Plurp: Hardly surreal, nor even wildly romantic

Bigger!

2003.09.28 : 2003.10.04

Saturday, October 4, 2003
Plurp. OK. We're going to try something a bit different. We call it our Treasured Reader Training Exercise. Here's how it works. We expose your subconscious to a cultural image, like so.

In response, you tell us a little story. It might be about the image itself. It might be about something else that is only cryptically connected to the image. You might even tell us several stories.
We sit quietly and monitor your progress. When you have responded in the manner that we have predetermined to be proper, we will publish (many of) your various responses, along with instructive commentary of our own devising.
Until you have responded properly, we will make no further comment.
We know. You don't understand. You don't have to. It's all part of the training.

Friday, October 3, 2003
Blab. On the topic of buying lighthouses (how did we get here?), a reader writes:
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the lighthouse herself.
And we thought she was crying wolf.

Blab. A new reader writes:
What is a "plurp"
We quote from our ever-helpful FAQ.
Q: What is Plurp?
A: It's a weblog.
Q: No, I mean, what does it mean?
A: What an odd question. What does a rock mean?
Q: No, I mean, what does the word "Plurp" mean?
A: Oh. We see. We don't think it's actually in the dictionary.
Q: No, no! Look. You have a weblog named "Plurp". I got that. But why did you call it that?
A: Oh! That's easy. We don't know.
So there you are.

Blab. A reader tries to pull the wool over our eyes.
Everybody knows Mary Had a Little Lamb, right?   When I was at school there was an utterly hilarious variation on this that started thus:
Mary had a little lamb,
She also had a bear.
The problem is that I can't, for the life of me, remember the ending. Your new reader competition is, therefore, to come up with an utterly hilarious finish to this variation on the classic rhyme.
Of course, Google easily finds the classical continuation:
I've often seen her little lamb,
But I've never seen her bare.
(It also finds many more such variations.) So it looks like the challenge for our readers is to find (or, more likely, invent) a new continuation of the above couplet that is nonetheless funny.
Go!

Blab. A reader thinks we're being a bit tough on the Libertoonians.
Libertoonians and the Free State: this one's a
little different, though. They're not intending
to split the state off from the U.S., or declare
sovereignty, or anything, this time. They just
intend to move there en masse and vote. A bit
more plausible. Perhaps?
True, though less exciting. We liked the image of them sinking the ten-thousandth concrete-hull boat, only to realize that they had a hundred thousand to go before they got above mean high tide.
There is a long (if sometimes questionable) history of fringe groups moving into areas in order to mold their governments in their own images. The Moonies did this in Oregon, we seem to recall, a few years back. (Didn't they try to poison the local non-Moonie population wiht botulin to keep them away from the polls? Classic.) The Amish moved en mass to Pennsylvania, and the Mormons moved to Utah, as did other religious groups that were a bit outside the mainstream.
Done right, it's one of the things that makes America great. So we'll try to behave ourself, sit quietly, and watch with interest.

Blab. A reader submits a curious entry into the No sh** contest.
Statement: Some tribes in Africa practice the controversial ritual of female circumcism.
Responce: No...NO!
Hey. Too much reality.

Blab. A reader takes the No sh** contest to its ultimate conclusion.
i'm writing in the style of e.e. cummings
no shift!
Really, my leg is fine--you don't need to immobilize it.
No splint!
When you run a marathon, you have to pace yourself.
No sprint!
We're going to a topless beach.
No shirt!
Oh, I forgot, it's not just topless, it's completely nude.
No skirt!
At the beach, we must be careful not to let sand get in our food.
No grit!
I had planned to have a cookout here on the beach, but forgot to bring anything to start the fire with.
No flint!
Next: In Lithuanian!

Blab. A reader gives us an authoritative answer on that other recent game in which you add one letter to the letters in PLURP and then rearrange them to form words.
The best even this Perl script can do is "or pulp". (Not counting "purple", "pa purl", or "pi purl".)
So, to the reader who posed the original game: Yes, you should site quietly for an E, then spell PURPLE. Or you could play a nice game of chess.

Blab. A reader claims that ...
This is kewl!
Powers of Ten. Now in Java. Yeah, that's kewl.
Sure is a big universe. A big, empty universe.

