The Loony Bin

US Patent 5827173 is a “Prenatal audio communication device”. The mind boggles, and one fears for any prenate unfortunate enough to be enwombed by a woman who would even consider using such a thing:

“A prenatal audio communication device has a receiving chamber which accepts sound waves for transmission through a flexible tube to a megaphone secured against the abdomen of a pregnant woman so as to transfer sound waves from an external source with which the chamber is juxtaposed to a position proximate the ears of the baby in the womb. Means is connected to the megaphone for encircling the pregnant woman and securing the megaphone outlet port against her abdomen. Preferably, the inlet port has a perimeter contoured to be snugly juxtaposed about the mouth of a typical adult. A curved lip extends along the inlet port perimeter to form a continuous seal between the chamber and the face of the user, to increase the comfort level of the user when the chamber is pressed against the face and to make a single chamber more universally usable with a variety of sound wave source shapes and sizes. Preferably, the securing means is an at least partially elastically stretchable strap which connects to D-ring type members disposed on opposite sides of the megaphone.”

Second RSS Awards

And the Platinum Pustule for Really Stupid Song goes to The Black Eyed Peas.

Reputed to be “one of the most popular hit singles in history”, the song is called My Humps. It’s also probably one of the most complained-about songs in history so unfortunately we’re not breaking any new ground here. Most recently parodied by Alanis Morrissette as an April fool joke, you can find her version plus the original on any one of a dozen video hosting sites, if you feel like clubbing some brain cells to death.

I can barely bring myself to put these lyrics in here, partly because they make my mind so numb I can hardly remember how to copypaste, and partly because they might act like google fly paper and then, well, there goes the neighbourhood. A sample, nevertheless:

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
My lovely lady lumps (lumps)
my lovin' got you
She's got me spendin'.
(Oh) Spendin' all your money on me and spending time on me.
She's got me spendin'.
(Oh) Spendin' all your money on me, up on me, on me.

…and so on.

I wish they’d invent a pill for radio intolerance, because it puts a person at a terrible disadvantage. I think if I could hum along to songs about girls who feel wretched about cheatin’ on their guy and feel they may as well be puttin’ a gun to his head but they really just can’t help it, I could quite enjoy life. That’s Rihanna, and she takes runner up for her song “Unfaithful”.

LyricBlokka TM, get it now at these fine stores. I’d be in there like a shot.

Nominations for the next Awards welcome. To qualify, songs must have actual lyrics but needn’t be current hits.

SNAFU

Our Christian churches, perhaps in some sort of partnership with our media, are having a bumper year, with key questions flitting clunkily about like flower fairies with little lead boots on. There was the tricky: “Does Satan really exist?” and there were also some questions which had wafty answers like, and I quote but I can’t remember who: “Well, you know, the bible doesn’t prohibit actual gayness, rather just the practice of it.”
Then of course, there were the reams of questions surrounding Our Lady of the Blinding Ray in Benoni.

But our rainbow of Christianity isn’t yet as plump with permitted political colourants, flavourants and emulsifiers as it is in other places - Utah for instance - so by contrast our theological angst is quite quaint. Here’s an example of what they’ve had on their minds over there:

“Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants…

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people …are determined to destroy Christian America, and there is nothing they won't do." He also said that illegal aliens were in control of the media, and working with Democrats. At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/220065/4/

Quinquereme of Rubber Duck

A few years ago, a ship accidentally tipped into the ocean its cargo of little rubber ducks and frogs, originally destined for bathtubs across America. It was reported in newspapers that flotillas of the toys had been seen cheerfully navigating the high seas and making the most of their serendipitous liberation, some putting to shore along the way and others pressing on. I think about them often, and wonder: are some of them still out there, startling brawny oil rig men or being spat out by disgusted whales? What would a sunbleached, travel-weary but still valiantly bobbing rubber bath toy have to say, if it were interviewed?

Renovating

Mundus vult decipi (?)

The terribly wicked and utterly delightful Mr. Eaton points his singular sword at the “mawble-and-porms-brigade”:

“If only they knew how they looked, how the fantasy is exploded every time the true, representative driver of the SUV goes out on her errands: the tiny Stepford wife, ring-encrusted fingers spread desperately around the gigantic tiller, stringy tanning-bed-purple arms fighting the power-steering, her dulled eyes half-closed in that permanent expression of moronic disdain the rich reserve for when they are forced to mingle with the less rich.”

