites us to experience a tiny moment in time.
SPLASH!
This is (1) an astonishingly well-timed photo, and (2) grounds for murder.

Blab. A spambot writes:
Hello,
I checked your website http://www.stevewhite.org/log/archive/20030406.htm and I believe it is compatible with mine, and I think it would be great to make a link exchange. My name is Paul Cabay and this is my site: [...]
And this is my linking information :
URL: [...]
Title: Hockey Resources
Description: hockey related news, books and web resources
[...]
Thank you kindly!
Paul Cabay
P.S. Should you consider my email unwanted, you don't need to worry because I will not email you again unless you contact me.
Curious as to the extent of our compatibility, we searched that old week of Plurp for the word hockey and came up with exactly one reference:

The side panels of these submunitions fall away, revealing four bomblets the size of hockey pucks.

It's part of our description of the operation of the CBU-105 anti-tank bomb.
Naturally, we received this little missive twice.

Plop.
Man Charged With Raping Girl He Met in Wal-Mart
An Ossining mother came home from work one day last month to discover that her kitchen screen had been cut and pots overturned. Nothing had been stolen, but another detail — a teddy bear had been rearranged in her 13-year-old daughter's bedroom while the girl was out of town — seemed even more peculiar.
The mother's suspicions led to the arraignment today on charges of rape and sodomy of a 20-year-old Long Island man who the authorities said had met the girl in a local Wal-Mart.
The case was the latest in a string of Wal-Mart-related sex crimes that the Westchester district attorney, Jeanine F. Pirro, has pursued in recent years, leading to the convictions of a former school board member, a Yonkers official and many others.
Oh, right. The article didn't say Wal-Mart. It said Internet. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been news. Got it.

Plurp. Helen insists that we tell you that, last night, we went to see Spellbound, a documentary about the U.S. National Spelling Bee.
It was surprisingly good.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was terrified by the alignment
of certain stars

Friday, September 5, 2003
Blab. An industrial accident clouds the memory of this Treasured Reader, who fails to give us a link to yet another unlikely story.
I remember a story a while back about someone receiving a knife blow to the skull. The photo in the newspaper showed the blade entering somewhere near the crown and the tip somewhere just behind the nose. That one wasn't very realistic either.
Yeah, it's amazing how the media will print anything with a good x-ray associated with it these days, isn't it?

Blab. A reader makes an astonishing claim.
"Are there books that advertise themselves as A False Story?"
Yes, they're called "Fiction".
Really? There are works of fiction whose titles are of the form <something>: A False Story?
Cool. And here we thought we were just being silly.

Blab. A reader opens our eyes to possibilities unconsidered in this world.
The reader who disagrees with your conic theory of airspace ownership is correct... at least if the Earth is flat. Or maybe if property rights have a different index of refraction in air than in dirt. Why must you bind your readers' creativity by not allowing these sorts of possibilities?
We're not so sure about that flat Earth theory. Even if the Earth is flat, cones whose apex is at the center of the Earth (wherever that is, as long as it's a single point) and which intersect distinct property boundaries on the surface still don't intersect (except along their surfaces).
You're right, however, about the cones intersecting if there's a differential index of refraction. We shall have to correct for that in our plan for world domination.
Thank you.

Blab. Another property rights theorist writes:
Euclidian doughnuts are a more efficient use of space.
We find it deeply ironic that the ultimate theory of the multiverse was discovered, not at Princeton University, but at a doughnut shop in Terre Haute.

Blab. A reader spots the first error in yesterday's thrilling statement by Brittnery Spears.
First error in that statement: "I think."
We think that's extremely unkind of you. Correct, of course, but extremely unkind.
And we're glad you put quotes on that.

Blab. A second reader is in the mood to mock today.
HA HA HA!!! Britney Spears thinks! That's a good one. Go on, tell us another - we could do with another good laugh!
It must be the expression on her face. Or the gum.

Blab. A reader becomes a journalist.
Shock Headline! Britney never kissed her mother! -AJL
And a good thing, too. Imagine the scandal!