Blab. Mistaking us for a sports fan, a reader writes:
I scored a 49 in last night's disc golf league. I think that now I can pretent to be a bad-ass!
Do you know disc golf?
Ah. Another "Canadian" cultural contribution.
The growing popularity of the game of disc golf begins with the essential fact that throwing a flying disc with power and accuracy is a marvelous sensation. The constant challenge, the social nature of the game, the good physical and mental conditioning, and the fact that it is inexpensive to play are also attractions.
We recommend not pretenting to be bad-ass because of this. At least, not at biker bars.

Blab. A reader more fortunate than we writes:
Well Tony Blair isn't looking at me - he's clearly looking up for a way to make a graceful exit!
Lucky you. He always stares at us. With that little twinkle in his eye.

Yow. There is hope after all.
A 3-year-old law that requires federal prisoners and parolees to give blood samples for the FBI's DNA database was declared unconstitutional Thursday by a federal appeals court.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that requiring the blood samples amounts to an illegal invasion of privacy because they are taken without legal suspicion that the convicts were involved in other crimes.
The court said that is a violation of inmates' Fourth Amendment rights against illegal searches. The samples "constitute suspicionless searches with the objective of futhering law enforcement purposes," Judge Stephen Reinhardt said.

Plurp.
Tony Blair
wasn't looking at
the blue dog

Thursday, October 2, 2003
Blab. A reader with nothing to contribute nonetheless contributes. Let this be a lesson to you.
I've got nothing to contribute today. Sorry. How about a big bucked of freeze-dried water?
Hey, that's great! Now all we need is some ... oh.

Blab. A reader selects the best possible Jesus Action Figure for dear Ashley.
How about a "Jesus Comes 2 Play" doll instead?
He sings and you can comb His hair! Just like the real Jesus!
They also have "Buddha Comes 2 Play" and "Moses Comes 2 Rock" dolls, in case Ashley is looking to switch teams (Moses's team apparently plays hockey.)
We really like:

Jesus is wearing a cross necklace,

Buddha is wearing a Chinese shirt, and

Moses is wearing jeans and has a hockey stick.

Mr. H.G. Wells, please pick up a white courtesy phone.

Blab. A dyslexic reader with poor personal sanitation nonetheless enters some recent contest.
statement: I think i have lice eggs in my hair.
response: Show nit!
That's actually pretty good. Though the cognitive dissonance hurts.

Blab. Stephanie is back. We were wondering where she was. Or who.
Hi Steve,
I didn't realize I hadn't checked in for a while. I
have 4 things to address:
1 - I've been singing the alphabet backwards for over
30 years, it's depressing how many people are
impressed by it. Though it might come in handy with
the cops if I am ever in a certain situation, it would
probably just pi** them off, besides, it would be
humiliating on "Cops," because I can not carry a tune.
2 - Why has no one mentioned the spikey aardvark thing
on the triangle block of the mystery toy?
3 - My mother taught me years ago that taking a
giraffe into a bar would be bad news and I'm sure she
wasn't lyin'.
4 - Please tell all those people that there are no
alien abductions. It's patently obvious that they are
humans time-traveling from the future doing some sort
of gene replacement therapy. Duh!
Always having fun with your site,
Stephanie
(Stephanie is very organized. We'll pretend that we are, too.)

Cool! Please send us an MP3 file. We'll post it along with the original entry in what we feel certain is about to become a Plurp Contest.

The spikey aardvark thing is the Babylonian symbol for food. We think.

We would never accuse your mother of falsehoods.

You mean that, as a child, we were abducted by time-travelers? We knew it!

Blab. A reader who is a spikey aardvark thing writes:
Centralized management dashboards - yum!
We wonder what one serves alongside a main dish of centralized management dashboards.

Blab. ChiderMan is here.
ChiderMan here - those Oneword entries appear to be getting shorter now you're only using the allocated 60 secs...
Not only is it a lie, it is a false lie!

Blab. A reader has ...
Is there something that looks like Iris Chacon's picklewagon and her trusting wooden kickstand that we can gaze upon? That would help.
Even something that looks like Iris Chacon's picklewagon and her trusting wooden kickstand would help.

Blab. A reader sends us images that might be related in some unexplained way.
New contest: Why are these politicians looking at you? What'd you do?

Oh, we get that all the time. This politician or that, gawking and pointing at us. Will it never end? Fine! We admit it. We did it. It's all our fault! Go ahead, blame us, pass laws against us, conspire against us. We don't care any more. We just don't care.

