The Evening * Glob

One of the hazards of using impressive words is accidentally reaching for the wrong one in the heat of disputation. It can be difficult to maintain the proper command of meanings when several little-used and unusual terms sound sufficiently similar to each other. More to the point, misuse of a big, fancy word will disastrously undermine the aura of learned intelligence that you are attempting to put over on your interlocutors.

I would thus be remiss in recommending last week's word, lugubrious, if I did not note a few other terms that are easily confused with it, such as lucubration and lubricous. It is essential to guard against confusion at all times, since using a word such as lubricous to describe a friend's mournful aspect will strain even a fast friendship.

lucubration refers to a solitary activity known only too well to every editor of The Glob. It derives, like so many of the snootier words in English, from the Latin. To lucubrate is to work by candlelight, and connotes the labors attendent on study or scribbling far into the night. The initial luc- is from lux, light, an element familiar from charming baby names such as Lucille and Lucifer. This happy association captures some of the essential pleasures of lucubration, which can be used to refer both to the act of burning the midnight oil itself or to the literary works produced by such toil.

Mrs. Bizzy: What do you think of our new vicar, then?
Mrs. Boddy: Hm.
Mrs. Bizzy: Isn't he wonderful? So young, and such the intellectual!
Mrs. Boddy: He's something shocking all right.
Mrs. Bizzy: I beg your pardon? Did you know he's writing a book on the divine body of the scriptures?
Mrs. Boddy: That does not surprise me in the slightest: he's carnally inclined.
Mrs. Bizzy: He's what?
Mrs. Boddy: He propositioned me.
Mrs. Bizzy: What? Vicar Glandstone?
Mrs. Boddy: After the Bible study group last week, I asked him for recommendations of further readings on the incorruptibility of saints both pre- and post-mortem. He pretended to have written something apropos the subject, and then he baldly asked me to call at the vicarage later so he could show me his lucubrations.
Mrs. Bizzy: Oh my goodness! What did you do?
Mrs. Boddy: I was utterly astonished at being addressed in such a fashion, so I bid him a hasty good day after kicking him in the shins.
Mrs. Bizzy: My, my, another lost soul, seething with cruel lusts. He seemed like such a nice, quiet man.
Mrs. Boddy: My dear, those are exactly the sort of people you need to watch.

In contrast to the upright, though perhaps pedantic, associations of lucubrations, the word lubricous is more suspect. A lubricous entity is characterized by lubricity, a smoothness or slipperiness that may be caused or enhanced by lubrication. A state of lubricity is therefore tricky and potentially treacherous. As an extended meaning, this term connotes lewdness, lechery and related entertaining vices. There is therefore a nice distinction between a lubricous glance and a lugubrious look that must be understood before employing either term in anger.

The Geek Chorus: Alright, dood, enough. I surrender.
Myself: I beg your pardon?
The Geek Chorus: You're the alpha male, OK? Chief BigWord.
Myself: Are you finding this presentation tedious?
The Geek Chorus: Well, your dictionary kinda stops on the first syllable, if you know what I mean.
Myself: . . .
The Geek Chorus: No offense, but there are limits. Some of us have stuff to do.
Myself: Ah, yes. I see.
The Geek Chorus: Seriously, man. I have work to do tonight.
Myself: And are your parents aware that your nocturnal, lucubratory activities are largely lubricous in nature?
The Geek Chorus: What?
Myself: You know what I mean. You're busy playing on the Shame Grid. What's your handle? The invincible Pr0n, who surfs for the Lusers?
The Geek Chorus: Man, I'm outta here.
Myself: Goodbye.

Posted by williford at 05:57 PM | Permalink

From time to time, the hushed halls of The Glob Universal School of Knowledge echo forth with the lusty cry of an academic hot on the heels of a research topic. This disturbance invariably rouses certain ancient researchers from their studies, who join in the general din with cracked bays of criticism on the shoddy methods employed by researchers these days. Things get bad enough when a single department is thrown into an uproar, but recent trends in cross-disciplinary studies have led to more than one line of research inciting fully more than half the faculty, requiring intervention by a squad of deans to pacify the inmates.

As a result of these disturbances, The Glob Universal Professor of Classics, Dr. Ni Ansa, has proceeded with extreme caution in publicizing his latest discovery. Working with materials scientists and imaging technicians at Glob Labs, Dr. Ansa has succeeded in completely recovering a text from one of the famous burned scrolls of Pompeii. The source scroll resembled a roughly oblong charcoal briquette before treatment, which took six months in total.

The recovery procedure involved first completely scanning the surface of the scroll with a tunnelling electron microscope and optical microscopes in the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet spectra. Then a computer-controlled laser vaporized a molecule-thick layer from the scroll, and the scroll was scanned again as before. These peeling and scanning operations continued in strict alternation until no trace of the scroll remained whatsoever, at which point the database of measurements was declared complete.

A powerful parallel computer then ran models over the collected data, looking for combinations of layers that, when unrolled, would yield patterns somewhat text-like. The candidate reconstructions were reviewed by Dr. Ansa, who made the final determination of the most likely match. As things turned out, the ink of this particular scroll charred differently than the papyrus, which greatly helped the analysis. Dr. Ansa immediately recognized the best candidate text as yet another copy of Aristotle's Ethics, with a few unique, minor variations. This was something of an accomplishment, but far more astonishing results were obtained in the control study.

In order to protect against experimenter bias in evaluating the recovery technique, the experiment had been designed as a double blind. The recovery procedure was actually run against two carbonized samples, one being a genuine scroll from the Villa of the Papyri in Pompeii, and one being a briquette prepared by Glob Labs from a blank papyrus scroll using an artificial volcano. Neither Dr. Ansa nor the Glob Labs technicians knew which sample was which. The genuine scroll yielded up Aristotle, but it turned out that the procedure recovered a text from the dummy scroll as well, with an even higher degree of correlation.

At first, the experiment's director suspected foul play in the preparation of the dummy scroll, but textual analysis by Dr. Ansa concluded that the text was unlikely to have been forged by anyone on the project. None of the Glob Labs staff knows Latin, and the style of the text is both subtle and refined. Dr. Ansa himself did not have access to the lab building where the dummy scroll was prepared, as the artificial volcano is an extremely dangerous piece of equipment.

