public Scott person;

Articulating the Numisma

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 06:49:50 -0500

"Common sense is very important in ghost research."

I find this quote amusing because it is well known that when the brain thinks about ghosts it undergoes clownossification. For those not familiar with clownossification ...

... let me first explain the most important point about the word: the first syllable divides between the "w" and the "n", not between the "n" and the "o" -- like this: clow-nossification.

Clownossification is the condition in which normally rational people under the influence of the unknown seek to attribute anything and everything out of the ordinary to the supernatural. You see it happen all around you, when people begin to talk or think about something mysterious suddenly a murkiness imposes upon reality and sense goes south for the winter and gets lost.

Clown-ossification is an entirely different condition -- it is the condition by which a clown undergoes something like petrification.

Some clowns were once rational human beings. One day something happened to them -- usually an emotional trauma -- and suddenly a murkiness imposed upon reality and their sense went south and got lost. At that point, starving and on the brink of personal extinction, they realized the only way to eat and have toilet tissue again was to become a clown, exploiting their new-found senselessness to the benefit of their own survival.

I'm not convinced everything out there can be researched. Sometimes you think of something to research that upon serious investigation would likely solve all of humanity's problems, and you know it, but you can't take on the project because there are no funding opportunities available. Then you happen to visit the circus, see the clowns, and think about ghosts and a murkiness is imposed upon reality.

I don't know if clowns have ghosts or not. If we assume a ghost is a soul, then it is unclear as to whether clowns have one or not. The world may never know, because I can't get funding for a project to investigate this conundrum, and now I'm thinking about both clowns AND ghosts, which is making my reality very murky.

Which brings me to the point of today's topic: Articulating the Numisma.

My Webster's New World Dictionary claims to have over 60,000 entries. My kids' Webster's Intermediate Dictionary has over 70,000. I tested this very scientifically by picking one page at random in the Intermediate Dictionary and comparing to the same set of entries in New World Dictionary until I found a word in the Intermediate Dictionary that is NOT in the New World Dictionary. The word I found was "acellular."

There are two conclusions one must reach in response to this important discovery: the New World will be less advanced than "intermediate" and in the New World, one will have no need of the word "acellular," implying, of course, that all things in the New World will be made of cells.

I didn't like the definition of numismatology in either of the Webster's dictionaries I consulted, so like any good post-modern man, I went looking for another authoritative source that I liked better. In this case I turned to the free online dictionary, WordNet 2.0. Thank goodness open source lags a little behind the rest of the world! It has the word in it and therefore is more advanced than "intermediate", but I still didn't like the definition. Fortunately I can get to a Webster's from 1913, which is even more advanced than WordNet and defines numismatology as "The science which treats of coins and medals, in their relation to history"

Clearly the problem with Webster's is that Noah Webster is dead. I can't seem to contact his ghost to inquire.

When I first saw the word "numismatist", I was walking along a sidewalk with a friend of mine gazing at abandoned storefronts along the main street of a small town near where we live. An abandoned jewelry store advertised the former proprietor as a "numismatist". Since we both live in the era on the cusp of the New World, neither one of us knew what a numismatist was because it isn't in the New World vocabulary. Suddenly we found a murkiness encroaching upon reality and found a satisfactory explanation in the supernatural which gave us topic for conversation throughout an entire lunch!

Clearly, a numismatist must do something with numisma, whatever that is -- certainly a substance of great power and probably a little gooey and sparkly. It must be something more psychic than material since we'd never heard of it and we had both been to college.

And then it all become crystal clear to my friend, P. (that's the old-school literary technique of naming someone anonymously. It doesn't happen now. In the New World people make up names for people to protect their identity and refer to everyone in the female gender). A numismatist must Articulate the Numisma.

Of course!!! And if the secret society of Numismatists did not continue and practice its arcane art of Articulation then all of space time would implode.

So let's have a drink to those heroic and unsung Numismatists!

There is a web site on the internet where you can look at photos of ghosts, read stories, get some ghost hunting tips, learn how to identify a real ghost from a trick of the light, etc., and visit their achrives. They claim to have been around sense 1999.

It is from GhostStudy that we learn that "Common sense is very important in ghost research."

The problem with ghost research -- indeed any research -- is that one is penetrating deep into the unknown and therefore at any and every turn runs the risk of clownossifying. This explains the existence of left-wing liberals, Obamanites, and evolangalists.

