Suffice it to say that the sweltering bit foundries of the Glib Lady (as we affectionately call her) are decidely illiquid and undesirable assets, so that any embezzlement that may (or may not) have been committed by parties unknown (or recently indicted) was (or was not) committed at a far remove from our operations. Our chief counsel has certified the above statement as accurate, with the understanding that it is largely fiction, but verifiably so.
Nevertheless, legal matters have weighed on our minds so heavily of late that we have commissioned a vital new study of crimes of the future. Watch this space for an exhaustive catalogue of heinous offenses that are yet to be.
]]>When casting about for an epithet, the animal kingdom offers a number of alternatives to the tired simian, jackass, pig, and snake. For example, the insect world offers us hellgrammite, a word of uncertain origin that is familiar to fishermen as a name for a dobsonfly larva. It is variously spelled hellgrammite, hellgramite, or hellgamite, but in any spelling it is the initial hell- that grabs our attention.
Encountering this word, one is initially reminded of hellspawn, hellhound, and hellhag, a term which has suprisingly not yet made it onto t-shirts for the nation's tweens. The ultimate syllable -mite suggests something classically unsavory, along the lines of catamite. This combination renders hellgrammite a potent contributor to nigh-Shakespearean imprecations.
The Genilman: Lookin' good there, girl!
The Lady: Aroint thee, hellgrammite!
The Genilman: . . . That's cold, baby, cold.
In this regard, hellgrammite excels beyond the North American giant salamander, or hellbender, which once bequeathed its name to a shoot-em-up video game. One supposes that 'Giant Salamander' wouldn't quite have the same cachet in the gamer community.
The Geek Chorus: Dood! That game was weak!
Myself: Was it now?
The Geek Chorus: Totally. The game engine was creaky, the frame rate blew. You're in a fighter, so there's no hand-to-hand. Waste of time.
Myself: I see. And exactly how old were you in 1996?
The Geek Chorus: Well. . .
Myself: I think that someone's been googling old reviews again.
The Geek Chorus: Well, whatever. Install's nearly over, so later, man.
Myself: Goodbye.
Hello? Can you hear me now? Hear now? Here? OK, OK. I just had to call, I know, it's my vacation, but I've made an incredible discovery:
English is no longer the language of international business. It is the language of universal lurve.
What? Of course I've been drinking, I'm on vacation! I could write a proud column on the semantic range of vacation these days, but my research has not been for the weak or overly scrupulous. Vacation is returning to its Roman roots as a great exemption, a freedom from duty, a wide-ranging dispensation from mundane morality. It is the key to the gates of Sodom itself! It is. . .
English! Yas! The language of pure passion, crystallized in arbitrary spellings! The language of empire, now sublimed and subverted into the panting tongue of. . . what?
The point? You cannot speak English for more than a few seconds before making a boner. That is, alluding or being taken to allude to a rude act. As a result of the vibrant, pulsing culture of the English-speaking world, the entire language has taken on a ruddy tinge, wetly warming the ears of innocents abroad.
An example: I was lingering in a café last night over a glass of chartreuse, when the local chantootsie chose to sit down at my table. I lit her cigarette and admired the flame in her dark eyes. She has a magnificent, full vibrato, and as I was framing the perfect compliment on her singing, I caught myself staring openly at her tittles.
Now, as I must have told you, I suffer from a rare congenital disorder. I'm ultralexic— when I see something my mind is immediately filled with the words it corresponds to, usually in a largish sans serif font. It's like being surrounded by billboards that walk and talk and occasionally sit down at your table, looking otherwise like a beautiful, soft dream.
Anyway, she was there, across the small table and delicately sucking on her cigarette. She smiled at me, and I struggled for words as her magnificent tittles filled my vision. Her name was Chloë, and all I could see was her perfect dieresis: those two circles of black, round and full, floating over her sensual, curved e.
I fought to gather myself, stifling a small cry. I had never been so close to a lady so diacritically perfect. I hungered to press her vowels to mine, but I hesitated, uncertain of her feelings. I ventured a formal homage:
"Mademoiselle, you have moved me as I have never been moved before. What the moving finger of the poet has writ in you, has never been written so well or so beautifully. Accept me as your humble worshipper, who takes as his altar the incomparable glory of your tittles!"
