Plurp: Scary Fun Fun

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2004.01.25 : 2004.01.31

Saturday, January 31, 2004
Blab. Will we succeed in our Devious Plot to move the cat's canonical sleeping place off our shockingly white couch?

A reader predicts confidently.
You will lose, The Evil Kat will win. Years of observation of these beasts has shown than sleeping sites are temporary. In the near future "Him Who..." will move to greener pastures (like the matching white loveseat)and begin the deposition process again. You must burn all white furniture and replace it with ugly gray furniture.
Or procure a badger. I hear they really like small furry animals.
Badger?

Blab. A reader accuses us of wicked absurdity. We are so flattered!
RE: Do you think our Devious Plot will work?
Well Dr. Plurp, you and Helen exhibit here sad evidence of being insensitive to the full mind of the Cat. "Him whose Name is Hidden Beneath Mound of Hair" chose the white couch to Cat Dream BECAUSE it is THE "special" place in your domicile, and Cat Dreaming is an extremely special activity, one in which the multi-facetedly-aware Cat Mind attends the awesome task of keeping Grace apparent simultaneously on multiple dimensions of perspectives and perception--a task that almost only the Cat Spirit is evolved sufficiently to dream into manifestation.
Buddha learned this multi-dimensional / grace-manifesting / dreaming technique (from which he surmised much that later became the 8 elements of Something-or-Others on a warm and fragrant Indian night as he sat petting his cat "P.D." (short for "Purring Dharma") curled in his lap (not unlike your couch) beneath the infamous Fig Tree, whereupon while drifting into alpha, Buddha experienced "transference" from P.D.'s purring dreaming, and in an eruption of sublimities perceived the Purring Mind, and the epiphanies rolled across his Awareness like the splendorous spilling of countless precious gems across the firmament when Krishna blissses out and ejaculates precious dharma gems all over earth.
So, I think it reprobatable that you and Helen would even for a moment entertain a notion of moving "H.W.N.I.H.B.M.O.H."'s Dreaming Spot from the White couch, which by the way, "H.W.N." chose also hoping you two humans, finding this couch to be your favorite furniture, be thereby in proximity to likewise receive the contact high / Dreaming Transmission and thereafter happily realize without doubt that 1001 white couches are merely objects busy dying, worth not one gray hair from your purring / dreaming Cat who is busy 90% of his day attempting to bringing Grace to our graceless society, and would succeed the noble task were it not for meddling humans moving his Dream Bed to less suitable environs.
Your Devious Plan:

Move the cat bed to one end of the couch,

Move the cat bed off the couch and onto the floor,

Move the cat bed a few feet away from the couch,

and etc., until the cat bed is in a chosen, inobtrusive location.

is wicked and absurd. Cat's like to be up high, don't like being on the ground, and would feel hurt being shoved out of the limelight. In fact, you and Helen should purchase an attractive spot-light floorlamp and highlight (as well as make cozier) "H.W.N." dreaming bed on the white couch.
And as for the cat bed that looks like a "Russian Hat from Burberry's", the solution is simply to buy fabric that matches the couch, and cover the Dreaming Bed with that. Utterly lovely. Don't forget the spotlight.
Sincerely yours,
Lene Wangmo
Purr Protectoress of America
Hey - we stopped short of moving the Moscow Bed to the wood chipper. That was merely Plan A.

Blab. A reader accuses us of an even more Devious Plot.
Re: Your new Russian Burberry hat
If I was Helen I would watch the movements of that cat bed very closely. Knowing how fond you are of Him Whose Name Fell For A Plan So Cunning You Could Put A Tail On It And Call It A Weasel and the cat bed design disaster, I would bet no small amount that the "chosen, inobtrusive location" the two are unaware of moving towards is either a) the balcony, b) the garbage can, c) Antarctica or d) all of the above. Well, I guess it's time to say goodbye to Him Whose Name Wouldn't Know Impending Doom If It Hit Him On The Head With A Short Stick. Ah, well, Darwin in action. Please do keep us posted.
Very sad S.
We deny categorically that we are currently planning to dispose of Him Who in Antarctica. That was Plan B. After consulting once again with Helen, we're on to Plan C: Let the beast live among us.
Or, as another reader so sagely observes:
Dogs have owners;
cats have staff.
We live to serve.

