Amusing: February 2004 Archive Page

Dog Canto

        Outside... il conformista
                walk milkbone
                                        roll-over
                                        il conformista
        Sit! sit!
                il conformista
        Paw! paw!
                il conformista
                                roll-over il conformista...
        Good doggy.
        Good good doggy.
                                Fidelius.

Brian Stefans --Il Conformista (Poem for a Dog) (Free Space Comix: The Blog)

A poem that uses only words that a (particular) dog understands. Found via GrandTextAuto.

Below the Sinkhole You are about 75 feet into the cave. There is a dim light at the east of the passage. There is a methamphetamine lab here! >EXAMINE LAB Nothing extravagant -- about average for this area. You see some cookware, solvents, and acids. Looks like someone has just finished cooking. >_

--There is a methamphetamine lab here! (Bowling Green Daily News)

OK, for those who don't get it -- this news story about a meth lab found in a cave made me think of the classic game "Colossal Cave Adventure," which I'm researching in prepraration for a conference in a few weeks.

[O]n Feb. 20, 1954 -- President Dwight Eisenhower interrupted his vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., to make a secret nocturnal trip to a nearby Air Force base to meet two extraterrestrial aliens.

Or maybe not. Maybe Ike just went to the dentist. There's some dispute about this. --Peter Carlson --Ike and the alien ambassadors (M$ NBC)

A precious quote, from the author of a book on the political implications of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth: "There's a lot of stuff on the Internet," he says, "and I just went around and pieced it together."

Journalists aren't supposed to editorialize while covering the news, but the use of this quote pretty much says all that one needs to know.

A close second is the following:

Mixson's article "A History of Dwight D. Eisenhower's Oral Health" -- published in the November 1995 issue of the Bulletin of the History of Dentistry -- is the definitive work on Ike's teeth. [Some tooth-related info here.] That may be more than you wanted to know about Ike's dental work. If not, Mixson goes on at some length, quoting a long, lyrical passage written by Fairchild on this troublesome presidential incisor.

All of this carrying on is fine, but if Spike really wants shows men like to watch, they've missed a few great concepts. Here are ten new programs that appeal to real men:

• The Explosion Show - Every week, the hosts fill some interesting object with black powder and then, well, you get the idea...
  
• Crank Callers - Contestants harass strangers and win prizes
  
• Celebrity Mud Wrestling - The name says it all
  
• Target Practice - Like those hunting shows on the Outdoor channel, except that the big game they're after is the neighbor's lawn ornaments
  
• Psycho Friends Network - Wisecracking comedians staff fortune-telling phone service
  
• Pick-Up Truckers - This is our reality show: Blue collar guys are taken to a real bar and compete to see who can be the first to convince a female patron to come home with them
  
• Mug Shot Makeover - Fashion experts visit the drunk tank with timely grooming advice
  
• Riding Lawnmower Demolition Derby - OK, it's sort of a sport, but it's not on ESPN
  
• Cheer Factor - Adult cheerleader routines are rated by regular guys with number cards
  
• Simian Nightly News - The events of the day are reviewed by chimpanzees dressed in designer suits

Are you listening, Spike?
--Driving the Spike [Scroll down a bit] (Every Fool's Guide to the Universe)

This site seems to archive only by page, so I can't send you to the entry I'm quoting from. It's the one posted at 9:58PM.

More than 150 Lego builders and collectors converged on Portland over the Presidents Day weekend for BrickFest PDX, a celebration of all things Lego. While plenty of individual work is on display, the big draw is the chance to interact with like-minded folks.... In one of the smaller conference rooms, a team of 10 guys, mostly young men and two preteens, attempt a speed record for assembling an Imperial Star Destroyer, a 3,000-piece Star Wars monstrosity that usually takes a single builder about a week of spare time to construct. The team wants to do it in less than an hour, but the record is 13 minutes more than that. --Marty Cortinas

--If You Come, They Will Build It  (Wired)

Sorry, the title just doesn't... click.

<> !*''#
^"`$$-
!*=@$_
%*<> ~#4
&[]../
|{,,SYSTEM HALTED

Translation:

"Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH."

--Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese --Stuck Shift Key Poetry (Net Funny)

This interesting bit of geek poetry illustrates the orality of poetry. On the rare occasions when I get the chance to code, I tend to do it alone; and on the rare occasions when I do discuss programming, I sometimes have difficulty with the specialized vocabulary. This poem dates from about 1990, so I have no idea whether the transliteration still works with the current generation of programmers. How about it, Jess, Will, Rosemary, and any lurkers out there?

As for the poem itself, to read it aloud you have to pace yourself to follow the pattern set by the first line. The first line begins with two trochees (BAH buh), while the second line begins with a trochee and a single stressed beat -- that gives only three syllables to cover the space previously occupied by four. The phrases "bang splat" and "back-tick" match up, but where the first line has "tick tick" the second line asks you to say "dollar dollar," squeezing four syllables into the space previously occupied by two.

So this text, when read aloud, is really following an invisible musical notation. The first line reads as if it is six quarter notes and the final "hash" is a half note -- and that sets the pattern for the other lines. Line four is awkward because it starts with an unstressed syllable, but otherwise the pattern still fits. Still, "Vertical-bar" in the last line simply doesn't fit -- you either have to pronounce all three syllables of "Vertical" on one quarter-note and "bar" on the other, or spread out all the syllables equally, which makes a stress fall on "cal" (which should definitely be unstressed). At first I thought the acceleration in the final line was deliberate, since it leads to the "CRASH", but it's only the first foot that rushes -- the rest of the line falls back into the steady pattern.

Spotted in "Poegram" on MGK's "Digital Studies" course website.

Jill Drake, from Tenterden, Kent, will fly to Los Angeles and scream for an hour to promote Disneyland's new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. --Terror task for screaming champ (BBC)

Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary.

Googling for 'weblog'Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

I found this line in my weblog tracking service today:

03 Feb, Tue, 15:49:46 http://www.google.com/search?q=weblog&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=100&sa=N

My weblog main page generally gets a couple hits from Google each day, and I do like to see what people are searching for, so out of habit I glanced in the URL for the keyword -- and I was a little surprised. Yup -- someone's Google search for "weblog" turned up this site on a page of results starting at 100 -- and then someone clicked on that link, thus generating the above line in my tracking service. I checked and for the moment anyway, out of nearly 9 million Google hits for "weblog," my blog comes up 109th.

I know this ranking thing is pretty much meaningless, and I'm sure this is just a fluke -- but it's a pleasant fluke, so I printed out the page to have a keepsake.