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 #145 New Moon of October 21, 2006 Contents copyright 2006 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. ********************* Halloween is approaching. Summer is over. What's more, my time of mourning the summer just past is also over. Every year as Summer Solstice approaches I get a sort of wistful feeling that the days of summer are numbered. Even though the warmest weather is yet to come, after the Solstice the days will start getting shorter, heralding the eventual return of the time of darkness. I don't want the summer to end. Then, usually sometime between Equinox and Halloween, comes a calm feeling of Acceptance. Summer is over and done with, no longer quite real. The short days of cool gloomy weather start to somehow feel like the proper order of things. Thoughts and plans turn inward, away from outdoor play to visions of loved ones gathering around the hearth. And there is consolation in the knowledge that the time of darkness, like the time of light, is limited. The sun will come again. ********************* Speaking of Halloween with its ghosts and walking skeletons and all that, have you ever thought about what Halloween would be like on a planet of intelligent exoskeletal beings? What would a decomposed dead person look like there? On earth the last thing that remains of a dead person is usually the bones, so our death imagery is full of skeletons, sometimes with bits of entrails and such. But there the skeleton would be on the outside. Thus a decomposed dead person might look more or less normal, but they would be an empty shell. Being hollow would be a symbol of death there. Being hollow can also have connotations of not being what outside appearances might indicate at first glance. So would their returning dead be thought of as sneaking around among the living, perhaps being detectable only by their too-light weight if you shove them or try to lift them? Even that might not be a reliable way to detect them. Since being too light would be a disadvantage in a fight, or even on a windy day, the returning dead might fill themselves with ballast, often dirt from the graveyard they were buried in. They don't always get it right. Since dirt is denser than flesh, it's easy to end up much heavier than normal. Even if they get the weight right, the mass distribution may be different, often leading to a lower center of gravity. Some consider the resulting increased stability to be an advantage in a fight, while others eventually change their ballast to something less dense so as to more easily blend in among the living. Either way, you can't tell the difference just by looking. You have to weigh them, and even that isn't always a reliable indication. Then over time the dirt or trash or whatever may gradually be replaced with treasure. Again, this can lead to weight anomalies, especially if greed overcomes common sense. There are tales of those who filled themselves so full of coins and jewelry that they could scarcely move. Such are easy prey for robbers, or at least those robbers who aren't afraid of curses and such. But treasure or no, the prevailing belief would be that the dead are deceivers, never to be trusted. Even if you can tell who is or is not undead, you can't tell from outside appearances who is full of treasure and who is just full of dirt. Legends tend to portray the undead as generally evil, and prescribe a number of ways of dealing with them. Like our undead, one way to deal with them is to cut them up into pieces that can be disposed of separately. But unlike endoskeletal beings, they can be poured full of concrete. That doesn't kill them, but it does immobilize them. Many a remote village has a centuries-old concrete-filled shell on display in the town square, and many are the scary stories told around the spot at night. Happy Halloween, whatever planet you may be on. ********************* Are you familiar with the gas sulfur hexafluoride? If not, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_hexafluoride The article describes a number of uses for it, including inhaling it to make your voice sound lower. This is the opposite of what happens with gases like helium that are lighter than air. One use they don't mention is to fill your blimp with it instead of helium if you're afraid of heights. ********************* While attending a recent science fiction convention I decided to walk to a nearby fast-food place for breakfast. My route took me along First Street near the San Jose airport. As I was passing through the 101 freeway underpass I noticed that someone had written "All thought is anthropomorphic" on one of the pillars. Where did that line come from? I just now did a Google search on it and got half a dozen hits, including something by Einstein that I can't access because it requires a login or something. Did he originate it? I first heard it from a fellow student in college circa 1962. I don't recall encountering it at all since then, up