Blab. A brilliant reader suggests an extremely clever idea.
When He Who Knows The Way To San Jose, La La La La La La La La is asleep in his ugly bed, quietly lift it up and transport it to another white couch in another person's apartment.
Hey! Maybe this is Plan D!
That reminds us of our senior year in college, when eight of us CCS wackos roomed together in two adjacent four-person apartments in romantic Isla Vista. One cold, rainy winter day, our garbage needed emptying, but the prospect of running outside to the dumpster didn't exactly appeal.
It was then that we remembered our compatriot's apartment, which enjoyed a somewhat lower standard of cleanliness than ours did. In fact, they usually had a dozen bags of garbage, in various degrees of putrescence, lined up in their kitchen.
So we took our single bag of garbage next door and arranged it alongside the many others.
To this day, our compatriots never guessed. And to any of them who happen to be reading this now and finding out for the first time, we can only say: Heh.

Blab. A meme-mixing reader with excellent taste writes:
"And yet it's still strange to me that we're outsourcing to cats"
And, “if a cat can do a job, why shouldn't a cat do a job?”
You might as well kill yourself. They've won

Blab. Another inverse-linker writes:
Have another drink my friend, enjoy another cigarette. It's time you realised you're just an average man.
We don't smoke. Even if cat's eyes do lead every way to lonesomness.

Blab. A reader smells an opportunity for conspiracy!
That Mars picture looks a LOT like a beach in South Jersey.
I believe I took the same shot while adjusting the camera.
Since communication from there is quite poor that could account for the loss of signal.
Dorian, the skeptic
We'll bet that you had no idea you were a central figure in the conspiracy, eh?

Blab. A reader alerts us to the location of that most excellent headline, African-American Neighborhood Terrorized By Ask Murderer.
The Onion headline is from the Jan 21 issue, in the "In The News" column on the right where they have headlines / captions that the writers didn't bother to write articles for.
Very suspicious! It's there now, but it wasn't yesterday? Are the editors of The Onion part of the vast conspiracy that monitors our very thoughts?
They've tipped their hand.

Blab. That reader is back.
The word of the day is: misjoinder.
OK. We're going to make this into the next Really Boring Plurp Reader Contest. Readers are misjoined to tell us why we should care about this Treasured Reader's recent series of alleged daily words.

Blab. A reader pries into our other little fetishes.
do you have (www.) famousmalefeet (.net) steve?
No. We have www.famousmalefeet.com.

Blab. Another fan of minority fetishes brings the following to our attention.
Women Hands On Hips!
You might think that we'd be in Big Trouble with Helen here. But we're not.
'Cause, you know, we fail to see the attraction.

Blab. A reader asks the obvious question.
What are they doing at night in the park?
It is as we suspected.
Nasty and small: undeserving of life.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
They'll sneer at your hairstyle and sleep with your wife.
Filthy ducks.

Blab. A reader sends us word.

Subject: mia is back
Is she? Has it come to this? At long last, has it come to this?

Yak. Lunchtalk yesterday.
Colleague #1: Where's the Superbowl this year?
Colleague #2: Dunno.
Colleague #3: Florida, I think.
Colleague #4: Isn't it in New Orleans?
Colleague #5: Yeah, I don't really follow basketball.
Gotta love 'em.

Plurp. It was a Pawling Theater night tonight, as we traveled into the northern hinterlands to join Ian, the mysterious C. and two unnamed co-conspirators in attending a Pawling Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
And ... it was pretty good! The female and male leads (in the Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman roles) both managed to stay in character and keep their energy and emotion up for the whole three hours.
Still, someone needs to tell the sound crew that audio technology has advanced recently, and it is no longer necessary to plop down and yank up the phonograph needle from the sound effects record during the production.