Blab. A reader says that ...
He's the button-pushing bugle boy of Company B.
Interesting.
Career Opening: Ceremonial accompanist for military events. Knowledge of Perl required.

Blab. The British expatriate Homer Simpson (now the Dread Pirate Homer Simpson, Arrr) writes:
19th sept is my birthday (i'm the british homer simpson)
So you'd like us to sing Happy Birthday to you in Pirate?

Blab. A reader mixes the memes.
"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"The interrupting weblog."
"The interrup--"
"PLURP!"
Zackly.

Plurp. Today, we have a difficult riddle for you.

Q: What's the difference between Britney and a field of stumps?

A: A field of stumps doesn't chew gum during a television interview.

Did you guess the answer?

Plurp. A friend asked at dinner last night why we make such a big deal about Chihuly. This is why.
(We have our avaricious eye on this one in particular. Or maybe this one. After we win the Lottery.)

Plurp. Also asked at dinner was why we make such a big deal about Cthulhu. That's harder to explain. Perhaps our readers would like to try.

Plurp.
The blue dog
asked at dinner
why we make such a big deal about
the blue dog

Thursday, September 4, 2003
Blab. Homer Simpson has emigrated to the UK.
mmmm johnny depp in eyeliner
oh and i'm british and i cant even answer all those questions.....:|
Bad news: your citizenship has been revoked. You are now a pirate.

Blab. And since you're now a pirate, you'll be pleased to hear this.
Arrr! September 19th be Talk Like A Pirate Day, matey! Avast yer mizzenmast an' prepare ta' walk the Plurp!
Arrr. We suppose.

Blab. A reader genuflects appropriately, darns us with faints praise, then makes an odd suggestion (with censoring by your loyal editor).
Your Plurped Eminences,
Your reader contests are somewhat fun. How about an ABERRANT METAPHOR (or simile) CONTEST?
Examples:
1) This has the relevance of Lucifer performing f****** on barnyard chickens.
2) That makes about as much sense as stuffing brown pudding into the r***** of a one-week old Cthulhu road kill.

Sounds somewhat fun, doesn't it??
Before we answer your question, we have a few of our own.

Huh?

Does it have to involve obscenities? (Censored)

Huh?

Does it have to involve misspellings? (Censored)

Huh?

So, uh, yeah, that sounds like more fun than ... well, something that isn't very much fun at all.

Blab. Jack Chick is with us always.
According to Jack Chick, the NECRONOMICON is real and plays an important role in Transyuggothian metaphysics.
Good to know! And how's this for the marketing line for his book?
Learn what satanism is like from someone who was on the inside
We love marketing.
But we're so confused! The referenced book is Lucifer Dethroned: A True Story. (Are there books that advertise themselves as A False Story?) The Necronomicon (et al.) are from the Cthulhu mythos, a decidedly non-Christian mythos. That seems problematic.
(Or maybe we can simply believe the Trivial Dichotomy: that anything that isn't Christian-Godly is Christian-Satanly. That would require fewer neurons. Perhaps it's Occam's Razor applied to frontal lobes?)

Blab. A reader calibrates its gullibility against our own. This is always an exercise fraught with uncertainty and danger.
I believe the story (about the guy surviving the drill bit through the skull) more than I believe that Fox News is "fair and balanced. " But more than that, I believe O'Reilly needs a spiritual enema.
wangmo
We distort. You deride.

Blab. A reader raises its megaphone to the stunned crowd and shouts:
tokimeki!
We don't want to know. Trust us. We Googled it, and we really don't want to know.

Blab. A reader deciphers our otherwise incomprehensible purpose in life.
Plurp sounds like something I'd say to annoy the hell out of someone. I can imagine a friend attempting to begin a statement, but I quickly squelch him by yelling, "PLURP!"
Yes, that's exactly what Plurp is. How did you know?

Blab. A reader informs us that ...
I like them all but they made my right eyeball dry and sore.
We can only assume that our reader refers to the beet people. We don't like any of them, especially when they try to poke out the eyes of our Treasured Readers.

Blab.

"I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that."

