SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.com http://www.well.com/~bubbles/ Issue #129 New Moon of July 6, 2005 Contents copyright 2005 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of "fair use". In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I get a cut of the profits. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. Details of how to sign up are at the end. ********************* We're just winding down from the Fourth as I write this, and once again the media have been full of messages about how dangerous it is to shoot off your own fireworks and how people should go watch professional fireworks displays instead. And once again many people still shot off their own fireworks, even in places where it's illegal. I think I have an idea why. Let me explain it with an analogy. Consider a bunch of friends sitting around in your living room singing. A couple of people have guitars, several more add their voices, and some just listen. To some it brings back childhood memories of nights around campfires, or singing to pass away the miles on long car or bus rides, or parking with a sweetheart on Lover's Lane while the car radio played the latest romantic hits. They're all enjoying it, each in their own way. Then comes a knock at the door. It's someone from the Neighborhood Association, warning them about a No Singing rule. If you want music, here's a list of free symphony concerts you can go to. Go listen passively to a symphony concert instead of joining with those you love to raise your voices in song? Let whoever is in charge decide in advance which piece to play when, instead of everybody being free to suggest whatever the previous song happened to remind them of? It just isn't the same. So they draw the blinds and get heavier curtains in hopes of muffling the sound so they won't be noticed, and continue singing. So it is with backyard fireworks as opposed to the big public displays. Sure, the big displays can be fun to watch, but it's not the same. Aren't private fireworks dangerous? Yes, but most people who do them end up not getting hurt. Aren't they illegal? Yes, at least in many places, but most people end up not getting busted. So people continue to do them, especially on a holiday commemorating a bunch of people defying their established authorities. And it just might be best to leave it at that, even at the cost of some blown-off fingers and such. To do otherwise may demand a higher cost in lost freedoms. ********************* Another sort-of-silly thought: First, if you're not familiar with the Puppeteer species from Larry Niven's science fiction writings, go see http://www.larryniven.org/puppeteer/ The relevant part: They are very averse to taking risks. So now imagine one of these beings living in some city on Earth (or some similar human-dominated planet) and somehow getting on the committee to do that city's annual fireworks display. Being the creature he is, his idea of safety is to do it on an airless moon or asteroid by remote control, with the audience watching on TV. His arguments make some sense: With no air, the fireworks can't set anything on fire (but they'll still work because the chemicals carry their own oxidizer). Also, an airless sky is always dark, even in the daytime, so there are fewer time constraints. As for the lack of sound, they can use video cameras hooked to computers to synthesize what the fireworks would have sounded like had there been air. But even though the logic makes sense, those pesky humans still won't buy it. ********************* Some semi-impromptu poetic musings, still in the rebellious spirit of the Fourth: Biddley boddley buddley boo. Give the spell-checker something to do. Let it whine and growl and complain, Though its whining be all in vain. Fliddley fladdley floodley floss. Let me show it who is boss. Font of knowledge though it be, The final say still rests with me. ********************* Apparently the In Thing among some men is smooth hairless skin. So now there are people offering male body waxing, as well as the more permanent electrolysis. Waxing is very painful, as many women already know. Think of how it hurts when you remove a bandage, except that this is over a larger area and actually pulls the hair out by the roots. It can also be expensive, depending on the skill and reputation of the person doing it. But there are apparently plenty of men willing to suffer, physically and financially, for that smooth-skin look. Just don't count me as one of them. Even if the treatment was free and didn't hurt at all, I probably wouldn't take it. I like my body hair. And now I'm wondering if body hair on men in the 2000's is going to be what long hair on men was in the 1960's. Will it become a political symbol? Will some of the more conservative employers, or at least those that allow short sleeves and open collars at work, start including body hair removal in their dress and grooming codes? If they do start doing that, how much of it will the average man put up with? And if that leads to a backlash of men keeping their body hair, might it extend to women's arm and leg and armpit hair as well? Even today I see some unshaven armpits on women in various groups I hang out with. So is keeping or eliminating body hair becoming less a gender-specific thing and more a matter of individual choice? ********************* A few weeks ago I spent the night at a friend's place. One thing I noticed was that she had lots of pillows on her bed. In fact there were so many that it was hard to tell if she was really there amongst them. That led to thoughts of a fairy-tale princess under a rather odd enchantment: By night she's OK as long as she stays near a bed with lots of pillows on it, but by day she turns into more pillows. To the casual observer she's just gone, and it looks like there are more pillows in the pile than there were before. Then at dusk the pillow pile shrinks a little and she reappears on the bed. She can sort of adapt to that, living a more or less nocturnal life. She can of course entertain lovers in the royal bed, and she can hold court in the bedchamber. She may even be