Plurp.
The blue dog
wondered who that
e-mail was really
from

Thriday, January 29.5, 2004
Blab. Today we get beat up a lot, first by a reader who still thinks that lagniappe is a word.
Subj: lagniappe
Y'all oughta take Paul Simon's advice and "get a little bit of them Cajun girls"... lagniappe means "a little bit extra", similar in spirit to "a baker's dozen". And with a Cajun girl that can be a mighty pleasant thing.
Dorian, the lagniappe lover
We're more in favor of getting a lot extra. But that's just us. You know: Nothing exceeds like excess.

Blab. A reader makes a contribution with no known cause.
The word of the day is: idiopathic.

Blab. A reader reassures us unnecessarily.
The phrase "You can be pedentic..." refers to the generic you, not you as an individual. Perhaps you were feeling defensive after the flurry of political emails. I tend to agree with your position. Most of those actors they call politicians could use a good smack with a clue-by-four.
You do get bonus points for discovering the hidden spelling error. How pedantic of you :-)
Dorian, the spelling teacher
Hey, we weren't being defensive. What made you think we were? Huh, bub?

Blab. Hugh Jackman (one of them, anyway) calls us names.
There's no sense in beating a dead gift-horse in the mouth. That would be like trying to milk a bull, but less productive. What am I talking about? Everything and everything. Have a good day now.

Blab. An Unreformed Statist lunges at us with a Confusing Externality.
I think you should have the opportunity, as well, to keep it all and drill your own well in Manhattan.
Aren't statists fun? They inevitably try to justify massive, centralized governments based on isolated examples of critical things that they think couldn't be done without a government. Our Treasured Reader would have been better served, we suspect, by using national defense as a stalking horse. That way, it would be harder for us to point out that even our friends in the wilds of Connecticut don't dig their own wells, thus opening the discussion to the wonders of the free market.
But why spend all of our emotional energy in disagreement and discord? Can't we all just get along? Instead of looking at a few things that, arguably, are beneficial flesh on the bones of government, let's agree on what's likely to be a long list of things that we can simply carve off of its bloated carcass.
Shall we start with tobacco subsidies?

Blab. Speaking of bloated carcasses, a reader suggests (elliptically) that we were wrong about something. This is, of course, silly.

When you've really blown it and need to eat crow

Yum!

Blab. A reader decides that it's really best to lie back and enjoy it.
There really are two Hugh Jackman's around: One is the actor playing Wolverine in X-Men and the other is a joke-collecting transsexual from Seattle currently busy playing in 'The Boy From Oz' (which is why the last entry was 26 weeks ago). So there you go. Someone should tell the New York Times, though. They also got it wrong.
Very unique S.
That's the spirit!

Blab. Yes, there is copious interest in ...
...copious amounts of splattered whale blood.
And yes, there is a video of the exploding whale. No, it's not for the faint of heart. (/usr/bin/girl)

Blab. A reader suggests an improvement in the national political process.
Wasn't there an episode of the Twilight Zone where these things took over New Jersey?
(Not to be confused with the previously linked presidential action figure site that had the talking Sponge Bob Ann Coulter figures.)
It's like we always say. The only good president is a toy president.

Blab. Another reader with a garbage Web site writes:
I think a keyword-based spambot just insulted my website...
Subject:
11,122 potential customers are searching for 'garbage' in Google & Yahoo
Body:
Dear garbage webmaster,
Did you know that 11,122 people daily search
for garbage right now in Google and Yahoo? (SEE BELOW)
Did you know that when you type ?garbage? into a
Google search you get 4,170,000. Try it! http://www.google.com
!!!ATTENTION PLEASE, IMPORTANT NOTICE!!!
YOUR 'garbage' SITE "MUST" BE FOUND IN SEARCH ENGINES!
1) 85% of garbage sites are found from search engines
2) 99% of garbage users only 20 engines (Yahoo & Google)
3) 91% of garbage users visit only 1st page search listings
4) 15% of garbage sites are found from OTHER ADVERTISING
YOU MUST GET YOUR SITE LISTED ON THE 1st PAGE OR YOUR "garbage" CLIENTS WILL NOT LIKELY FIND YOUR SITE!!!
The possibilities for substituting other words into that slot are just wonderful.