Let's take the evolangalists as an example. A dude we'll call Chuck came up with the idea that all lifeforms were descended through evolution over time from common ancestors. That idea evolved over time into the modern theories of evolution. That's all fine. Chuck himself (or should I say, in preparation for the New World, "herself") went on to become a self-professed agnostic -- sad, as it places his/her eternal soul in jeopardy, but still not a particular problem for the rest of us. Though why anyone would willingly run the risk of placing his/her eternal soul in jeopardy, I don't know -- sense would dictate that given the choice of oblivion or possible existence after death, that one would just go ahead with doing what was needed to ensure existence "just in case" -- if all things end in oblivion after all, you haven't lost anything by being a little cautious. Perhaps he was clownossifying. But I digress.

The problem with researching the origin of man or any life form isn't so much "how," as "why". "How" is relatively easy -- enough study, enough time, people will figure it out and that is very good. The "Why" is the Great Mystery of the Cosmos. Once research delves into the origin of anything it has to eventually ask why the thing originated, and when people start to do that they are confronted with the Great Mystery.

If mystery leads to murkiness, the Great Mystery leads to Darkness, and it is in the Great Darkness that reality is broken and people totally lose their sense. And so evolangalists, seeking, rightly, to try to understand how man was made, are confronted by the Great Mystery that cannot be answered by science -- it can only be answered by the Originator, and then only by personally asking Him (no "Her" allowed in any World for this One) and expecting an answer as to "Why? Why did You do it?"

There in the depths of Mystery people often lose their sense and rational people become clowns, Articulating the Numisma in a vain belief that they can control the Cosmos and that somehow the Why of things was conceived by the creature rather than the Creator.

Rather than own up to human inadequacy, people confronted with the Mystery will fall back on Pride and reject there is a mystery at all, and that is when clownossification begins.

But it does not culminate in the denial of the Creator. No, indeed, if only it did! No, when final ossification of all sense is complete, then the Creator is substituted with another concept -- any but Him -- with fanatic religious fervor. For evolangilists, the concept is evolution, and somehow the existence, for them, of a theory of how man originated is proof-positive that Jesus is not divine -- a leap of "reason" that could only be made by an ossified intellect -- or a clown.

Piggy Holds the Conch

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:00:08 -0400

Piggy holds the conch....

I once met a man who is determined to swim the Bering Strait. Unlike Lynne Cox who swam the Strait between Diomede Islands, about 2.5 miles apart, Mr. Stellant Gregory of 54 New Court Drive, proposes to swim the 50 or so miles between Alaska and Russia proper.

Mr. Gregory has been in training for his remarkable event since 1987, some 22 years for those educated in public school. He has invested approximately $737,239 in bagged ice ...

to daily cool his above-ground pool in order to acclimate his body to the extreme cold he will have to endure when he attempts his much-anticipated crossing.

Mr. Gregory has financed his training by entertaining people at special events. Mr. Gregory is a mer-clown -- perhaps the only one in the state, maybe in the nation. While mer-clowning may not at first seem a lucrative profession, think for a moment about how many mer-clowns there are and how dangerous it is.

Through amazing feats such as underwater juggling and hyper-hydrated fire breathing, Mr. Gregory has managed to contract with some of the worlds wealthiest families for children's birthdays, weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs, etc. Recently, my company even hired Mr. Gregory to entertain at our monthly Employee of the Month anointing ceremony.

When people are properly anointed an oil is used. Sometimes, though, people use something other than oils. And that brings us to today's topic, Piggy and the conch.

First, we must clarify how "conch" is pronounced: k[o^][ng]kaccording to the dict, my preferred dictionary (http://www.dict.org/).

I think Webster's is about the worst dictionary of the English language I have ever seen. Misters Merriam were crazy to take it over when dear Noah passed away, or perhaps they ruined it. Who's to say.

A conch is a sea animal, specifically a marine gastropod, that God created for us to use as trumpets and telephones. Most people have not figured that out yet, and just set them around the house as really cool looking kitsch. Mr. Gregory, however, saw a great financial opportunity in conchs, so he borrowed $15,000 from his terminally ill sister and bought a metal building. Then he went for a swim. Mr. Gregory, trained as a mer-clown, can stay underwater at any conch-infested reef for a very long time -- enough, apparently, to fill a metal building with desiccating conchs.