You strike an SUV, you strike a rock

im in ur internetz stealin ur time

The internet (ahem, beg pardon, the internets), as we know, is/are (a) very strange place/s. There’s google of course, which is strange. I was at a thing once, around ‘99, where there was a man we’ll call Andrew who hunkered about in a chalky circle, throwing plastic replica bones, while talking about the way forward and paradigms and core relationships and innovation. Occasionally he’d mention the word "Google". Milling about in the shadows (actually, it was a flouro-lit conference room so there were no shadows but you know what I mean), the casually dressed suits on this fun team-building exercise chewed on the ends of their cellular network branded goodie bag pens.
“What’s a google?” they worried amongst themselves. A man with a smear of sticky purple ink bleeding down into his branded golf shirt collar tried to leave the room traditionally, but the door had been bolted from the outside so he threw himself out of a window.

“So basically,” said Andrew, after he’d given everyone a go with the bones, and got them to sing shosholoza while standing on their heads and juggling raisins with their eyebrows, “At the end of the day what we’re saying here is that a paradigm shift in leveraging relationships within core markets focuses on innovation and strategic removal of impediments to the implementation of the blah rhubarb. And remember, Google. Thank you.”

Apart from one lady who ended up with a raisin lodged in her sinuses, it was the Google bit that stuck most firmly. Google is like that glue they use to stick promo CDs onto magazines, which sticks to everything else too and your skin in particular. You sit there at the coffee shop with the magazine wrapper and a little sugar packet siliconed to your fingertips, fluttering away like a crazy person. Even if you manage to lose the paper bits, you’ll retain the glue and it looks like snot. You flap at it feebly, you try rubbing it off onto the underneath of the table, it ends up on your chin. The people sitting at the next table will ask to be moved.

You can hardly do anything online without Google. It’s the people’s gateway to the universe. You can feel at home and put your feet up on it, whether you’re into Scrapbooking or S&M. And it can sell more stuff than any other entity in history. Andrew, if you’re still out there, if no-one’s slipped nightshade in your Red Bull or defenestrated you yet then of course you know this: You were right and I wish I’d bought shares.

Anyhow, heaven help us, now there’s Lolcode. I don’t know what it does but I think this is what it is: a programming language based on IRC-speak, engrish game-speak, texting-speak, snowclones (‘catch-structures’ like, “To X, or not to X”) and lolcats. Lolcats are those cutesy photos of cats with pidgin captions, e.g., “o hai. i make u cookie but i eated it,” which go round and round and round in places like myspace (and your inbox if you’re careless enough to have given your email address to a nitwit).

I’ve posted before about Making Light, how entertaining it can be. In a recent open thread, they did some literature in sort of lolcode. The ritual deployment of This Is Just To Say is in there, naturally. There’s some Chaucer and Shakespeare, there’s all three parts of The Lord Of The Rings, how could there not be, and lots more. I once promised to keep this blog silly, so this makes up for any lapses in silly that might have occurred - Here’s Pride and Prejudice:

Rich man can has girl.

Bngli: i can has dance?
J4N3: k
l12: i can has dance too?
DarC: no u ugly go way
l12: LOLz
Bngli: BRB

MrC0lnz: l12 i can has heart?
l12: no gway
Chrltt: u can has me
MrC0lnz: K BRB

Wikm: IM IN UR TOWN SEDUCIN UR DAUTERS
lyd14: o hai

DarC: i can has heart?
l12: no gway u rude

l12: IM IN UR PEMBERLEY ADMIRIN UR STUFF
DarC: hai
l12: OMG thought u were AFK!!1!

J4N3: OMG lyd14 & Wikm BFF
l12: WTF?
lyd14: i can has wikm, k?
Wikm: i can has $$$? LOL
DarC: k

Bngli: hai, back. i can has heart?
J4N3: k lol
DarC: back
l12: thx 4 ur help
DarC: i can has heart?
l12: k lol

If you are far enough gone to have liked that, that is if you are ROTFLYAO, then here's a whole anthology, to distract you from your work for the next two days at least. Scroll down to comments #119, 120 and 130 for LOR. “Is one ringtone enough to rule them all?”

All your silly are belong to us.

:-) kthxbye

Dear Diary

They were repainting the roof of my local Spar yesterday. A freshly opened 20L tin of terracotta paint fell from the roof and bounced off my tiny shiny pretty pearly silver two-week-old Yaris as I pulled into the parking bay, about three seconds after I had mused on how lucky I had been to get one right by the entrance. Damn you Asphaltia, daughter of Satan, Succubus, Whore of Babylon.

