Plurp: Getting Stale

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2004.02.08 : 2004.02.14

Friturday, February 13.5, 2004
Blab. Several reader surprise us by entering this week's Boring Plurp Reader Contest.

All the images came from Flickr?
Ooh - good guess! But no, as far as we know, none of them did. Undeterred, a raving exhibitionist writes:
Dear Steve,
I'm not sure how to take being called a "raving fascist." I honestly don't care if the government knows that I play euchre, read plurp, use penguins as baseballs, watch animated cats perform rock songs, send flowers to my grandmother, and shop at Linens & Things. Okay, maybe the soap opera page i visit is kind of embarrassing. I really believe "that those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing." And in answer to your question: I do frequently walk through the house nude and I never close the blinds on the backyard windows. Raving fascist? Really now. Also, I'm changing my "caption" to the bottom right pic of the pucker series to "Billy Bob Thornton and his Eleventh Wife."
Whoa! Way too much information!
Finally (for today, anyway), we cow one last Treasured Reader into the small herd of contestants.
All right, all right, here's my entry in the contest.
Mayville is abuzz over the upset at the Cooter county karaoke contest, in which a fish entered by Mr. Maynard Cox won first prize. The other contestants were unable to perform after sampling some of Granny Cox's 'special' lemonade - the secret ingredient of which turned out to be a heaping spoon of alum.
/Loli bows
We'll have to take your word for this, never having (to our knowledge) tasted alum before, but we rise in spontaneous applause nonetheless.
Congratulations to all of our winners.

Blab. A reader wishes to contribute to our massive collection.
From the wonderful British TV show "Life Laundry" i heard a potential Helenism
"Are you nearly at the end of your rope?"
-end of your tether
- ?
We dunno. Isn't a rope a tether? Now if you had said at your rope's end, we would have had an easier time of it.

Blab. A reader derides Flickr. We think.
"We collect images with cameraphones and so forth, but we have no good mechanism for advancing them out into the world": hahahaha!
Now, without the link, we would have figured you were laughing at the verbiage. With the link, however, we figure you are claiming that the 300k moblogs are already what Flickr is attempting to be.
Maybe so! We note, however, that Flickr adds user-defined social groups and chat rooms, user-defined friends lists and collections of photos from other users.
Is any of that important? We have no idea.

Blab. On the redirection of the hive mind that was GNE to that new Flickr thing, an optimistic reader writes:
GNE's candle flickrs, yet it may not sputtr and die. Although, if it does sputtr and die, please remember I used sputtr before they did.
So noted.

Blab. An excited reader informs us that ...
GNE chat is back up!
Was it down? (We're just not following this at the moment.)

Blab. On that new Mel Gibson flick, a reader writes:
Clever, this actor guy Caviezel:
..We all killed him, and he died for it.
I feel all warm and cuddly already. - Morton
Wow. We have personal responsibility for killing Jesus? That's even better than having personal responsibility for making Eve eat that apple. We're going into the button business with this.
Order now!

Blab. A lascivious reader sends us a non-worksafe link.
Subj: swimsuits
Well, we failed to "just say NO" but we never were Reagan fans. I never realized I could envy a horse. We prefer the british swimsuit issue. Fewer horses, we guess.
Dorian, the horse's ass
No comment.

Blab. A reader sends us this.

Beware, Evildoers!

You people frighten us. You really do.

Blab. Another reader wants us to ...
Enter Slice City.
Um ...
[Slice City] lets the Sims in the game play a video game in which they create mini cities. So, along with the many things that Sims can be instructed to do -- such as going to work, playing guitar, cooking, socializing and dating -- they can blow endless hours creating small urban environments. [...]
"The Sims must routinely refurbish the buildings to keep the citizens happy, or just let them deteriorate and force the citizens to become unhappy and move away."
So we'd really rather not. But thanks very.

Blab. An old friend writes:
Hello...
It has come to my attention that you are being under the police investigation.
Is that true? Have you really commited such crimes?
Please read the following article located at:
[URL removed]
Sincerely,
Your old friend
Yes, old friend, it's true. We've been systematically assassinating spammists.

Blab. Looks like perky "Canada" has wormed its way into the news again.
Perky "Canada" has temper; bad sense of humor.
Indeed.
Canada's government on Friday condemned a show by U.S. late-night television host Conan O'Brien that insulted people in French-speaking Quebec [...].
Alexa McDonough, a legislator for the left-leaning New Democrats, described the program as "racist filth" [...].
We are particularly amused by the charges of racism. Just what race is this, we wonder?

Plurp. Oh. Yeah.
Happy happy.

