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 #153 New Moon of June 14, 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. ********************* By the time this goes out, we will be about halfway though June. And a certain song notwithstanding, I haven't noticed anything in particular busting out. Some flowers are in bloom, but then there are flowers of one kind or another in bloom pretty much year-round. No, in this area June doesn't bust out all over. Instead it slips in on foggy cat feet. Other months also defy convention. March wasn't especially windy, and April wasn't especially rainy. It's as if this part of California attracts unconventional months, much as it attracts unconventional people. ********************* I noticed something interesting in the inserts that came with a recent utility bill. They don't like it when people dig up their underground lines, so they say you should call them "before you dig, augur, or move earth in any way." What I found interesting was their use of "augur" instead of "auger". According to the dictionaries I looked at, the -er spelling is the one they probably should have used. It has various meanings, all related to drilling or digging. The -ur spelling has to do with prophecy and such (and no, the dictionaries I looked at did not show them as being interchangeable). Given that, I would think the utility companies would be happy if more people were to do some augur-type work before doing anything involving an auger. That would reduce the incidence of damage to underground wiring and pipelines. Even if damage is inevitable, knowing about it ahead of time would let the utility companies be better prepared to minimize their losses. Or do they already have psychics working for them? Could that be the reason they don't need (or at least think they don't need) more psychic input from the general public? Now that this has gotten me thinking about words like "auger" and "augur", another word comes to mind: "ogre". Might there be a few ogres on the payroll to deal with people who fail to heed the warnings about augers? ********************* Here's an interesting language tidbit I've noticed. But first some background: I do a fair amount of walking, and I carry bubble-blowing stuff with me. So every now and then some random person or group of people will encounter an unexpected cloud of bubbles. Reactions remind me of that parable in Matthew about sowing seed and having much of it fall on stony ground or get eaten by birds or some such, while a fortunate portion lands on fertile ground and brings forth plenty. Likewise, some people frown or appear not to notice the bubbles, while others smile, laugh, or otherwise react with visible pleasure. What I find interesting is that many adults (and adolescents) who react favorably will say the word "bubbles" in a particular way: In a high-pitched voice, with the second syllable drawn out longer than when the word is used in ordinary speech. And more often than not, the pitch will gradually drop during that drawn-out syllable. I think I get that reaction more often from females than from males, but I'm not positive of that. I'm reminded of some scientific studies of how adults talk to young children. They found that that sort of baby talk differed from adult speech in fairly predictable ways that seemed to be sort of standard across different cultures and languages. The rules seemed to be more or less hard-wired, perhaps related to how babies learn to talk. So is this related to those presumably hard-wired baby-talk rules? ********************* Someone was talking about Starhawk (a writer of Pagan-related books), but pronouncing it more like "Starhock". That led to thoughts of trying to pawn stars. I don't think most pawn shops would take stars. I kind of doubt they'd even take one of those "Name a Star" things. I would think an actual star would be more like real estate, sort of: You go to it, rather than trying to bring it to where you would like it to be. But either way there won't be very many takers. Even if you have proof of ownership of "your" star, there are no convenient ways of getting there, at least with currently known technology. So given what they say about the importance of location in the real-estate market, I would expect the market for stars to be rather slow. ********************* Speaking of going somewhere in search of something that won't come to you, there's a cartoon cliche of a guru or some such sitting on top of a mountain, with a seeker climbing the mountain to ask the guru a question. The thought I had was a variation: The guru's skin is green, his hair and beard are blue or purple or some such color, and his facial features don't look like those of Earth humans. The sky also looks unearthly, with strange stars and planets and such visible. The seeker climbing the mountain is wearing a space suit and is obviously from Earth. Problem is, I don't know what the seeker's question would be. ********************* And still on the subject of going places, there's a science fiction convention coming up in a couple of weeks at the same hotel where another such convention was held recently. The layout of the hotel is rather confusing, at least if you don't have a map to refer to. It consists of several