Blab. Oliverbot continues to tempt our readers.
ME: more!
OLIVER: That remark was either too complex or too simple for me. We were talking about more. Can you please rephrase that with fewer ideas, or different thoughts?
That would be tough, eh?
OLIVER: What kinds of food do you like?
ME: Beets.
OLIVER: Sounds delicious.
We don't like either one of you.

Plurp. For some reason, the meme that has locked onto our mind today is I'll Do Anything For Love by Meatloaf. What a great, great song.

Yow. Remember the Mission to Mars? It's back. But better!
Participants on the attraction each accept a different role before embarking on their journey to Mars. Team members accept assignments: commander, pilot, navigator or engineer.
"Each role has a different task during the mission and all are important," Rex said. "There are different functions and working with your team you can affect what happens during the adventure," he said.
After you've received instructions from the capsule communicator, you are escorted by a "uniformed flight crewmember" to an X-2 trainer and you're ready to embark on the mission.
Rex said that riders will experience a feeling as close to blasting off into space short of actually taking a trip to the moon or Mars.
"We came up with this new technology -- it's a centrifuge technology. No one has done a centrifuge experience like this before. And the visuals which add to the experience are actual footage from NASA of Mars. With a high definition video presentation and state of the art audio system, the combination creates a very real experience," Rex said.
We are so there!

Yo. The Libertoonians are at it again.
A group of libertarians Wednesday announced New Hampshire as the place where it hopes to send 20,000 Americans to create a "free state." [...]
The 5,000 members have already pledged to relocate to the selected state, Free State Project organizers say. They hope to increase their numbers to 20,000 within two years, move to the chosen state, and start transforming the state into a national model for small government, few laws and individual liberty.
You're not old enough to remember the Republic of Minerva, which was shut down by the King of Tonga. Or an equally well-considered scheme to establish a Libertoonian nation in the Gulf of Mexico on an island created by sinking a whole mess of concrete-hulled boats. Or many others.
But we are.

Plurp. Tag line from email we got today.
"Worrying about a large institution, especially when it has computers, is like worrying about a large gorilla, especially when it's on fire." -- Bruce Sterling
We don't always understand Bruce.

Plurp.

Yo. We are pleased to see that Helen naked pitures are popular everywhere, not just here.

Yow. We are a fan of great architecture, and there is a certain amount (sadly, a certain, small amount) of great architecture in NYC. The Goog. The Seagram Building. Lever House. The Empire State Building. The Chrysler Building.
It's hard to pick a favorite. But, today anyway, we might pick Rockefeller Center.
In an era when the public realm barely gets even lip service anymore, it is proof that the profit motive and the general good can coexist, that beauty can lie down with the beast and give birth to grandeur, civility and ordinary sunlit life.
Or, as Gertrude Stein said when it was first built:
[It is] the most beautiful thing I have ever seen ever seen ever seen.

Plurp. Dr. Laura.
Husbands need sex, and it's a wife's job to provide it - as much as he wants, whenever he wants it. So contends Laura Schlessinger - better known as Dr. Laura, the ever-provocative radio-show shrink - in "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands."
In a galley of her book, coming out in January, Schlessinger describes what she calls "loving obligation" - that is, a spouse's duty to do something whether or not he or she feels like it.
If husbands are expected to "go to work and earn money" and visit relatives they don't like, she argues, why can't their wives put out on demand?
She also describes other ways a woman can make her marriage flourish: by making her husband her No. 1 priority; by not nagging, nitpicking or whining ("Be honest, girls, this is what we do") and by seeing her husband for what he is: "a gift from God," and respecting him accordingly.
We have absolutely no comment on this whatsoever.
Talk amongst yourselves.

Yak.
"I was thinking of buying a lighthouse," she said.

Yow.

Helen: The news on TV said a while ago that there's a big tie-up on the FDR. Somebody fell into the East River. It's quite a mess.

Steve: Yikes. Could you let me know how it progresses? I might have to take a different route home.

Helen: I can't. That was the last traffic broadcast.

Steve: Hmm. Hang on. Let me ... ah. The cams on the FDR show traffic flowing both ways. I guess the mess is over.

Helen: Great! See you soon.

Steve: See you soon.

You know what we love about the Web? No, no. You know what we love about New York? No, no. You know what we love about the free press?
Well, maybe not even that.
But you know what we do love? Some random organization that erects and maintains Webcams of the major traffic arteries of our commute.

Plurp. We understand that all of the ballots in the upcoming California gubernatorial election will be absentee ballots. Mental-absentee ballots.