Plurp.
The blue dog
flickered
like a horse

Wednursday, February 11.5, 2004
Blab. In this week's Boring Plurp Reader Contest, you were asked to send us words that either were or were not associated with various frightening images.
Curiously, a few of you did.

"Incredibly Boring Plurp Reader Contest": Eight! Jeffie! Laredo! Offeratory! Collateral! Saturday! Slime!
Zackly! (Though how our Treasured Reader knew that was Jeffie is still unclear.)
This begets another mystery.
Mr. Ogden married a woman with a congenital fish-like deviated cleft. Just look at what they bagat. Shocking!
Little Jeffie Ogden got married? Nobody ever tells us anything. Less mysterious is this reader's interpretation of the pixels.
It's an odd one out competition and the answer is that they are all fish, except the one in the bottom right which is a bloke holding a fish.
:-D
(Actually, they are all blokes holding fish.) Belatedly, a fish lip writes:
You should have seen the one who got away [belated comment on fish lip photographs].
A reader contributes what appears to be a stupid response.
1: I squeeze my face 2: I just saw David Gest nude 3: I just ate a lemon 4: Redneck with fish
In fact, we were just being set up for this really funny response!
1: Pucker 2: Pucker 3: Pucker 4: Redneck with fish
Why is that funny? We dunno. But it is.
A reader with a fish in its pants writes:
The images. Hmm. Starting from the top left and proceeding clockwise.....
1) Corporal Punishment for a Foul-Mouthed Boy
2) The Effects of Swallowing Dry Ice
3) That's disgusting. Put that thing back in your knickers.
4) I beg your pardon; I don't have a pie-hole.
Yo Plurp Dude. I sense that you will be away for a while. It would be consistent with the last few "Incredibly Boring Plurp Reader Contest(s)." And, we may actually miss you this time.
Suggestion: Try pinching your tongue between your thumb and index finger and concurrently speak the following: "I was born on a pirate ship." It's great fun.
Our reader has rare intuitive insight. Or maybe not. It's so hard to tell! Meanwhile, we have spent the entire evening pinching our tongue and telling the mirror about our pirate heritage. The mirror does not yet believe us. Or maybe it's just our speech impediment.
Anyhow! A reader makes a wonderfully geeky joke (if you consider slime science to be geeky).
Picture 1 (upper left):   telephase
Picture 2 (upper right): metaphase
Picture 3 (lower left):   prophase
Picture 4 (lower right): spermatogenesis
Finally, a reader tells us something shocking.
I want to be a fish.
And that was more than we wanted to know.
But what's the deal with the rest of you? Why aren't you sending us astonishingly funny (or mind-wrenchingly cryptic) words in reaction to our carefully-selected collections of pixels? Huh? Fish got your lips?

Blab. On that mysterious new Web-based thing, a reader gets terribly excited.
>We may even explain why we care.
Marvellous, spectacular, throat-wobblingly terrific news!
Meanwhile, a corner of this particular veil of mystery is lifted.
Actually, I think the Flickr secret is officially out. (Note that the URL is now www.flickr.com instead of the other super-secret one.)
I'm sure your withholding of "naked helen pitures" will be considered by many a major disservice, but I trust your discretion.
Em
Indeed, Flickr just launched today. As best as we can tell, it's a bunch of predefined and user-defined chat rooms, plus the ability to share pitures. Or, as explained so crisply by an advisor of the company that developed it:
"We collect images with cameraphones and so forth, but we have no good mechanism for advancing them out into the world. Here's a mechanism for batching them into a locked-and-loaded tool for firing them into the world."
So there you have it.
Now, as to why we care - the company that developed it is the company that was developing GNE, the game prototype to which we were addicted a while ago. They were all fired up about making it into a real, fully-developed game, which we thought would be pretty fun.
Now they've gotten a bit of funding for putting out this piture-sharing thing. We'll see if they still have time to develop GNE.

Blab. We have been saying for quite some time that there is a vast, ongoing conspiracy to control our thoughts. Finally, we have tricked the conspiracy into tipping its hand.
I see that you have fallen into our trap, Mr. White.
We, your readers, have over the years been responding to your various musings and feeding you various links, both blind and sighted, as part of an intentional scheme to get you to post that broken link on Sunday.
You see, while you thought that you were controlling our behavior, we were in fact conditioning you to expect certian types of responses to the stimuli that you emitted. Of course, these responses were themselves stimuli, carefully crafted to guide you towards the target behavior that we wished from you.
Really, Mr. White; did you actually believe that a communication network of computers spanning the planet would be used for things as trivial as making jokes about Quorn and the geometry of produce? The Network was born out of Science, and it is Science that is conducted here.
Now that the experiment on you is done, please report to your superiors at IBM for brain dissection. It will only hurt a little.
So, when we turn up missing in the next few days, our Treasured Readers will know why.