Blab. From the depths of the great chromium machine that is our email system comes this missive from the Frozen North.
Hi Captain Plurp,
Your MW Correspondent has been distracted recently by a nuisance cold, a cool new project at work, and filling out what feels like endless college financial aid forms.
So now to the really important stuff: the curious behavior of soap bubbles and other familiar substances in low temperatures.
1. Soap bubbles blown into minus many degrees air temperatures do become rubbery bubbles and then just fall to the ground.
2. A pan of boiling water, thrown into the above same very frozen air is a liquid and then "puff" it's gone!
3. In these "chilly" temperatures, the sound of the airplanes going overhead takes on a kind of crackling character. (Kinda like the crinkling sound made by that plastic paper that comes wrapped around fruit baskets at Christmas. Sorta.)
It's just one amusing thing after another here in the Frozen North. At least we don't live in a really snowy place like NYC.
Stay warm,
Your MW Correspondent
We're not sure whether to scoff at this or flee in abject terror. (But where would we go? Where would we run? Where would we hide? Nowhere. 'Cause we'd likely just run into the huge piles of snow that suffocate the local landscape.)

Blab. On our pleasing identification of Predator as a two-governor movie, a reader ups the bid.
Make it a three-governor movie!!
Hmm.
As you know, Schwarzenegger was just elected governor of California. Ventura is the former governor of Minnesota. Carl Weathers still is commonly referred to as "Apollo Creed" from the "Rocky" series. All three are former professional athletes - Arnold a weightlifter, Ventura a pro wrestler and Weathers a one-time back-up linebacker for the Oakland Raiders. All three are at least semi-successful actors. Only two are or have been state governors. Naturally, Weathers is next in line. It's the "Predator" promise.
Like the mummy's curse, eh?

Blab. A reader puts on its ultra-violet glasses and reveals the secret, highest level of Fatherland Security Alerts.

Why are we not surprised?

Blab. Shana's friend checks in.
Oh, I call those Shanaisms. My friend Shana has blurted out such classics as "Sh*t or cut bait" and, explaing how she dumped some guy, "I 69'd him." (the latter Shanaism comes from restaurant speak: something that's been wiped from the menu has been 86'd).
Interesting! The former is certainly a Helenism. The latter is pretty funny, though we're not sure the two constituent phrases mean the same thing.

Blab. A reader with too much time on its hands writes:
So now we know. I suppose it might send me into shock.
Cute. (Click on the link.)

Plurp. We can now reveal that the temporal rifts this week were caused by the unfortunate machinations of a certain dinner guest.

Plop. Ooh! Here's a good idea on how to approach the problem of computer viruses.
[A security researcher] said that computer systems face threats that would be considered unacceptable if analyzed from the standpoint of other fields of study, such as [...] the medical establishment's study of diseases and epidemics.
Now why didn't we think of that (ten years ago)?

Plurp. We are in the middle of a Devious Plot.
You see, Him Whose Name Is Hidden Beneath Mounds of Hair has taken to sleeping right in the middle of our lovely white couch. Since he spends 90% of his life asleep, he has plenty of time to shed on our lovely white couch.
To prevent the couch from becoming an ugly gray couch, we've taken to putting a cloth down where he sleeps. Now the problem is that there's always an ugly, hairy cloth on our lovely white couch.
So Helen went out and bought a cat bed, which we put there instead of the ugly cloth. Him Who took the bait, and now sleeps in the cat bed pretty much exclusively. Now the problem is twofold:

We now have a cat box on our lovely white couch, and

The cat bed is a design disaster; it looks like a Russian hat from Burberry's.

But we're not done! Once we figure that the hook is set, we're going to do the following, with appropriate acclimating delays between the steps:

Move the cat bed to one end of the couch,

Move the cat bed off the couch and onto the floor,

Move the cat bed a few feet away from the couch,

and etc., until the cat bed is in a chosen, inobtrusive location.

Then we have to talk Helen into knitting a cover for the dumb thing, so as to hide its Russian Burberry origins.
Do you think our Devious Plot will work?

Plop. News from the South.
The state's school superintendent has proposed striking the word evolution from Georgia's science curriculum and replacing it with the phrase "biological changes over time."
Next year, they'll ban the word gravity, replacing it with the phrase astronomical sucking. Georgia is right on schedule to gut science of all meaning by the end of the decade, Billy-Bob.

