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2004.01.04 : 2004.01.10
Saturday, January 10, 2004
Plop. Yesterday, our laptop, which had been mysteriously
missing for several months while allegedly being repaired, was returned
to us. There was rejoicing (brief, rather restrained rejoicing, but nonetheless)
and the loaner laptop went home to wherever such things live.
All find and good. We worked, pretty much all Friday night on a paper
that's due on Monday and, around midnight, went to send it off to our co-authors.
Surprise! The modem doesn't work. Now, it might be a residual misconfiguration.
Or it might be just plain dead. Hard to tell.
One thing's for sure. This paper wasn't going to our co-authors on Friday
night, despite our promises. Instead, we're going to drive an hour to work
today to send it, and again tomorrow to get comments from our co-authors.
And that means Plurp will be all clogged up in the process.
Have we mentioned that we hate computers?
Friday, January 9, 2004
Blab. Here is the definitive answer.
Q: Why did the chicken cross
the road?
A: It was stuck to the stick.
That certainly makes more sense than our
interpretation.
Blab. A reader delves into the mysterious and dangerous world
of brain function.
Hi Steve,
Just curious about Helen. Does she
also mix words up. I was making Helenisms long before you started calling
them that and also transpose word sounds. Last week while navigating from
the passenger seat, I said, "Trust me, this is the most Diroute rect."
Or was that the beer talking (again)?
Helen's particular talent is phrase-blending.
It occurs to us, though, that you could make a good deal of money on
the interview circuit with that talking beer thing.
Blab. A reader informs us that we've been worrying about the
wrong thing!
Who cares about the war when
there are more interesting things to worry about?
[link]
[link]
[link]
(And don't click on any of the WaiWai
links. I'm warning you!)
Cheers, M
Cats, ***
Blab. Our Most Treasured Reader writes:
Badger badger badger just
crashed my computer. Thanks.
You're welcome. That is, you, especially,
are welcome.
twice! I will never
hear Badger badger badger!
Consider yourself blessed.
Blab. We don't usually publish stuff that you type into our little
Blab
box when you were clearly thinking it was our massive search facility.
Nonetheless, you typed this phrase into the little Blab box from
a page we published last
October. And that intrigued us.
rouge the bat
Oddly, we did publish a reader contribution
that included that phrase. We would have bet against it.
Plurp. Favorite Spam Subject Line O' The Day:
Subj: Message subject
The dodo's in the details.
Plurp. These
are not our mother's lesbians.
Good to know. Though, oddly, we were unaware that our mother even had
lesbians.
We probably should have paid more attention.
Yow. No
Presents for Santa. We can't possibly explain it. Maybe our GNE friends
can. But we doubt it.
Plop. How can the U.S. hand over power in Iraq and not worry
that it will once again become hostile to the U.S.? Simple! Create secret
police to keep things in line.
"The creation of a well-functioning
local secret police, that in effect is a branch of the CIA, is part of
the general handover strategy. If you are in control of the secret police
in a country then you don't really have to worry too much about who the
local council appoints to collect the garbage."
Democracy in action, Winston.
Yow. More startling
news.
The Supreme Court stepped
squarely into a momentous debate over national security and personal liberty
today by agreeing to consider the case of a man who has been held without
charges by the United States military since he was captured in the fighting
in Afghanistan.
Shocking, isn't it? Why
would they do this?
No person shall be held to
answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment
or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval
forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public
danger
Pinkos.
Plurp.
Any technology that does
not appear magical is insufficiently advanced.
- Gregory Benford
 Plurp.
The blue dog
noted that the Threat Level
had been reduced to Elevated
Thursday, January 8, 2004
Blab. The U.S. is at war. Terrorists stalk the Western
world. Suicide bombers kill people every few days. So what occupies the
attention of our Treasured Readers? Tedious analyses of the stick joke.
It's kind of comforting.
The stick joke is a play
on the ambiguous meaning of the word "sticky". The word is taken to mean
"adhesive", but the rules of English allow it to also mean "like a stick",
although no one ever uses it that way (except when making jokes like this).
"A stick" is not an obvious answer to the question given the expected meaning
of "sticky". Thus, the listener is surprised (an important aspect of most
humor) by that answer and that is what makes it a joke.