Blab. On the prospects of Visual Cobol (and Visual Forth), a reader writes:
OK, f-word visual everything.
We'll get right on that.

Blab. A reader with a taste for adventure writes:
Hi Captain Plurp,
Loved the link today from one of your Treasured Readers on the jaunty aquatic topless car! It looks very sporty and I think you should definitely buy one for your next birthday. Or for any upcoming trips that will be near the ocean. Readers who would like to experience an earlier version of this vehicle can visit a wonderful family resort in Northern Minnesota and have a ride! My family and I have visited there several times and attest to how fun it is to drive around on land and then zoom off into the water & take an aquatic ride. It kinda puts a whole new view on the "go jump in the lake" missive.
Your Travel Guide & MW Correspondent
Hey, kids - let's all jump in the Amphicar and head up to Northern Minnesota!

Blab. There is a strange synchronicity in the universe today, as reader who compulsively follow all of our links will certainly realize.
Re: Topless Swimsuits
It seems that everyone is developing swimming cars now. That was on TV yesterday. It's a James Bond meets Transformers car-cum-hydrofoil. The rear spoiler rotates downward and becomes the rear wing, and there's an outbord engine hidden under the rear bumper. Quite impressive, but absolutely not for sale. Is the swimming car The Next Big Thing (TM)?
Very carfully swimming S.
We do note that the East River is quite a bit less crowded than the FDR Drive. So far.

Blab. A reader who is forever young writes:
In several decades, when we are old, there will be a problem with social security. I wouldn't put it past the persons in power to think it a reasonable solution to institute a draft of senior citizens for military service. Can you imagine being on guard duty sitting on a wheel chair with a catheter and a pellet gun (oh and don't forget the diapers).   Perhaps squirting the contents of the catheter reservoir at suspicious characters would be an excellent deterrent, and possibly would be a fun-fun activity to pass the time for an old flatulent goof.   Just postulating.
Peace.
Why wait? We're planning on plopping ourself down this weekend on the corner of 57th and 5th with our wheel chair, catheter and pellet gun for several hours of fun-fun.
Scary fun-fun.

Blab. A reader who flies the friendly Loompa skies writes:
That plane is seriously scary
New Yorkers are encouraged not to click on that link. We warned you.

Blab. On the topic of the U.S. government monitoring all of your Google searches, a raving fascist writes:
Re: Google monitoring. As Dr. Phil so often says, "Those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing." Gotta love those Dr. Philisms!
We wonder if Dr. Phil, or our Treasured Reader, have curtains on their windows. Or clothes.

Blab. For some reason, a reader chooses not to go to Google. This is so confusing to us! Helen came over to us a couple of days ago and asked, Would goat cheese go well with lamb chops? We replied that we had no idea and asked her to wait a second. Why?, she asked. Hang on, we said ... Uh, yeah. It'll be great.
Has anyone coined "spam chowder" yet?
Yes.

Blab. A reader extends the genre of broken jokes beyond our comprehension.
Broken jokes, under the guise of Jokes from Germany, sent to me this morning. I saw them, and thought of you!
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
The police. I'm afraid there's been an accident. Your husband is in hospital.
A man walks into a pub. He is an alcoholic whose drink problem is destroying his family.
Did you hear about the blonde who jumped out off a bridge? She was clinically depressed and took her own life because of her terribly low elf-esteem.
What do you call a cat with no tail? A manx cat.
Why do undertakers wear ties? Because their profession is very serious, and it is important that their appearance has a degree of gravitas.
How many electricians does it take to change a light bulb?
One.
Why do women fake orgasms? Because they want to give men the impression that they have climaxed.
Two men are sitting in a pub. One man turns to the other and says: 'Last night I saw lots of strange men coming in and out of your wife's house.' The other man replies: 'Yes, she has become a prostitute to subsidise her drug habit.'
Two cows are in a field. Suddenly, from behind a bush, a rabbit leaps out and runs away. One cow looks round a bit, eats some grass and then wanders off.
Why are there no aspirin in the jungle? Because it would not
be financially viable to attempt to sell pharmaceutics in the largely unpopulated rainforest.
We assume that these were translated by Babelfish, as the Germans are well known for their succinct language and snappy sense of humor.
Did you hear over the Blondine, which jumped out away from a bridge? It was depressed clinically and it possesses the life because of their terriblly low eleven-attention took.