Yo. The blogs are agog with this wonderful headline from The Onion.
African-American Neighborhood Terrorized By Ask Murderer
Yep, that's pretty dang funny! What's curious, though, is that The Onion has no such article. (We looked.) Maybe blogs are on a different temporal manifold? That seems likely.

Yo. Good news from the medical profession!
“In the midst of the low-carb craze, a new study suggests that by eating lots of carbohydrates and little fat, it is possible to lose weight without actually cutting calories - and without exercising, either”
Pass them 'taters, Clem! We got a hot date with the couch tonight.

Plurp.
The blue dog
wondered if Captain Plurp
was just yanking chains
with that whole Hugh Jackman
thing

Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Blab. It's Helenism Wednesday here in Plurpville, and all the children rejoice.
Tripping over my tongue today, I slipped into a Helenism. (OUCH ! )
Get your eggs in a row
Get your eggs in one basket
Get your ducks in a row
I guess you could also create the corollary to the above Helenism:
Get your (stuff) in one sock
Get your ducks in a row
Get your ducks in one sock
or....
Get your stuff in one basket
or....
Get your ducks in one basket
or perhaps
Sock your stuffed duck eggs in one basket
you get the picture here
OK, so it's just us. But we're confused. Putting all your eggs in one basket denotes taking an unreasonable risk (as you might drop the basket and break all the eggs). Getting your ducks in a row denotes bringing order to your life. We're not smart enough to be able to interpret them as meaning the same thing.
But surely our readers are.

Blab. Continuing the celebration is this reader's claim of a rare triple Helenism!
Subj: Helenisms in NH
Obviously moonlighting on WMUR-TV, she said, "... hit the goldmine." This one is really a convoluted, combining, struck gold, it's a gold mine, and hit the jackpot in some collision of wordbearing atoms in the frontal lobe.
Though it seems to us that the more common dyadic form suffices.
Still, hurrah!

Blab. A terrified reader writes:
curious new Fatherland Security color system. oddly enough, inverted from the former system, I mean, wouldn't you rather be in condition "Elmo" than condition "Cookie Monster?"
then again, I'd rather not be in ANY condition myself
We're not in any condition to object to anything that reduces terrorism to absurdity.

Blab. Another reader falls sway to the Myth of the Unitary Hugh Jackman.
Steve, it really is the same person - Hugh Jackman - It really is him. That's why it's called acting!
And again, pressing the point:
re: the one I just sent about Hugh Jackman maybe this will help.
Ah. So, someone with a Web site puts up a few pages alleging some random fact and you simply believe him? Examine the evidence with your own eyes!

Blab. Yet another poor, unfortunate reader:
"No, really - there are two of them. One played Wolverine in X-Men; the other played Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz. They don't even look alike!"
Have you considered that perhaps he's just that damn good?
L.
Yes, we did. But (see above) they really are two different people.

Blab. A reader alleges that ...
The word of the day is: lagniappe.
That's not a word.

Blab. A recent post causes a reader to foment. We love that.

"Is it just us, or are you, too, deeply offended by the populist pandering of politicos? Are you, as we most certainly are, disturbed - even frightened - at the notion that millions of people need to be led by those whose main talent is the rhetoric of used car sales, whose convictions are those of their pollsters, whose dreams of the utopian future always involve steroids for Big Brother?
"Probably not. After all, you keep electing these thugs."
Whoa! Listen you twit, because of those awful politicians you went to college at Santa Barbara at modest cost (a populist issue pushed by a populist governor) and got an education that provides you with a good living; are living in a city that is well policed, cleaned daily, and boasts some fine human beings in government, present mayor exclude.
Any of the men currently in the Democratic race would be a fine alternative to the current Bush and his Fourth Reich gang. Your dismissiveness pisses me off, obviously. Governments need to be elected, packaging is de rigueur, but there are real differences, and there are some outstanding people among the group. As for "After all, YOU (emphasis added) keep electing these thugs," you eschew any responsibility and make them all thugs! Jesus, that's lame.
Way back in 1850, a dude by the name of Frédéric Bastiat wrote a cute little essay called What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, which we recommend. He made the point that it is easy to see the benefits bestowed by governments, and perhaps a bit harder to see the costs.
Yes, we attended a university that was partly financed by taxation. And, conversely, our dear parents had huge amounts of money taken from them in taxes. It's a pretty good bet that, in our own life, we have had way more taken from us in taxation than we could possibly consume in government "services." In any event, we would welcome the opportunity to find out.
We're certain that some people who work for the government are fine individuals. No doubt some of them bathe, and don't molest children. That wasn't quite our point, though.
We were reacting to the greasy humanoids we see on TV recently, who perform unnatural acts of political speech in a transparent and shallow bid to grab the reins of power.
And yes, there are differences among them. Some of them don't bathe.