The text appears to be the first book in a longer work, De Voluptate Cæleste, dealing with the manipulation of people through casting of horoscopes. The material is presented as a series of dialogues at a dinner party, in which a master astrologer, Scortator Audax, alternately flatters and lampoons the guests with horoscopes to affect changes in their behavior. The astrologer appears to be manuvering to estrange all the wives from their husbands, in order to obtain opportunities for more detailed, personal study of the ladies' stellar qualities.

The author focuses the bulk of his discussion on the associations and influences of the hitherto unknown constellation Morpio, a small, faint grouping of stars that Scortator Audax repeatedly invokes to inflict particular discomfiture to guests he doesn't like (that is, the husbands). Dr. Ansa has begun to trace echoes of the racy dialogue in later works by other authors, most notably the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter. The only difficultly, of course, is that by all rights the work under study shouldn't exist, and Dr. Ansa is unable to consult with colleagues at the School due to the risk of inciting a riot.

I have therefore selected this ontological puzzle as our brainteaser for this week. Solutions should be submitted to In re: The Authorless Text, care of this column. All entries will be forwarded to Dr. Ansa for evaluation, who remains sequestered for his own safety at the Heavy Research Facility at Glob Labs. The author of the winning entry will receive a personalized horoscope from The Glob's resident astrologer, cast according to the methods of Scortator Audax. Carpe astra, lector!

Posted by williford at 05:15 PM | Permalink

As the sun rises on another working week, it is tempting to take an hour to review your upcoming schedule and commitments, perhaps pausing to peruse the morning's news or at least the latest thrilling installment of The Glob. At these times of relative peace and quiet, nothing spoils the mood quite so much as a proper sense of perspective. While you are lolling at the breakfast table, or on the train, or in your task chair, every other living person on the planet is pursuing their own business during that hour, as best they can.

Given a human population of six billion, your lazy time can be seen as one piece of a collective 684462.697 years of human experience accumulated in parallel during those sixty minutes. Assuming for the moment a human lifespan of 70 years, this experience would occupy 9778 lifetimes, were it lived consecutively. And at least the same amount of human experience is accumulated every other hour, around the clock. In fact, given that world population continues to expand, we can count on our hour with the news becoming a more and more minute fraction of the whole. This state of affairs begs the question of what on earth the news can possibly tell us about the world in which we live.

After all, we can only spend an hour reading the news, and news organizations only have a limited time to collect and disseminate current information. What gets written about and published is therefore an insignificant subset of the total set of occurrences. Six billion days' worth of questioning, laboring, striving, successes, failures, toil, pleasure, and anguish are experienced every day, and you will never hear about most of it. It simply isn't possible.

At best, the news represents a set of stories that we use to synchronize our understandings with each other. If we all read a story about a skinny man from Gujarat who wins the crown of Steer King in a Texas Panhandle steak-eating competition, to the horror of his devout relations, then we all have grown closer together. We have another point of reference that we can use to try to communicate with each other. For example, the heavyset co-worker who, improbably enough, proves to be the best drunk dancer at the office holiday party could be referred to thereafter as the Steer King of soused salsa (or salsa con tequila).

It ultimately doesn't matter what stories the news contains so long as enough of the people you need to interact with are reading the same stories. For this reason, I urge you to promote reading The Glob in your office, home, or institution of higher learning. Like the more traditional news outlets, The Glob presents a select, impossibly small fraction of human experience, distilled by hand with attention to the traditional values of fine writing, big words, and lack of obvious advertisements.

The Geek Chorus: Hey, dood, isn't that like an advertisement?
Myself: I don't believe I am obliged to answer that question.
The Geek Chorus: Takin' the 5th, huh? Anyhoo, I just wanted to say the perspective stuff was awesome! I'm all inspired now to reach out and help people.
Myself: I see.
The Geek Chorus: Yeah, I've got this great idea for a new virus.
Myself: . . . Help people, you said?
The Geek Chorus: Oh, don't get me wrong, dood! This isn't exactly malware. It's like a Buddhist worm.
Myself: I beg your pardon.
The Geek Chorus: Well, I was surfing around, and I found out that the Dalai Lama says that making a prayer wheel out of a disk drive is up to spec, spiritwise.
Myself: Yes?
The Geek Chorus: So, like, what if you have this worm that propagates through the net, and every host it infects, it finds the connected disks and copies the Diamond Sutra onto all of 'em.
Myself: Yes?
The Geek Chorus: Well, then every time the disk spins, the Diamond Sutra gets spun out into the universe. Imagine the power of the Google server farm, co-opted as a massively parallel prayer engine!
Myself: I see. Why the Diamond Sutra?
The Geek Chorus: Er, well, at first I thought Neal Stephenson wrote it.
Myself: You just have a new exploit that you want to test, don't you?
The Geek Chorus: Man, you will simply not believe it. It's soooo sweet, and it's like every version of Windows is vulnerable. It'll spread like anything.
Myself: Very bad karma, I'm afraid.
The Geek Chorus: You think? Maybe you're right From what I've read, that Dharma guy is one bad dude. I maybe shouldn't peeve him.
Myself: That seems wise.
The Geek Chorus: Good deal. Whoa, is that the time? Later, dood!
Myself: Goodbye.

Posted by williford at 09:59 AM | Permalink

One of the appealing characteristics of the English language is its fearlessness in appropriating vocabulary from any source. You can easily find Latin, Greek, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Irish, Dutch, and Spanish words canonized within the vocabulary of English, though somewhat changed by the process.

These words are frequently borrowed as opaque wholes, without related words to set up helpful associations in the mind of a speaker. So, for example, the word lugubrious is unique in English, standing underived from any other word. You either know what it means, or you don't, and there's no way to figure it out unless you have been subjected to the tribulations of a classical education.

If you have had the pleasure of reading Catullus in Latin (and it is worth the while), you would have run across the verb lugeo in Carm. 39 referring to mourning, allowing you to infer that a person with a lugubrious physiognomy is a pretty gloomy-looking customer, even if it is a put-on.

