Plurp: The Frog of War

Bigger!

2004.05.03 : 2004.05.08

Saturday, May 8, 2004
Plurp.
The George W. Bush War Pyramid

Friday, May 7, 2004
Blab. Plurp's own Dick Tracy is back with more news.
Hi Steve
Here's a followup on my crime stopping website from an on line newsletter about eBay called AuctionBytes.
Dale
Heck, he even gets kudos from none other than the government of the United States of America. (And we've heard of them.)
Peterson's site became a clearinghouse for information about Short's case. Assistant United States Attorney Brian Cromwell, representing the U.S. government in the case against Short, said Peterson's Web site was useful partially because it organized fraud victims and rallied them to action, making it much easier for attorneys to gather information from victims.
The power of the Web compels you!

Blab. On our observation of the inevitable correlation of cats and bad luck, a reader writes:
Well, at least the cat wasn't Black and White! Now THAT'S bad luck!
In our experience, that's more than bad luck. That's demonic intervention.

Blab. A reader in need of a clue writes:
I can't get banana phone. It is badger phone and that's been taken off line. Oh, BTW badger badger badger doesn't shut my computer down anymore! My life is complete now.
Yes, that site no long has banana phone. But there are links to mirror sites. So you could, um, click on one of those?

Blab. A more clueful reader terrifies us.
For true horror, try the Raffi version! (Or here.).
So banana phone is, like, an actual song? And people like, pay money for it?
Aaaaaugh!!!

Blab. Why is there a bright spot around the sun (which you can observe by blotting the sun itself out of your view with your thumb)?
Some of the sunlight curves around your thumb
The theory here is apparently that there is no bright spot. Rather, its just diffraction around your thumb.
Good though, but we don't think so. Diffraction isn't a big enough effect to explain it, we suspect. We also believe that we can see the effect even without the thumb in place.
Any other budding physicists out there?
(Note: Readers who stare at the sun have only their own stupidity to blame for their inevitable blindness. Not responsible.)

Yak. It's all about meetings.
The flip side of the sword

The flip side

A double-edged sword

That's work well spent

That's work well done

That's time well spent

Thursday, May 6, 2004
Blab. A reader adds us to the list of controlled substances. And we treasure that.
We've just opened the very nice box of our very nice (and very white!) new iBook 14" portable, connected it to our airport base station, and got on the web. Then guess what we did. Yup. We really should get out more. Oh well, back to playing with my weapon of mass distraction. -AJL
Plurp - the first week's free.

Blab. A Treasured Reader copies us on an email to one of the editors of the LA Times, advocating that they publish our silly little Plurp Guide to Modern Morality in Warfare.
I would love to see them ask to use your chart as an op-ed piece. I think it is brilliantly inspired.
Yrs,
McD
Isn't that sweet?

Blab. That same reader writes:
Does William hung also give web design classes??? I'm first in line. Blue on blue is brilliant!!
We fear that it would not be that attractive.

Blab. A reader informs us that, at last ...
Life is now complete.
Everything you ever wanted to know about bathrooms around the world - a web site by a devoted toiletologist.
Search > Belarus > Minsk
on the road
Rating: BAD
Hours: 24hr
Gender: Gender Specific
Fee: free
Comments: no bathrooms along the road. high bushes. men on the left women on the right
Very useful. We suppose. To someone.

Blab. A new reader trips and falls into an alien plot.
ALIENS DONT EXIST YOU STUPID PEOPLE
Sure they do. Whom do you think stole all of the punctuation?

Blab. Here's a good example.
Brian Fihl is an alien from MArs
See?

Blab. A reader tells quite a tale.
My fantastic crime-busting web site.
Dale
So! Dale buys a PC from someone online for an unbelievably cheap price. Surprisingly, the PC does not arrive. So Dale goes after the guy, figuring out who he is, who he's scammed before, and on and on. And, when the guy's domain ownership lapses momentarily, Dale scoops it up and puts his own anti-guy Web site where the guy's former site was.
And here's the amazing bit: rather than getting shot by this guy, Dale's ballsy actions result in the guy getting arrested.
The moral of our story: Never piss off the smart people.

Blab. Fascinated by our blathering about physics and consciousness, a reader states a lemma.
Physics tells us that there will be a gravitational field (with a bunch of observable consequences) whenever there is stuff around that has mass.
So the bigger I get, the more attractive I become?
In fact, everything in the universe will find you more attractive. But only a little.

Yo. On a nice, clear day, hold your thumb up so it blocks the sun. (We're not trying to blind you here.) Notice that the part of the sky around your thumb is considerably brighter than the part of the sky beyond that, and certainly brighter than the part of the sky behind you.
Why is that? Sure, the sunlight is reflected by the atmosphere, and the dust in it. But that's not enough of an explanation.
The simplest model for light scattered by a speck of dust is that most of the light keeps on going, while a little bit of it scatters off the dust mote uniformly in all directions. But if that's the right model, it seems to us that you wouldn't get a bright area in the immediate vicinity of the sun. Rather, you'd get a much larger bright area around the sun, with a slow fall-off in brightness as you look away from the sun.
So what are we missing?

Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Blab. Our helpful Plurp Guide to Modern Morality in Warfare got noticed by ... a Web site!
Dear Steve,
Great entry. Thank you for the clarification. King George will undoubtedly send you a thank you note when the drugs wear off.
We won't hold our breath.

Blab. A reader seeks to expand the repertoire of shameful and appalling acts in which various governments indulge.
Where would forcing the enemy to read Plurp fit in the overall scale?
What about listening to Willian Hung?
The former is already required. The latter is clearly inhumane.

Blab. Trying to divert our attention, a cat symp writes:
Re: horribly depressing war stuff on the eve of my dental crown horror, I say, "Cats are funny."
It's a Sad Tale From the South.
Cheyenne, a cat that vanished in Florida seven years ago and was recently found wandering the streets of San Francisco, has been reunited with her owner.
Some might consider that funny. We think of it as really bad luck.

Blab. Also on the topic of cats, a reader gets all exclamatory about ...
Very Funny Cat Decapitations!
OMG that's funny! (The vid is here.) In a sadistic, twisted sort of way. So you can see why we like it.
(Apoplectic cat lovers might prefer the pigeon version instead.)

Blab. A reader who narrowly escaped cerebral liquefaction writes:
Steve, this is from the newspaper where I lived in my teen years. I have 3 questions: 1) toilet paper? 2) They couldn'e decide between bud or corona? 3) Did we really wonder if the driver of the car that hit the kid was injured?
News from the South.
Thieves broke into a Durham business between 3:30 and 3:38 p.m. Sunday and stole toilet paper, police said.
The burglars broke a window in the bathroom of Welcome Baby, 2000 Chapel Hill Road, and took six rolls of toilet paper valued at $3, a police report said. Nothing else was reported stolen, and no further information was available.
An exciting place, the South.

Blab. More happenings in the South.
I think this says a lot about Wal-Mart. It must be really hard to find the deodorizer section.
This is much more exciting than the stolen toilet paper!
An Oklahoma woman drove around for days with her mother's decomposing body in the passenger seat of her car, Florida investigators said Thursday.
Sheriff's deputies found the woman's body Tuesday in a car parked outside a Wal-Mart store in the northeast Florida city of Palm Coast.
Maybe she just thought Mom was being pensive.

Blab. Second-Favorite Spam Subject Line O' The Day.
now her friends are nordstrom mazda
We do wonder, however, what they were before. But the First-Favorite Spam Subject Line O' The Day is most assuredly this.
Your chance to get in on the bottom of an amazing company
Language. It's so complex!

Blab. A reader alerts us to an activity that is both physical and conceptual.
Pac Manhattan! How freakin' cool is that?!
So, um, a bunch of energetic folks dress up as Pac Man and related characters, and run around the streets surrounding Washington Square park in a bizarre urban enactment of the ancient arcade game.
We give it an 8, mostly for weirdness.

Blab. Knowing our fondness for shedding light on the dark secrets of the universe, a reader exclaims:
Secret messages everywhere!
Indeed. And, it's brought to you by Smell of Steve (dot-com, of course). But it's not us. Honest. Well, perhaps conceptually.

Blab. Finally, the madness ends.
The word of the day is: hydrocarbon.
This transmission is now complete. Treasured Readers are invited to discern the message therein, as it has already been received by its intended recipient.
Those discerning readers who are still awake, that is.

Plurp. Which one of these does not belong?

helen naked pitures

naked muggie pictures

ian naked pictures

mia

arsenic poisoning pictures

mouse naked pictures

virtual helen naked pictures

imani

iris chacon

naked female dogs

Yak. We do so love our interminable conference calls. Where else would we find out about stuff like this?
Business dollarized priorities

Yak. A lovely expression with great meaning to those of us who spend much of our day on conference calls that blather out of our speakerphones.
No, no, I'm here. I was just talking to Mute.

Plurp. Admit it. You loved badger, badger, badger. Maybe you'll also love banana phone. Or maybe it'll drive you insane. Or both.
If you don't get it, just leave it playing in the background for several hours while you work, or play, or whatever it is that you do do. It's a fascinating study in the ability of memes to control your mind. Actually, we thought badger, badger, badger was better in that regard, but novel memes need love too.

Monday, May 3, 2004
Plop. The modern world has become very complex. It's hard to know what's proper and improper, what's right and wrong, especially in the practice of peace-keeping and nation building. So, as a service to our Treasured Readers, we selflessly provide the Plurp Guide to Modern Morality in Warfare.

Bravery and Heroism Shameful and Appalling Acts

Firing at the enemy in tanks with specially crafted depleted uranium rounds, which, after penetrating the tank, turn the inside of the vehicle into an inferno of white-hot gas and sparks. Forcing enemy prisoners to live in damp cool cells.

Splattering 75 pounds of sticky, burning gel onto the enemy, burning him alive. Asking the enemy to pose naked for pictures.

Inflicting internal injuries, including burst ear drums, crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness. Pouring cold water on naked detainees.

Showering the enemy with thousands of nail-sized needles (flechettes), which often bend when entering the body, creating additional wounds. Kicking, stamping or urinating on the enemy.

We're happy to have cleared that up.

Top

Earlier entries Later entries