Blab. A reader whose lucrative profession does not involve geometry writes:
There is a small problem with your cone theory of property rights. Countries that share a border would both have claims on some of the same air space. The infinite cones are going to intersect above the earth's surface. Not only that, but they would have air space directly above the other country as well.
Um, not in this universe, friend. Or, rather, not unless the universe is multiply connected, and even then only really, really far out (man).

Blab. A reader pries into our personal affairs.
How rich are you?
Let's just say that we won't be providing competition for Billy Gates or Larry Ellison any time soon.

Blab. A reader finally wakes up to the truth.
There's something screwy going on here!
Actually, there's quite a bit screwy going on here. At least, that's the way it looks to us.

Plurp. Imagine a world in which Plurp was the very first weblog you had ever read. It boggles the mind.

Yak. If Grandmother worked at IBM Research.
Why, Grandma, what big ideas you have!
The better to snow you with, my dear.

Yow. Now this is pretty cool. In a morbid, clinically depressed sort of way.
The premise is simple: You are now dead. You just died. You don't know how it happened, you don't know what happens now. The only thing you know for certain is that your life is over.
This is your opportunity to write one letter to the world. You may say anything you want. You may use as many or as few words as necessary.
Over 5,000 Dead Letters are currently in their database. Go read. It's pretty interesting. Or write your own. Just don't die right afterward, OK? We can't afford to lose the few readers we still have. (lancearthur)

Yo. Are you British? Are you a hopeless flirt? Do you have no morals whatsoever? Have we got a job for you!
[A] Yorkshire-based company, called The Honey Trap, offers wages of £30 to £50 per hour to people willing to meet a "target" and then report back. [...]
The advert asks for smart and confident people to "detect infidelity in personal relationships and report back to clients".
Wouldn't it be nice if this were a sting operation by Satan? But, yeah, it probably isn't.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was an incomprehensible,
multiply-connected,
clinically depressed
version of
Jack Chick

Wednesday, September 3, 2003
Blab. A reader writes:
Oh, I get it. Sorry.
Excellent! Now, can you explain it to us?

Blab. A reader with a devious plan to conquer the Earth asks, innocently:
You know how countries have "airspace" over their land? Is there something similar for beneath their land, a "dirtspace" if you will? Like if "Canada" wanted to create a boreship, for whatever sinister purpose, and tunnel under our borders, say a mile down, would we have any recourse, legally speaking?
We're not a lawyer, but we seem to recall that property rights give the landowner ownership of all of the land in a cone that projects to their surface parcel from the center of the Earth (and everything on up, all the way to the edge of the universe, with a few exceptions). That would indicate that they could bore through all the reindeer remains that remain, but ducking under the borders would be a no-no.
On the other hand, governments do not generally consider themselves bound by anyone's notion of property rights, as evidenced by the U.S. using its own boreships to tunnel under the Iraqi borders.
So, who knows?

Blab. A reader has a more complex question for us.
A disobedient drunk walked into a brothel and began blathering about how he aquired a tattoo on his...unit. He then bragged that over the last few weeks, he had rubbed the tattoo off his...unit. However, he never did notice that the brothel was void of humanity.
So, if a man rubs a tattoo off his...unit, and noone sees it or hears about it, did he really go to a brothel?
Yes, by the assumptions contained within your question.

Blab. Another reader has a question for us.
What's the difference between a duck?
Seven. Roughly.

Blab. Finally, an alliterate reader asks its own question.
Disdained discord did duplicate dormant dogma.
Devious damsels did deflect demeaning dialogue, differentially.
Damned dualisms did delineate depraved deprivation.
So, what gives?
Just a normal day here at Plurp, friend.

Plurp. Beyond all comprehension, people still search for things here. Go figure.

helen naked pitures

iris chacon

quorn naked pictures

imani

britney

bezos head

arsenic poisoning pictures

mia

naked female dogs

chihuly

We are pleased to discover that Google considers us their top authority on Bezos head, and their only authority on both Helen naked pitures and Quorn naked pictures.

Plurp. Today, in the "news".