"Brownies" or "fecal material" do
not elicit the same response, as they are sticky in the expected sense
of the word. Therefore, they qualify as broken joke answers, being that
they are expected to be described as "brown and sticky".
"Brownies" do not carry the same play
on words as "sticky" -- and hence are not a funny answer, regardless of
what you say -- since brownies were intentionally named for being brown,
so
there is nothing unexpected there. "What's brown? A brownie" is not equivalent
to "What's sticky? A stick".
We can only supplicate ourself in humble appreciation of our reader's ability
to get to the heart of the matter.
Blab. Another reader checks in with a radical analysis.
As I mentioned to Steve while
he was showering this morning (why was he getting up?), from the beginning
this was not a broken joke. A broken joke HAS to be a joke that everyone
knows. "Why did the chicken cross the road?" The only reason
the broken answer is funny is that we anticipate the common response.
Maybe the stick joke is regional. But it's not common enough to be
able to be broken.
Why did the chicken cross the road, anyway? We were never clear
on that.
Blab. Or ...
Q: What's brown and sticky?
A: Brownies with twigs in them.
Now that's funny!
 Blab.
Or ...
Q: What's brown and sticky?
A: Fudge pickles.
Then the above reader, or perhaps another reader whose mental processes
are controlled by the above reader (opening possibilities too terrifying
to contemplate), writes:
Fudge pickles! Fudge pickles!
Fudge pickles! Fudge pickles! Fudge pickles! Fudge pickles! Fudge pickles!
Fudge pickles!
Profanity is the natural order of
things.
We've always said that.
Blab. A spammist writes:
Dear Sir,
This mail might come as a surprise
to you but i really want you to go through it patiently and throughly before
considering a line of action. My name is Henry Briggs and i happen to be
a legal practitioner in Nigeria. What am about to tell you must be treated
with the strictest confidebtiality because should it made public knowledge,
my license to practise as a lawyer might be withdrawn as well trial for
impersonation and also fraud.
We find it refreshing that a spammist admits to ethics violations, criminal
impersonation and fraud in an introductory letter. Truth in advertising.
Blab. A reader alerts us to an insidious threat.
The pixmen
are coming!
Indeed, we ourself are about to be detained, as threatened on this threatening
site.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY WARNING
The concepts presented on this site
are protected by the international laws and treaties (PCT) related to the
protection of intellectual property. Any reproduction or use is prohibited
unless granted in writing by Pixman Corporation
So, when we disappear without warning, you'll understand.
Blab. A reader uses regionalism to duck out of a Helenism.
Yes he (physics teacher)
is English. And he is northern. And he's stupid. Maybe that explains it.
Maybe. But maybe this reader interprets your chaotic brain waves properly
anyway.
"out in left field" for the
helenism
Ooh - nice!
Blab. The camouflaged snipers on a nearby rooftop report:
Helen likes to be on top.
Our tax dollars at work.
Blab. Keanu Reeves writes:
George W. Bush is the president
of Helen's fan club? Whoa!
We think of it as a productive day job.
Plurp.
The blue dog
wondered why the chicken
crossed the road
Wednesday, January 7, 2004
Blab. A sorry reader writes:
Sorry, I agree with AJL.
The canonical punchline "a stick" is a legitimate joke, if an unusual type
of joke. "A melting chocolate bar" is indeed a broken joke.
(If you persist in your belief that
"a stick" is a broken joke, then what is the canonical unbroken form of
that joke?)
And so I'm not just criticizing, I'll
add one to your collection (although it is related to one already in there):
"Yo mama's so fat, when she sits around
the house, she needs an unusually large chair."
We don't mind your criticizing. Not at all! So let's analyze this to death,
shall we?
Why is this funny?:
Q: What's brown and
sticky?
A: A stick.
Well, the obvious answer to this question is:
A: Fecal material.
Well, OK, perhaps funnier in its colloquial form, but only because scatological
text is funnier colloquially. To make this funny, we must come up with
a cognitively dissonant answer, one of which is certainly suggested by
the question.
A: Brownies.
See? That's funny! (Those of you who aren't thinking about the chocolate
confection or the impish spirits are under arrest.)