The odor was horrendous, so much that the neighbors complained to the landlord (Mr. Gregory bought the building, not the lot it was on). The landlord (Joe) complained to Mr. Gregory. Mr. Gregory had inserted by means only clowns are privy to, a very clever legal phrase that held Joe responsible for any foul orders emanating from Mr. Gregory's building. While his conchs had been rotting, Mr. Gregory had been fomenting discontent and greed in the minds and hearts of his neighbors in the trailer park. By the time the odor reached them and had grown beyond that which was their own, the conchs were well on their way to oblivion and the neighbors well on their way to lynching.

It did not take Mr. Gregory long to convince the trailer park residents that the real reason they and their homes smelled like dead wet dog was due solely to his conchs, for which Joe was responsible.

Tipping off Smarm, Warm, and Dipple, attornies at law, Mr. Gregory ensured that the trailer park residents were educated on their rights and well represented by a respected local law firm that cares. The plethora of law-suits that followed broke Joe. Mr. Gregory quickly bought up all of Joe's real-estate ventures in the unadvertised bankruptcy auction that followed. He turned around and sold all of his newly acquired assets at a very fat profit, ensuring his heroic swimming training endeavors would be well-financed for decades to come.

With his training secure, Mr. Gregory has had only to do enough clowning to subsist.

In the Lord of the Flies, the only one allowed to speak was the fly holding the conch. For insects, this simple rule holds, but for humans it also holds. Though humans do not have wings and flies do, holding a conch prevents a fly from flying. This makes humans and flies equal under the authority of the conch.

Doug Sabermouth, standing on the beach in 1986, watching a man in a clown suit dive beneath the waves in Hawaii was far more interested in the wetness of his bucket of sand than in conchs. He paused only a moment at the oddity that was Stellant Gregory slipping neatly and quietly into the surf. Then he went back to his sand castle. When his family moved from their single-wide to the double-wide across town, he thought it was because his dad got a promotion and a raise at the mill.

Now, 22 years later, Doug has wives of his own and children with whom he sometimes lives with his parents in that blessing of a double-wide that followed shortly on the tail of the magical visit to the Hawaiian beaches where he witnessed a clown vanish beneath the waves when he was five. While Doug has clearly benefitted from Mr. Gregories acumen, the world still waits all a titter for his promised performance.

Some claim that he never really ever planned to swim the Strait. Others that the Strait is only just the beginning and that he wants to be sure he is ready for the brazen challenges that will follow his success. Still others claim that Mr. Gregory was just out to make a buck.

Regardless, it is clear that the world remains unchanged, yet Mr. Gregory holds the conch.

Make of that what you will.

When Dilly Wugums Comes to Call

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:54:37 -0500

I take great comfort in statistics that bespeak the relative cleanliness of toilet seats. Therefore, I will not catch an embarrassing disease from public bathrooms.

My dog's name is Molly, therefore I have pickles between my toes.

I hate clowns, therefore you are in space.

No, no, [chuckle, chuckle] I'm not crazy. These seemingly irrational ...

... truths do make sense when seen through the lens of Dilly Wugums.

What?! You haven't heard of Dilly Wugums?! Well, let me tell you ... !

First off, Dilly Wugums is not a man. Nor is she a woman, but he might be. See, I thought so.

Second off, Dilly Wugums was her given name.

When Dilly Wugums come to town, clowns cry. Why? Because not even the notorious Silly Socks could be as irrational as Dilly Wugums and make people believe in him. When Dilly Wugums comes to town, people just don't give a bat's mucous plug about what actually makes sense and what doesn't.

Several statements that came to my ears recently make me suspicious that perhaps Dilly Wugums has come to my town, and maybe even brought along a clown just to be sure.

Some people would be disturbed by statistics that show how clean or unclean something is compared to a toilet seat -- especially a public one, or even a public toilet seat. There are two reasons why: (1) there are those who are disturbed because they really thought the inside of their mouths were cleaner than a public toiliet seat, and therefore are disturbed to discover they might be better off licking the toilet seat at the local Huddle House rather than their own teeth. (2) there are those who are disturbed because they didn't realize that toilet seats were dirty at all.

I, on the other hand, am comforted by the fact that public toilet seats are not the festering petri dishes we once imagined. Why do toilet seats not bother me like other people? I suspect it has to do with the fact that I actually use them. Now that may not seem like much, but recall, I am not a woman, and that makes all the difference here.

When Dilly Wugums used the ladies' and mens' rooms at the local McDonalds in July of 1998, everyone in town lined up behind old Doc Gonoria's (no, you creepy freak, I didn't mispell gonorrhea) to peek through the window of his little office to get a peek at Dilly Wugums' butt. Oh, yeah, it was raw -- at least that is what I heard. When Doc Gonoria carried the samples around to his little lab, the people followed around the outside of the building and peeked in there, and sure enough, that rash was caused by something in the samples.