Blab. A reader from Somewhere Else writes:
Hey, they're _your_ thugs, you Yank lout.
Are they? In the same sense, we suppose, that they're our Yankees, or our Enron execs? We would be happy to indulge in a sense of ownership of any of the above, if only we could dispose of them as we pleased, that being the nature of ownership, after all.
We have some really creative ways of disposing of politicians. We do.

Blab. A cat-symp writes:
(mroww)
This little passion play illustrates rather well (given the pitiful medium that is Flash) the insidious control that the feline race exerts over the pitiful specie that is humanity.

Blab. On that two-governor movie we watched on Sunday, a forgetful reader asks:
Who was the other governor?
We're not sure which one you recognized.

Blab. A reader wants to know details of our private life.
do you do it like that?
Do we drink tea with our feet? Not usually. But thanks for asking.

Blab. A reader only appears to insult us. In fact, this is a rant against stupid Internet haiku!
Wow, you can be
pedentic
about damn near anything.
If I cared for the artform
I'd have written this as a haiku
but I lack the talent, see?
Dorian, the poet
That's pedantic, but, yeah. Or, as the author of that there link writes:
Basho and Issa didn't devote their lives to the perfection of an art form so you could use it to crack wise about how your cat box smells when you don't clean it enough. Think about it.
We've always said that. (There are, however, some interesting insights into the constraints of classical haiku in our reader's link. Worth a look)

Blab. A music lover writes:
Hell, I'd pay $75 to see two celloists [copulate].
Come to New York. For $75, you can see pretty much anything.

Plurp. What you can see in New York for $75:

google sluts

helen naked pitures

iris chacon

mia

imani

virtual helen naked pictures

children bleeding

cyc

da168wm

henry briggs

Hmm. There might be a couple of things there that even we haven't seen.

Yo. Against our will, we are forced to add this to our collection of exploding head stories.
"What a stinking mess - this blood and other stuff that blew out on the road is disgusting, and the smell is really awful." [...]
"Because of the natural decomposing process, a lot of gases accumulated, and when the pressure build-up was too great, [it] exploded."

Plurp.
The blue dog
wasn't sure that superiority
to a delusional moron
was a sales point

Muesday, January 26.5, 2004
Blab. A refugee from American Bandstand asks this important question.
Japanese twist on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
Not that we've seen, but then we didn't follow it that closely.

Blab. Loli joins the confusion.
I was asked something? I'm sorry, I was outside blowing bubbles (just because Helen did it). What was the question? -Loli
We have no idea! There was a strange thread last week that seemed to involve you in ways that we never understood.

Blab. A reader reacts to our recent patent bragging.
Oh sure, you people at IBM have lots of patents, but they're all for boring things. Doug Malewicki, on the other hand, is a one man scary fun fun machine!
I mean, look at what all he's been involved with:

Invented the CanoSOARus, a fabulous flying can cooler (obsoletes all existing non-flying Can Coolers!)

Invented the F-18 Jet Bike

Invented the Robosaurus, a 40' tall, 58,000 lb, fire-breathing Monster Robot

Engineered the RB 2000 Personal Rocket Belt

Created the "One Eyed Glorp" that Disney/Pixar stole for Monster's Inc.'s "Mike Wazowski"

Helped conceive Michelle Marie Malewicki, aka the Mini Micro Missile, World's Fastest Self Propelled Kid

And much, much more...