Plurp. Once again, with the Earth poised just so in its orbit, we undergo the annual examination of our core cultural values. And once again, as in every previous year, we demonstrate our firm commitment to inclusivity and gender integrity by refusing to look at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.
Even if it is on the Web. Just a click away.
Even if hundreds of people labored for months specifically to hook into our most powerful instincts. Even then.
And we definitely won't watch the annual stalker vids, nor play with the new VR thingies. Under no circumstances.
Like you, we just say no.

Yo. An excellent icon for us in particular.

Plurp. We love meetings.
This doesn't have to be rock accurate.

This doesn't have to be rock solid.

This doesn't have to be perfectly accurate.

Plurp. It's not that we don't like meetings. It's just the we have more than our fair share. Lately, we're double-booking meetings so that, should one meeting end early, we can attend the other one. And we prepare for our next meeting in our current meeting.
So we were thinking today that this was awfully selfish of us. And we were wondering if it would be possible to sell some of our excess meetings on eBay. Readers who know should tell us. We're thinking we have a gold mine by the tail here.

Plurp.
The blue dog
turned out to be merely
a mechanism for batching them
into a locked-and-loaded tool
for firing them into the world.

Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Blab. Demonstrating the currently excellent focus of the mind control lasers, our readers react to this week's Sunday Piture in the prescribed manner.
hey what gives? I got one of those little red x's in the top left corner of your pic box?
Or, even more colloquially ...
Where's my open-faced meatloaf dish?
Here's where we indulge in shameless and slathering self-congratulation in having raised a purposefully broken link to an art form.
It's all about context.

Blab. A reader leaps through conceptual space and lands here.
Re: Mia and her Miata
Speaking of the Miata, how about getting a new topless swimsuit, Steve? Bit pricey, though.
Very impressed S.
It's not what you think! It's the Aquada, a Miata-esque amphibious car. What fun!

Blab. A reader gets all excited and nostalgic. At the same time.
A new web business, huh? I hope you'll notify us in that narrow period of time between it becoming public and it going under? Thanks ever so.
It's the late 1990s again! Huzzah!
We'll be happy to do so. We may even explain why we care.

Blab.
The word of the day is: gambit.

Blab. The world is a very strange place, as readers of this foolish blog surely know.
Here is some weird spam recieved today:

Hi there!
I'm from Roland Dilmah - your good buddy and comrade!
I'm fully confident good proposal for you in the present day wonderful (name deleted)
Visit this site at once for your bonus!
(link deleted)
P.S. Bequest is Without charge now!
Trully your's, your ally and associate.
I'm firmly convince you can ending from this perfect nippy intercontinental tips. Send any email at Gratis here sweetheart
We love that! And we look forward to ending from this perfect nippy intercontinental tips.

Blab. A frustrated reader writes:
F-word visual C++ !
Try Visual Cobol ! (Or maybe you prefer Visual Forth?)

Blab. A blind reader writes:
[link].
It's the Necronomicontest! Readers with more free time than we have these days are invited to figure it out and explain it to us.

Blab. A reader reminds us.
It has come to our attention, that many, many Muslims have Google on their computers. This powerful search system can allow the bad among them to gain access to many sites which contain data and other information that could be, if used in certain ways, a clear danger to the American people. While we believe with our very Christian souls in the freedom of most people, we will be making plans to monitor all Google searches by persons with names suggesting foreignness, particularly those that may be identified as Arab in origin.
Vigilantly Yours,
While we don't mean to come across as paranoid, it's pretty clear that the U.S. is already monitoring all Google searches. Heck, they monitor all phone calls worldwide in real time, checking for particular words and voices. Monitoring Google is trivial compared to that.

Blab. A reader with a charitable mission writes:
Dear Mr Dr Plurp,
I need knitters! I need people to help me create knitted hats from bags and bags of donated yarn for the cold headed folks on the NYC streets. Any of your readers want to give me a hand? Please help!!
You know where you can find me........just look to your right........HI!

So here we are, playing intermediary for yon charitable reader. Fine. Those of you who wish to help pull the wool over the eyes of the homeless should tell us. We'll hook you up (so to speak) with the above Treasured Reader.

Plurp. Our readers continue to be curious about certain ... topics.

helen naked pitures

mia

britney

get an elephant in a refrigerator

iris chacon

muffler men

plausible deniability

quap

sock puppet

zyx lady

We are all about the plausible deniability of muffler men.

Plurp. Here's a really interesting article. Readers may try to list all of the topics which overlap strongly with our own humble life. Those readers will, we suspect, miss a great number of them.

Yow. We recently got a patent on censorship. Really!