The Lady: Is it Halloween already?
The Genilman: Naw, baby. 's my new look. I am the king of the night.
The Lady: King of the night?
The Genilman: You ever think about how beautiful the moon is, when it's all big and clouds blow over it? Over at the club we talk a lot about the moon, and the night. Space, death, y'know, the heavy stuff.
The Lady: Uh-huh.
The Genilman: So, you gotta put on your heavy-thinking clothes to deal with that. It's like a crime-scene cleaner-- can't wear no Hawaiian shirt to a crime scene. You gotta dress serious for serious business.
The Lady: Uh-huh. You look like Ronald McDracula.
The Genilman: Aw, don't be that way. Besides, that name was already taken. When I'm at the club, I am the dread Baron Courvoisier. I make a face like this: behold my fearful visage!
The Lady: . . . You are one lugubrious looooser.

Learning long Latinate words like lugubrious is worth the effort both for their descriptive power and for their usefulness in restaurants. If you find yourself slightly short of funds for an adequate gratuity, you can proffer genuine 50-cent words of this kind to make up the balance, scribbing them on the check. I recently presented the following word list to a waiter, after an indescribable meal:

1 Caesar salad . . . saponaceous
1 Soup of the day . . . multifarious
1 Special roast . . . precambrian
1 Creme brulee . . . auto-da-fe
1 Espresso . . . rheological

This gift of knowledge will happily fulfill your moral obligations to your server, but it is advisable to resort to your vocabulary in this way only if you happen to be wearing shoes that you can run in. Do not linger over the coffee: you should allow your waiter the pleasure of a private moment upon discovering your matchless gratuity.

Posted by williford at 03:52 PM | Permalink

I hestitate to dwell overmuch on serious topics, but a number of people have written in with questions regarding the soul insurance now on special offer to readers of The Glob. It appears that California has been surprisingly ill-served by the insurance industry to date, such that the public is completely unfamiliar with the basic features of a soul insurance policy. After consultation with underwriters at Celestial Sentinel, I have obtained permission to present a case study that clearly demonstrates the value of this critical risk-management product.

At the time of the claim, Mr. Monkey (not his real name, of course) was a middle-aged screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He had made a decent living for the previous twenty years by writing scripts that sold fairly well, but were never produced. His career had provided him with sufficient material comforts, but he craved the accomplishment of actually seeing one of his scripts made into a film. Resolving to take positive action to achieve his dream, he joined an esoteric society in Venice Beach that promised to unlock his latent creative powers to their fullest extent.

Mr. Monkey diligently applied himself to the exercises and studies prescribed by the society for several weeks, without any changes occurring in his writing. However, after a weekend retreat in Death Valley sponsored by the society, he returned home to find his mind in the grip of an idea. With scant effort, this idea blossomed into a thrilling feature-length screenplay that possessed an intricate but subtle structure, pulsing like a living thing through the story. Each character was masterfully delineated in fine strokes that provided an actor with superb opportunities to strike nearly every chord on the human emotional instrument.

He brought the screenplay to his writers' group, a small circle of hard-bitten professionals who had wasted their energies in reworking other writers' miserable efforts for money. With recourse to a case of beer that he had also brought along, Mr. Monkey prevailed upon his colleagues to conduct an impromptu reading of the script. By the end of a long evening, every writer at the table was in tears, confessing that this was the most beautiful script that had ever passed through his hands. It was more than just a commercial screenplay, it was a masterpiece of theatrical art, and it was the masterpiece of Mr. Monkey.

Now justifiably excited, Mr. Monkey took the script to his agent, who read the first page and found herself unable to put it down again until she finished. She immediately began shopping the script to the major studios, engineering a bidding war that saw Mr. Monkey command a seven-figure price for a script for the first time in his career. The studio that purchased the rights rushed the project into pre-production and placed Mr. Monkey on retainer for rewrites, if any were required.

A month into pre-production, Mr. Monkey was presented with a binder full of notes from the director and principal actors requiring changes to the script. He took the binder home and dutifully reviewed the notes. Each requested change dealt a mortal blow to his creation. The subtle pulse that moved the story had to go: it was 'too artsy.' All of the characters needed to become more like the actors assuming the roles, so that the actors could work in the bits that audiences loved to see in all their films. The rewrite would be a complete hatchet job on the child of his brain, and Mr. Monkey sat paralyzed before his computer for hours, unable to change a word.

Lying in his bed that night and worrying over his dilemma, his mind drifted through some of the visualization exercises that the society had taught him, and as he fell asleep he invoked the Path of Third while wishing that this problem would be taken care of somehow. The next morning, Mr. Monkey awoke to find a completed script on his writing table next to the binder of notes. It was a perfect massacre of his creation, implementing every suggestion in the notes to the letter. However, the work was done, and he would be paid for it. So, after waiting for a few days for appearance's sake, he turned it in.

The next week, yet another binder full of notes arrived. As an experiment, he took it home and laid it on his writing table as before, then went to bed. In the morning, a fresh bastardization of his work was waiting for him. It was a miracle.

In total, the script went through seventeen rewrites before all parties were satisfied, and Mr. Monkey tenaciously turned in each new version on time and incorporating all comments. The studio was astonished. Mr. Monkey was somewhat vexed by the destruction of his artistic vision, but he was more than compensated by the fact that he didn't do any of the destruction himself, albeit he got paid for it. Moreover, actual shooting was starting soon.

During the long period of revision, he had become convinced that the bringers of his good fortune were the Rewrite Elves, entities that he had once thought of as a screenwriter's joke, but which he now believed in totally. With every batch of notes from the studio, he went through a ritual of placing the notes on the writing table and discussing their general obtuseness with the invisible elves, whom he referred to as 'The Team.' He left them a bottle of scotch and a bowl of pretzels for their troubles, which were invariably consumed by the next morning. This generosity to The Team was nearly Mr. Monkey's undoing.

Mr. Monkey was unaware of anything amiss until he went in for the annual wholeless and wellness checkup required by his esoteric society. Tests showed that he was dangerously close to utter damnation, despite no significant record of sin or bad karma in his spiritual history. Further investigation revealed the cause: The Team had reported his nightly offerings of refreshment as sacrificial worship of impious spirits, violating the First Commandment, among other statutes. Moreover, the forces that had reached out to Mr. Monkey had spirited in an addendum to his studio contract, stipulating that the studio received a one-twentieth interest in his soul with every rewrite required. Only a minuscule fraction of his soul remained free of sin and obligation, and this revelation shocked Mr. Monkey to the depths of his being.

