Plurp: Increased Chatter

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2003.12.21 : 2003.12.27

Saturday, December 27, 2003
Blab. Last night, a Treasured Reader, likely one from GNE (on which we still hang around at random hours and for purposes unknown), wrote:
Aww, you left! Sweet slumbers, dear Plurp!
And we supped those sweet slumbers, Treasured Reader, until an horrific miscalibration of the Orbital Mind Control Lasers resulted in this.
I love the badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers badgers. Even with the sound off it's FUN. I wonder what would happen with the sound on? Do you think it would wake Steve up??   Shall we try?????
In fact, the badgers theme invaded our dreams this morning, causing us to say to our dream-partner, You're going to have to turn that off soon, you know, then only to half-awaken a moment later and realize that it was all too real. Enough!, we said, groggily, and perhaps not entirely cheerfully.
Shortly thereafter, we lumbered out of bed, unable to get back to sleep, and spent the rest of the morning recalibrating those darn Mind Control Lasers.

Blab. A reader criticizes us, then wishes us to look at an irrelevant site.
The Bicycle Pedaling Frog is pleased to have received an unprovoked--if misspelled (unless there really is some other frog out there who sells bicycles, of which the Bicycle Pedaling Frog is completely unaware)--greeting, and wishes you a belated happy Decemberween.
The bicycle peddling frog is never ironic; but he is occasionally macaronic.
Decemberween is, of course, a classic Strongbad piece: entirely incomprehensible to the uninitiated and thoroughly in genre to those who are steeped in its tradition.
Gosh, didn't that sound erudite?

Blab. Another reader thinks it's Mispelling Day here in Plurpland.
LotR: Ro"f"K?
That's correct. Return o'th' frickin' King. Finally. All 3.5 hours of it.

Blab. A reader from perky "Canada" sends us this nearby news.
Subj:    OH! The humanity!!!!
STAMFORD, Conn. (Dec. 26) - A 2-year-old model and actor who cut his head at a playground is seeking unspecified lost wages and other compensation from the city. Konrad Mader of Greenwich was running toward a treehouse at a playground Nov. 4 when he crashed into a railing, according to a claim filed last week by his mother and reported Friday by The Advocate of Stamford. The blond toddler received several stitches.
It's the American Tort Lottery at its finest. We plan on filing a similar suit against the mother on behalf of little Konrad, and a suit against Konrad on behalf of the city due to lost future taxes.
We'll be rich! And through no virtue of our own!

Plurp. For Thingie Day, we received quite a bit of torn paper.

Yo. We finally get on that poetic spam list that Dave has been on for a while.
Re: EKYVXMDL, the most uncomplicated
Re: VPIHIA, sun played merrily
Re: WTZVMWMD, exchanged smacking kisses
Re: TQ, sobs and whisper
Re: JULMRD, dont know anything
Lovely, isn't it?

Plurp. Dr. Poopsalotta Kittifecus sends us news.
A course for people who want to psychoanalyse their pets has been launched by Edinburgh University. [...]
It gives training tips as well as advice on welfare and techniques for dealing with "problem behaviour".

This is, no doubt, an introductory course for us on our own way to a Ph.D. in Feline Poopology. We have more than ample source material available to us.

Plurp. It's tough trying to create things for a living. It would be fun, and so much easier, to fight on the side of entropy for once and just tear things down. So, today, we play theater critic.
Mary Tyler Moore was lucky to have been chased off the stage of Neil Simon's latest, Rose's Dilemma, a play so moribund that not even the timeworn device of a dead main character can resurrect this production from its dreary plot. It is rumored that Ms. Moore could not remember her lines, but this is obviously a cover as most of her character's dialog is simple repetition of the dead character's that she hallucinates. Instead, we believe that Moore rankled at playing the aging, washed up creative who hasn't done anything original in years, and whose most substantial contribution consists of dying in the middle of the second act. Perhaps the metaphor was too much for her.
Hey. That was fun.