buildings, some at odd angles, connected by enclosed walkways that look pretty much like the rest of the corridors except for having windows to outside instead of doors to rooms. The carpet pattern and wallpaper design are the same throughout. I saw maps posted near the exits, but they only showed the immediate vicinity. There was an overall map available, but you had to ask for it at the front desk. I didn't find out about it until the last day. To add to the confusion, they were in the process of changing the names of their function rooms. That got me to thinking about that stairwell at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies where the stairs are constantly rearranging themselves. Suppose an entire hotel did that kind of thing. You'd go to where something had been earlier, only to not find it there. It would be somewhere else. Having maps that constantly redrew themselves and were thus always correct might help some, but only if things didn't change too rapidly for you to chase after them. In that case you'd need a map that showed where things would be in the future, so instead of going to where your destination is now you could go to where it will be by the time you can get there. ********************* San Francisco, like a couple of other cities I know of, has a colony of wild parrots. They're the descendents of domesticated parrots that escaped over the years. Now, according to a news item I saw recently, the authorities have passed a ban on feeding them. This has stirred up some controversy, with some of the "regulars" talking of defying the ban. Others disagree. At one point someone was quoted as saying, "The birds attract nature photographers and tourists, too." Something about the way that was worded seemed to imply that tourists and photographers are just another species of vermin. That leads me to wonder if there might be some chemical spray or something that would keep them away. Some kind of mist that gunks up camera lenses should suffice to keep the photographers down, but it might not have much effect on the tourists. Scarecrows and fake likenesses of predators probably wouldn't work either, since tourists are generally smart enough not to be fooled by such things. Would real predators work? Perhaps a few dozen lions and tigers and such roaming the area would do the trick? Problem is, that might not go over too well with neighborhood residents. Then again, some of the residents are contributing to the problem by feeding the parrots, so perhaps they should not be exempt from the lions or whatever they end up doing to keep the tourists away from the area. Be the details as they may, it looks like there may be no solution that will please everybody. ********************* A month or two ago I started hearing jackhammers. They seemed to be coming from the next block over toward the west. Day after day, somebody was jackhammering something. But what? I finally went and looked. They were jackhammering the swimming pool at a nearby park. It looked like they were replacing the lining. They jackhammered off a relatively thin layer, and then stopped. Then they started sticking on new tiles around the rim. [later] Now the pool has a new lining and is full of water, and there's a sign to the effect that it will open on June 23. It looks like all is well. But for a while there part of me had been wondering what if all that jackhammering hadn't been legitimate. What if they had been stealing the pool, piece by piece, to be reassembled, like some demented jigsaw puzzle, in their secret lair in Tasmania or Timbuktu or some such place? Would they just leave a hole in the ground where the pool had been, or would they plant it with flowers and put up Sunken Gardens signs to divert suspicion, or what? I was thinking that had I started seeing Sunken Gardens signs I would have asked the city's Public Works department about it. Let them pursue any possibly-purloined public pools. After all, as part of the city government they probably know people in the Police Department whereas I don't. ********************* Is June less of a month for weddings than it used to be? Is that tradition fading? Or have I just not been paying as much attention to such things as I used to? ********************* Speaking of June losing whatever once made it special, there's this, written back when I was living in Southern California: The Balance of Trade I see by the calendar it's June again. Ho hum. June doesn't bust out all over L.A. like it does other places. Here it just sort of oozes in on cat feet like fog, The last cool gray scraps of winter being used up Like turkey sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving. Nothing to write home about, And nothing to write poetry about. Yes, "June" here still rhymes with all the usual words Like "Moon" and "spoon" But there's something lacking. Some undefinable essence is missing. So even though Los Angeles exports all kinds of wondrous things Like Movie Stars and Hollywood, Not to mention more mundane goods, If it wants poems about June it must import them. -- Thomas G. Digby 23:39 Jun 12, 1996 13:34 Jun 13, 1996 16:32 Jun 13, 1996 ********************* 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. 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