Luckily for Mr. Monkey, his society membership included coverage for accidental soul lossage as part of a group insurance plan from Celestial Sentinel. He made a claim to the company in short order, which dispatched an investigator to verify the facts of the loss and obtain an affidavit of involuntary temptation from Mr. Monkey. The company then arranged to have his house exorcised and entered into negotiations with the studio over the diabolical addendum. A settlement was reached whereby the studio relinquished their 17/20ths interest in Mr. Monkey's soul in return for additional rewrites, gratis. Mr. Monkey was also obliged to take his name off of the completed picture in the event that the final shooting script contained a majority of material from the demonic rewrites, which is what eventually transpired.

Mr. Monkey therefore achieved his ambition with some cost, and no credit, but things could have turned out far worse. Without soul insurance coverage from Celestial Sentinel, Mr. Monkey would have been at the mercy of independent spiritualists and lawyers when trying to sort out his affairs. Once he made a claim to Celestial Sentinel, the company immediately put Mr. Monkey into a state of grace that prevented further losses of innocence, protecting him from immediate peril. The certified affidavit of involuntary temptation was redeemable for absolution for his unfortunate worship of pagan divinities, and the company was able to recover the rest of his soul from the studio. In the event that the studio had proved recalcitrant, Celestial Sentinel could have compensated Mr. Monkey by confiscation of portions of the souls of the studio executives who refused to do the right thing.

All in all, Mr. Monkey didn't have to sweat the details of his brush with damnation, thanks to his coverage with Celestial Sentinel. I urge every reader of The Glob to consider whether he or she can afford to pass up this offer. As the familiar slogan goes, 'With Celestial Sentinel, you've got friends in high places.'

Posted by williford at 11:54 PM | Permalink

The Permanent Committee to Recall the Governor was in special session in San Francisco last night, debating measures to take in response to the delay of the immediate recall election by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. One firebrand from Hayward attempted to agitate the committee into staging an impromptu march on the Federal Court building downtown, but a quick tally by the chairman showed that the members of the committee did not possess adequate funds to take the bus back to chambers afterwards, due to the recent 25 cent increase in Muni fares. The motion was therefore tabled, becoming yet another victim of the hard times affecting the state.

As might be expected, there were a few members who voiced strong resentment against an arm of the Federal government meddling in state affairs, and the word secession was on the lips of many. Eventually, the chairman was forced to restore order by mounting the rostrum himself and delivering an elegant speech on the need to maintain focus and discipline in the committee's work. If the answer to the state's plight was secession, then the committee should voluntarily disband and return to the general assembly of The Glob Political Action Wing with empty hands, but with a firm resolve to marshall forces for the greater work. Yet what was the more immediate threat to the commonweal of California? The Ninth Circuit, or the inept tyranny of the governor?

With a single voice, the committee answered with a thunderous oath impugning the governor's probity, intelligence, and overall presentability in genteel company. The Ninth Circuit's decision was denounced as a Fabian tactic, mere cunctation by opponents of reform. The committee proceeded to nominate six members to a subcommittee for the drafting of an amicus brief for the inevitable appeal. The committee then heard the report from the Permanent Subcommittee for Cultivating Grassroots, who asserted that despite their best efforts, the electorate remained mighty confused by the whole business.

The debate then shifted to the question of how to best educate the public as to the benefits of a regular course of elections to recall the governor. The representative from Mill Valley advocated a series of issue ads placed in the major television markets, circulating a draft script for one such piece:

SLOW PAN OF INTERIOR OF CAR'S ENGINE COMPARTMENT WITH

V/O: We all know that politics can be a dirty business.

PAN REVEALS GREASY HANDS OF MECHANIC, MAKING ADJUSTMENTS

V/O: If you stay in office long enough, it's impossible to keep your hands clean.

CUT TO REVEAL TIME PASSAGE. A CLEANER SET OF HANDS MAKING ADJUSTMENTS WITH

V/O: So why do you change your oil every six months, but wait four years to change governors?

SUPER OVER SHOT OF A SLEEK LIMO WITH STATE SEAL:

"THE PERMANENT COMMITTEE TO RECALL THE GOVERNOR"

This proposal was met with loud calls of approval, until the acting treasurer rendered an estimate of the cost to produce and air such a commercial. Dismayed by the figures, the committee engaged in some half-hearted speculations about securing corporate sponsorship before voting to adjourn for the evening. The meeting over, a few of the members strolled to North Beach for refreshment, each secretly hoping to run into a celebrity who might be converted to the cause.

Posted by williford at 10:59 AM | Permalink

Each week, the readers of this feature astonish me with their generosity. Words fail to describe the rich and costly gifts that regularly appear at The Glob's offices, unbidden. Rest assured that I do not personally profit from these gestures of goodwill: all the received goods are donated to needy members of the editorial staff. Weak advertising revenues have led to abysmal rates of pay for the rank and file at The Glob, and these donations are therefore critical for maintaining production.

Starving men cannot safely operate the enormous steam-driven difference engines that provide worldwide, around-the-clock access to The Glob's many features. I cannot bear to write another letter of condolence to a young bride, whose fiancé sacrificed his health to meet deadline after deadline, only to be denied permission to marry. At the same time, I cannot risk making any more widows: marriage is impossible for any employee of The Glob, including myself. Our work is too perilous, and too necessary.

Since we cannot afford to be generous to ourselves, we appreciate the support of our readership all the more. As a token of this appreciation, The Glob has secured a special benefit for our readers, in conjunction with the good spirits at the Celestial Sentinel Corporation. For a limited time, Celestial Sentinel is prepared to offer preferential rates on soul insurance policies to any Glob reader, regardless of righteousness. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to obtain or increase coverage for your most important personal asset at a bargain price.

Now, many people quibble when the subject of soul insurance is broached. Life insurance has unquestionable value, since life on this planet is undoubtedly precarious. However, most people feel secure in the possession of their souls, thinking that it is simply impossible for them to be lost except by deliberate sale. Nothing could be further from the truth. Statistics show that the accidental loss of souls is an common occurrence in certain industries, and over the last few years it has become much more prevalent in the workforce as a whole .