Plurp. OneWord: Echo.
"Hello?" He hoped at least to hear his own voice, but not even that came back from the black silence. He had been feeling his way along the rough stone walls for hours since the batteries wore out. And he was getting thirsty.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was something that looks like
Iris Chacon's picklewagon
and her trusting wooden kickstand

Wednesday, October 1, 2003
Blab. A reader discovers the awful truth about Oliverbot.
Oliverbot reveals his true nature if you type
"who's AIML"
Apparently -
"The Oliver software implements AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) a non-standard evolving markup language for creating chat robots. The primary design feature of AIML is minimalism. Compared with other chat robot languages, AIML is perhaps the simplest. The pattern matching language is very simple, for example permitting only one wild-card ('*') match character per pattern.
AIML is an XML language, implying that it obeys certain grammatical meta-rules. The choice of XML syntax permits integration with other tools such as XML editors. Another motivation for XML is its familiar look and feel, especially to people with HTML experience.
An AIML chat robot begins and ends with the and tags respectively."
It revealed this to me after I asked, (having told him he sucked) if he thought it was rude to suck, and he asked me to ask Ally, he then told that Ally was a chat bot based on AIML, and after the obvious question, he bared his soul.
If anyone can tell me why it's so amusing to be talking to a moronic bit bucket (No, I don't mean plurp), I'd be really grateful.
-AJL
We were figuring that you'd tell us!

Blab. And, while that was happening, the drugs kicked in.
We were wearing ballet shoes and a catskin jockstrap, we were smoking kippers and drinking sunsets, we were rattling the bones of our long dead aunts and juggling with the eyeballs of martyrs.
Then we found the limits of Oliverbot's knowledge.
AJL - Do your clients tell you that they are men?
OB - You have reached the limits of my knowledge. A lot of robots are like that.
We're *so* happy.
-AJ
It's like we've always said: a bot's gotta know its limitations.

Blab. Two readers contribute to one of the games from our Reader Contributed Game Day. In this one, you were asked to make words by adding one more letter to the letters in PLURP.
Adding an 's' gives SLURPP
Yes, and adding a 'q' gives PLRUQP.
(You said no E, but I am ignoring you.)
- repulp (part of the process of recycling paper)
Do surnames count?
- Rupple, Ruppal, Lupper
Or the name of an Indian animal sanctuary?
- Palpur
Very nice! (This is a hard game.)

Blab. Meanwhile, another reader volunteers this entry to the other game from our Reader Contributed Game Day. (In this one, you were asked to submit smartly responses that sound like (or rhyme) with "No Sh**!". We have no idea what that means. But this reader does!)
Statement: I'm really constipated!
Response: No kidding!
That's good! We really appreciate the broken jokism.

Blab. A reader, who might be the famous Michael Menkin himself, reminds of us an Important Safety Tip^TM.
Remember kids: if you see an alien in your neighborhood, tell a parent, policeman, or guy in a Velostat hat right away!
Unless it looks like an ice cream cone. In that case, you should do whatever it says.

Blab. On the topic of Plurp, a new reader writes:
Is there any protocol to this madness?
Order is so desperately important to the human mind that we will find organization where there is only anarchy, correlation where there is only randomness, order where there is only chaos.
So, yes.

Blab. Another newbie reader writes:
Today is Wednsday. Yippy! Now where's Tuesdays plurp?
Lost in the place where old letters and punctuation go to die, we'd say. While you're looking for it, you might want to ask the Help thingie in your browser how to do a Reload or Refresh. Otherwise, it's likely to be Monday for quite some time to come.

Blab. Mistaking us for the copyright police, a reader writes:
Someone should tell Apple that their website has been stolen.
L.
That would be you, we think. Though we think you have a tough row to hoe in proving it.

Blab. Uncharacteristically invoking the Jesus Action Figure meme, Helen writes:
We have to send sweet little (really irritating) Ashley a Jesus Action Character for her collection. Which one?
Helen
Our readers are invited to tell us which Jesus Action Figure we ought to send to sweet little Ashley. And, of course, who she is.

Blab. Helen's back. (Was she gone?) And makes a curious claim.
Dorian, my life IS a Sunday cartoon. H
We wonder what that could mean.