Plurp.
The blue dog
had certain ways
of dealing with
"problem behaviour"

Friday, December 26, 2003
Blab. A reader threatens terrorist acts against us. But it is too late.
A pox on the Plurpmeister! The "badgers badgers badgers badgers" meme has nearly complete control of my brain.
Yes. Our little experiment is almost complete.

Blab. A reader still believes its all about reportage.
Dr. Plurp,
You need to let your fan club know why Christopher was so mucked up on Christmas Eve day. Apparently he had some kind of nasty tummy bug that gave him diarrhea. If you recalled he cried uncontrollably until he finally was sick to his stomach again and then you and I cleaned him up. I still have a gash in palm to prove it.   This happened at least twice and, at 1am after midnight Mass, we even considered giving him a bath. He was not purposfully screwing up your holiday. Just sick like you were at Christmas two years ago. That didn't ruin my holiday either.
Mrs. Purp
In our continuing search for truth, we call in the expert: Dr. Poopsalotta Kittifecus.

Plurp: Welcome back, Dr. K.

Dr. K: It's good to be back. Sounds like you've had an exciting holiday.

Plurp: Can you explain the uncontrollable crying of our hairy roommate?

Dr. K: Well, having smeared feces all over his underside, he was probably unhappy at the way he smelled.

Plurp: And the barfing?

Dr. K: If you licked feces off of your stomach, you might be sick too.

Plurp: So this was ... ?

Dr. K: Normal feline behavior. That's right.

Plurp: Thank you so much for clearing that up.

Dr. K: My pleasure.

Yow. We received many fine things on Thingie Day. Of course, we treasure them all. But this is the one that has ended up on our night stand, watching us piteously all night long.

Carl Cthulhu

Carl likes bunnies. Carl likes daisies. Carl will consume every living soul on the planet. But right now, Carl just needs a hug.

Yow. We finally (finally!) saw LotR: RofK. And yes, it is quite fabulous. (In spite of someone having cranked up the subwoofers to 11 so that there was a thunderous rumbling through the entire film, and the guy behind us who insisted on crackling his plastic bag the whole time.)
Definitely the best of the three, and so far superior to every previous attempt to bring Tolkien's work to the screen that there's no sense in trying to compare them.
As Helen says, it probably won't win any acting awards, but it is likely to win stuff like Best Adaptation, Best Art Direction and Best Screenplay. Several scenes were simply spectacular: the first, long flyover of Minas Tirith; and the subsequent battle there (pretty much the whole darn thing). Breathtaking.
We even liked the Star Wars Walker scene.

Plurp.
The blue dog
stayed home and watched
The Day The Earth Stood Still

Thursday, December 25, 2003
Blab. A reader sends greetings.
Happy Thingie, Plurp & Helen! Smooches, from Treasured Reader Loli
Happy Thingie, Loli and also to the Bicycle Peddling Frog and everyone back at the Riptide Campus.

Blab. Another reader suggests this.
Merry Plurpmas!
Isn't that nice? And it's not even St. Swithin's day.

Blab. Charlie Brown writes:
Steve, after all these years I have discovered the true meaning of Christmas - Champagne and coffee with Irish cream (use 2 different glasses) Merry Christmas to you and all my fellow blogheads!
We recommend Tylenol. Soon.

Blab. A New York philosopher writes:
"If you take the Q line, which used to be the D line, and call it the B line, which is now the W in Brooklyn, that could confuse a lot of people hopping on the wrong train," said Ms. Kolanovic, before pausing to question her own recollection of the lines she had mentioned.
"Q becomes B," she mused. "That's like calling the F train the A train. It doesn't make any sense."
In the 1960s in New York, it was A is A. Now it's the New Millennium in New York, and it's Q becomes B.
We are forever fascinated by the evolution of ideas.