For example, consider the fate of lawyers in this country. The stereotyped view of lawyers selling their souls for power and pelf is generally false: most lawyers never enter into direct negotiations with the infernal. Nevertheless, an astonishing proportion of lawyers end their lives as soulless things. The very business of pursuing the law in this country has a leaching effect on the psyche, such that a bright soul gradually becomes tarnished and corroded by the stresses of billing hours, making associate, making partner, and winning at any cost, be it in the courtroom, the boardroom, or the voting booth.

However, the legal profession is far from the only occupation that carries risks for the souls of its practicioners. During the internet boom of the late 1990's, thousands of impressionable young people embarked on brief soul-destroying careers in dotcom companies. Today, they still struggle to find gainful employment, or else while away their hours in low-paying drudgery. These legions of the disillusioned have sustained lasting damage to their psyches, and the damage continues. However, severance and unemployment insurance offer no adequate recompense for their losses.

Even professionals that have remained employed through the economic downturn are reporting that their jobs are leaching away their spirits at unprecedented rates. With every compromise, every sacrifice of self for the grey corporate good, the temptation to vice and active evil grows within the most stalwart, upstanding workers. What begins with stealing office supplies or websurfing during business hours can end with embezzlement, fraud, the bottle, and the pipe. However, if you have taken the precaution of having adequate insurance on your soul, you needn't suffer forever for your mistakes.

I urge every reader of The Glob to carefully review his or her existing policies and consider taking up Celestial Sentinel on their generous offer. As an extra benefit, a portion of the premiums for new policies will go to The Glob Relief Fund for indigent editors, enabling you to help the underprivileged at the same time as you help yourself.

Posted by williford at 06:18 PM | Permalink

In recent divagations through the wilds of English vocabulary, I encountered the curious specimen wittol. It turns out that this rara avis is a descendent of a once-vigorous family of terms inspired by the cuckoo and its curious means of raising young. For this week, will will abandon our studies in useful terms that sound much ruder than they actually are, and focus on these linguistic fossils, both living and extinct.

The actual cuckoo and its song was known to both classical and medieval authors for appearing in spring and heralding summer . One of the earliest pieces of written English music, the thirteenth-century pop hit 'Sumer is icumen in,' depicts the cuckoo as singing in the season:

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu …

The cuckoo's singing is also memorable for its Reichian fascination with its own rhythm, repeated seemingly forever at a stretch. I suspect that this tendency to mindless, maddening repetition gave the cuckoo something of an association with simplemindedness and the compulsions of lunacy, leading to the modern he's going cuckoo, he's completely cuckoo, and all kings are cuckoos.

However, it is not the song of the cuckoo that recommends itself to our attention, but rather its fascinating means of reproduction. The cuckoo does not raise its own young. Rather, the female cuckoo lays lays her eggs in the nest of another bird, sometimes making room by eliminating any eggs that happen to be there already. The nest's owner, being generally bird-brained, raises the young cuckoos as its own, thus saving the cuckoo the trouble of care and feeding. Thus the cuckoo's nest always happens to be some other bird's nest, which has led to a an interesting set of associations with infidelity among human couples.

Although it is the male cuckoo that sings, and the female that invades the nests of other birds, when this pattern of homewrecking is applied to humans, we find that it is the male that takes on the role of invader. A man who seduces a married woman cuckolds her husband, who is considered a horned cuckold forevermore. This identification of the male adulturer with the female cuckoo is an interesting reversal of sex, but the implications for the human woman are unfortunate: she is reduced to a passive role as the site of the invasion.

There is in fact a strain of Scottish bawdry that makes very clear exactly what the cuckoo's nest is and where it can be found, which is perhaps a little too raw to explore fully in a feature of wide circulation. This is regrettable, because the various versions of the air 'The Cuckoo's Nest' are extremely pleasant to sing on a summer's night:

There's a thorn bush in the garden where the lads and lassies meet
For it wouldna do to do the do they're doin in the street
And the first time I went down there, I was very much impressed
By the rufflin up the feathers of the cuckoo's nest!

I am happy to report that these songs hold the cuckoos themselves up to some rather pointed criticism, but I digress.

The curious word wittol that started this train of thought refers to a witting cuckold. A wittol is a man whose wife cheats on him, who knows that she cheats on him, and who doesn't happen to mind. It may be that he is a cuckoo himself in his spare time, as well as a cuckold, but at any rate his marriage would appear to be happy enough.

A woman whose husband cheats can be referred to as a cuckquean, though it seems something of a stretch. So strong is the association of the wandering (female) cuckoo with the wandering human male, that in order to reverse the roles cuckoo is explicitly feminized with quean, a woman. This term appears to be completely extinct, whereas cuckold can still be encountered in the wild from time to time, although it is most likely to be seen by moderns in Shakespeare.

Taken on the whole, I cannot approve of the behavior of either cuckoo birds or cuckolding apes. Life is difficult enough without these domestic betrayals. Cuculus non facit magnam felicitatem, sed adulteram. Cave, lector!

Posted by williford at 07:40 PM | Permalink

The administration has made it clear that vast appropriations are immediately required for continuing defense of the nation and national interests abroad. In the face of a sluggish economy and weak tax collections, these expenditures will no doubt accelerate the expansion of the Federal deficit. The effects of increasing the debt load further are uncertain, but as we discussed last week, the consequences could be dire.

It is a against this sombre landscape of fiscal gloom that the beacon of science shines out like a new dawn: I am pleased to announce that after countless man-years of effort, engineers at Glob Labs have developed a practical plan for disposal of the national debt. With only a modest investment of public funds, Glob Industries can immediately begin construction of a debt-works that will first consolidate the ambient debt into its liquid form for temporary storage in leaden tanks. These billion-gallon tanks will feed into a second section of the works, where the crude debt will be heated by the combustion of worn-out paper currency obtained by the rail-car from the Federal Reserve. The resulting debt vapor will then be subjected to fractionation in vast distillation towers, using techniques pioneered by the petroleum industry.