Yo. It's been pretty boring around here recently, hasn't it? And you know what that means. Yesser, it's another Incredibly Boring Plurp Reader Contest!! But we're going to try something a bit different this time. This time, you are to associate certain words with certain images. We carefully select the images (see below); you send us the words.

It would be ever so clever of you to make the words have something to do with the images, wouldn't it? But nothing obvious. We're looking for subtle here. We think. Or obvious. Your choice.
So enter early and often! You may win valuable prizes! Pigs may fly!

Plurp.
The blue dog
was all about
little red x's

Monday, February 9, 2004
Blab. A confused reader writes:
Pizzatorte?
No. Meat pie of meat pie meat of pizza pie.

Blab. A reader asks what seems to be a simple question, but isn't.
When do we see 'naked helen pitures' on [name of service deleted] ?
Yonder reader has Inside Knowledge of a Big Secret that will be revealed in the coming weeks - a new Web business that's being started by people whom we know but have never met. (Are you following this?) Part of being told about the Big Secret was having to promise that we wouldn't tell anyone else.
And the simple answer to our Treasured Reader's question is: Hopefully, never.

Blab.
The word of the day is: amanuensis.

Blab. Our Midwest Correspondent lifts the lid on a running joke.
A phone conversation at least two years ago...
Almamater solicitor: "Hi I'm Kevin, (blah, blah, blah) and wondered if you'd like to contribute again this year ...."
Me: "Sure. And y'know, if you'd like a hint of how you might receive another contribution, check your spelling of Steve White and his middle name (which I supplied)."
Almamater Solicitor: "Huh? Oh, OK. Yeah, thanks. Bye"
So much for data correction attempts.
Your MWC
Sigh. For years, our treasured alma mater has been sending mail to us asking for money. We were amused, as they always got our name wrong. It just seemed to us (and we know we're being picky here) that folks asking us for princely sum could at least get the prince's name right.
Over the years, we have also given clues to various solicitous callers, and sometimes even to the folks directly in charge of alumni relations. Curiously, this does not seem to have helped. We will be interested to see if our Midwest Correspondent fares better.
And after that, we'll work on them getting our address right.

Blab. A reader shoot and scores.
The penguin was pummeled an absolute value of 574.9.
Your welcome.
Thanks you.

Blab. A reader uses algebra to defame our vice president.
"out of sight, out of mind" = "invisible idiot"
Or hidden psychotic, eh?

Blab. A reader writes, temptingly:
miata
... but then:
mia - ta?
Is that an arithmetic problem?

Blab. A reader provides a solution. Precipitously.
In regards to the arithmetic question, I believe the answer lies somewhere in the following:
(Penguin batting score)(578.7) - AJL = ?
Therefore, AJL = ? - (Penguin batting score)(578.7)
Using proper focus and reasoning, I conclude that "AJL" must be referring to an acronym for either of the following:
1) universal constant for ALIEN JETTISON LUBRICATION
or
2) the ANTI-JAZZIFICATION-LEAGUE.
Sincerely, a despondent student at Plurp University
Dear, Treasured Reader. Be of good cheer. You have achieved an A+++++++ in Plurpology! That and five bucks will get you a nice latte.

Blab. A consistent reader writes:
Subj: Pre-emptive
I think it was when realized that he had an opposed thumb and could do anything with it, that I decided I had to take him out. You know?
Given the policy of our own benighted government, Treasured Alien Reader, we could not blame you. Or your intelligence.

Plop. If you're in a crowded meeting and you have a cell phone, here are two things not to do:

Don't have an amazingly long ring jingle. Don't, for instance, have an entire Bach cantata. We know - you think it's cute. But it's not. It's stupid.

Don't have your ring jingle repeat over and over and over without pause. It's going to take you 10 seconds to realize that it's you're phone. (Naturally, you were unaware that only you had that Bach cantata.) It's going to take another 20 seconds for you to figure out where you put it and then dig it out of your huge, disorganized bag. It'll take you another 30 seconds to get up and trip across your colleagues' feet, hopping and stumbling to the nearest doorway before you answer your phone. (You wouldn't want to answer the phone and say "Hang on." No. That would be impolite to your unknown caller.) So that's a whole minute in which the rest of us have had to put up with your ringing phone. Instead, at least have the decency to configure your phone to ring once and then shut up.

OK? Thanks much.

Plop. During a rambling, nearly incomprehensible interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press last night, Dubya said:
I owe it to the American people to speak as clearly as I can.
Just frightening.

Plurp.
The blue dog's
tongue had more
neurons

Sunday, February 8, 2004
Plurp.

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