Whew! You can imagine the stink that caused!

Oh, and womens' rooms have those nifty toilet seat covers, whereas for some reason it is generally believed that men don't sit on toilet seats and therefore don't require seat covers. So men attempt to balance shreds of cheap public toilet tissue around the toilet seat. Men must hold their breaths (well, "men" is plural) so as not to blow off the tissue by accident and then must sit vertically down upon said seat so as not to shift the paper in the process of lowering themselves into position. Alternately, men can take the much riskier "bare seat but hover" approach and poop into space. Finally, men have the option of living like Indiana Jones and just risk pressing the buttocks directly onto the cold, hard ... uh ... whatever toilet seats are made of ... stuff.

Regardless of the preferred technique, simply placing disposable toilet seat covers in mens' rooms would make either approach more bearable (pun intended).

Now here is the thing, Dilly Wugums said, "I don't feel comfortable using public toilet seats because they are dirty, so normally I wouldn't, therefore, I could not have caught this rash from the seat."

I daresay, even though I fully understand the power of Dilly Wugums, even I am tempted to believe her rationalization -- that's just how powerful he is.

But everyone else in town looked at each other (that took a while) and nodded their heads, mumbling words of agreement.

And so Huddle House, in my town at least, did not lose its public restroom permit.

Two days ago my wife said, "I bought you this clearance bowling shirt to bring out your inner bowler."

Yesterday, someone said, "I argue for Obama not because I agree with him, but because so many other people do not."

Today, a woman said, "I will be happy in heaven, and because I am saved and could not be happy in heaven if my son was not, my son must be saved."

What puppy caca!

That's all like saying, "I am happy because I am not hungry, therefore you are not hungry either." When really, I'm hungry enough to sloppy some glazed roaches between obese gay clowns in a steamy roman bath.

It's one of those years when people are like that. Be careful what you hear out there. At best there are bunch of clowns wandering about. At worst, Dilly Wugums herself is in your neighborhood. Regardless, the spin on the truth to rationalize selfishness drips around you like rain in a tsunami. Don't buy in -- just keep returning to basics, the fundamental simplicity of right and wrong.

And in case you need it spelled out for you: "If it kills babies, it is bad. If it saves babies, it is good."

I'll Be Having That My Way

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 22:11:09 -0400

Clowns are not happy with their bodies. That is why they paint their faces and wear big, baggy pants.

If you meet a clown in civilian dress on the street, you won't know it's a clown. If you meet a naked clown, you ...

... still won't know it's a clown unless the clown has a tatoo that says, "I'm a clown," which is rare, because people, even clowns, typically don't like to advertise that they are clowns on their naked flesh.

Which brings us to today's topic: having things my way.

Somewhere out there in the USA -- you are NOT going to believe this -- are people who became so dissatisfied with their church that they took the part they liked, made up the rest, and formed their own church!

Really! It's true! I wouldn't make something like that up, though there are a lot of things I would make up, like, maybe, clowns, if I was a clown makeup professional.

But clowns typically do their own makeup. Why? Because clowns are picky, irascible creatures who want to be absolutely certain that their makeup is done their way.

And so these [air quotes] Catholics [close air quotes] decide they've had enough, form their own [air quotes] Catholic [close air quotes] church, ordain married women as [air quotes] priests [close air quotes], renounce the Pope (that is THE Pope), and still insist they are [air quotes] Catholic [close air quotes].

They do their own makeup before slipping into their baggy vestments and going on-stage for their communion service.

I once tried to commune with a clown. It hurt.

Children grow and somehow manage to live through adolescence and do it without going insane or becoming clowns and spend the better part of their youth focused entirely on their careers, winning rewards for hard work and dedication and obtaining a comfortable and respectable standard of living. Perhaps they get married when they find that "special someone" that makes them feel fulfilled and complete. After they've established a nestegg and the timing is right, maybe they have a couple of kids. Because of their due diligence, they can afford put their kids in the best daycare and schools.

Then they do their own makeup before they go off to work.

