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 #170 New Moon of October 28, 2008 Contents copyright 2008 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. ********************* As I write this two special days are coming up: Halloween and Election Day. Both are sort of scary, in different ways. Halloween is full of images of things our ancestors were frightened of, but which many of us today dismiss as "not real": Ghosts, vampires, walking dead, and the like. One potentially scary thing is the reminder that all of us will eventually die sooner or later, but then again there's so much death in the news that we've gotten accustomed to pushing that thought aside. Elections may not seem as scary on the surface, but they can affect our daily lives all through the year, even after the Halloween stuff has been put back in the attic. Quite often there's no real way to tell in advance of an election what, if any, real difference the outcome of a given contest will make. But still the choice must be made. You can leave the choice to others by not voting, but that is itself a choice you'll need to decide whether or not to make. Other times it looks like there is a clear choice, but then the scary part is that other seemingly rational people can disagree as to which choice is the right one. It's not like Halloween costumes where it's usually obvious at a glance which ones are what. I suppose you could try to pass a law requiring political candidates to dress as angels or devils or whatever, in accordance with their inner natures, but there would be no real way to enforce it. ********************* In other scary news, I'm reminded of a line I once came up with about reporting stock market performance on the Richter Scale. ********************* Recent gossip among the gods: "What's this I hear about Pan getting into computer programming?" "He and the Mother are writing an internet pornography filter, and they want to install it world-wide." "Why would they want to do that?" "They say that people are filling up the Internet with politics and treachery and wars and plagues and disasters and such, and it's making everybody unhappy. So they're trying to do something about it." "But a pornography filter? How would blocking porn help anything? And why would Pan and the Mother be the ones wanting to do it? Isn't she the one who says all acts of love and pleasure are her rituals?" "Who said anything about BLOCKING porn? I think you have it backwards." "Oh." ********************* Someone in another forum said something to the effect that all humor is based on pain. I'm not sure I agree with that. While much humor does seem to boil down to umpleasant things happening to others, especially others you don't feel close to, there do appear to be exceptions. One major exception I've noticed is humor based on cognitive dissonance, perhaps overlapping with overthrow of the established order. The most obvious examples of cognitive dissonance humor come from cartoon physics. Some character does something that we know wouldn't be possible in our world, and we find it funny regardless of whether or not anybody gets hurt. Say a character is trapped in a room with no obvious way out. But he does have paint or chalk or some such available. So he draws a door on one of the walls, opens the door he just drew, and escapes through it. That's often seen as funny. Or he's walking across a bridge that has a section missing. He walks out onto the missing section and doesn't fall until he looks down and notices that there's nothing holding him up. Many of us would find that funny even if someting broke the character's fall so he didn't really get hurt. And don't forget the case of some nominally inanimate object taking an active part in the action, such as when the ball in a ball game decides to favor one of the teams. As for something closer to real-world overthrow of the established order, look at food fights, or other situations where they get laughs by making messes. You might say that such antics do hurt whoever has to eventually clean up the mess, but that's usually a minor part of the overall appeal. Another not-inherently-painful form of humor involves the juxtaposition of unrelated concepts. Puns are prime examples of this. Yes, these forms of humor may have evolved from situations involving pain, but nowadays the connection can be rather tenuous. So I would hesitate to say that all humor is based on pain, even if that's what it originally evolved from. ********************* Two movies I recently saw had rather rough boat rides as part of the action. One took some of the main characters down a river, through rapids, and even over a waterfall or two. The other was mostly underground, through tunnels and caves and sluices and such. Both times it occurred to me that the producers were hoping that someone would want to build a theme-park ride based on what they saw in the movie. Is this kind of thinking common among movie producers nowadays? ********************* Lately I've been thinking about technology and copyrights as they affect tails of distributions. Currently the distribution of fame and fortune in the music scene has a "head" consisting of a few big-name zillionaire artists whose names are household words over much of the world. The distribution leads down through others whose fame is more modest but who still are making a pretty good living, and then trails off into a "tail" of people who are known only to a few dozen or maybe a few hundred friends and friends of friends, and who won't be quitting their day jobs any time soon. Different eras in history have emphasized different parts of this distribution. For instance, back in pre-technological times the distribution consisted mainly of a long tail of bards literally singing for their supper in taverns and inns. There were some wealthy artists performing before the crowned heads in royal courts, but most of the populace seldom if ever saw or heard them. In contrast, the Twentieth Century brought us technologies with relatively large startup costs and economies of scale that more or less by their nature favored the head of the distribution. It was easy to go to a neighborhood store and buy recordings of Frank Sinatra or the Beatles or whoever happened to be at the top of the charts that week, but difficult or impossible to obtain similar recordings of some song the neighbors' teenager wrote and would now and then sing at parties. Now the technological pendulum is swinging back, what with the Internet and the Web and YouTube and various and sundry portable players with download capability. That may be leading us into a battle between the different parts of the distribution. The big media conglomerates have been pushing for laws that favor their end of things, such as restrictive copyright rules that limit the ability of ordinary people to make recordings widely available to others. Want music? Go to their store (either a physical place or some kind of online site) and buy whatever they're offering for sale. Pay no attention to the musicians next door, however talented they may be. On the other side we have those who make up the long tail. Some of them aspire to eventually join the lucky few who make it into the head of the distribution, but many do not. Perhaps their music appeals only to members of this or that specialized subculture or interest group, or maybe they prefer the intimacy of a small concert venue where members of the audience can get up close and personal with them. Whatever their motivation, they want to be able to make themselves heard by those who would want to hear them if they knew they existed. Money may be a concern, but for many it's secondary. And there are many who believe that in the long run letting their fans share their work freely leads to more sales. They don't want to have to play by big-corporation rules. Although I once had dreams of being among that select few in the head of the distribution, nowadays I favor the long tail. But however this scenario plays out, we are living in interesting times. ********************* As I was reading something in Wikipedia about mythological beings, I came across a reference to the story of the Billy Goats Gruff and the troll under the bridge. That reminded me that years ago I'd wondered if the kinds of trolls that lurk under bridges could hide under a dental bridge in someone's mouth. And if they could, what would they live on? Would they just grab a portion of whatever food the host happened to eat, or what? And could such a troll live under other kinds of bridges, such as the bridge of a song? I'd never done much with either idea before, but this time something sort of clicked. I don't really have a tune for it yet, but people I've shown it to have said it sort of fits various other existing tunes, so that may not be all that much of a problem. Someone suggested that I change the word "Army" to "Dorsai". Feel free to do that when most of the people in your audience would get the reference. But it may be better to leave it as-is for audiences that aren't familiar with the Dorsai. And feel free to add your own verses. Just try to keep the logical progression of first describing the problem, then solving it, and finally announcing success. The Troll at the Bridge I don't dare sing the bridge Of this song. I don't dare sing the bridge Of this song. [line's worth of silence] [line's worth of silence] I don't dare sing the bridge Of this song. There's a troll at the bridge Of this song. There's a troll at the bridge Of this song. [line's worth of silence] [line's worth of silence] There's a troll at the bridge Of this song. When Spinal Tap played This song When Spinal Tap played This song The troll got their drummer [line's worth of screams and such] When Spinal Tap played This song. So let's teach the Army This song. So let's teach the Army This song. They'll slaughter that troll [battlefield sound effects] So let's teach the Army This song. Oh now we can all sing This song. Oh now we can all sing This song. The troll has been vanquished And conquered and slain So now we can all sing This song. -- Tom Digby First draft 18:44 Sat October 18 2008 Revised 01:26 Wed October 29 2008 Revised 02:00 Wed October 30 2008 ********************* HOW TO GET SILICON SOAPWARE EMAILED TO YOU There are two email lists, one that allows reader comments and one that does not. Both are linked from http://www.plergb.com/Mail_Lists/Silicon_Soapware_Zine-Pages.html If you are already receiving Silicon Soapware and want to unsubscribe or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be in the footer appended to the end of this section in the copy you received. Or you can use the above URL to navigate to the appropriate subscription form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change your settings. -- END --