Blab. On recent political events, a former Californian writes:

I am embarassed for California. What a complete political disaster. I never lived there. Or least I don't remember. Or that was the drugs. Probably the drugs.
Be of good cheer, Treasured Reader. Minnesotans survived Jesse. Californians will survive Arnold. And, it'll be loads of fun to mock them while they do!

Blab. A pair of readers seem to have found an enigmatic connection between last week's mysterious thing and children's toys.

The hedgehog crossing/musical instrument/food beater is a funky accessory for this. However, it doesn't actually appear to be featured on the site.   I have always dreamed of a large Brio collection for Christmas though...
How extremely odd that a children's train set would need either a musical instrument or a food smasher. We would be disinclined to believe it, except for this.
STOP PRESS! I've found it, I tell you, I've found it!
So, indeed, there appears to be some unexplained connection. And Helen seems to have figured it out too.
Subj: the hedge hog thing
Oh give it up. Your cousin-in-law had it figured out. We need to get those pieces now for your little Christmas train set. Just in time for the holiday tree.
Helen
This reader has another take on the mystery.
an object not made of cheese is clearly not my macaroni and broccoli sandwich. my head hurts. why can't my happy meal just be there for me when i want it
Zackly. Finally, the aforementioned relative responds positively to this week's training session.
To Whom it May Concern:
Ok, so next time you'll get the frickin' URL. Do you really need it to be that easy?
Yours truly,
Appears to be a Relative
Good reader! Have a biscuit!

Plurp. And in the far turn, it's Iris Chacon in the lead!

iris chacon

chihuly

helen naked pitures

arsenic poisoning pictures

imani

quap

britney

ginger

furrie

backstage

Yow. Super neato blocks clock! Almost as super neato as the scribble clock, long our absolute favorite. (/usr/bin/girl)

Yo. Still desperate to get in on Ginger / IT / The Next Big Thing, but your Segway was recalled? No problemo. Build your own.
There is one very important difference between what can be built as an experiment and the commercial Segway: The commercial one has a lot of safety features, redundancy and fool-proofing. Mine has none whatsoever (Well, it does have a kill switch so it doesn't go zooming off if I fall off, and it does shut down if it finds itself tipped more than 45 degrees.) This is pretty darn important, and you should think about it very carefully before considering building such a thing yourself. With a scooter like this, if it stops working for any reason (software crash, hardware failure, low battery) you will fall, hard, and probably on your face. Imagine zipping along at 10 MPH, and suddenly the platform you're standing on stops dead. Oh, and there's a T-bar in front of you to trip you up if you start to run.
Unlike the commercial Segway, of course. (Rachelle)

Yak. In a meeting yesterday with our Director.

Director: Somebody sent me email today saying our customers are going to spend billions of dollars on Sarbanes-Oxley. What the heck is that?

Steve: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is the most sweeping legislation affecting corporate governance, disclosure and financial accounting in over a generation. [It requires] that CEO’s, CFO’s and independent auditors and committees [...] certify the accuracy of financial statements and disclosures.

Director: How in the world did you know that?

Steve: Google. How else do you know anything these days?

Director: And what the heck is this Section 404?

Steve: Section 404 requires an annual evaluation of internal controls and procedures for financial reporting.

Director: OK. Enough.

We love the Web. Yes, by golly, we really do.

Plurp. Last night, oneword: Forced.
It was not that he had no choice. He knew, in his marrow, that he had free will. It was that he had to. His job depended on it. That's what he told himself.

Plurp.
The investigatory team
determined that
the blue dog
was an object not made of cheese and
clearly not a macaroni and broccoli sandwich

Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Blab. It's Reader Contributed Game Day here in Plurpsville. Ain't that just too much fun?
Hey fella, me & the family were having fun playing Snatch at the weekend, a word game where you try to grab your opponents' words by adding a letter and rearranging.
Anyway, was wondering how far anyone could get if they started with PLURP. Would you need to hope an E turned up to make this into PURPLE? Can your readership (ahem) do better? That make sense?
That is, what single letter (other than E) could you add to the letters of PLURP so that, when arranged properly, a six-letter word is formed?
OK readers, go play!

Blab. Our second reader contribution to Reader Contributed Game Day is entitled ...
Smartly responses that sound like (or rhyme) with "No Sh**!":

Statement: I've been standing all day.
Response: No sit!
Statement: I've been using a Gilett razor.
Response: No shick!
Statement: I've missed the boat.
Response: No ship!
Statement: This drink is too hot.
Response: No sip!
Statement: That dress is not modest.
Response: No slip!
Statement: I've got a very dry mouth.
Response: No spit!
Statement: I did not perform in the talent show.
Response: No skit!
Statement: I can't open my eyes.
Response: No slit!
No kidding.
Other reader entries to this (or any other game) are invited.