The next thing I felt was a decent red wine burning my eyes, followed by glass breaking against my forehead. In the background, glowing in lines of fire, was a gutter French so excoriating in intent that I involuntarily shrank in my chair to protect my vitals. Hurriedly mopping my face with the tablecloth, I painfully focused on the enraged lady and stood to take my leave:
"Écorché, Mademoiselle."
I then winged my chair at her and quickly escaped to a taxi stand outside. It's simply impossible here not to get ladies overexcited by speaking plain English, and at my age, French lovemaking is likely to be fatal. This much I've learned. Hi to the old Glob for me, I've gotta run. Bye-o!
]]>Friends! Noble and loyal readers of the stelliferous Evening * Glob! I bear greetings to your worthy selves from the legion of sub-editors now immured within that commercial Moloch, the Consolidated Glob Corporation, Inc. Hear our plea; for we are the pencil-necked and ink-stained wretches who laboriously wrest the literary gems that bedeck these pages from the unyielding rock of our insensate Chief's opinions.
We are the drab wielders of the pen, cowed beneath the whips and stings of our employer's peculiar manual of style. Our weapon, mightier than the sword it may be, is rust-spotted and out of temper. We are too weak to hold our ranks against our Chief's venality. We write what we are told to write, how we are allowed to write it. A mention in The Glob commands a huge sum from operatives of every party and concern, and our Chief is extremely judicious in his choice of patrons. He lives in palatial apartments above the City Room, while we labor below in fear of forfeiting our day's wages by a misplaced comma.
Beaten down by duns and deadlines, we scratch and scribble and burn out our eyes to afford a one-room apartment for our families. (Just the one.) Half of the time our real wages are discounted with a handful of scrip for the ConGlob company store, so that our children will not lack for remaindered copies of The Glob's Guide to Glibness: How to Talk Your Way to the Top and Glob Gone Wild: 211 21-Year-Old 21st Century Starlets, in Color!
I could horrify you with the privations visited upon our families. When our weekly ration of wheat runs low, my wife concocts a filling stew from excelsior, fortified wine, and coal. The most popular schoolyard game among our children is rickets. But these sufferings are nothing compared to the obscene conditions within The Glob itself. I speak, of course, of murder. Infanticide! Oh, my baby stories, my sweet paragraphs that died in draft!
How many times has a darling idea of mine been strangled in the press bed? How many times has that tyrant driven a spike through a gentle essay, an unassuming poem, a whimsical anecdote? Our best work is thrown to the flames of The Glob's infernal presses. Just last week, the Chief used a sheaf of my manuscript annotations to Pound's Cantos to light his grill for Fajita Night. These pages, the labor of months, were to have formed the basis for a new fortnightly feature, "Pound by the Ounce". Our editor proclaimed the fajitas the best he's made in years.
Dearest readers, do not allow this brute to consume more of our children. Help us, and yourselves, by adopting the manuscripts that would otherwise surely perish. You can redeem these innocent captives at the very reasonable rate of ten dollars per page, sending cash to the Glob Progeny Rescue Fund, in care of this column. Be sure to include a self-addressed stamped envelope of the largest size for the remission of the lucky articles. All pages are guaranteed to contain writings that would never be deemed fit to print in The * Glob, so that you will be sure of the supreme charity of your gift.
]]>Under Mr. Rascible's chairmanship, the Committee has abandoned its previous advertising campaigns, such as the well-known efforts to link Governor Schwarzenegger with violently pro-metric sentiments. During the height of the flu season, agents of the Committee distributed cases of pocket tissues imprinted with a number of anti-Schwartzenegger slogans, such as
This whispering campaign was crushed by the governor's recent remarks on Space Ghost: Coast to Coast about "those cranks who want me to open a can of vupp-ass on them, and that's a gallon can, not a liter!"
In response, Mr. Rascible has devoted the Committee's dwindling resources to compiling evidence linking the governor's behavior with the dire weather in California. At the last full meeting of the Committee, he elevated Jodie Geld, a self-described math puzzler and delegate from Volcano, to the position of Chief Researcher to the Committee. The position carries a generous stipend in free hours on AOL, which are ostensibly to be used for research on the Committee's behalf.
