SILICON SOAPWARE wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway from Bubbles = Tom Digby = bubbles@well.sf.ca.us http://www.well.com/~bubbles/ Issue #65 New Moon of May 4, 2000 Contents copyright 2000 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. If you don't want to read about the mechanics of this, skip down to the row of asterisks (****). 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I do that one manually. ********************* There's an abandoned car in the back parking area. It seems to belong to the people who moved out of one of the downstairs apartments a couple of months ago and didn't take it with them, perhaps because they already had enough other cars and minivans and such. I don't know if it runs or not. It's a Cadillac Coupe de Ville, from sometime around the late Sixties or early Seventies. I'm not an expert on cars, but it's definitely from after tailfins went out of style and almost certainly from before the OPEC energy crisis when cars got smaller for a while. It's a kind of grayish green, although whether that was its original color or whether it was originally greener when it was new I can't say. I assume the owners know where it is, and just don't consider it worth coming and getting. In theory they could have forgotten where they left it, and even as I type this they could be frantically searching their new neighborhood for it, putting up LOST CAR posters on telephone poles and such, but I kind of doubt it. The cops came and put the standard "Move it or else" sticker on the back window, but that was several weeks ago and nothing has happened since then. So what's going to happen to it? A few nights ago it occurred to me that maybe angels will come and fly it up to Heaven. I don't know if they have roads up there, but they might, and there are probably people up there who like cars. Streets paved with gold may be too slippery to drive on safely, but if you're already dead anyway, another car accident or two might not matter. So even though it isn't a convertible, somebody up there might want it. Hauling away old cars sounds like a silly thing for angels to do, but if there are people up there who like a certain amount of silliness in their afterlives, that may be reason enough to do it. So how might they do it, assuming the kind of angels you see in cartoons and comic strips? Part of the standard setup for such occasions is a choir of angels, almost always with songbooks even if the words are only "Ahhhh... aaahhhhh... ahhhaaaahhhhh...." and so on. One of the neighbor's buildings has a sloping roof that would be good for them to stand on, like risers in a choir loft so the ones in back are higher than the ones in front. There are tree limbs blocking about half of it, but if the choir members are small children you could probably squeeze enough in for a decent (if not really big) choir. Then there's the matter of actually moving the car. I'm assuming angels don't have the strength limitations of mortals, so four of them, one at each corner, could just pick it up and carry it away. Or could they? The rear bumper doesn't look especially bumpable. It may be more ornamental than functional. So if beings with the appropriate super-strength tried to pick up the car by the bumpers, would the bumpers take the stress or would they break off? Let's assume that there are people in Heaven with the appropriate technical knowledge, and that they have determined that it is OK for four angels to pick this particular car up at the corners. The problems don't end there. Angel wingspans are fairly large, probably at least a small car length, and there might not be enough room. The car next to the car in question is mine, and I would move it out of the way if angels asked me nicely, but that might not solve the problem. The back parking area is walled on three sides, and the car to be moved is in one of the end slots. The side wall is five or six feet away, but with some of that space taken up by trash and recycling bins and such. The front bumper is only a foot or two from the rear wall. Again, even though the junk can be moved, there may not be room for angels to flap their wings. And there's the aforementioned tree with limbs above the front end of the car, partially blocking the ascent. What they might do is pick the car up by the corners, walk down the driveway with it, and fly it off from the middle of the street, perhaps late at night when there's essentially no traffic. There's still the problem of overhead power lines, so they may have to walk a couple of blocks to find a good clear takeoff spot, but I'm assuming angels don't get tired so that won't be a major problem. Are angel wings aerodynamically capable of lifting a quarter of a Cadillac? Some authorities have calculated that they may not even be capable of lifting a human-sized angel, especially since they just seem to be sort of grafted onto the shoulder blades with no major flight muscles in evidence. And even if the wings were up to the task (which would also include the ability to maneuver like hummingbird wings), it would entail moving as much air as a fair-sized helicopter does and would probably be about as noisy. Even if they didn't mind waking up all the neighbors, the noise would drown out the choir. And then once they're airborne with the car, you have to trust them not to drop it. But despite what I've said about wingspans and such, physics may not really be a problem. In the movies, angels often just sort of hover with their wings barely moving, just lazily fanning the air. So maybe they're staying aloft by telekinesis or magic or something, with the wings being mainly symbolic so the aerodynamics don't really matter. In that case picking up the car by the corners and flying it up to Heaven without dropping it should