Blab. Mirable dictu, a second reader sends us a lovely little story of someone who would buy our curious 3D object.
Ashley MacDonald is fourteen, and lives in the suburbs outside of Baltimore. She would love to buy the figurine of the red-haired girl, because it is just the cutest thing, and she could put it on her dresser between the pile of Beanie Babies and the plastic figurines of Rouge the Bat (the sexy good/evil female member of the Sonic the Hedgehog pantheon) and Maehara Shinobu from the "Love Hina" series (she ordered that one from eBay, and her parents find it disturbing in ways that they can't quite express; this red-haired one is comforting in comparison).   But she might not be able to get it this week, because her parents made her stop downloading mp3's from the Net, so she and her friends are pooling their allowances to buy a bunch of CDs that they can then all rip. Maybe next week.
We can all hope.

Blab. Plurp's own meme-mixer checks in with this.
Is that an opened-faced meat loaf dish, with a wooden kickstand?
No. Get back to work.

Blab. Gosh. Maybe there are two meme-mixers.
Is that an open-faced, twisted, upper-left suzy serandan unbelicus, meatloaf dish?
No.

Blab. A reader suggest that we (or someone) can ...
Do what thou, Wilt Chamberland.
We're not sure what to make of this. Did our Treasured Reader mean Wilt Chamberlain? Or is this somehow a sly pun on the jazz singer, or the Iowa math professor? Treasured Readers are so tricky that way.

Blab. Still confused about that confusing thing, a reader writes:

Is that really a twisted upper-right suzy serandan umbelicus?
Of course not. We were kidding. It's actually a musical instrument similar to a dulcimer or harp.
And a food smasher. Don't forget the food smasher.

Blab. This reader ascribes a certain nationalism to a certain explanation of that confusing thing.
"Pithy summary: Yonder curious image is alleged to be a mechanism for protecting hedgehogs."
Of course! That is typicaly English (British?)
Using musical instruments to protect hedgehogs? How does that work?

Blab. Our good friend Michael Menkin checks in.
thanks for mentioning stopabductions.com
You may be interested in my new website, aliensandchildren.org
The drawings are authentic. That is reality.
Michael Menkin
We like reality.
This website features a series of drawings made by children who were abducted by aliens for the alien purpose of creating a new race of alien/human hybrids. The drawings show different aspects of the alien abduction phenomenon and include cruel medical procedures performed on children, children boarding alien spacecraft with other aliens, children playing with alien/hybrid children so the alien/hybrids can learn how to be human, and children being taken by aliens against their will, and the types of aliens encountered by the abducted children.
Why don't children ever go willingly with the alien invaders? If the aliens are that advanced, can't their mind control lasers convince the children that they are ice cream cones, or sculptured clay mountains? Can't they make the children think that they are their parents? Or at least friendly replicants?
Aliens these days are just sloppy. It's not like it was when we were abducted as a child.

Blab. A reader attempts to console Helen.
Helen ... hopefully his sunday brilliance has no connection to computers :-)
I fear the day is coming when you'll end up in the sunday cartoon.
Dorian, the dim
Hmm!

Blab. A reader refers to something.
Damn, she looks alot like Asskkkroft!
Helen? That cute redhead? Or maybe you mean her. Yeah, that's a more charitable interpretation.
It's not Asscroft, though.

Blab. Chicken Little checks in.
Yellowstone will erupt any day now! Be prepared by buying a poncho!
Actually, we still have the poncho we bought to protect us from the mega-asteroid that will soon destroy the Earth. So we're all set.

Blab. On the topic of stealing virtual resources (which we weren't talking about before, but we are now), a reader writes:
Help! Police! Somebody stole my chicken!
Or, as the article so poignantly puts it:

It might be tricky getting
a witness statement from a yeti

Blab. Another reader talks to Oliverbot, and comes up with a surprise.
Oliverbot made a broken joke!
Me: Who's on first?
ob: What's on second?
Me: I don't know.
ob: Me either.
Hahahahahahaha!
That's quite wonderful! That'll be the first Turing Test contribution to our collection of Broken Jokes.