Children grow and somehow manage to live through adolescence and do it without going insane or becoming clowns and spend the better part of their youth focused entirely on their careers, jumping from job to job in a vain effort to climb the rungs of some illusory ladder. They pass up love for lonliness until the [air quotes] timing [close air quotes] is right. When youth is wasting away, they seek that [air quotes] someone special [close air quotes] they can use to fill an emptiness they can't explain. Maybe they marry. They do all they can to prevent the conception of children until they have had their time with just one another to be sure their marriage will last and they've truly gotten to know one another, bonded, and built a comfortable financial cushion. At some point, when they can safely afford children, they may choose to have a child, and as long as the fetus shows no sign of an inconvenient defect, they permit the pregnancy to come to term. Because of their due diligence, they can afford to put their kids in the best daycare to be reared by strangers. When they discover rearing children is time-consuming, difficult, and an all-or-nothing venture requiring total sacrifice and focused dedication, they realize they can't risk the possibility of stopping on their way up the ladder or risk having another child that doesn't get their attention, so they have themselves permanently sterilized. Some time later (long or short) they leave the job they sacrificed everything to climb to, and within a much shorter time they are forgotten and their efforts erased and lost to the erosion of time. They continue to live with all the creature comforts until they die and climb the final rung of that ladder with everything they can carry into the afterlife.

While they lived, they did their own makeup.

But no matter how diligent they were, no matter how many sacrifices they made for their wants, no matter how they remained in control and yielded up as little as possible to humanity, when they died the mortician stripped them naked and it was someone else who did their final makeup.

But I digress.

And that brings us back to today's topic: having it my way.

I once tried to digress with a clown. That hurt, too.

I never met a gay clown -- at least that I knew was gay. If I did, he'd probably say it was OK to be gay because that is [air quote] the way he is made [close air quote].

How are kleptomaniacs made? How is an unfaithful husband made? How are pedophiles made? How are serial killers made? How are abortionists made?

I suppose a clown becomes a clown because he is [air quote] made that way [close air quote].

I've never manufactured a clown, well, except the one in the banner at the top of this page. He is exposing his backside because that's the way he is made.

Did I mention how #### titillating my wife is?

When kids arrive for the first time on college campuses for class, they expect to walk away four or so years later with a degree. They expect it because they showed up for one. If they have trouble along the way, they expect someone to handhold them through the rough times, show them some special treatment because they are themselves, cut them a little slack, and give them a passing grade.

Clowns are afraid to be themselves. That's why they are clowns. But their fellow clowns -- the ones in their troop (that's what you call a group of clowns -- a troop) -- these other clowns know them for who they are.

I sometimes wonder about the secret life of clowns -- when the makeup is off and they sit around the apartment together in their underwear drinking beer and watching football. When they are just average joes.

I still don't like to watch football. Or basketball. Or baseball. They are boring to watch. It's akin to watching impossibly old people without teeth gumming Cream of Wheat. Actually, that might be more interesting to watch than football, basketball, or baseball.

Humans are biological creatures that must reproduce to survive as a species. Despite what we would like to believe to the contrary, we are built to procreate -- hence the insatiable pre-occupation of our culture with sex.

Sex is for making babies.

Now, I know that is a head-spinning, radical, crazy idea, but hear me out...

The ultimate purpose of sexual pleasure, intimacy and intercourse is for making babies.

OK, wait...

The reason humans have a need to congregate socially and pair off in a romantic and loving desire for one another and the reason they enjoy and find fullfillment and satisfaction in the act of love making is to form deep and lasting bonds in order to establish inseparable family units in which offspring are protected and provided for above all else, ensuring the propagation of the species.

Hmmm. Let me try this another way:

Sex is for pleasure.

What a bizarre sounding proposition. Might as well say "makeup is for clowning" ...

The ultimate purpose of sex is the pleasure derived by the participants.

Still off somehow...

The reason humans have a need to congregate socially and pair off in a romantic and loving desire for one another and the reason they enjoy and find fullfillment and satisfaction in the act of love making is for the enjoyment, fulfillment, and satisfaction derived from making love.

Wait, that's circular. OK, I've got it:

The reason humans have a need to congregate socially and pair off in a romantic and loving desire for one another and the reason they enjoy and find fullfillment and satisfaction in the act of love making is for the enjoyment, fulfillment, and satisfaction derived from making love thereby significantly improving the odds for conception and continuation of the species.

That's better, but "improving the odds" is, well, odd ....

The reason humans have a need to congregate socially and pair off in a romantic and loving desire for one another is to find enjoyment, fulfillment, and satisfaction though the act of making love which encourages them to make love frequently to ensure conception and continuation of the species.

OK, now we are getting somewhere. Let me wordsmith a little to shorten it .... I won't bore you with the iterations further until I get it down to its essence:

The reason humans enjoy sex is to ensure that they have babies.