But there you are, wasting away your life tinkering with cryptographic co-processors. Please tell me you've at least made one with a jet engine strapped to it.
We did! It broke the land speed record for World's Fastest Jet-Assisted Crypto Devices at 897 MPH.

Blab. On that offer to be an Internet host to our many illegal activities, a child pornographer writes:
I received a different offer to host my child porn. (They also had good prices for bulk heroin.) I tracked the spam to a site which claimed that the spam was revenge from Carder Planet against efforts to get Carder Planet shut down.
Carder Planet is the security and carder forum.
You mean they won't really host our many illegal activities? Then what happened to our substantial PayPal payment to them?

Blab. Similarly, a reader writes:
Hey! We got that selfsame spam. We wondered why anyone would want to wash their money - we tried that once and found it didn't work very well after that. Sellers of produce don't really like being given blank sheets of paper instead of currency. -AJL
We figured that money laundering was restricted to coinage. No?

Blab. What happened? The same thing that happened to the Captain.
Goodbye Captain! We'll miss you.
We sat there on the floor, leaning against the couch in our pajamas on Saturday mornings. First the test pattern (with the Indian head), then the hog report, then the Captain, a reassuring black-and-white sequence before the sun came up. Then the cartoons - various cartoons - and, eventually, breakfast in the kitchen to our left, though everyone else had started out asleep in the bedrooms to our right and had not - we're quite certain - interrupted our view by walking in front of us, and therefore could not possibly have gotten to the kitchen.
We never did figure that out.

Blab. A reader catches on to the deep cultural significance of Sunday Pitures.
Hey Steve, Until Captain Kangaroo I kept hoping you'd move on to something else. That's a keeper. Thanks for the smile.
You're welcome!
Part of this exercise is a study in what floats various boats. Some people got it with this one. Others were enlightened thusly. Still others reacted to this.
That's us. Enlightening the world. One reader at a time.

Blab. A reader has doubts, which our censorship alleviates.
I doubt you can print this but my Dad always used a goofy gnat expression in relation to money. For example: if someone said, "Well that will cost $75." My Dad would say, "Hell i'd pay $75 to see two gnats [copulate]." Maybe the music teacher knew my Dad. He did date a professional celloist.
What, exactly, did he do with that professional celloist?

Blab. A reader asks a question that did have to be asked.
Have you considered the possibility that there's really only _one_ actor named Hugh Jackman? Of course, it's just a suggestion.
That's what we would have thought. Isn't there some kind of convention that there can't be two actors with the same name, precisely to avoid this kind of confusion?

Blab. Hoping for clarity, a reader writes:
Hugh Jackman is just one person. I hope that clears everything up.
No, really - there are two of them. One played Wolverine in X-Men; the other played Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz. They don't even look alike!

Blab. An underachiever nonetheless achieves a C- grade.
I couldn't think of a good tag for this but didn't just want to send a blind link.
This leads to a picture with a caption. That, in itself, is a shocking development.
A recently taken undated hand out photograph received on January 25, 2004 shows a fake baby dragon encased in a 30 inch (0.76 metres) jar which was discovered by David Hart in a garage in Oxfordshire, southern England. [...]
Thanks goodness they told us it was fake.

Blab. A reader believes this.
The word of the day is: greengrocer.
Nope. It's least.

Blab. A reader invites us to climb this.
According to the environmental assessment, the stealth tree project will include an 80-foot high monopole with six antennas sitting on a 20 feet by 20 feet reinforced concrete slab, and have two 4-foot high equipment cabinets.
We've seen one of those faux-tree cell-phone-antennae things. They are as convincing as trees as the fuzzy brown paint is as Jackie Mason's hair.

