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 #173 New Moon of January 25, 2009 Contents copyright 2009 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 big news story of the past few days (barring some other sudden development) is the inauguration of Barak Obama as President of the US. This transition felt like a great weight being lifted from my shoulders. Had it been there since the events of 9-11, or perhaps even earlier, when the younger Bush first took office? I think some of it dates from back then, but the feeling had waxed and waned in the intervening years so it's hard to really say. I do recall that in the summer of 2001 I had bright shining dreams of doing various kinds of creative stuff, such as recording readings of my poetry and stories. I was even starting to think in terms of how I might set up a computer and related hardware to record audio and such. Then it all seemed to come crashing down along with the World Trade Center buildings. So now is it time to revive the old dreams, and/or sow the seeds of new ones in their places? Part of me seems to think so. ********************* Over the last year or so you've been reading about some new research into brain chemistry as it relates to memory. It's kind of interesting, at least the little of it that you can understand, but it doesn't seem all that important to you right now. Then you start noticing the ads. Some company is selling pills to help you forget a particular person. You've never heard of this person before, but from the way the ads are written it seems that he (or maybe she?) is someone rather well-known. This, like the memory research, doesn't seem all that important to you. But then as you see the ads again and again, you start getting curious. You tell yourself that there may be a reason people would take pills to forget this person, and that it may be best to let sleeping dogs lie. But every time you see another ad you start to wonder. Eventually the thoughts come unbidden at random times, even without the ads. You can't stop wondering who this person is, and why people would want to forget him (or maybe her). You start looking up the name. The major Internet search engines come up empty, except for the ever-present ads for the forgetfulness pills. Wikipedia has an article, but it's just a place holder, seemingly there only to enforce some kind of policy of silence. Despite all this, you persevere. It becomes an obsession. You start searching for misspellings of the name, as well as typos and phrases that might be oblique references. You find hints, some of which lead you to more hints, in turn leading you to still more hints, and so on. Eventually your knowledge reaches a sort of critical mass, and the whole story becomes clear. You are horrified. Images best not described haunt your thoughts day and night. Old songs take on obscene new meanings. Bedtime stories you recall from childhood become tales of almost unimaginable cruelty and devastation. Your favorite foods taste of death and decay. Although you know intellectually that the risk is practically non-existent, you are afraid to go near mailboxes or drinking fountains or sycamore trees. Life has become unbearable. If only you could forget. Then you remember the ads, the ones that started you on this path. You look them up ... Some time later, you see an ad. Some company is selling pills to help you forget a particular person. You sort of wonder what it's about, but only sort of. It doesn't seem all that important to you, at least not at first ... ********************* Imagine a brewery, with tasting rooms and a retail store and such, advertising itself to tourists with signs along the highways giving the distance to the place. You've probably seen such signs: So many miles to whatever, with the number getting smaller and smaller as you draw nearer. The difference is that since this is a brewery, and the brand name of their beer has some connection with music or song, instead of distance in miles they give driving time in units of bottles of beer on the wall. ********************* At a recent party people got to discussing UFO's, and someone brought up the often-asked question, "If they're out there, why don't we have more evidence of their presence?" Someone else suggested that perhaps we are their DO NOT DISTURB list. They're trying to protect us, much as some agencies on Earth are trying to protect this planet's endangered species. Under that theory we would get a few visitors, but only a few. First, there may be scientists and other scholars studying us. They and other authorized visitors come and go quietly, pretty much unnoticed. The ones who do get noticed are the rule-breakers: Thieves, vandals, joy-riders, pranksters, and, if the more lurid tales of alien abductions are to be believed, sex perverts. Although this makes sense intellectually, part of me finds it a bit hard to accept emotionally. I think I know why: It implies that whatever alien beings we may now and then encounter are fallible. No matter how far ahead of us their technology may be, they're not necessarily gods or angels or other enlightened super-beings whose advice we would do well to seek out. They are just plain folks, or worse, and we should take anything they say with a large grain of salt. This may be sort of how a child might feel upon learning that the people he'd thought were his parents were imposters. A stable reference point has failed. Who, if anyone, can we turn to now? ********************* At one point during the new version of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" one of the human characters says "It's our planet," whereupon Klaatu says "No, it isn't." The discussion then goes off in some other direction, so we never hear him say whose planet he thinks it is, or why. My response might be to say that before we can decide whose planet it is, we need to decide who gets to decide. If it were up to humans to decide, we would be likely to rule that it is indeed our planet, or maybe that it belongs to some deity or some such that at least some fairly large bunch of humans believe in. In either case, the decision would be likely to be biased in favor of humans as opposed to beings from Klaatu's world or elsewhere. If, on the other hand, Klaatu or his people get to decide, the decision could well go against humanity. So we need to decide who decides. But to do that we need to decide who decides who decides. And who decides that, and so on. In the end, does it come down to anything more enlightened than "Might makes right"? Their technology is way beyond ours, so they get to decide our fate. One would hope that sufficiently enlightened beings would have progressed beyond such thinking, but perhaps that is too much to hope for. For all we know, "Might makes right" may be the ultimate answer. ********************* Question: If you were a school teacher and one of your students used a non-word like "ain't" or "irregardless" in an essay or something, but spelled it other than the way you usually see it spelled, would you mark it as a misspelling? Or does the spelling not matter if it isn't a word to begin with? In other words, is it possible to misspell things that aren't words? After all, if "irregardless" isn't a word, then why should it make any difference whether you spell it "irregardless" or "iragarddlas" or even "ploomplgloxl", as long as whatever spelling you come up with doesn't happen to match some real word you didn't intend to use? Yes, I'm aware that some authorities don't believe in the concept of some word-like things not being words because they don't have the Establishment's blessing, or something like that, but then it isn't as funny. ********************* By the way, "irregardless" is in this editor's spell-checker dictionary, while "ploomplgloxl" isn't. Isn't that discrimination or something? ********************* As I was reading the news a few days ago I came across an item with the headline "Normal couple weds at Taco Bell" At first I thought it was a joke of some sort, perhaps having to do with the fuss about same-sex marriage. But no, it wasn't. The headline was referring to a town named "Normal". As for the part about Taco Bell, the couple wanted a low-budget wedding and liked Taco Bell. People have gotten married in odd venues before. I know one couple who got married on a commuter train, and several who have tied the knot at science fiction conventions. It just so happened that in this case the town name led to a headline that made the story look more interesting than it otherwise would have been. It also turned out that the couple was indeed "normal" in the sense of being one man and one woman, but that wasn't the point of the story. ********************* Speaking of new faces around our nation's capital, let us hope that the Obama Administration will give us reason to once again Believe ... Moon??? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Moon And saying that you've seen it brings howls of cruel laughter? Where the silvery light shining in the night Is a thing that defies explanation And the tides are caused by the breathing of the oysters? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Sun And everyone is acting just like it wasn't shining? Where to walk down the road in the midday heat You are careful to carry a lantern, Or you have to move as if stumbling in the darkness? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the Moon And people that've seen it are locked up in the nut house? Where the young lovers go out beside the sea And they watch the reflections of nothing, And they never talk about what they think they see there? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe in the rain But keep on getting wet without any earthly reason? Where you go with your friends for a picnic lunch While you fear what you'd better not mention, And it's just delusions you have to come in out of? Have you ever been to a part of the world Where people don't believe In love??? Thomas G. Digby written ???? 1968? typed/revised 0130 hr 11/23/75 entered 2340 hr 3/16/92 ********************* 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 --