But that misses the point of sex, so let me try again:

Sex is for making babies.

And that is what you get when the makeup comes off.

If they aren't testable, they aren't requirements

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:13:22 -0400

Once upon a time there were some people who called themselves "programmers" and they ticked me off because I'm a programmer.

These people wrote "program" code in a bizarre and utterly nauseating language called "Visual Basic." They also didn't smell like ...

... stale coffee.

People who don't smell like stale coffee and yet call themselves "programmers" bother me, unless they have a medical condition that prevents the consumption of coffee, then they probably bother me for other reasons.

Mostly I just don't understand people -- not because they are hard to understand -- I just don't understand how they can have blatant faults and not themselves see them ... i.e., they aren't like me and won't change.

Take for instance underpants. When I wear underpants, I wear them proudly. Other people don't wear their underpants proudly, or they wear them proudly, but on the outside of their other clothing.

Which brings me to today's topic: requirements.

Requirements should be specific, concise, unadorned, testable -- that is, they should be SCUT.

By specific, I mean they should describe a single function of a system and not a smorgasbord of vague, half-finished statements about dozens of functions. Oh, that's also what I mean by concise. No it isn't. Concise means they shouldn't be wordy, but should get to the point, and only one point, which is what I mean by specific. They should also be what I meant but didn't mean by concise, a better word for which would be complete, precise, and accurate -- which is actually three words. But they should be them. And they should be testable, which means that you could sit down with the system and try the function and see it work or not, which implies you could write such a test scenario, which is what I mean by testable. Unadorned means they are written without using a word processor's fancy features.

So, I guess really, we have requirements should be specific, concise, unadorned, testable, complete, accurate, and precise. That spells SCUTCAP. What else does it spell? Email me at scott@colickyclown.com and let me know what you can spell with SCUTCAP.

Here is a requirement for "underpants wearer" to illustrate my point.

Name: SR-001: System wears underpants under all other clothing.
Description: The Underpants Wearer system wears underpants immediately and only on top of its epidermis.
Simple test:
1. Enter a pair of underpants into Underpants Wearer on the Input Clothing page
2. click the "Wear Underpants" button
3. query Underpants Wearer for the status of underpants
4. observe the Location output field and verify that the z-order is "bottom"

Now, you see this is testable. Simple test is present to ensure that it is testable. We can make it virtually untestable:

Name: SR-001: System likes underpants under all other clothing.
Description: The Underpants Wearer system likes underpants immediately and only on top of its epidermis.
Simple test:
1. Enter a pair of underpants into Underpants Wearer on the Input Clothing page
2. click the "Wear Underpants" button
3. ask Underpants Wearer how it feels about the location of its underpants
4. verify .... what????

You see the problem here? Underpants wearer can't tell you how it feels about its underpants, first because it is supposed to be a computer system and computers don't wear underpants, but mostly because underpants wearers are generally a bit embarassed about this topic and can't be relied upon to actually discuss it. Even if it could tell you and it didn't like the location of its underpants, it doesn't mean anything. Liking the location of underpants is not a system function an end-user cares a lick about. It is a quality of the system, not a requirement.

Visual Basic (VB) programmers don't like requirements. They are not the kind of people who want to be confined by them. They prefer the excitement and brutal edge of coding without rules, creating software out of nothing that is usable not by their stakeholders but by people who might really need what they create -- serendipitously hitting upon the golden combination of requirements that SCUTCAP-defines THE system these people need by the "programmer's" sheer artistic genious. They like quality statements about systems, not requirements, becase VB makes it easy to code qualities of a system but extremely difficult to write a program that meets real requirements such as those that Mel would code for. VB programmers often don't have degrees in computer science or a related field. In fact, you can even have a BA in something as loathsome as Clowning and call yourself a VB programmer.

Coffee comes from beans. Coffee is called "java" sometimes. Java is a programming language with a stupid name that Java programmers have taken to the extreme of immaturity. You can write Java code as a self-contained class that meets certain conventions and voila it is a Bean.

People laugh at beans. Beans are funny. Stand up at a fancy dinner party, all somber and serious and in a solemn tone draw out "bean" firm, loud, and strong. Then sit down and resume eating. People will burst laughing.

No one gathered name requirements when Java was named. It was done by all accounts I can find in a chaotic frenzy of ecstaticly wild artistic gyrations desparately seeking to serendipitously appeal to someone somewhere out there.