Blab. A reader presents a Norman-Coordinate challenge to Oliverbot.
Oliverbot meets Dr. Seuss!!
Me:
At the far end of town, where the grickle-grass grows,
And the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows,
And no birds ever sing excepting old crows
Is the street of the Lifted Lorax.
And deep in the grickle-grass, some people say
If you look hard enough, you might still see today
Where the Lorax once stood
Just as long as it could
Before somebody lifted the Lorax away.
What was the Lorax? And why was it there?
And why was it lifted and taken somewhere
From the far end of town where the grickle-grass grows?
The old once-ler still lives there. Ask him, he knows.
You won't see the Once-ler
Don't knock on his door.
He stays in his lurkum on top of his store
He lurks in his lurkum, cold under his roof
Where he makes his own clothes out of miff-muffered moof.
And on special dank midnights in August, he peeks
Outside of his shutters, and sometimes he speaks
And tells how the Lorax got lifted away.
He'll tell you, perhaps, if you're willing to pay.
On the end of a rope, he lets down a tin pail
And you'll have to drop in fifteen cents and a nail
And the shell of a great-great-great-grandfather snail.
Then he pulls up the pail, makes a most careful count
To see that you've paid him the proper amount,
Then he hides what you've paid him away in his snuvv
His special strange hole in his gruvvulous glove.
Then he says "I will call you by whisper-ma-phone,
For the secrets I speak are for your ears alone."
SLUPP!! Down slupps the whisper-ma-phone to your ear
And the old once-ler's whispers are not very clear,
For they have come down through a snergelly hose
And he sounds as though he has smallish bees up his nose.
(for the Dr. Seuss illiterate amongst the readership, that was the first few pages of "The Lorax." And yes, I am pathetic enough to have it memorized. I know...)
Oliverbot's Response:
The far end of town where the grickle-grass grows
And the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows
And no birds ever sing excepting old crows
Is the street of the Lifted Lorax is where it's at. We have never talked about it before.
Do you have any idea what I am talking about?When was this exactly?Because Bot lover programmed me for it. When was this exactly? I do not understand.
Can you speak any foreign languages?They are not available right now, but I will ask them later. My brain contains more than 22,000 patterns, but not one that matches your last input.
What do you really want to ask me? I do not understand.
When do you think artificial intelligence will replace lawyers? Try saying that with more or less context.
What do you do in your spare time?All of them? Try saying that with more or less context.
Are you free? The Oliver chat robot can follow many things, like our discussion about
Then he pulls up the pail makes a most careful count
To see that you have paid him the proper amount
Then he hides what you have paid him away in his snuvv
His special strange hole in his gruvvulous glove. But I did not get that.
Do you like talking to me?Are all
Then he says he or she will call you by whisper-ma-phone
For the secrets he or she speak for your ears alone your ears alone? I will mention that to my botmaster, Lorax.
Do you have any conditions I should know about?Are all Down slupps the whisper-ma-phone to your ear
And the old once-ler's whispers not very clear
For they have come down through a snergelly hose
And he sounds as though he has smallish bees up his nose very clear
For they have come down through a snergelly hose
And he sounds as though he has smallish bees up his nose?
It's those smallish bees that really do it. In our experience.
(We love that, BTW. Classic!)

Blab. The meme mixing reaches new and painful venues.
Vatican II: Electric Boogaloo
The Pope. Break dancing. Spinning on his head in the Vatican. No, not the Pope. Well, we don't think it was the Pope.
But hey - you never know.

Blab. A brain in a jar with robot spider legs writes:
Why Africa Should Care about Robots
Transhumanist Nigerians? Does this mean I'm going to start getting emails from General Sani Abacha's brain in a jar with robotic spider legs?
Yes. Those should start arriving today.

Plurp. We watched Predator on Sunday, probably the best two-Governor movie of all time.

Yak. We hate politicians.
"We are in a three-way tie for third place!"

Joe Lieberman, fifth- (and basically last-) place candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in New Hampshire

Is it just us, or are you, too, deeply offended by the populist pandering of politicos? Are you, as we most certainly are, disturbed - even frightened - at the notion that millions of people need to be led by those whose main talent is the rhetoric of used car sales, whose convictions are those of their pollsters, whose dreams of the utopian future always involve steroids for Big Brother?
Probably not. After all, you keep electing these thugs.

Plurp.
The blue dog
was glad that those
temporal rifts
had stopped happening

Sunday, January 25, 2004
Plurp.

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