The construction worker [...] survived a freak accident without brain damage after falling from a ladder and onto an 18-inch-long drill bit that impaled his skull.
The question is: Do you believe this story?

Plurp. On that same topic ...

"America is dumb, it's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive," he said.

Plurp. Are you British enough?
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, unveiled proposals today for immigrants pass a new "Britishness test" before they can receive a UK passport.
Among the question that immigrants would have to answer are these.
Who is the Prime Minister? How do you pay a telephone bill? What do the main political parties stand for? When was Britain last invaded? When was the Act of Union?
We recall many examples of reporters doing person-on-the-street interviews with random people, asking them really basic questions, like Who is the President of the United States?, or What is the capitol of the U.S.?, and quite a number of people not knowing.
We are willing to wager that a nontrivial fraction of current British citizens would flunk this test.
But, hey, the U.S. does the same thing. Go ahead - take the test! See if you qualify to be a U.S. citizen. (We don't.)

Yo. More media whoring today! A very talented photographer guy came to work to take our picture for something-or-other. (We don't remember what.)
We spent nearly an hour staring into this really beautiful camera, which was made of lacquered wood and leather, with polished brass fittings. Its sly construction allowed the whole thing to fold in on itself into a lacquered wooden box which was also its frame.
It's nice to see such loving hand craftsmanship in an everyday object. We wish we could surround ourself with such beauty.

Plop. We would like to apologize for it having been Thursday for a brief time today. Bad flux capacitor! No biscuit!

Plurp.
The blue dog
was definitely not
British enough

Tuesday, September 2, 2003
Blab. A shy reader gets up the courage to bring this gem to our attention.
I was holding off responding in the hopes that one of your other Treasured Readers would answer your question, but since no one has, here's the canonical version of last week's polite cow broken joke:
"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"The interrupting cow."
"The interrup--"
"Mooo!"
Ah! We apologize for not grasping that immediately. They don't let us out much. Armed with this knowledge, we can formulate a broken joke version.
"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
"The interrupting cow."
"The interrupting cow who?"
"Mooo!"
Though it's a little odd, the brokeness coming in the penultimate line and all.

Blab. An alarmed reader shouts:

Beware! The Beet People are coming to get you...

This frightens us more than we can express.

Blab. Similarly, a reader suggests that this might be ...

A friend for Mike?

No doubt our Treasured Reader is looking to fix up our new best friend Michael Menkin. While we're not sure if they would get along as buds, they do seem to have similar taste in fashion accessories.

Blab. A reader reports on an astonishing scientific discovery.

Sir Richard Branson spontaneously evolves wings and flys across the Atlantic, setting numerous world records in the process. Meanwhile, Bill Gates still cowering in his high-tech, womb-like mansion, reportedly mumbling word "rosebud" over and over to himself as he nervously rocks back and forth in his chair.
Imagining the possibilities of picnics with things like this circling above, we find ourself doing a certain amount of our own nervous rocking back and forth in our chair.

Blab. A reader slide-steps up to us, bows, and says:
Welcome to Button-Museum!
Thank you. Can you direct us to the gift shop?

Blab. A reader stumbles across the weirdest thing.
Email exchange between Nigerian scammer and "Randolph Carter"
This is the best ever!
If you haven't already guessed, it is - that's right - correspondence with a Nigerian spammer done in the style of an H.P. Lovecraft story. Go read it. Right now. Really. It's kinda long, but it'll keep you either (a) on the edge of your seat, (b) rolling in the aisles, or (c) both.
Simply fabulous.

Yo. From the new New Testament.
Make sure that Jesus would be pleased with what you wear. You don't have to look frumpy, just make sure you look like a child of God.
We're not kidding.

Yo. People's belief systems have always fascinated us, ever since we were trying to decide, as a tot, whether or not UFOs were real. (And why people either believed they were or believed they weren't.) We are, therefore, particularly interested in beliefs about things like who was responsible for that massive bomb that killed the top Shia cleric in Iraq recently.
The United States and Israel had the most to gain from the killing of a top Shia cleric in Iraq last week, said Hizb Allah Secretary General Sayyid Hasan Nasr Allah.
Isn't that interesting? Do you suppose he actually believes that? And, if so, imagine the constellation of beliefs that must be connected with this one.