Plurp. So here it is, Thingie Day, here in Plurpville. We celebrated in the traditional manner, staying up Way Too Late last night, for reasons that we cannot explain, and then getting up Way Too Early (in Helen's case) or Way Too Late (in Steve's case) this morning, as is our wont.
We spent the remainder of the day in Great Excess and Extended Recovery, in ways about which we do not wish to provide further details.
We opened various wrapped material items, worrying greatly about the mental states of some of you in the process, but expressing childlike glee in the resulting mountain of boxes and paper, in the midst of which we slept for several hours this afternoon.
And here we are, at the end of the day, tempting fate by living in New York and eating beef. It's a grand life.

Plurp. Have you shuffled your penguins yet? No?? Well get to it, Skippy. It's not like those penguins will sit around waiting for you forever.
Sheesh. (boingboing)

Plurp.
The blue dog
really wondered
about that
Peace On Earth
thing

Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Blab. Here we are, still catching up on that pile of reader contributions. This happy little piece fits right into the holiday joy.
Subj: One Man's Meat...Excepting Andy Warthog
Then there is this, for you meat eaters.
Right. Revenge of the Meat Gods.
Speaking of which, those nasty prions are at it again. This time, it's BSE and it's in the U.S.
BSE, being a neurological disease, only infects the brain and spinal chord. You prolly already know that BSE spreads primarily because beef producers feed ground up beef (including brains and spinal chords) to their cows. Like kuru, it is a disease of cannibals.

Blab. While we are on the subject of mammals ...
I'm often involved in goat rodeos at my workplace. The term goat rodeo is used by management when they're making you do something you don't want to do and they themselves
would never bother to do.
I never know I'm part of a goat rodeo until I'm told "Man..that's some GOAT RODEO you're a part of!".
-the TL
So you're saying that responding to our readers is a ...

Blab. A reader figures that somebody has it all figured out.
FOXP2, the final "human=yes" switch?
So. Some biologist folks found a gene that helped enable language in humans. The weird thing is, the gene appeared a mere 50,000 years ago. (Humans, in their modern form, have been around for 100,000 years.) We wonder what those folks from 60,000 years ago thought about.

Blab. A reader sends us something cool.
[link]
Yowser. An interview with Chris Gray, of Headfirst Studios, on their perpetually-upcoming game, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
Sounds great. If they ever finish it.

Blab. Helen gains yet another fan.
Dear Helen and Steve,
Hello! My husband, Mike, is the son of the owners of Krazy Kat. We just got back yesterday from a week on her with my inlaws. It was an amazing time; I had never before spent a week on a sailboat. Actually, never even overnight! So in planning, I did a search on Krazy Kat on Yahoo and that's where I found your website. I was so impressed with Helen's journaling of your millenium sail. It really gave me a great idea of what to expect! Of course I told Jeanne and Larry (the owners, my inlaws) and my hubby about it right away, and all of us were thrilled. We were very happy that you totally enjoyed the boat, and my enthusiasm for going doubled. Helen's comments and writings came up in conversation all week .
I hope you're enjoying the snow. (We're in MD) It was nice to come home from the BVI's to wake up to a fresh snow fall. Sort of eases the transition when everything is made soft by snow.
We look forward to reading about more of your trips! Take care,
Geri
Ain't she great?

Blab. Another reader wants to cheer up our otherwise dreary life.
Subj: Something fun for your treasured readers
That's really very strange. We especially like the Linux reference.

Blab. A reader provides us with festive bandwidth consumption!
Season's greetings!
Like badgers?
Like Lord of the Rings? Good! Try this Flash animation.
See the film that way it was meant to be. All badger scenes restored.
Or maybe Lord of the Right Wing?

Blab. A reader thinks it knows something.
we all know its you who searches for helen naked pitures steve
Actually, we already know where they all are. But ours is not the only place where people seek those naked pitures. Odd.

Blab. That reader who fed our email address to some random folks on the Web, who probably sold it to spammists in order to pay for other, unspeakable acts, writes:
wow! so you haven't been getting spam until I put you on the list. Most impressive!
--Bad reader who found out where you hid the biscuits and just finished the last one! HA!
Hey! We were saving those biscuits for later!