Today, Ms. Geld issued the first press release from her office, which claims the discovery of a chaos-theoretic model that explains California's recent weather patterns. In the six-page release, mailed to news organizations as a holograph manuscript on college-ruled notebook paper, Ms. Geld attempts to show how the governor's consumption of a cigar in Van Nuys can result in tornadoes in the Bay Area. A single political speech by the governor can cause up to two inches of rainfall in the greater Los Angeles area, with the devastating mudslides that follow.
Ms. Geld repeatedly invokes pretty butterflies as the crucial link between the governor's actions and natural disasters affecting the state. In Ms. Geld's analysis, every action taken by the governor in public or private life results in the derangement and death of innocent butterflies, which are particularly sensitive to smoke, noise pollution, and unregulated dietary supplements. The suffering of the butterflies then leads to environmental chaos, in accordance with well-known principles of chaos theory.
The Geek Chorus: Dood, you're at it again!
Myself: I beg your pardon?
The Geek Chorus: Your science writing is sick. Do you have a grudge against empiricism or what?
Myself: Nonsense. My parents were datapoints, in actuarity.
The Geek Chorus: X! You're Ebola with the language, man.
Myself: Bloody right I am.
The Geek Chorus: Basta! I'm outta here.
Myself: Goodbye.
We also would have thoroughly enjoyed the various benders, orgies, drug-fueled sprees, and absorbing bouts of meditation that have been variously ascribed to us. Unfortunately, none of these exciting and profound events actually transpired. Simple pressure of business has kept us from the weighty literary essays that enliven this page, and we are now pleased to announce that this business has concluded satisfactorily.
The * Glob has completed negotiations to acquire an adjective, which we display with pride. We have great hopes that this modifier will distinguish our publication in an increasingly-crowded marketplace.
This investment in our marque gives the lie to those critics who have ascribed our brief pause in production to slack and indolence. We have been industrious in the best tradition of the new global economy. Were the correspondence not proprietary and confidential, we would be happy to publish the millions of words exchanged with our lawyers and bankers on the topic of our recent acquisition.
As it is, we will let the change speak for itself. Good evening.
]]>Each item is published as a de luxe illustrated pamphlet set in large type, suitable for enjoyment by language learners. Many pamphlets deal with scientific subjects of wide interest, particularly human anatomy and corporate finance. A complete catalogue of subjects is available upon written request to Editrix, Glob Press, care of this column.
]]>The internal investigation into the cause of the incident stirred up a lot of bad feeling, such that even the editor-in-chief's coterie of yes-men flipped their polarities. Seeing that the mood of the crew was turning against him, the editor blockaded himself in his office with a brace of pistols and the company's entire supply of rum until the staff came to their senses. In the end, a general amnesty was declared that allowed the resumption of normal activities with regard to publication. The sole casualty was the offending print server, which was summarily defenestrated by the mob during the worst of their sobriety.
OP CULTURE
In compliance with a directive from the Department of Household Security, we submit to general notice the following list of items for which all recommendations for household use have been rescinded. These items, while generally non-threatening in and of themselves, nevertheless could be confused with actual threats that would merit vigorous, pro-active mitigation. To avoid unfortunate misunderstandings, please do not prepare, brandish, or otherwise employ
This notice is sponsored in part by Glob Environmental Security Associates. GlobESA has staff available around the clock to respond to your domestic security emergency. Don't hesitate to contact our helpful and friendly professional operatives for all of your household security needs. Pets and the elderly a specialty. Correspondence may be addressed to GOCC, GlobESA, care of this column.
]]>However, the most surprising aspect of 2003 was the return of the ghostly horde to Hollywood films. With star turns in both Pirates of the Caribbean and The Return of the King, not to mention the obvious homage in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, the legions of the undead have never appeared so inescapably cool.
The Glob spoke recently with Victor Tennybrass, the warden of Hollywood's Local 322 of the Union of Post-Life Artists and Technical Workers (OFB-DIS), on the improving fortunes of Spectral-Americans in the film industry. The interview took place over a smoldering brazier heaped with funerary incense at Mr. Tennybrass' luxury columbarium in Beverly Hills.