The weighter investment-grade debt will collect in the lower sections of each tower, and after cooling it will solidify into a ruddy mass that can be carved into bricks and stored safely in vaults. Glob Labs have determined that this grade of debt is metastable, with a half-life ranging from 3 to 30 years depending on its precise composition. This debt gradually decays into other debt of greater mass, with the net result being an increase in the density of the material over time. This wonderful property suggests a range of uses for the material, ranging from ballast to building foundations to applications in nuclear waste disposal, provided of course that the debt is carefully insulated from any real assets, which it will corrode upon contact. There is of course a slight risk that stockpiles of this condensed debt could eventually achieve densities that trigger collapse into a fiscal singularity, but our physical accountants assure me that the risk of such a catastrophe is extremely remote for the next five years at the very least.

The lighter, more volatile grades of debt will collect in the upper portions of the distillation towers. At room temperature, this debt is a pale ruby fluid that is extremely sensitive to local economic conditions. Glob Labs has patented the manufacture of fiscal thermometers utilizing this substance as the active ingredient. Under sound economic conditions, the fluid remains quiescent, however in an environment of restricted cash flows and diminishing returns, the fluid will darken and expand in volume proportional to accumulated losses.

By introducing one of these thermometers into either the front or back office of a business and taking a measurement, it is possible to correlate the appearance of the company's books with the reality of its financial health. The Glob Industries Type 3 fiscal thermometer fits easily inside a briefcase, and we project that this product will sell well to financial services firms, investment banks, and even individual investors. With every unit sold, a portion of the national debt will be safely harnessed for productive uses.

Glob Labs are working on miniaturization of the thermometer to enable financial checkups of individuals using the same technology, which will enable us to sell in bulk to consumer lenders, landlords, and employers. Please direct any enquiries regarding these products to Sales, Glob Industries, care of this column, and include your business card for faster reply.

Returning to our consideration of the debt refining process, the very lightest fractions of the debt are irreducible to solid or liquid form under normal temperatures and pressures. These correspond to the gaseous fractions of petroleum which are traditionally burned off in flares from the distillation towers. Disposal of gaseous debt in the same way would be disastrous, as demonstrated by work at Glob Labs. After retrieving what records could be salvaged from the Experimental Debt Reduction laboratory, sadly destroyed, engineers focused on containment mechanisms for the most volatile debt.

Testing revealed that even the heaviest pressure cylinders could be rendered buoyant with gaseous debt, which possesses several orders of magnitude more lifting power than hydrogen under most economic conditions. Our engineers are thrilled with the prospects of not only reviving the dirigible industry, but also revolutionizing real estate across the country. Given the abundance of the Federal debt and the vast lifting power of the gaseous fractions, there is no reason to limit application to simple airships. Entire buildings or complexes could be suspended from networks of baloons filled with gaseous debt, allowing for the flotation of infrastructure that would otherwise contend for ground resources.

Imagine vast solar-powered factories drifting above the landscape like boxy clouds, kept aloft by bunches of silver bubbles, each filled with the refined gases of the purest pink debt. Below, the former sites of industrial works would be landscaped into parks, allowing children to play in the shade of the hovering factories. Initial tests using the lighter-than-air craft Venture Cap to float a bit-recycling plant over the San Francisco Bay have proven that this idyllic future is within our grasp. Simulations at Glob Labs indicate that entire industries can be floated off the surface of the earth utilizing refined debt.

We can have a garden planet and yet maintain the heaviest of industries. Our national treasury is an inexhaustible mine of debt that can be used to lift our troubles. I urge you to support Glob Industries in its efforts to bring these plans to reality, today. We are currently engaged in raising funds for the construction of the superlifting dirigible Capex, which will be used to demonstrate the buoying power of debt around the country. Send for a prospectus for Series X Glob Industries bonds, now on offer, care of this column. Cleaning up the debt is our responsibility, and we should reap the benefits for ourselves and our descendents.

Posted by williford at 12:28 PM | Permalink

As the planet Mars gradually draws away from us, I wonder that none of the learned commentators who noted its approach saw fit to warn the public on the possible hazards of skygazing. Observation is symmetric: just as we have recently enjoyed a closer point of vantage to study Mars, taking the opportunity to lob several probes in his direction, any observer on Mars would have had a similar opportunity to study our blue globe in more detail than usual. For that matter, the time would have been ideal to launch an invasion from Mars to Earth in return for our probes, although no actual invastion appears to be underway. We have thereby lost another opportunity for bringing humanity together in a unity of purpose for the betterment of the world, but I fear I am straying from my point.

The observer is also the observed. For example, one reason that physicists are finding it difficult to get a good look at a Higgs boson is that these grave little vectors of the Higgs field are notoriously guarded about their private lives. At available energies, the Higgs particles have become adept at spotting physicists on the prowl for a picture and routinely give them the slip, much like celebrities dodging the paparazzi. This reticence has the physicists clamoring to invest billions in longer lenses, which is to say higher-energy accelerators that will allow them to snap some candids of a Higgs before it happens to notice anything. Of course, the Higgs may have the last laugh by simply failing to exist, and if physicists do manage to get some topless photographs of a Higgs that prove its existence, the resulting celebrations will entirely lack gravitas.

The Geek Chorus: Dood, that hurts.

Once again, I appear to have strayed onto a tangent, as the ant in the clavichord said.

The Geek Chorus: Dood! What are you doing?
Myself: I was in the midst of a public service lecture on the dangers of watching the night sky when others may be watching you.
The Geek Chorus: What? Like you're totally into looking up, and someone else sees you and steals your iBook or something?
Myself: That is a possibility.
The Geek Chorus: Dood, that's paranoid. Whatever, but you gotta stop with the puns, man. I'm seriously gonna lose it.
Myself: I am sorry to hear that.
The Geek Chorus: By the way, I hate to break it to ya, but Fiendster is way overrated.
Myself: Howso?
The Geek Chorus: Well, I can manage my enemies OK, and the chat/plot functionality is pretty spiffy, but there's not enough actions I can take.
Myself: Actions?
The Geek Chorus: Hell, yeah. These are my enemies, right? So there should be actions that you can initiate from the system against your enemies. What else am I supposed to do, just watch 'em work against me?
Myself: I see.
The Geek Chorus: So, I got bored. Last few days, I've been checking out a new site called Doomster that has a fully-automated payback system in addition to enemy management. It's awesome.
Myself: That doesn't sound entirely legal.
The Geek Chorus: The service is just in test mode now, they're still waiting for an MI5 license to go into full production.
Myself: MI5?
The Geek Chorus: Yeah, it's a Scottish outfit running the site, y'know. Anyway, you better check out the competition, dood, if you want to stay in the game. L8r!
Myself: Goodbye.