Well, it doesn't appeal to me, and I'm not wearing underpants.

Crawling in the Skin of the Snake

Wed, 09 May 2007 22:48:02 -0400

On a dry, balmy summer day, the skin of a snake is dry and not slimy. On a rainy, warm, summer night the skin of a snake is wet and slimy.

The same holds for ....

... humans. If you put one outside on a balmy summer day, as long as it is relatively still, it will be dry and not at all slimy. On the other hand, on a rainy, warm, summer night, put the same human outside for a moment and then rub its skin with your tentacles, and it will feel slimy and wet.

There's really no surprise in this -- it is obvious. But for clowns there is a deeper significance here, because clowns have tentacles. Clowns also have no sex drive, so a male clown thinking about a the rain-wet skin of a woman on a balmy summer night will be excited only by the fact that she presents a great opportunity to irritate someone with some obnoxious miming. Even if she's naked and ecstatically drinking the warm rain water falling on her upturned mouth open to the roiling sky ... regardless of the rivulets spiraling down and twining around her limbs, finally leaping to the concrete below and swimming away into the shadow behind her, cast by the streetlight painting streaks across the darkness with the rain.

But I digress. Today's topic is, after all, not post-apocalyptic fantasy, but the anatomy of clowns, though post-apocalyptic fantasy would make for a fascinating topic that would, indeed, involve slime and a cornucopia of canned foods.

Clowns don't come from cans, though you can put one into a can and give it to a friend you don't like as a wedding gift.

On our wedding, my wife and I received a set of translucent blue plastic salad bowls. The set came with a serving bowl and utensiles to match. I was horrified by this gift.

When you give a gift for a wedding, you should either try to immensely please (in total -- more on that in a moment) or gruesomely horrify the newlyweds. A moment has arrived: "in total" means that if you take the sum total of the reaction of both members comprising the couple, the reaction equates to "immensely pleased" or "gruesomely horrified." This could mean that female is ambivalent to the chainsaw, but male is so thrilled that a lump of emotion crowds his beer for access to his esophagus. In this case, male's pleasure + female's ambivalence = immensely pleased. It could mean that male is threatened and nauseated by the thought of sleeping under floral bed curtains until death while female is giddy. In this case, male's sickening, hopeless, horror + female's joy = gruesomely horrified.

Contrary to popular belief, males actually feel more intensely than females. That's why men readily rush into battle to kill one another while women merely make nasty innuendos about one another that only another woman, or a clown, could detect as an actual attack.

There is another thing females are wrong about: that men "only want one thing." The truth is, men want two things. One is women and the other is food.

This is what wars are fought over and ... females, I'm sorry to expose your secret ... nasty innuendos uttered over.

Clowns are made of meat. Their bones, however, are not hard like ours. Their bones are soft and flexible, like those short rubbery radio antennas on some cars. That's why clowns can fit so many of themselves in those little clown cars.

Clowns have tentacles. I know, I've seen them. They keep them braided up in four twisty abominations they stick in shirt sleeves and pant legs to look like arms and legs. Clowns wear gloves and oversize shoes to hold their tentacle braids together and make it appear as if they have hands and feet.

What does the singular of "pants" look like?

Despite documentaries to the contrary, clowns don't wear makeup. What you see are their real faces, but not all of their faces. Clowns have multiple faces -- maybe it is more accurate to say that they have more of each kind of facial feature than humans. They wear those comical wigs to cover their additional facial features so as not to horrify humans and give themselves away.

That's why clowns are cranky.

I think the Japanese appreciate naked women in the rain. Clowns are not japanese. I've never seen a naked clown, though I have seen a clown in nothing but his underwear. That's how I know they have tentacles. And that they are warty.

I have a wart on my right calf. It's been there since I lived on the farm, but it is flat, so I don't worry about it. It hasn't changed in over 20 years. If it did change, I'd worry -- I'd worry that clowns had crept into my bedroom at night and injected me with virus laden with a recombinant clown DNA payload in order to transform me into a clown.

I like The Bangles.

Female humans do not have tentacles. Neither do male humans, though some female humans might argue that point. Humans are also not snakes, and to call one a snake is really a terrible insult because God put enmity between humans and snakes and to say that a person is a snake is to say that he or she is forsaken by God and doomed to hell. What you bind on earth will be bound for eternity. So no matter where his tentacles roam, girls, let's not make excessive use of hyperbola and in so doing curse him to eternal damnation. Regardless of the impropriety of copping a thrill, he probably isn't worthy of unfathomable and infinite torture for it.