able to wander around more or less like anyone else, as long as she's back in a pillow-laden bed by dawn. But during the day she's rather vulnerable. If the pillows from the pile she turned into get scattered, she may not be able to resume human form. For example, suppose some servant, ignorant of her plight, decides the bedchamber can use fresh linens, and sells the old pillows at a yard sale. No one person buys the whole pile, so she's essentially scattered to several homes across the land. So then she's missing for several nights, until those who know about the spell figure out what happened. So then knights and such have to go all across the kingdom, finding anyone who recently bought a pillow at a yard sale and buying back those pillows. Sometimes it takes a fair amount of gold, and sometimes it requires other forms of persuasion, all the while keeping the real truth secret. Since it's a fairy tale they do eventually get them all, plus lots more that they aren't sure of either way. So they bring them back to the palace and pile them in and around the royal bed. Maybe the first try doesn't work because there's one pillow still out there somewhere, but after many trials and tribulations they do get them all and she reappears. Then after they sort out which of the remaining non-magical pillows she wants on the bed and which they can get rid of, everybody lives happily ever after. Or something like that. ********************* Hickory Dickory Dock The mouse ran up the clock. Some digits flickered But the mouse didn't notice. Hickory Dickory Dock. ********************* Someone at a party quoted Sturgeon's Law, and I mentioned that I recalled it originally being worded differently from the way it's usually quoted. So our host looked it up in an online dictionary site he likes. That site says the original wording is "Ninety percent of everything is crud" but that it's almost always quoted with "crud" changed to "crap". That matches what I recall of it. Later I looked at other online definitions of Sturgeon's Law, and most of them agreed about the shift in wording. I've heard of other instances where a saying gets changed by the folk process. Often the changes are more or less random things like names of people or places or species of animals. How common is it for the change to make the language of the popular version dirtier than the original? ********************* I got the news about the explosions in London as I was putting this issue of Silicon Soapware together. Naturally I started thinking of what, if anything to say about it. Should I not say anything at all, given that much of what I might say will have already been said in various other publications' editorials and such? Maybe I should just choose an appropriate poem to end with. But which one? Given my initial reaction (or lack thereof), perhaps I should run "Armor" http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/poetry/Armor.txt but that previously appeared here only a few months ago, after the tsunami that inspired it. I might address the larger questions by running "Recycler of Dreams" http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/poetry/RecyclerOfDreams.txt but that has been run a number of times, most recently about a year ago. "Lessons in Pain" http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/poetry/LessonsInPain.txt might be another possibility, but it's about redemption and forgiveness and it doesn't feel like the time is quite right for that yet. It can come later, after the raw edges of people's emotions have started to heal. I finally decided on "Moon???". It too has appeared in Silicon Soapware before, but not for a couple of years. And it does seem sort of appropriate to the larger questions of "Why?". Moon??? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Moon And saying that you've seen it brings howls of cruel laughter? Where the silvery light shining in the night Is a thing that defies explanation And the tides are caused by the breathing of the oysters? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Sun And everyone is acting just like it wasn't shining? Where to walk down the road in the midday heat You are careful to carry a lantern, Or you have to move as if stumbling in the darkness? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Moon And people that've seen it are locked up in the nut house? Where the young lovers go out beside the sea And they watch the reflections of nothing, And they never talk about what they think they see there? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the rain But keep on getting wet without any earthly reason? Where you go with your friends for a picnic lunch While you fear what you'd better not mention, And it's just delusions you have to come in out of? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe In love??? Thomas G. Digby written ???? 1968? typed/revised 0130 hr 11/23/75 entered 2340 hr 3/16/92 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU If you're getting it via email and the Reply-to in the headers is ss_talk@bubbles.best.vwh.net you're getting the list version, and anything you send to that address will be posted. That's the one you want if you like conversation. There's usually a burst of activity after each issue, often dying down to almost nothing in between. Any post can spark a new flurry at any time. If there's no mention of "bubbles.best.vwh.net" in the headers, you're getting the BCC version. That's the one for those who want just Silicon Soapware with no banter. The zine content is the same for both. To get on the conversation-list version point your browser to http://bubbles.best.vwh.net/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi and select the ss_talk list. Enter your email address in the space provided and hit Signup. When you receive an email confirmation request go to the URL it will give you. (If you're already on the list and want to get off there will be an Unsubscribe URL at the bottom of each list posting you receive.) To get on or off the BCC list email me (bubbles@well.sf.ca.us or bubbles@well.com). I currently do that one manually. -- END --