Posted by williford at 10:51 PM | Permalink

I am pleased to learn that our recent experiments in promoting vocabulary are starting to yield results. One of our loyal readers reports that no less a writer than Samuel Beckett, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, has availed himself of one of our recommended words in his radio play All That Fall. To quote from the work:

MRS ROONEY: Come down here, Miss Fitt, and give me your arm, before I scream down the parish!
MISS FITT: Well, I suppose it is the Protestant thing to do.
MRS ROONEY: Pismires do it for one another. I have seen slugs do it…

That a writer of such stature had the insight to sieze upon the word pismire in 1956, when he yet walked the earth, is a testament to the prodigious ability of our RetroSocket (tm) publication strategy to shine a light of knowledge into the past as forcefully as we shadow forth the future. I have petitioned my virtual correspondent 4rch33 to contact Mr. Beckett's shade for comment, which I hope to report in due time.

The word for this week is the subtle adjective glaucous. The word names the color of the sea: a bluish, grayish green. It has also taken on a technical sense in botany, referring to the state of being covered with a pale waxy bloom. What brings it to our attention is its sound, reminiscent of raucous and mucous. To pronounce it distinctly is to first scrape invisible peanut butter off of the roof of your mouth, then gargle invisible water, choke slightly, and finish with a hiss.

I admit to a fondness for the sea, and I find its subtle colors appealing. I am therefore somewhat disappointed that these qualities are labeled with word sounding like glaucous. If pronounced with appropriate force, it would make a passable term for some theoretically edible Klingon delicacy:

Captain KorD'ump: More glauQuss?
Ambassador Buffer: No, thank you, captain.
Captain KorD'ump: Bah! The old proverb is true: food is wasted on the weak, human!

However, this line of speculation is taking us from the matter at hand. The word glaucous can be effectively employed as a conversation-stopper, even when the meaning of the utterance is completely innocent.

The Genilman: I wanna get you a present. What's your favorite color, baby?
The Lady: Glaucous.

Likewise, simply describing something as glaucous, however accurately, will tend to call the whole context of discourse into question. Suppose that you are dining out, and due to poor planning you are dining alone. The waitstaff of the fine restaurant you selected is ruthlessly efficient and opinionated, and so you have been forced to accept the recommendations of your waiter in all things in order to avoid argument. You can serve as you are served by lodging complaints like the following:

Waiter: For the final course, the cheese and fruit selection de luxe.
Diner: These fruits are unacceptable.
Waiter: In what manner do they fail to please, sir?
Diner: Isn't it apparent? The grapes are patently glaucous!
Waiter: …I see. I do apologize.

It is vitally important to utilize this technique only under extreme provocation, and well after having eaten your fill. Waitstaff can be perilously vindictive.

Finally, when wishing to discuss a bluish-green color, the word glaucous simply has a greater expressivity than bluish-green. It evokes the great melancholy that afflicts all sea-going peoples from time to time when facing the vast, unsympathetic depths of the oceans.

Mrs. Bizzy: Oh, you should have seen the bridesmaids! The little dears, all in pink ruffles.
Mrs. Boddy: Pink dresses? I hope the girls were pretty.
Mrs. Bizzy: Oh, such bright faces, and all blondes, the dears.
Mrs. Boddy: Nothing sadder than a plain bridesmaid in pink. Unfair, especially with ruffles.
Mrs. Bizzy: They were just darling! I took so many pictures.
Mrs. Boddy: Like a great big gold ring set with an agate. A common stone.
Mrs. Bizzy: Oh, to be a young girl and a bridesmaid again!
Mrs. Boddy: They'll never get me to do that again, oh no! (Pause.) What about the bride?
Mrs. Bizzy: The bride?
Mrs. Boddy: Yes, there was one, wasn't there?
Mrs. Bizzy: Oh, the bride! It was so sad!
Mrs. Boddy: She died?
Mrs. Bizzy: No! The bridesmaids were such darlings, and then the bride enters in a full gown, with a bouquet of pink roses. The gown must have cost a fortune- silk, antique lace… oh, what a tragedy!
Mrs. Boddy: Yes? Go on.
Mrs. Bizzy: It… the gown, was… glaucous.
Mrs. Boddy: Glaucous! And pink bridesmaids!
Mrs. Bizzy: It was horrible, hor-rible!
Mrs. Boddy: There, there, take my handkerchief, love.

Posted by williford at 06:26 PM | Permalink

Suspicions are growing that the current administration is being somewhat disingenuous regarding the effects of the colossal Federal deficits projected for the next several years. Some commentators have compared the current situation to the period of deficts incurred during the last phase of the Cold War, which led to enormous growth of the national debt. Others have likened the Federal deficit to the great she-spider Ungoliant of the outermost dark, who feasted on the treasures of Valinor and swelled into a hideous leviathan of evil thereby, thanks to the treachery of Melkor. These latter commentators may be neither safe nor sane, but their concerns cannot be ignored.

Perhaps most troubling about the state of the national finances is the ecological threat poised by the expanding debt. A shortfall of trillions upon trillions of dollars has a considerable psychic mass in the collective consciousness of the nation, and it is soon liable to begin condensing into a material state. I would not be surprised if the basements of the treasury are already collecting pools of the stuff. At normal temperatures, the materialized debt is a brilliant red fluid, somewhat volatile, which could be employed for writing were it not for its tendency to corrode gold nibs. Its effect on human health is unquantified but generally deleterious, especially to the young.

As an immediate measure, the debt could be pumped out of the treasury and stored in zinc or nickel tanks, but this is no long term solution. Any dip in the economy could result in an immediate expansion of the debt that would explosively rupture any storage vessel. Such an event would spread an aerosol of debt over a wide area, leading to a choking of the economy in the affected region. Even in the absence of a cataclysmic loss of containment, the debt will tend to leak out of tanks over time, leading to contamination of any money supplies or other liquid assets in the vicinity. Vast quanities of cash would be required to clean up the mess in either case, with untold other losses to the citizens of the country.