Various men with glinting murderous eyes gathered round the startlingly novel cowhide-jackrussel paint job, and hungrily offered to pummel the young roof painter, as though I looked incapable of it. I declined and laughed and took the hand of poor Jaques, the painter, who had come down from the roof and was crying real tears and shaking from top to bottom, because in that moment I could see clearly, in slow motion even, and I was just so happy for him that I’m not a murderous man. If you’re going to spill roof paint all over a brand new car, and you have a choice as to which car, pick mine ok? I tried to explain to Jaques how he should see this like winning the lotto - that what happened was quite literally once in a lifetime ‘cos it’s my first brand new car and I won’t ever have another. He must have misunderstood because he went even paler, sobbed even louder, edged towards the group of murderous men and tried to take cover in their midst.

The dent in the roof from the tin is like an exclamation mark. Serves me right I suppose, for getting all inexplicably fond of and vain about a stupid car. I don’t even like cars. Let this be a lesson to me.

Mr Ludwig the Flower Man

Checking in at the Silvery Tay Poetry Competition site today, to see whether there’s any housekeeping needed before I go and do a foolish 3am caution-to-the-wind type of thing like mention it in David Bullard’s comment threads, I found that I must either have forgotten to post the “Short Exceptance Speech” that Melodi Bloggs emailed to Mr Clarke and me; or I did put it in but it got eaten by a passing flock of jubjub birds, which are known to be attracted by bright multicoloured party lights like Melodi. If I forgot, I’m sorry, and if it was eaten, I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did. Well I’ve put it up there now so that’s all right then.

It went like this:

Short Exceptance Speech

Dear Ms Pandora and Mr James Small
It is with great humbility that I accept this onerous award.
I’ve never won anything like this before and I hope it won’t go to my head.
In honour of the honour I will be decorating my second bathroom in the same classical tones as my Pandora’s Poet Laureate certificate of 2007. After which I will be approaching Mr Ludwig (the flower man, not the composter) about having a rose named after myself.
And in the words of the intrepid Jesus, “I’ll be back”.

Yours poetically
Melodi Bloggs

Pandora’s Poet Laureate 2007


Re the housekeeping, I’m relieved to report that none was needed. This is because as yet I have not mentioned the STPC on David Bullard’s blog, of course. I have been sending emails to myself and sticking post-its all over my desk, loo door and kettle, with lists of reasons to remind me why I should not do it. I hope it keeps working.

David Bullard’s Eternal September

I was both amused and alarmed by David Bullard’s column about blogs and bloggers in last week’s Sunday Times. It was all absolutely true, every word, so knowing what lay in store for him I sent some little psychic sachets of sterkte winging through the ethers, for him to keep in his pocket. I hope they’re coming in handy. But why would he want to engage with a not very subtle cabal of nitwits whose collective online oeuvre is concrete proof that some people should not have been allowed to learn reading and writing in the first place? Now he’s gone and nailed his foot to the funnyfarm floor by acquiring a blog of his own. Why would he do that? Like he said this week, “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

It’s not too late, Mr Bullard! Bail out immediately before they eat your brains. No-one is immune, not even you. Don’t feed the baboons for goodness sake. Get some calamine for that nasty rash and take comfort from the fact that they get bored really quickly and will move along any minute now.

But if you must pursue this folly against all advice, may I offer my services as Disemvoweller? You will need one for sure. The beauty of disemvowelling is that it’s not the same as censorship. It’s better. I’ve been dying to try it but have never had the opportunity here, all four of my readers being very well behaved indeed. I will charge you 1 cent per word or part thereof, the reason I have to charge is not because I’m after the money (although I’m anticipating it getting to a point where you offer me a rand a vowel just to keep me on) but because I’m after the job description. I’d quite like to be able to say, “I’m a Professional Disemvoweller” when people ask.

Shibboleths

1.
Doug Shaw Prime did a test to find out what kind of American accent he has. I thought I ought to do it too, so I did, and it said: “New York City. You are most definitely from New York City. Not New Jersey, not Connecticut. If you are from Jersey then you can probably get into New York City in 10 minutes or less.” I found that very interesting.


2.
The Extensis blog had a haiku competition to celebrate the premiere of a hardcore designgeek film called “Helvetica”. While I absolutely do not in any way whatsoever miss my late career*, I did like these haikus. First prize was a limited edition Helvetica fine art poster, which in those circles can be compared to a staunch Catholic winning one of baby Jesus’ milk teeth. My favourite was Christina’s, which won second place:

wedding invite came
they chose brush script mt bold
i give it six months

*only tiny insignificant bits of it, and even then only sometimes.

Girl Stuff

Melodi Bloggs, as you ought to know, was the winner of the Silvery Tay Poetry Competition 2007. She is a beloved friend of mine and I have begun compiling an anthology of her bons mots, gathered from emails and conversations around the edges of board games. Here is a sample:

Melodi Bloggs on ‘Fruition’: “By fruition, do you mean headgear a la Carmen Miranda? I don’t mind going this route, but it’s not strictly Geisha, and I always end up losing my bananas.”