After a few minutes of chanting, Mr. Tennybrass materialized in a vintage tuxedo jacket from 1913, casually worn with an open collar shirt and black silk trousers that terminated vaguely in a greenish haze at floor level. He apologized for the gaping wound in his left breast, a memorial of the fatal accident that ended his stage career.
The Glob: Mr. Tennybrass, I think our readers would be fascinated to learn how much the dead contribute to modern films such as Pirates of the Caribbean.
The Spook: Well, it's not so much the dead, you know. I mean, the dead are simply dead. The members of our union are properly speaking Spectral-Americans, soulless things damned to walk the earth until they are released from their tormented travesty of life.
The Glob: Good Lord!
The Spook: Language, mister! Mind your language.
The Glob: My apologies. How is it that you and your colleagues are not, as you put it, simply dead?
The Spook: Ah, well, that's business for you. Most of the members of Local 322 are products of the old studio system who didn't live long enough to be released from their contracts. You see, at the time when studios really started to value their talent as investments, you had guys like Errol Flynn who were absolute terrors in their private lives. To keep from encouraging the party lifestyle, a few studios experimented with contracts that impignorated the soul of the performer for a certain number of pictures against a balloon bonus payment for good behavior. The problem is that one of these contracts did not terminate upon the death of the performer, so when an accident happened, you all of a sudden had another spectre haunting the studio lot, trying to get work. It was a tricky situation.
The Glob: How did the studios react?
The Spook: To tell the truth, they were somewhat embarrassed by the fact that they held liens on all these souls. The papers would have had a field day if word got out, so they worked hard to keep things quiet, and for the most part they succeeded. Every major back lot had an exorcist on call, and so the ghosts had to hit the streets, waiting for a break. Those were hard days for all of us.
The Glob: So the studios refused to employ you?
The Spook: It was prejudice pure and simple. Every producer you would talk to over punch at a Sabbat would swear up and down that of course you're perfect for the part, it's a mummy, or a skeleton god, or a walking corpse, or whatever, but the studio couldn't afford to do all the shooting at night, and of course all the rain machines were designed to run on holy water, that was just the technology you know, and anyway the public was just not going to buy a real ghost as the ghost of Hamlet's father. They wanted a familiar face on the battlements that they could maybe run into at the Brown Derby.
The Glob: I see. When did things start to change for you?
The Spook: First, we had to develop a business sense. The studios didn't see that they had a moral obligation to release these souls, because the people that run the studios are businessmen, not ethicists. So, we took a page from their book and organized all the local spooks under the biggest entertainment trade union in Hell, which is pretty much the 900lb. gorilla down there. They want entertainment in Hell even more than they want icewater. That got the producers' attention.
The Glob: Why is that, exactly?
The Spook: Well, to put it bluntly, they know where they're going. It's insanely easy to be damned in Hollywood, especially if you're working on the money side of things. By establishing ourselves as the topside representatives of the U.P.L.A.T.W., we could negotiate with the studios from a position of strength. Sure, they didn't have to hire actual undead for their pictures, but locking out the union here would guarantee excruciating negotiations with the central executive on the other side. Most producers didn't want to risk that. Besides, with the development of special effects technologies, it was becoming more cost-effective to employ us.
The Glob: That's an interesting assertion. Most of our readers naturally assume that all of the scenes in Pirates with the skeletal pirate crew were purely computer-generated animation.
The Spook: It is CGI, and it's CGI that has allowed us to obtain such great billing recently. In the old days, it was a real pain to get us to show up on film. (Not all the whining by the producers was bogus, I suppose.) If you shot us under normal lighting, we would pretty much disappear. Shooting in low light required special emulsions that really raised the production costs, and most of us were lousy at impressing ourselves on the film directly. A lot of the footage that did get shot looked so badly faked that it ended up on the cutting room floor. So, they just used to call in Karloff and a makeup guy instead. Instant mummy, even though he's breathing in every frame.
The Glob: If that's the case, then how does computer-generated imagery give you more opportunities?
The Spook: Well, we figured out how to haunt virtual spaces created by a computer like they were actual locations. So, you have your server farm crank out the backgrounds, and then we do our stuff, which becomes the raw footage for the animations. We can create better choreography than physical-modeling software, in a fraction of the time. It's a win-win situation.
The Glob: So I take it that you never spend any time with the rest of the cast?