Blab. This reader gets into complex mind-body issues with Oliverbot.
Conversations with an AI:-
AJL - do you like to dance?
OB - It's a bit hard without a body
AJL - not really, dancing is all in the mind
OB - Oh really? Are they exactly the same?
AJL - what, dancing and the mind?
OB - That's a good question. Not many people express themselves that way. What are you wearing?
He likes to argue too.
-AJL
What were you wearing?

Blab. We love the military mind.
"... I can't believe that in all of human history, we'll never ever be able to go beyond the speed of light..." said [General Wesley] Clark.
Heh.
Wesley Clark: Rhodes scholar, four-star general, NATO commander, time-travel fanatic?
Is this a multiple-choice test?

Plurp. Next contender for Subheadline O' The Decade:
Tube bosses have launched an investigation after a vasectomy delayed thousands of passengers.
They must have stayed up all night giggling about that.

Yow. Unfortunately, the vasectomy came too late. California has become Minnesota. We rejoice, however. We needed the comedic relief.

Plurp. You remember last week, when all 6,000 shipped units of Ginger / IT / The Next Big Thing were recalled due to a safety problem wherein the victim was catapulted off the darn thing and onto the hard, hard asphalt?
Curiously, it also turns out that Ginger hasn't been selling well.
Segway announced that all of its Human Transporters -- approximately 6,000 -- sold as of Thursday are under recall. That figure pales in comparison with the 50,000 to 100,000 units the company had expected to sell by January of this year.
That's so sad! Personally, we were expecting Yet Another Scooter to revolutionize life as we know it.

Plurp. We're wondering why Ian hasn't asked us for one of these yet. (/usr/bin/girl)

Plurp. oneword: Lack.
He had always felt it. And he felt it no more strongly than when she looked at him, the sadness apparent in her eyes despite her reassurances, despite her protestations that everything was all right, that everything was just fine.

Plurp.
The blue dog
thought that
Wesley Clark
looked a lot like Asskkkroft

Monday, September 29, 2003
Blab. Another brave reader talks to Oliverbot. With surprising results.
I spoke to oliverbot. I typed in this command - <input> and a new text field came up. I do not understand what it was for.
Readers who are successful at hacking Oliverbot should tell us all about it.

Blab. A reader that our sources tell us is Helen writes:
Dorian,
He spends entirely too much time on Plurp and then laughs hysterically at his brilliance on Sundays.
Helen
Nonsense! It's hardly restricted to Sundays.

Blab. A reader sends us something interesting.
Super Happy Exuviations!
Pithy summary: this is alleged to be a real, unhoaxful pic of a crab (and its shed shell) that really do have these markings.

Hey - we believe it. But we'll believe pretty much anything.

Blab. A reader wants to know this.
Hey! Who turned out the lights? Again!
Sadly, Italy did not take us up on our offer to move there, for what we thought was a very reasonable fee, in order to prevent just this kind of massive blackout. Even after we demonstrated our usefulness in that regard during the recent U.S. and London blackouts.
There was no official tally of customers without power, but early reports indicated most of Italy's 58 million people could be affected. The Aug. 14 blackout in the eastern United States affected 50 million people.
Other countries, take note. We are still available, though our rates are going up.

Blab. A reader sends us some obscure HTML document which doesn't quite contain images and such, but does contain enough clues that we can find this link to it. We only do all of this work because it appears to be a relative of ours who sent it. Otherwise, we would simply make fun of our reader's inability to send the fricking URL.
In any case, no biscuit. But you do get this.
Next question?
Pithy summary: Yonder curious image is alleged to be a mechanism for protecting hedgehogs.

This seems wildly unlikely to us. We still favor the explanation that it is a musical instrument of some kind.
And a food smasher.

Blab. A reader makes a joke.

That mystery object? Beets me.
Beets. Why did it have to be beets?