In exactly the same way,
A: A stick.
... is funny. (Except for the under arrest part.)
So, given these sensible answers, how do we make a broken joke? We make
an answer that is an obvious. But both of these latter answers is already
obvious, which leads us to utter confusion. How do we make a broken joke
out of something that already has an obvious (if funny) answer?
Reader are invited to explain
it all to us. Obviously.
Blab. An impatient reader, failing to comprehend the essential
contingency of life, writes:
I never got a big box of
Plurp
How about that! We wonder if that might be connected with the fact that
we never sent any. Nah.
But we will. Oh yes, we most certainly will.
Blab. A reader is led to believe that England has good television.
Triplets of Belleville? Delightful
film! Known in England as Belleville Rendez-Vous, it was broadcast on Christmas
Day on BBC2, i.e. on free telly (we may not have air-conditioning but we
do have some good stuff on the box). I guess the Beeb were able to do this
having part-funded the project.
Loads of memorable images, from the
teetering liner leaving port to the three old dears eating frog soup, frog
kebabs and frog lollipops.
As you say, do go see it and lose
yourself for 80 minutes.
We appreciate your appreciation, even if you were forced to watch the nine
hundredth rerun of Faulty Towers (or A Visit to the Manchester
Cement Works) for the rest of the week.
So, yeah, it's a good flick, and folks should go see it.
Blab. A reader stares in wonder at its discovery.
Possible helenism but I'll
leave the last half to the other treasures....
Said by my physics teacher (in a very
loud voice) when a student walked in late and didn't shut the door....
"WERE YOU BORN IN A FIELD?!"
-"were you born in a barn?"
-"?"
Yes, we love doing our readers' work for them. We do!
In this case, we discover that Were you born in a field? is a
colloquial expression in that
same England that has such good television. If your physics teacher
is English, perhaps she was merely parroting her childhood chiding.
Otherwise, you know, something
something something field.
Blab. A reader asks:
Helen has a fan club?
Who is President?
(1) Yes.
(2) George W. Bush.
Any other questions?
Blab. On the wisdom of the Chinese in killing cats, a reader
writes:
You touch that cat and you
will be next! Keep your hands off of Christopher!
We'll be good. We promise to only touch him with wood chippers.
Blab. Having been out of the focal point of the orbital mind
control lasers for a bit too long, a reader asks a probing question.
So how do those mind control
lasers stay up there? Enquiring
minds want to know.
Whoa! Space travel is fake? Why didn't we know this?
Plop. Why is the media drooling over pictures
of the surface of Mars? (It's covered by red dust and small rocks!Breathless.)
Doesn't anyone remember the two
Viking landers? Or Pathfinder?
Or you?
We had to look this stuff up on the Web just to make sure that things
that happened in our own past are still generally recognized as having
happened in the timeline that all of you seem to occupy. We wonder about
that. A lot.
In our own past, for instance, we hadn't yet found life
on Mars. So ...
Plurp. You'll be relieved to know that balance is once again
restored in the universe. At least, in our part of the universe.
-
helen naked pitures
-
iris chacon
-
mia
-
snow
-
angelina jolie
-
apartment
-
backstage
-
big fish
-
britney
-
get an elephant in a refrigerator
Yo.
new
islands can be found by flying out to sea
(Bruce)
Plurp. Is this fun enough
to become our new obsession? Tell
us!
Plurp.
The blue dog
was born
in a barn
Tuesday, January 6, 2004
Blab. On our deep desire for someone to open a slathering
fan site for us, a reader writes:
Plurp already has a phan
club devoted to Helen. Two, actually, as the second is devoted to dearest
Mia. Now you want a third? Like we should all grow ponytails and drive
a miata? Maybe for Helen or Mia. Anything for them. I've already started
rubbing cow orker's feet. Some call it madness. I call it phanaticism.
Dorian, the balding
Yeah, maybe we don't want this kind of attention after all.
