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 #237 New Moon of March 30, 2014 Contents copyright 2014 by Thomas G. Digby, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. See the Creative Commons site at http://creativecommons.org/ for details. Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback. Details of how to sign up are at the end. ********************* April come she will, with or without showers or cruelty or fools. Poets looking at April have seen all of these, or one or another of them, or sometimes none. Perhaps April's secret real name is Rorschach. ********************* April first has long been a day for pranks and hoaxes, with the mainstream media sometimes participating. For example, back on April 1, 1957, the BBC showed a supposed documentary on how spaghetti grows on trees. Since pasta was not as well known in Britain then as it is now, a fair number of people fell for it. Another hoax, this one in the Seventies and early Eighties, consisted of scientists claiming that an upcoming line-up of planets would reduce the apparent gravity felt by people on Earth. Supposedly if you jumped up in the air at the right moment you would be able to feel yourself floating. Some actually claimed to be able to feel the difference, even though calculations by reputable scientists showed the effect to be far too small to detect except perhaps by extremely sensitive instruments. This brings up a question: When real news happens on April 1, how do you report it without being disbelieved? For a recent example, there was a large earthquake under the ocean off Chile on the evening of April 1 (local time). The Wikipedia article on "April 1" shows many more events happening on that date over the years. Some of these were triumphs, some were tragedies, and still others were sort of both or in between. And, perhaps depending on your views, some were more plausible than others. So when something is reported on the first day of April, how do you know whether or not to believe it? ********************* The list of fiftieth anniversary dates (early April 1964) shows more items, but few really seem to stand out in retrospect. One such is the Rolling Stones releasing their debut album in the middle of the month. And of course the Beatles continue their conquest of the pop music scene. ********************* "That psychic you hired for our carnival isn't doing too well." "Really?" "Her recent predictions have almost all been wrong. And for some reason they all seem to involve blizzards and other winter weather, even for things that are supposed to happen in the summertime." "I think I know what the problem is." "What is it?" "Her crystal ball broke a couple of months ago. So while she's looking for a new one she's been using a snow globe as a temporary replacement." "That sounds like it could be it. Could you speak to her about it?" ********************* Someone in another forum said something about a movie preview in which some actor looked especially bad. That led me to thoughts of wanting to make a movie seem bad so as to discourage people from going to see it. Suppose some movie theater needs to do some remodeling or some such, but the society it's in has a taboo against closing for, or even mentioning, such things. So even if all of the seats have been ripped out along with the projectors and screen, they have to have a token showing of something, even if it's on a temporary setup that's little more than a curtained-off corner of the lobby with a TV fed from a VCR, and a half-dozen folding chairs for the audience. So what they do is try to pick a movie as few people as possible will want to see, and present it in as bad a light as possible. There may even be movies (and trailers for them) especially made for this market. The problem the makers of such things face is how to make something bad enough that no one will want to watch it, while not inadvertently becoming some sort of cult classic like "Plan 9 from Outer Space". That doesn't happen often, but it supposedly does now and then. And then once the work is done and the main facility is usable again, how do you get your previous audience you've driven away to come back? It's a strange field to work in. ********************* Speaking of odd happenings, I once saw a restaurant surprise a customer with a free order of fries because their check totaled exactly seventy-seven cents. This was many years ago, when a dollar was worth something, and restaurant checks were written by hand, not printed by a computer. After listing all the items ordered along with their prices the server would add all the amounts up and write the total in big print in the middle of the check, where it would be easy to notice. Thing is, when a customer asked for something special that would be emphasized in a similar manner. To further complicate matters, people in different countries have different styles of writing numbers. Specifically, in many places they put a horizontal line across the "7", perhaps to avoid confusing it with the "1", since people in those places often make the serif at the top of the "1" larger than is common here. The result is that their "7" looks a little like a mirror image of our lower-case "f". So when the total of this particular check was seventy-seven cents the cook saw the big "77" on the check with the crossed sevens and misread it as "ff", and took that to mean that the customer wanted fries. I left while the server and the customer and the cook were still trying to figure out what happened, so I don't know if they ever really worked it out. But the above is my best guess. ********************* Alternate Routes He was crazy. We all knew that. All his talk of strange exotic lands he would someday run away to proved it, Since it was well known That here was the only place there was. Still, he could be quite convincing So we had to keep reminding ourselves That he was crazy. Further proof: One night late, driving home from a party or something, As he approached the curve in the road We saw him signal to turn right. He tried to explain about another road to the left They had taught us not to see But that only proved How crazy he was. And so we went, Being careful not to look too hard as we passed the curve, Until One night late, driving home from a party or something, As he approached the curve in the road We saw him signal to turn left And vanish. We all stood there, Telling each other that we could see, Way down in the canyon, His flaming wreckage. I felt it best not to mention That to me the faint red glow Looked more like tail lights Dwindling toward the horizon. -- Thomas G. Digby written 0420 hr 5/17/80 entered 2115 hr 2/08/92 ********************* 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 you can tell which list you are on by looking at the email headers. If the headers include a line like this: Silicon Soapware zine with reader comments you are getting it via the list that allows comments (some software may hide part of the line, but there should be enough visible to recognize it). To comment, simply email your comment to ss_talk@lists.plergb.com (which you can often do by hitting "Reply All" or "Reply to List") from the address at which you got the zine. The list will not accept comments from non-member addresses. If the Subject line includes the phrase "SS_Talk Digest" you are getting the digest version. Otherwise you're getting individual items as they are posted. The address for posting comments is the same either way. If, on the other hand, there's a line like "Silicon Soapware no-reply" you're on the zine-only list. This list does not expect comments nor does it accept replies for posting. If you need to contact the author use bubbles@well.com or bubbles@plergb.com. If you are receiving Silicon Soapware and want to unsubscribe or otherwise change settings, the relevant URL should be just below this section in the copy you received. Or you can use the plergb.com URL at the beginning of this section to navigate to the appropriate subscription form, which will also allow you to cancel your subscription or change your settings. -- END --