Blab. Entranced with the Italian financial scandal, a reader writes:
Parmalat's long-life milk is long-life by virtue of being subjected to high temperature that kills off virtually all of the bacteria that make milk spoil. Then they put it in a a tetra pak box that keeps it completely sealed away from light and air, and voila!   Milk that lasts longer than 10 days at room temp.
Eggs are routinely broken down into their component parts and made into a powder for food processing. It was probably this form of egg that was used in the egg nog.
Merry Christmas, and enjoy your nog!
The egg nog? Which egg nog was that?

Plop. Him Whose Name Is Beneath The Barf is having a merry day. A while ago he decided to smear himself with feces and roll on the expensive rug until he threw up. Now he's chewing on the African lilies, presumably so he can throw up again.
We're trying to remember why we have a cat.

Yo. Fifty word fictions. Sort of like oneword.

Plurp. From somewhere or other.
Where are we going, and what are we doing in this handbasket?

Yow. Yes, it really is the Santanomicon. (/usr/bin/girl)

Plurp.
The blue dog
wished everyone a happy holiday.
Except for the suicide bombers.

Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Blab. A reader seeks easy narratives associated with yesterday's mysterious thing.
Oh c'mon! It's just like Mr. Potato Head. Only Picasso!
Oh. Of course. Why didn't we think of that?

Blab. A reader reveals our potato to others.
A Mr. Picassohead painting has been created for you to view online. Please visit the link below to see your painting, cruise the Mr. Picassohead Gallery, or to make your very own Mr. Picassohead.
Very nice, We are duly impressed.
But our Treasured Reader informs us of this artistic masterpiece by giving our email address to said Mr. Picassohead site. Now, why would said Mr. Piscassohead site want to know our email address? We can think of two reasons. (1) They want to send us spam. (2) They want to sell our email address to someone who will send us spam. Note the commonality.
So ... Bad reader! Don't give out our email address! No biscuit.
A lovely work of art, though, we must say.

Blab. We are trying desperately to catch up with the rather large, gooey clog of reader contributions that has been rotting away here in Plurpville ever since those unexplained temporal anomalies in the last few weeks. Here's an example of why this is so difficult.
"The ending green type treatment (typical Matrix screen type, showing the word "Longhorn") was all done on a Mac (Pismo) with AfterEffects. And all of the keying/ compositing was done on an SGI Onyx (Unix). It was a fun project, it had our SysAdmin (Linux only) falling out of his chair, he was laughing so hard. He felt honored that MS is feeling so threatened by the penguin."
You see? What does it mean? It's so hard to know!
There are quotes. Quotes within quotes (or do those inner quotes make Longhorn unquoted?). Egad! It's the postmodern plight. Times two.

Blab. A reader sends us something that we find funny. Which we find odd. Not the sending. That's not odd. We pretty much expect that around here. No, it's the funny-finding that we find odd. We don't understand why it should be funny at all. But it is. That's so odd.
Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger
Mushroom! Mushroom!

Blab. A reader sends us something that we absolutely love. Of course, we can't explain why. But we do!
Jack Chick has converted to the worship of the Elder Gods.
And about time, too!

Blab. And while we're on the subject of Cthulhu and sex, which we weren't, exactly, but we appear to be now ...
hubba hubba!
Just what is that large green statue doing, anyhow?

Blab. A reader violates its solemn vow.
I usually just delete spam, but today I found this:
Congradulations Mr./Mrs morton Your house, at p.o.box 1941 new york, qualifies for the lowest available rates in over 40 years.
Click Here
Kimberlee Fensel (KiFensel@optonline.net) toxic
What you have to know, is that POB 1941 is at the Grand Central Station PO. I'm glad to know that it qualifies for the lowest rates and will pass it on to the MTA and USPS.
Cheers, Morton
There's never been a cheaper time to buy Grand Central Station.