Yo. So, if you're a teenager in New York, what are you doing right about now?
[T]his year, it's Japanese hair straightening, Brazilian bikini waxing, teeth whitening at a dental day spa and eyebrow sculpturing. [...]
In a day and a half, Ms. Hanono, 19, of Lawrence, N.Y., crammed in a hair coloring, a haircut, a manicure and body wax and an eyebrow wax. It's service she said she couldn't find in Bloomington, Ind., where she is a junior at Indiana University.
"It's like roughing it," said Ms. Hanono, a communications major. [...]
"I feel like high school changes you so much," said Samantha Chaplin, 15. Earlier that day, her brown hair had received rivers of blond highlights, and a slight man named Sid had plucked her eyebrows with a piece of twisted thread. "When we were in middle school, it was the outfit," she said. "Now, it's the whole package."
We are so out of it.
In fact, this impresses us with how out of it we were even when we were way back there.

Plurp.
The blue dog
chose sleep over Plurp
and PowerPoint over sleep

Monday, September 1, 2003
Blab. On our attempt to make a broken joke last week, an exasperated reader writes:
Sheesh, no, it's "What's the name of his other leg?". Don't you watch Mary Poppins?
But ... but ... that's the original joke, not a broken version?

Blab. An expert on deep colon washes writes:
You wrote: "We offer traditional as well as alternative therapy which includes acupuncture and Chinese herbalism" which is the usual result of eating homemade sushi (including bones for the acupuncture) wrapped in butcher paper (chinese butcher paper soaked in soy sauce). I can understand that Manhattanites are a strange breed. But then I clicked on the link and realized you were talking about a VET! What's next? A deep colon wash? I think your left-coast background is showing.
Dorian, the meat eater
We do not wish to know the connection between deep colon washes and your dietary preferences. Really, we don't.

Blab. That reader who seemed swelled with possibilities after 23-year-old babe Britney kissed 45-year-old Madonna writes:
"That's absolutely right. As long as you're a wealthy bisexual, female rock star. Which, of course, you are."
Please. Sometimes, fragile delusions are all we have left to hold on to.
L.
We will be the last person on Earth to threaten your delusion of being a wealthy, bisexual, female rock star. You go, girl!

Blab. Into our Big Blab Box, a reader types:
big good site
While it's possible that this reader was looking for a big, good site (here, of all places), we will continue to tell ourself that this was a flattering, semi-literate review of our own site.
Sometimes, fragile delusions are all we have left to hold on to.

Blab. A reader informs us that ...
   |\_._._/|
   | o o |
    \ .` /
    |`---|
    |    |    Der blaue Hund boxed up Billy Goats
     |`___|\_ on slashdot.
   /|    |\
   ##    ##
Unfortunately, the box isn't big enough to contain any comprehensible information on what the new Billy Goat anti-worm software actually is. Perhaps our Treasured Readers from the IBM Zürich Research Lab can tell us?

Plurp. We went to see thirteen over the weekend. It was really quite good. The performances were strong and excellent, especially those of the teens, and the story is very compelling.
It turns out that Nikki Reed, who played the bad teen, actually wrote the screenplay, along with the director, in less than a week. It was the first screenplay either of them had written.
Pretty good start.

Plurp. It might be possible to be lazier than we were this weekend. We did finish a presentation for Tuesday, after all, and we would have been even lazier if we hadn't done that.
There don't seem to be any other items on that list, though.

Plop. Prepare for Bureaucrats in Cyberspace.
"The government has essentially relied on the voluntary efforts of industry both to make less-buggy software and make systems more resilient," says Michael A. Vatis, former director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "What we're seeing is that those voluntary efforts are insufficient, and the repercussions are vast."
'Cause, you know, those same folks that brought you the California power crisis and the Iraqi war are equally qualified to determine how you use the 'Net.
They are.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was so lazy
that ...

Sunday, August 31, 2003
Plurp.

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