Researchers at Glob Labs have long anticipated the need for a scheme to permanently dispose of the debt, and a research program has been underway for some time on cost-effective means for debt abatement. There have been some notable failures along the way: Project Bottom Line seized on the idea of recycling condensed debt into warheads for munitions. Early tests confirmed the destructive properties of debt-based weaponry, but later measurements demonstrated that weapons deployment invariably led to an increase in the total amount of debt on hand. This was a crushing disappointment, and the work was subsequently abandoned.

Project Budget Freeze proposed vitrification of the debt into inert solid blocks that could be safely buried. Unfortunately, some of the team clandestinely employed the resulting ruby-colored cubes for the manufacture of dice, which lead to a widespread outbreak of gambling. The project leader managed to run through the entire budget in a few weeks, leading to an indefinite suspension of work. The ringleaders themselves were disappointed to discover that the vitrificaton process only slowed the expansion of the debt, rather than halting it altogether, and they were eventually forced to declare bankruptcy.

Though the work continues at a furious pace, we are increasingly concerned that the accumulation of debt is yet more rapid than our progress. There are also disquieting rumors circulating in the lab of a parallel government effort on a strategy of last resort: a proportional transfer of the debt to individual citizens via an emergency inoculation program. The results could be nothing short of horrifying. Many citizens with personal debt would not survive the injection of their portion of the Federal debt, suffering from instantaneous evaporation of net worth. Children without incomes would be devastated, beginning life with tremendous financial obligations. Glob Labs cannot endorse the wisdom of such a plan, and I sincerely hope these rumors are mere fabrications.

The Geek Chorus: Speaking of, isn't this getting kinda heavy, dood?
Myself: I beg your pardon?
The Geek Chorus: I mean, you're almost ranting here. Grrr, argh, the Feds stole my ice cream bar. You some sort of troll?
Myself: No, I don't believe so.
The Geek Chorus: Man, you need to lighten up, then.
Myself: I see.
The Geek Chorus: Totally. Anyway, I need to cruise over to check out those Britney pix. L8r, dood.
Myself: Goodbye.

Posted by williford at 12:57 AM | Permalink

Subscriptions continue to pour in to The Glob Universal School of Knowledge for our correspondence courses on computing and the computational lifestyle. However, questions are being raised as to whether the curriculum goes far enough for the needs of the modern parent. Daily we are receiving pleas from distraught fathers and mothers such as the following:

Dean, The Glob Universal School of Knowledge:-

Kind sir, I hope that this appeal will find a sympathetic ear in you. I carefully monitor my son's usage of the family computer, and thanks to your Correspondence Course I know how to review all of his cleartext emails, as well as being able to turn the machine on and off by myself.

However, I was recently snooping on my son's IRC traffic, and I found it much less straightforward to decipher than his email. One ominous exchange revealed a burning ambition to become one of the 'w0rri0r 3733t of the MCP.' Needless to say, I am worried, moreso because I have absolutely no idea what he means. Has my son joined a cult? Please help!

Yours sincerely, in distress,
Proxima Frock (not my real name)

In response to this and other inquiries, we have conducted a thorough review of our course offerings, and we admit that we perhaps erred too much on the side of imparting practical knowledge. The current correspondence courses focus on fact, application, and implementation to the exclusion of more humanitarian disciplines such as art and poetry. Yet the domain of computation has a rich tradition of story and song, and allusions to remarkable figures from this canon are common in discourse. As a result, a thorough familiarity with the legends of computing is required in order to understand many intercepted person-to-person communications.

The Glob School of Universal Knowledge has therefore formulated a new set of reading courses in the classic literature of computation. All students are strongly advised to begin with the three-course sequence in Ancient Geek, which closely follows the pioneering work of Prof. Darmok. This noted scholar has spent his life surveying the breadth and depths of speculative fiction, febric fantasy, and the collected lore of Mellonheads and MITniks alike to seek the wellsprings of geek culture. From these various sources, he has applied the comparative method of Parry and Lord to reconstruct the original versions of the great heroic lays, once chanted by master technicians in the caverns of ENIAC by the light of a bank of triodes. These urtexts, restored to the meter of their native hexadecimal, represent the first flowering of culture amidst computer science, and commend themselves to special study.

In Ancient Geek I course, the student will quickly proceed from a basic introduction to Ancient Geek syntax and semantics to the translation of selections from the Biphiad. This work tells story of the violent flamewarrior Biphyas, called the Magnavox or 'great voice,' and his wanderings on the tides of news on the nets, bereft of thread or clue. It contains many famous episodes that have passed into general currency, such as

0FEBA332 DFB80FFA
0000000A 557AABD2
01353BCC FFF1FF2A
0104BDFE 30032AA2
…

This episode is usually referred to as 'Biphyas and the Boxen of the Sun,' and it has been rendered into English by Prof. Darmok as follows:

For Biphyas looked out upon the deeps and saw another domain, not his own
And in this domain there were kine of no kind he new,
For they had neither heads nor horns, and abode in racks,
And he cried out 'WUT'S THAT, D00D!' and was astonished while 1.
They panicked together, such that Lia the admin was
Hard-pressed to restrain them, return them to function.
While they panicked, he had no peace, and he cried out
To the lord of the Sun that made them,
And this lord sent out his packets upon the nets
And pinged Biphyas and cursed him, for the love of his boxen,
And he hurled upon him an exploit, barbed and perilous,
Which woke Biphyas from his astonishment, as in horror
He saw the buffers overflowing the firewalls
And called out to the host to close the sockets…

The advanced course in Ancient Geek will also cover later developments in computational literary theory, particularly the theories of Rensselaer. In a series of responses to Darmok, Rensselaer has disputed the existence of any heroic lays in period, pointing out that there is very little evidence of actual lays in all of computer science. He argues that the native verse form is properly elegaic, a 'lament for the lay' that desires to evoke a vigorous, heroic past that in fact never existed. Students will proceed in directed reading of Rensselaer's classic 'Lie of the Great Lay,' which explicates the undercurrents of sadness and frustration that inform much of later computational literature.

To learn more about any of these exciting and rewarding courses, please inquire for a prospectus care of this column, including $15 for handling and freight. The Ancient Geek prospectus will be sent to you within a week on a choice of media, including 8" floppy, 15" tape, or punched cards.

Posted by williford at 12:16 AM | Permalink