Blab. A reader alerts us to a stark threat to shavers everywhere.
One more reason to keep your beard.
OK. Let's see if we get this. Gillette puts RFID tags in packages of razors in stores. We're with you so far. Then a goodie beneath the shelf detects when one of the packages is removed and takes a picture of the person removing it. Another camera takes a picture of people buying these packages at the cash register.
So, if you're photographed at the shelf but not at the cash register - bingo! - you're pretty much guaranteed to be a ... razor thief. And, and, and then they can prosecute you for ... stealing a few bucks worth of razors?
Great privacy invasion tech! But are we missing something about the utility of applying it to this particular product? Gosh, we hope so.

Plurp. You foolish readers. You, like, want things!

naked voodvork pictures

helen naked pitures

imani

christmas

cyc

j fred shirley harold

naked pictures of helen

number of the beast

nun

thermobaric

We note that helen naked pitures + naked pictures of helen handily (sic) beats out all the rest.
As it should be.

Plurp.
The blue dog
sought easy narratives
that rhymed with
Orange

Monday, December 22, 2003
Blab. A reader states a counterfactual.
Sunday's Plurp photo has been withdrawn due to heightened state of terror alert!
What will the Sunday piture be next week?, asks Helen. It's hard to say, we reply, but something always comes up.

Yow. The wonder of having everything online was highlighted today by, of all things, the 6.5 earthquake in California.
The USGS has the whole monitoring and reporting thing automated. As soon as the quake occurred, they had distances from various monitors, magnitude, a shake map, maps of all of the aftershocks , and seismometer readouts, as the quake occurred. And they were all on the Web!
We love the Web.

Plurp. Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich.
Watch this humorous half-hour peek at the pitch letters and pleas John Malkovich receives from aspiring filmmakers and screenwriters trying to interest him in their projects.
Funnier would be the letters sent to Feynman, or Hawking.
Even we have gotten some real doozies over the years. The best of these are preserved outside our office at work, on a corkboard labeled The Nutboard.
Propriety prevents us from reproducing them here, as they were sent to us by well-meaning psychotics, after all. And we respect that.

Plurp. Somewhere in the gray haze of the last couple of months, we stumbled across something odd on the Web. Now, we know that's hard to believe, but it's true!
Do you like it? Do you understand it? If so, please explain it to us.

Plurp. Favorite Spam Subject Line O' The Day:
u must shocked when seeing the pric.e of our software autophyte fantoccini
Frankly, we were shocked by the very existence of their autophyte fantoccini. The horror!

Plurp. The chairman of ABC Entertainment says:
"Reality is a part of the business that is starting to come of age."
Do the quotes get any better than that? We can't imagine how.

Yow. We like this thing. We like it a lot. We can't tell you why, though. Or won't. (Caterina)

Yow. We have often derided the noxious, pretentious commentary that accompanies art exhibits these days, pretending, as it so inevitably does, to wrap sociopolitical messages around the works of artists that the postmodern commentators never knew, and certainly never understood.
So it is with a certain air of validation that we present this.
The situation, in which the political aspect of contemporary art is becoming more and more significant, has turned artists into mere illustrators of the ideas suggested by curators. It is curators who have become true artists. It is they who receive the best exhibition rooms and museums. It is curators who have created the myth of artist's insanity and the consecutive necessity of wakeful custody and elaborate elucidation of artist's creation.
However, curators have little relation to art making, which brings about surrogate exhibitions: on one hand, they call for scandal, on the other - they try to adjust to current political situation. In this situation, museums remind one of the old-time wagons traveling from one market place to another in order to attract visitors with such miracles as a peregrinate shark-fish, elephant crap or a shagged woman. Such art has always been considered as the low art that has no connection with the high art.
Why do we burden you with this? Because of this lovely fact: it was apparently penned (which is, in context, a tasty anachronism) by members of The New Academy of Fine Arts.
In St. Petersburg. (Bruce)

Plurp. TYPEflake. (Mike)

Plurp. Two new additions to our Stuff section: this year's annual letter (we know: you're thrilled), and a retrospective exhibit of images related to America's War on Terrorism. With no postmodern commentary whatsoever. Well, sort of.

Plurp.
The blue dog's
state was always
high

Sunday, December 21, 2003
Plurp.

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