Blab. A reader, disgruntled at only having 14.5 minutes of fame
left, writes:
So I'm to understand that
you got a foreign package marked "Urgent" slipped under your door and were
blown away by your picture on paper? And that you were not able to read
the phan mail surrounding it? Perhaps you should get a multi-lingual person
to open your mail if only for safety reasons. Never know what's in the
"Urgent" packages. Was the picture of you rubbing a cow orker's foot with
your bookcase in the background? I'd choose a better background as copies
of "Grid Computing" are likely to spoil the mood. But I do understand that
one has very little control of telephoto pictures taken from the black
helicopters. The Paparazzi are everywhere.
Dorian, who appears in "All Things
American" with Andy Warhol
You have no idea what a chick magnet Grid Computing can be.
Blab. A pessimistic reader seeks to disturb the firmament of
the universe.
I propose re-dating this
month to be Plurbuary 2003, so that we can savor this grand year a bit
longer. 2004 can only be worse. - Cheers, M
We would do this in a New York nanosecond, were it not for the certain
wrath of vast hordes of Gregorians which would surely descend upon us.
That, and sloth.
Blab. Our dry cleaner reveals itself as a paper fetishist.
I tell you what! YOU
do the ironing and I will build that mechanical dog. Just have to
consider the priorities.
That's OK. We'll wait for a more devoted paper fetishist to build the mechanical
dog for us. You keep ironing.
Yow. Go. Read. Ftrain.
Today. (Or listen.)
Given another millennium,
the citizens of whatever this city is named will want to know exactly how
I felt at that moment, how we were now. How was it to stand in front of
a shop during that golden age, on a sidewalk flanked by ancient, four-wheeled
gas-driven cars and comparatively tiny buildings, what was it like in the
early years of the information age, with its minimum wage and poisoned
meats?
Dave calls Paul
the God of Narrative. You can almost smell the glory.
Plurp. China finally wised up and is killing
cats by the thousands.
"We first put them in disinfectant
to sterilize them, then electrocute them, then burn them," said the man,
who wouldn't give his name.
We read this story aloud to Him Whose Name Is the Squishy Part of the
Hairball on the Living Room Rug. He pretended to ignore us, but we
know he's worried.
Plurp.
The blue dog
was ...
worried
Monday, January 5, 2004
Blab. On the great Saturday
Writings, a foot fetishist writes:
ummm, they may be helen's
feet but they ain't your hands.
Dorian, the pavement pie
Sure they are!
Blab. Helen writes:
I don't know where you got
that picture but I don't think it's really my foot. It does have
some resemblance to it, though. The second toe is slightly longer
that the 1st. Hmmmmm. Maybe it's those big black helicopters
flying overhead taking pictures........
We've been telling you!
Blab. A reader misconstrues.
It's a first.
You got the blond as a toy
for thingie day?
Thingie morning musta been something
to look forward to! Why the unwrapping alone would leave one atremble...
Dorian, blonde on blonde
Around our quarters, Thingie Day always leaves us atremble. Nonetheless,
the toys we received this year were not blonde, nor vice versa. We won't
comment on the brunettes.
Blab. A luger writes:
The Cthulhu plush slippers
are by the same people as the Paris Hilton screenshot? Whoa.
Was that Paris Hilton? Whoa.
Blab. A reader alerts us to this.
Seirbhis
Luchd Ceannachd
Customers in the Asda Walmart supermarket
in Corby, Northamptonshire, in the south-east of England, were a bit puzzled
this week when they were confronted by in-store signs which incorporated
a Gaelic translation. So instead of a "Right Price Guarantee" they were
offered a "Dearbhadh Cosgais" and when they asked for Customer Services
to explain what it was all about, they were pointed to "Seirbhis Luchd
Ceannachd". It was all part of an effort by the supermarket giant to help
save the Gaelic language - and Corby has a large Scottish population (though
the number actually speaking Gaelic is unknown). The biggest problem the
store bosses had was finding someone local to do the translations - and
then hope he or she got it right!
What they were puzzled about was Walmart offering a hovercraft that was
full of eels.
Blab. A reader insults us.
Was that animated paper model
of a dog posted a while back too difficult for you? Well, here's something
a little bit easier from your friends in the government.
Remember to save the page with the
hole to use as a frame. You wouldn't want to display your hard work without
a frame!