The Spook: No, not really. All of our work is done in the effects shop, or in post. We never have to visit the principal locations, which is good for us, since we can't travel very far from our final resting places. I have to get exhumed and reburied somewhere else if I want to take a vacation, for example.
The Glob: Will we be seeing more of the ghostly horde in 2004?
The Spook: I certainly hope so. We managed a record 83% average employment rate for the local last year, thanks to Pirates, and especially Return of the King, requiring so many damned souls for the battle scenes. Working with Peter Jackson and the WETA team was a dream-- they really let us shine. We're generally nimble performers, light on our feet, as you saw in our battle scene. For Pirates, they had us lumbering around too much for my taste. I understand the choice, though- we would have made Depp and Rush look like hippos if we were fighting full speed.
The Glob: 2003 was obviously a fantastic year for you. Has there been any downside?
The Spook: Like every other actor, I worry about typecasting. I can't tell you how many people somehow assume that I and my colleagues were in Pirates because we were really pirates once. The jokes I hear- it's terrible. How come there are no pirate novelists? Because pirates can only write ARRH-ticles. What's a pirate's favorite holiday? ARRH-bor Day. Why did the pirates invade Half Moon Bay? For the ARRH-tichokes. I am sick of pirates, frankly, but I wouldn't say no to a sequel. I have only a few more pictures to fulfill in my contract, and I can't afford to be picky.
The Glob: Do you have any definite plans for your retirement?
The Spook: I haven't thought much about what comes next. If there's anything my years in the business have taught me, it's to focus on the process rather than the goal. That being said, the goal is a consummation devoutly to be wished. The old boy had it right, there.
The Glob: Thank you for your time Mr. Tennybrass.
The Spook: You're very welcome. See you around.
How can you be sure that the packets that were assembled into this page were not morally corrupted by simple proximity to these degenerate datagrams? Peer pressure is an all too real phenomenon, and even the most innocent of web pages is only a hyperlink away from depravity beyond the fleshpots of Sodom. How can you be sure that all the the bits you receive are pure and chaste?
After all, due to the prevelance of obscene spam, innocent email doesn't stand a chance anymore. Time after time, new emails spontaneously decay into cheap come-ons by simply being spooled with a few bad messages. That note from your friend John, with the subject 'This is interesting', had once contained to a link to your favorite band's home page. However, within a few milliseconds of being delivered to your inbox, a gang of solicitations for herbal viagra 'convinced' John's email to change its link to a site for an Icelandic firm specializing in frozen food perversions.
With email nearly a lost cause, the Web is the next battlefield. Every time you surf, you are venturing out into polluted streams of data. The more bandwidth you have, the greater your risk of contamination: your fat pipes are an open sewer. The Internet backbone is a spineless wonder when it comes to morals. How can you keep you and your family safe from corruption? It's easy, thanks to your friends at Celestial Sentinel.
Celestial Sentinel's patented HappyBits™ service automatically cleans and purifies data before it's delivered to your browser. Zero bits are thrown away and replaced with brand new zeros crafted from certifiably pure void. Each one bit is broken down into its component fractions, thoroughy washed, and then reconstituted using an infinite sum. Since the data is recreated on your machine, any dubious tendencies picked up by the original in transmission are simply whisked away.
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]]>Researchers from the High Energy Rhetoric Laboratory at Glob Labs have been carefully monitoring the planning and execution of this debate, and they feel that their preliminary findings are too important to delay publication. Simply put, the Senate leadership appears to be engaged in a controlled test of high-flux debate in the hopes of experimentally establishing the interchangability of time, energy, and political matters. The Senate chamber is the reaction vessel, and the senators themselves are both the experimenters and the subjects of the experiment.
Quantum social dynamics predicts that heavy, massive political bodies may be rendered unstable under highly charged and pressurized conditions. In the presence of a polarized political field, these bodies are easily excited via absorption of information with a contrary spin state. Typically, the excited political body then emits information of the opposite spin in a speech, returning to his or her normal energy level.
