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 #152 New Moon of May 16, 2007 Contents copyright 2007 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. ********************* The poppies are in bloom, at least around Sunnyvale. We have had a very dry rainy season this year. Some areas have set records for paucity of precipitation. As a consequence, there are few wildflowers this spring. Fields and hillsides that normally would be a riot of color are barren and brown. But Sunnyvale does have poppies. I see them when I'm out walking, sometimes in a corner of someone's front yard, other times in that unpaved strip between the sidewalk and the curb, or now and again making a courageous stand in cracks in the pavement. They aren't all over the place by any means, but there are clumps of them here and there. I suspect they're taking advantage of nearby lawn sprinklers. They may have been deliberately planted at one time and then managed to re-seed themselves down through subsequent years. Or they may have always been there. I don't really know. But however they got there, there they are. Enjoy them while they're here. ********************* Something reminded me of a billboard I saw many years ago when I was a child. It was along a highway near the airport. It had a picture of an airplane with the word "LOCKHEED" in big letters. At the time I didn't get that good a look at it, and misread the word as "LOCKED". This was before cars had seat belts or child safety door locks. So my parents often told us kids that we should never touch the door handle while the car was moving, lest we open the door and fall out. So it made sense to me for airlines to lock the doors on their planes while in flight. That way passengers couldn't accidently open the door and fall out. It also meant that people on the outside wouldn't be able to get in, although I didn't think that anyone would be trying to enter during the trip. So it followed that airlines might want to advertise the fact that they locked the doors on their planes while airborne. Hence a billboard with a picture of an airplane and the word LOCKED in big letters. Another childhood thought on airplanes: There was this movie that had a scene of paratroopers being dropped. There were a number of large planes droning along in formation, with what looked like hundreds of parachutes drifting slowly down. It didn't occur to me at the time that there would be crew members remaining on the planes after all the paratroopers were gone, so I was surprised at how well the seemingly empty planes stayed on a straight and level course with nobody at the controls. I also recall wondering what happened to the planes afterward. Did they just keep flying until they ran out of gas and crashed, or what? The movie didn't seem to show that part. I also recall a scene of a bugler, standing silhouetted against the dawn sky at a military base, playing Reveille. But how did the bugler wake up? Did they just pick somebody who tended to be among the first to wake up most mornings and make him the bugler? I asked Dad, who said that the guard would wake him up. I didn't ask who woke up the guard. I may not have had the concept of guards and such staying up all night, so perhaps I should have asked, but I didn't. It's amazing how much stuff I didn't know back then. It may still be amazing how much stuff I don't know, but I don't know about it so I can't really say. ********************* Speaking of centaurs (which we weren't), would they be eligible to run in horse races? If so, would the centaur be listed as jockey, horse, or both? I could see the bureaucrats of horse racing getting all tangled up in their rules and regulations. When it comes to stuff like betting, laws and rules can get quite messy. The easy way out would be to just say "No Centaurs", or at least none racing against traditional horses and riders. Centaurs racing against other centaurs might be easier to deal with, because you have something closer to a level playing field. But would that count as "horse racing" for purposes of laws defining legal and illegal betting? It might well vary from state to state. ********************* While eating with friends at a local Denny's, I got to noticing the paper place mats. They were mostly blurbs for their various beverages. The text included phrases like "juices with an attitude" and described their coffee as "bolder". Had customers been complaining about timid coffee? Did their old juices taste like yes-men? And how do you psychoanalyze a beverage anyway? You could pour it out on a couch and try to listen for it to say something, but I have strong doubts that you'll get anything but a soggy messed-up couch. So do you just make up a bunch of baloney and hope nobody calls you on it? That also leads to other questions, like what would coffee with other human personality traits taste like? And which ones would you prefer to drink? Bold coffee? Timid coffee? Considerate coffee? Treacherous coffee? Faithful coffee? Pious coffee? Skeptical coffee? Creative coffee? Slothful coffee? Industrious coffee? Sadistic coffee? Sympathetic coffee? Childlike coffee? Studious coffee? Pensive coffee? There's a whole world there that Starbucks hasn't touched yet. "Time to brew a new pot of coffee. The present batch is getting tired." ********************* You know the cartoon cliche of the guru up on the mountain top giving philosophical advice to seekers climbing the mountain to see him? Why are those cartoon gurus almost always male? Female gurus exist, or at least I'm pretty sure they do. So why don't we see more of them in cartoons? Is it just a case of too few cartoonists having thought about it, or is there some deeper reason? One possible contributing factor: It's harder to draw a female guru who's obviously a guru. The cliche signs of cartoon guru-hood include a loincloth or robe-like garment, long hair, and a big bushy beard. Those wouldn't work well to mark a female guru. A robe would look too much like a "normal" dress while a loincloth plus a bra would look too much like a swimsuit or maybe some kind of Amazon warrior getup. Many women who are not gurus wear their hair long, and few women have beards. So how would you draw a female cartoon guru who would be instantly recognizable as a guru? ********************* What kind of dressing goes with word salad? ********************* I was looking through that issue of Newsweek with all the letters from soldiers who had died in the Iraq conflict. I only read a fraction of the letters, but even so it was a deeply moving experience. I was on the verge of tears, not sure my composure could have taken much more. Then I saw the back cover, which was a full-page ad for some car. It started off to the effect of "Think how happy you'll be when you tromp down on the gas and feel the surge of those couple of hundred horses under the hood." There was more, but again I had seen enough. That's when the tears really started flowing. Is that what those men and women are fighting and dying for? There is something horribly wrong here, and it goes deeper than just bad decision-making by our leaders. But you probably already knew that. What I don't know, and suspect nobody else knows either, is how to get out of this mess. One thing that may help: The next time you're about to buy something, especially something you've seen lots of ads for, let it remind you of those people in Iraq, or whatever other far-off place we happen to be at war in. You don't need to resolve to do anything in particular in terms of what you do or don't buy and who you do or don't buy it from. Just let it remind you. The rest will follow. ********************* Breezy Bubbles Soap bubbles on a breezy day Dance away in the wind. They wander hither and yon, Some soaring to the heavens While others tempt fate In a daring brush with the ground. I'm reminded that my every breath Scatters to the four winds And thence to the ends of the earth Even when no dancing bubbles make it visible. Likewise my every action, Grand or trivial, Serious or playful, Driven by sweet love Or by something less savory, Echoes through the cosmos To and beyond The limits of imagination. I cannot predict All that will come of any one act, Any more than I can predict the fate Of any one bubble. But just as I have a general idea of the wind And can position myself accordingly, I can make some guesses. So as I go through each day Full of myriad little decisions Too numerous to really think about I can try to make a habit Of spreading less sorrow And more joy. Like the playful bubbles Dancing away on the wind. -- Tom Digby First Draft 18:09 Mon April 30 2007 Revised 14:49 Thu May 17 2007 ********************* 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. 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