Thanks so much. Actually, we are awaiting the arrival of the animated
paper dog model from our paper fetish reader(s), who both know who
they are and are on the verge of being seen as too lazy to respond.
Blab. About something unknown, a reader writes:
now that is better
This might be connected (but who can tell?) with a GNEr last night who
told us that we finally (finally!) got the Sunday Piture
right.
The Sunday Piture turns out to be a Rorschach test. Who knew?
Well, OK. We did.
Blab. A particular reader writes:
Re: Hamburg vs. Homburg
Hi Steve,
actually, the
article is about an assumed confusion of two army hospitals (one in
Hamburg and one in Homburg). Some politician in Hamburg claimed that some
terror group might plan to attack the Hamburg army hospital, and it is
now assumed that the real target might have been an army hospital in Homburg
(where, in contrast to Hamburg, there are also US soldiers being treated),
and which is almost at the other end of Germany (Hamburg being up north
and Homburg southwest Germany).
The link to the stopped Air France
planes and the mixed-up names is that there seem to have been errors in
"oral transmission" in both cases. Oral transmission, huh? Like, analog,
or what? I don't get it.
Very smart S.
This is a reader who, somehow, sent us an (analog, physical) Festive Season
card. Through the snail mail! This reader knows more about us that we know
about it.
This frightens us.
Plurp. Hey! All of a sudden it's a different year than
it was before.
How did that happen?
Plurp. You know what we want? We want a fan club. Like Paul
Ford's fan club.
Welcome to the Paul Ford
PFan Club site!
Devoted to Paul, and anything else
Paul likes (which, strangely enough, turns out to be other people's
writing). Share and enjoy!
'Course, yeah, we don't deserve it. But still! Imagine hundreds
of drooling sycophants, scouring the Web for all the useless little tidbits
that make up our wan existence.
Yo. It's Extremely Obscure Media Whoring Day here in Plurp!
Shoved under our office door over the recent Festive Days was an Urgent
envelope from Airborne Express. Impressed with how important we must be
to receive an Urgent envelope, we opened it immediately and found a Japanese
magazine called Nikkei Computer.
Well, actually, that was the subtitle. The title was, you know, in Japanese,
so we have no idea what it is.
Anyway! We examined it carefully, looking for a clue as to its Urgency,
but it was just a magazine. So we opened it up and you know what? The whole
thing was in Japanese, so we were pretty much hosed on figuring out what
it says.
squiggle squiggle squiggle
IBM squiggle squiggle squiggle
LAN squiggle squiggle squiggle
HTTP squiggle squiggle squiggle
So there we were, thumbing through this incomprehensible magazine, looking
at the pictures and wondering what it all means. When - omigosh! - our
very own face stared out at us. Well, not literally, as it was a picture
and so forth. But you get the idea.
What was it doing there? We're not sure! We do have a vague recollection
of having been interviewed by someone who took our picture with our bookcase
in the background, as illustrated in that obscure magazine, but we had
forgotten all about it until now.
There you have it! More fame for us, no doubt at the expense of your
15 minutes. Sorry. Now if we could just figure out what it was about
...
Plurp. The mystical poet who has been contributing recent works
to Dave's blog makes
an appearance here as well.
Re: WD, what the devil
Re: WD, what the devil
Re: AQLF, indeed? and what
Re: UHO, thought of having
Re: KC, dramatists and literary
Re: ZJS, former poet ivan
Re: VDNXWFAA, mstislav lavrovich
instead
Re: YYBAJQOH, entered into peoples
Re: QLGUJR, trumpets or impudent
Re: PA, gospel of luke
Re: the glittering golden r
Re: KCUCGO, whole choir stood
Re: breaking to pieces w mehrgy bc
Re: EKRQSMN, before it exhaled
Re: HY, then he found
Re: DAWOFPOH, found himself alone
Re: in the garden ktybz mjrzjllzc
We predict great things for this author. Great things.
Plop. If you were in a leadership position in the EU, and folks
kept sending letter
bombs to your colleagues, would you still be opening your mail yourself?
Would you even let your assistant open it, without at least x-raying it
first?
You would if you were stupid.
Plurp.
The blue dog
thought of the EU leadership
as Darwin in action
Sunday, January 4, 2004
Plurp.
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