Melodi Bloggs on dating: “My innards are those of a fifteen year old. My outers, sadly not.”

There's a lady, Ellie, who has an eponymous knitting shop in Edenvale. I can remember going there with my Ma when I was a kid. So I coveted my sister's scarf last winter, and not being able to find a similar one anywhere, went to Ellie's in hopes of finding a way to make one for myself - how difficult can it be to make a long thin woolly thing with wispy pompoms on? I found Ellie unchanged, she’s like an ancient china shepherdess. She showed me how to cast on and how to do a lovely lacy dropped-stitch thing, and I asked, "So, do you have a book with, like, stitches and patterns and stuff?" The other customers, most of them magnificent old ladies, each with a life's worth of unpicked things, started laughing and I had an epiphany: This woman IS the book. Well it’s now next winter and I still don’t have my scarf - I never got past knit-two-rows-unpick-three. I miss my granny.

For a Barbarian woman to offer help in a Greek Cypriot woman’s kitchen on Greek Easter (or any other time in fact) is foolish. Maria and Stalla and Thea Eleni will go pale for a moment, exchange panicked glances and then chorus something to the effect that everything’s almost done, ok can you take this spanakopita out to the men? Don’t drop eh?
Yes, I am Barbarian, my compound crime not only to do with not being Greek but also to do with having mostly Viking ancestors (you cannot hide that sort of thing from a Greek), which is as bahrrr-bahrr-ee-yun as it ever gets, with as much emphasis as you can muster on that second syllable. After years of wondering why they still invite you to these gatherings at all, you learn to just be very grateful that they do, and you sit quietly and eat, and eat, and eat, and you don’t argue anymore with Stellios about that dessert with the rose-cordial actually being Turkish. He’s getting on now anyway and doesn’t need the stress. When they send you off at the end of it all with a stack of tinfoiled leftovers enough to last two weeks, you don’t joke, “Do you think I can’t feed my own family or something?” You just say “Thank you,” with relish, and look forward to next year.

An A-C of Things that Might Help

A is for Asphaltia

There is a goddess of parking spaces, apparently. She is called Asphaltia and her invocation goes, “Lady Asphaltia, full of grace, find for me a parking space.” I like it a lot and look forward to more successful parking in future.


B is for Butter-side-up

Caro Jazoni sent me a Vimrod cartoon that said, “If you are worried about having a bad week then post yourself some toast on Monday. Then Tuesday and Wednesday can be spent looking forward to what might come in the post, and then on Thursday the toast will come which will be a treat, and then on Friday it’s the end of the week.”


C is for Cat

Death, and What Comes Next.
English
Afrikaans
Many other useful translations, including Catalonian, here.

All you ever needed to know about Zombies

Over at Making Light, they’re good at grabbing a thing and running with it. They can take a piece of spam and turn it into a couple of days worth of entertaiment. I wonder where they get the time - maybe they actually live inside the internet and their comment threads are like other people’s walking the dog or dusting behind the bookcase.

This particular subthread, which kicks off at comment #53, begins with: “A spammer writes: ‘We will appreciate if you will use the following information to link us back from your web site’. I hope no-one on ML minds, but I’ve been running a Zombies simulation on a 2 Mqbit SQUID using the comment threads here as modelling data. This is not a Vingefied AI system with trapped, sentient copies of the contributors here: the agents modelled are guaranteed soulless empty software shells…”

While I suspect that the stuff re 2 Mqbit SQUID and vingeified AI systems etc was aimed squarely at gaming geeks (because that is the type of alarming language that I’ve come to associate with people of that ilk) and other ML insiders, and therefore not at me, I nevertheless had a lot of fun reading what followed.

They also have what they call a “Ritual deployment of This is Just to Say”, which is always cute. Here’s the Zombie deployment:


This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the brains
that were in
your cranium

and which
you were probably
saving
for grad school

Forgive me
they were delicious
so gray
and so warm

The Sheep Albedo Hypothesis

“Not everybody agrees with the Sheep Albedo Hypothesis. Leading the flock of skeptics is the New Zealand Sheep Farmers Guild. Their spokesman, Steve Ramsturf (no relation) was quoted as saying "Baaah, Humbug. No matter what goes wrong with the world, they're always trying to blame the poor New Zealand Sheep Farmer. First it was the methane belch tax. Now this Albedo thing.”

If you have time to read only one scientifical article today, let it be this one.