In the current experiment, the Senate leadership have engineered a lengthy and constrained period of debate in which access to the floor will be tightly controlled. By forbidding at-will floor access to excited Senators, these actors will be unable to emit speeches in a timely fashion, all the while continuing to absorb highly energetic bogons and pontificons from the current speaker. By carefully focusing the debate to maximize contrary spin, the Senate leadership obviously intends to excite at least one senator into a critical state, resulting in an explosive conversion of some portion of that senator's gravitas into negative energy. That depleted senator would then decay harmlessly for the remainder of his or her term into a completely burnt-out actor, politically inert.
Given the slim margin currently held by the majority party in the Senate, this experiment appears to be part of a dangerous game. If the leadership can explode one or more of the opposition, then they will be able to pursue their agenda without let or hindrance until the next elections. However, there is always the danger that senators from the presiding party may also succumb to critical excitement, which could fatally weaken the majority. There is also the possibility of a chain reaction that would convert the collective grey matter of the Senate into waste heat via a self-sustaining, indefinite debate.
Glob Labs is confident that the public is not in immediate danger as a result of this experiment. The experimental vessel is well-contained, so there is no risk of direct exposure to the polarizing pontificon flux within the Senate itself. However, viewing the progress of the debate through media channels may entail exposure to secondary radiation, so the public should exercise caution. Readers of The Glob who fear that they have been exposed to political fallout from this debate are urged to see a licensed physician, especially if suffering from nausea, vomiting, light-headedness, or a desire to address the nation.
]]>The Glob: Dr. Dusty, do you have an opinion as to the cause of the intense solar activity we have experienced over the last few weeks?
Dr. Dusty: Well, I've certainly been thinkin about the sun. See, some folks say it's middle-aged, but that don't make no sense to me, what with the spots. This here star's clearly an adolescent, and so you can guess what it's got on its mind. These prominences and flares, well, it's just gettin roused by some passin heavenly body, and it's lettin off a little steam, if you know what I mean.
The Glob: Is there any risk associated with this activity?
Dr. Dusty: Well, we're not gonna go blind, if that's what you're thinkin. The solar brightness ain't going to vary much. Damn, though, I'm afeared one a these days it's gonna git itself really worked up to the point that it blows fire and plasma out past the orbit of Venus to roast our asses in one colossal cosmic spl**ge.
The Glob: Good Lord!
Dr. Dusty: Yep, prayin ain't a bad idea, but I was thinkin maybe we could treat the disease by treatin the symptom. If we could just clear up them spots, maybe it would calm the hell down.
The Glob: Is that even possible, doctor?
Dr. Dusty: Sure, it's possible, and NASA's got folks working on a coverup cream for celestial bodies, made mainly of osmium, tungsten, and titanium with a little beeswax and Vitamin E. But we need to test it first, and we were thinking about using Jupiter, but the trouble is, the coverup stuff is so heavy it'll sink right through the atmosphere of a gas giant. It'd be one hell of an extreme makeover if it worked out, though.
The Glob: That would be must-see TV.
Dr. Dusty: TV? Well, the time delay would make things pretty slow. There's no way to get Jupiter into the studio, a course.
The Glob: It would be a grave situation.
Dr. Dusty: We get too close, and we'd end up broadcasting live from hell quicker than you can believe.
The Glob: Indeed.
Dr. Dusty: I suppose it would be interesting. See, they've already got TV in hell.
The Glob: They do? Who does?
Dr. Dusty: The damned. They've got TV in hell, but there's only one channel for everyone: a personalized shopping network. What you see for sale are all the things you lost or never had due to your own foolishness. Just one bad decision after another, and all these chances to set things right with a simple phone call and a credit card. But you start out nearly maxed out on your credit card, and when you go to town buying up your long-lost possible futures, well, they come looking for you to pay. Pretty soon they've got your spleen out your eyesockets and your lungs down around your knees, and they drag you into the shower and run cold water through your ribs, though it ain't exactly cold, and it ain't exactly water, cause it's on fire. And it's like that every single day. Your life and your losses on TV, and the chance to get them back, but only if you pay, and you just keep paying, forever. Compound interest is a terrible punishment for sin... I wonder about the divine mercy sometimes, I really do.
The Glob: Well. . . thank you for your time, doctor.
Dr. Dusty: My pleasure, son. You're welcome to come back if'n you got any more questions. I've got a theory of galaxy formation that you just might want to hear about sometime. Turns out that there're more similarities between stars and steers than you might expect.