Blab. A reader sends us spam. No, really.
The following spam just arrived and I couldn't help but forward it to you. Notice that it comes from an unknown hotmail account and came from China. Frankly I'm impressed that spammers are getting so well educated. Where were they when I was doing my physics term paper? I'm tempted to actually reply to this one. I'm uncertain what onsequences that might have.
Dorian, the uncertain spamee.
------- Start of forwarded message -------
From: "[...]" <[...]@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Uncertainty Principle Is Untenable
[...]
THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IS UNTENABLE
By re-analysing Heisenberg's Gamma-Ray Microscope experiment and the ideal experiment from which the uncertainty principle is derived, it is actually found that the uncertainty principle can not be obtained from them. It is therefore found to be untenable. [...]
The particle can have a certain position in the slit and the uncertain quantity of the position is dx =0. According to Newton first law , if the external force at the X direction does not affect particle, and the original motion in the Y direction is not changed , the momentum of the particle int the X direction will be Px=0 and the uncertain quantity of the momentum will be dPx =0.
This gives:
dPx dx =0.
No experiment negates NEWTON FIRST LAW. Whether in quantum mechanics or classical mechanics, it applies to the microcosmic world and is of the form of the Energy-Momentum conservation laws. If an external force does not affect the particle and it does not remain static or in uniform motion, it has disobeyed the Energy-Momentum conservation laws. Under the above ideal experiment , it is considered that the width of the slit is the uncertain quantity of the particle's position. But there is certainly no reason for us to consider that the particle in the above experiment has an uncertain position, and no reason for us to consider that the slit's width is the uncertain quantity of the particle. Therefore, the uncertainty principle,
dPx dx ~ h
which is derived from the above experiment is unreasonable. [...]
------- End of forwarded message -------
Readers who are dying to read the whole thing can go here (and, no doubt, elsewhere). We have included only enough for clueful readers to see the flaw.
We are certainly impressed with the quality of your spam, though!

Blab. A reader updates us on the activities of a certain "Cecil".
Cecil is a caterpillar. Cecil is my friend. The last time I saw him he was <----------> this big. Phwoar! Cecil! What have you done?
"I ate my mummy."
Silly reader; that's not how it goes! Well, maybe that's how it goes in Egypt.

Yo. We were under the impression that modern mathematics pretty much originated in the Arabia.
According to Egyptian law, a life sentence normally means 25 years. The prison year, however, is calculated as nine months.
But maybe not arithmetic.

Yo. There is an institution in NYC called the street fair. There is at least one street fair in Manhattan on every Saturday and Sunday during the summer. An avenue is blocked off for three to twenty blocks, depending on the event, and vendors set up booths to hawk everything from BBQ to backrubs.
Sometimes, there are more exotic wares for sale.

Yow. We consider ourself to be quite the New York fanatic. We do not hold a candle to Joe Queenan.
[I]in recent times, New York has come in for a good deal of pummeling from the misguided Podunkian classes. [...]
Yes, it is true that residents of the New York area wake up every morning and turn on their radios to find out if the bridges to Manhattan are still standing. This is certainly no treat. But at least they do so knowing that if the bridges are still standing they can go across them and look at the Vermeers. Or the van Goghs. Or the Yankees. In Raleigh, if the bridges are still standing, the only thing you can do is go across them to Durham. [...]
About two years ago, my daughter and I had a 45-minute wait between "Chicago" and catching our train to Tarrytown, so we stopped by the Museum of Modern Art to see Picasso's "Demoiselles d'Avignon," the painting that gave birth to, or at the very least midwifed, modern art. This was one of those unexpectedly exhilarating moments that reminded me why I had come from Philadelphia to New York in the first place: because you could look at the single most revolutionary painting of the 20th century while you were killing time. You cannot do that in Salem, Ore., or Anchorage, Alaska. With all due respect.
We can only grovel in abject jealousy.

Plop.Here's something depressing. We've gotten more traffic on our Web site this month than ever before. We should be happy, right? No, we should not.
Turns out a whole lot of it is to this here old Plurp page, and only because we have one of the top South Park images, according to Google. In fact, that page got more visitors than all of the combined hits to the "current" Plurp page this month.
All you South Parkies? Go away.

Yow. We made a terrible, terrible mistake on Saturday. Trying to update Plurp, we accidentally overwrote a whole week that we had previously posted. In fact, it was the historic first week during which we actually posted Plurp.
The horror!
Now, we thought we had a backup of that directory somewhere or other. But we couldn't find it. Was it lost forever?
Nope. We found it two different places: the Google cache and the Wayback Machine. So everything's better now. (Phwew!)
We really, really love the Web.

Yow.
The blind get to go through life without ever seeing Shelley Winters.

Plurp. OneWord. This time: Never.
She came across the small, foil packet while cleaning out the kitchen cupboards. It had been years. Hard years. And she threw it away without even looking inside, because she knew, without any doubt, what would happen if she did.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was revealed to be
a smiling exuviate of
Shelley Winters

Sunday, September 28, 2003
Plurp.

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