until I saw it on that underpass pillar. Strange things happen in this world. Be the provenance of the line as it may, I just couldn't resist following "All thought is anthropomorphic" with "At least on this planet." Others have since suggested that I should have given more attention to the thoughts of whatever thinking non-humans may exist here. If they want to go to that pillar where First Street goes under the 101 freeway in San Jose and make the correction, I won't object. ********************* Something that popped into my mind: Two nurses are wheeling a cart along a hospital corridor. On the cart is an anvil. One of the nurses is looking at a prescription form and asking, "Are you sure this doesn't say 'Advil'?" ********************* A couple of weeks ago I happened to arrive early for a medical appointment. While I was waiting I stationed myself outside one of the hospital entrances and blew soap bubbles for a few minutes. Many of the people passing by smiled, and a few made happy comments. Even the security guard smiled. A few people didn't react at all. I was reminded of an earlier incident at a poetry reading when one person just walked right through a bubble zone without smiling or anything. The phrase "immune to bubbles" popped into my mind. That had the feeling of a sad condition, on a par with immunity to kittens. Was he also immune to rainbows and butterflies and the faint sound of distant music? It would seem to imply severe atrophy of the Inner Child. Is there any hope for a cure? ********************* Speaking of medical stuff, I've noticed that the most unlikely things can be of use. I recently got to wondering what if some researcher were to find medical benefits in some non-polar liquid that is most easily obtained from certain legless reptiles? Then there might actually be legitimate medical uses for snake oil. ********************* Some fast-food chain, I forget which, was recently advertising that their employees "really hustle" to get your order to you. That didn't score points with me. Rather, it got me to wondering if that degree of haste was really necessary. While I wouldn't want them lounging languidly about while they should be getting my order together, the few seconds' difference between reasonable dispatch and "really hustling" doesn't seem worth the extra stress it would put on them, especially considering what they're paid. It's not like I was a paramedic stopping by for a quick bite on my way to restart somebody's heart. A later thought: Would it be different if I didn't perceive fast-food restaurant staff as human? Would dressing them up as robots or some such help me feel more comfortable expecting them to "really hustle" on my behalf? ********************* Legal question: If some being from another planet or dimension or other hitherto unknown realm wanted to visit the US legally, what formalities would they need to go through? ********************* I just came across an interesting Web site: Freak Nation. http://www.freaknation.com/ You've probably noticed how alternative-lifestyle subcultures tend to overlap. The people running the site take this as the basis of a sort of "nation" composed of seven major "tribes". They call these tribes "Fans", "Re-Enacters", "Goth/Punk", "Mystics", "Alt-Sexers", "Gamers", and "Geeks". If you're in one, you're likely to be in others. I'm in four of the seven, possibly on the fringes of a fifth, depending on how you define things. The stated purpose of the site is to be a common rallying point for those who don't fit into the mainstream. That may seem unnecessary to those of us living in places like the Bay Area, but could well be important if you're a lonely teenager out in the middle of nowhere. So it may be worth a look. ********************* Halloween is approaching, and this seems appropriate: I ENJOY SCARING THE WORLD TUNE: "I Enjoy Being a Girl" from "Flower Drum Song" I'm a Thing and by me that's only great! I am proud that I set you all a-quiver; I can be all the things you fear and hate As the night closes in to make you shiver. I adore taking form as something frightening When the day fades away into the night. Out I go in the moonlight or the lightning Like a dragon who is ready for the flight! When I was a savage werewolf, with the Moon shining like a pearl, I think I was quite a fair wolf. I enjoy scaring the world. When men see me as a vampire, with my cape flapping all unfurled, Approaching their lonely campfire, I enjoy scaring the world. I flip when some fellow fleeing showers Takes shelter in some old haunted place; I float through the corridors for hours With nothing but a skull upon my face! I snicker and smile and chortle, as I think of the fear there'll be In the mind of some helpless mortal Who will dread being a guy Meeting a Thing like me. -- Tom Digby written 0415 3/ 4/79 entered 1350 10/24/87 ********************* 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.com or bubbles@well.sf.ca.us). I currently do that one manually. -- END --