be easy. You might still have the problem of neighbors who might Wonder at a choir of angels singing "Ahhhh... aaahhhhh.... aaaaaahhhhh..." in the middle of the street late at night, and might even call the police, especially if they're atheists who don't believe in angels, but if the angels do their jobs right they (and the car) should be gone by the time the cops get there. ********************* Another email list I just joined seems disappointingly quiet. Perhaps it hasn't reached critical mass yet. And that thought led me to look up "critical mass" in the dictionary. My Webster's gives the social definition (as with a movement or a business getting big enough to sustain itself) with a first-use date of 1964, and doesn't mention the nuclear definition at all. The American Heritage, on the other hand, gives the nuclear definition but doesn't mention the social definition at all. So which dictionaries do you like and why? ********************* I got some fast-food coupons in the mail, but probably won't use them because they're for a specific meal with side dishes I don't especially care for, with the words "no substitutions" occurring more than once. But it did give me the idea of a fast-food place "For people in a hurry who don't care what they eat." There's no time wasted telling them what you want. You just go through the drive-thru and pay a fixed price for a random bag of food plus a drink. You have no idea whether it's going to be fried chicken and a Coke, or a hamburger and milk, or a fish sandwich and coffee, but it's generally about the same amount of stuff and it's usually pretty much OK if you don't have any strong likes or dislikes. If you're really in a hurry then perhaps their system could read your license number and automatically debit your account, so you don't have to waste time handling physical cash. Just drive up to the window, take the bag they hand you, and drive off. I don't know if it would fly in the real world, but it might make a good parody. ********************* The fact that Presidential candidates are getting involved in the fuss over flying the Confederate flag in South Carolina reminds me that nowadays it seems to be the job of higher levels of gov't (such as the Feds) to protect individual citizens from wrongdoing by lower levels (state and local). One example is Federal prosecutions of local officials for violating some individual's civil rights. Is this a new development, or has it always been the case? For example, did medieval kings routinely monitor lesser nobility to make sure they didn't mistreat their peasants? ********************* There's been discussion on the mailing list, and/or on other lists (I don't recall exactly which ones), about what the world would be like if we had really quick and easy sex-changes. Think of something like the Star Trek transporter with editing, free or costing not much more than a local phone call, available at locations almost as ubiquitous as phone booths. There's also a political fuss going on about allegations that police are more likely to stop minority drivers. Apparently some officers come to think of racial minorities as being inherently suspicious. It's sometimes referred to as being stopped for "Driving while black or brown." Those two ideas lead to thoughts of what the world would be like if we had some easy way of changing one's race. If anyone could change their skin color and facial features about as easily as making a call from a pay phone, what would the effects be on society? ********************* And speaking of changing sex ... THE SEA ANEMONE She never found out how her name had gotten entered, But she had won a free sex change. Full of vague dissatisfactions she'd never really acknowledged She thought she'd at least check it out. The shop was one of those places you read about in old books That hint of things beyond our rational world. And when she wasn't sure about taking the obvious type of sex-change They handed her a 200-page catalog. She finally decided to put in a sea anemone. When she returned to the singles-bar scene Reactions were, you might say, Interesting. Many a Casanova followed her home, Interested in only one thing And that one thing Was not a sea anemone. More than one had run screaming into the night. She got quite adept at finding out which insane asylum To deliver the left-behind clothing to. Others, made of sterner stuff, Plunged ahead anyway But soon learned that sea anemone tentacles Have little stingers, like jellyfish, For hauling in prey. And if that didn't stop them Their manhood would go numb Until they couldn't be sure It hadn't already been digested. Since she swung both ways She brought home some singles-bar women. "Can't do much with that," they'd say And take their leave. Then through the grapevine She began to hear of other anemone people. They'd lie together in the night Feeding each other sardines down there And thrilling to a sensation Others had no words for. But even this lacked something. She drifted away from the singles bars And began putting more of herself Into other parts of her life. Then once in a great while She'd meet someone special, Sometimes man, sometimes woman, Or sometimes someone with another anemone Or flowers or something. Exactly what didn't seem to matter. "Can't do much with that," they'd say, Looking between her legs, But then they'd find plenty of possibilities With the rest of her And with the rest of themselves. These were the ones she treasured. They soon learned how that part of her liked sardines And how other parts of her liked other physical pleasures. But they also knew that the most important parts Were not between the legs, But between the ears And in the heart. Tom Digby bubbles@well.sf.ca.us written Feb 27, 1995 23:20 edited Mar 1, 1995 22:05 -- END --