Like humans, there were originally only two clowns -- a clown and a second clown. Clowns do not reproduce sexually. They have no sex organs. Clowns reproduce by cloning themselves through special asexual nose organs. Deep in the nasal cavities (all 16) of a clown are its reproductive organs where a bizarre biological phonomenon involving recombinant DNA and the production of carcinogens contained by the bombardment of cosmic particles takes place. This is why clown noses are big, round, and red. They are irritated by their own cloning, just as we are irritated by their clowning. Why aren't they all the same, then, you ask? Mutation, you moron. What are you, a clown?

First Was (not Was) walked the dinosaur then they got on the floor and killed the dinosaur. This is because Love is a Battlefield and people can't Not Worry and Be Happy when they are the Owner's of a Lonely Heart.

Clowns are lonely. They were from the start, and that is why they are coming for you, why they want to transform you with their weird science into clowns like them.

Be a hero. Hug a clown, save the world.

Smelling the Nose of Insincerity

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:42:00 -0400

I have an awful dictionary. I do not replace it. Why do I not replace it? Because my dictionary is Webster's NEW WORLD Dictionary and so I don't want to miss out on being part of the new world.

My dictionary describes the word jive as ...

... follows, and I quote in total:

jive (jiv) n. [] [Slang] foolish, exaggerated, or insincere talk --adj. [Slang] insincere, fraudulent, etc.

That's it. There is no more. That's because in the new world things will be like that.

I like stuff. I like the word and I like having stuff. Stuff is good, stuff is keen, stuff is the stuff that makes chickens preen. I don't think that liking my stuff makes me sinful. I don't think that liking having stuff makes me unholy. Some of my stuff has holes.

My dictionary defines preen as follows ...
preen (pren) vt. [proinen, to dress up] 1 to clean and trim (the feathers) with a beak 2 to dress up or adorn (oneself) 3 to pride (oneself)

The "e" in the pronunciation should have a little bar over it, but I don't know how to make that an "e" with a little bar over it with HTML.

I know a lot of things. I know, for example, that Austrailia is both a country and a continent. I know that red stars are cooler than blue stars. I know that urine is potable.

Ironically, though urine is potable people are revolted by the thought of drinking it. Dogs and cats are edible, and in some parts of the world they are eaten, but here people are revolted by the thought of eating dogs and cats.

"What kind of farm do you have?"

"I have a dog farm."

"What do you raise on your dog farm?"

"Why, that would be dogs!"

Based on my dictionary's definition, if someone danced the Jive, they'd be dancing insincerely, fradulently, etc.ly.

What's it like when someone dances insincerely? What's it like to be in the audience watching someone dance insincerely?

"Wow! Brav .... oh. Well, that was magnificent, but ... well, it was so ... insincere. I mean, he just didn't mean it. I need to go now."

My dictionary puts "the feathers" in parentheses, like this "(the feathers)." That's because in the New World, everyone will have a beak. We'll use our beaks to clean and trim. We'll clean and trim a lot, but not jively -- no, we'll really mean it, unike that jive dancer.

Clowns are insincere. They reek insincerity. In fact, I think clowns hate us -- they hate us non-clowns. Just like deaf people hate people who can hear.

I watched a part of a PBS show, that was not jive, that told the story of the "deaf culture." Apparently, the deaf have a culture of their own and in the words of one of the deaf people, it is "beautiful." I don't know what that means -- they have their own culture -- but then I wouldn't and couldn't if I wanted to because I can hear. Moreover, many deaf people like being deaf and would stay that way even if they had a choice.

Anyway, as a subculture, the deaf think that we who are not deaf think the deaf are stupid, inferior, or otherwise discriminate against them.

My response? "I really don't give a ... what's the sign for 'crap'?"

I've never thought or known anyone who thinks that deaf people are in any way inferior to people who can hear. I never even thought of them as "them" as opposed to "us" until it was pointed out to me that they think that about me. So why are the deaf so paranoid, arrogant, and angry?

I think it is because ... and I'm sorry if you are deaf and this upsets you ... deafness is just not debilitating enough that you can't fairly easily learn to live with it.

In fact, if you have to lose a sense, the only one I can think of that would be less debilitating would be smell. Well, or maybe taste. We really don't need those. Anyway, we've all experienced some semblance of deafness at some point -- not complete, so don't get your undies in a wad if you are deaf -- but moments where for one reason or another sounds go unnoticed or unheard and we miss something.

But deafness isn't, say, like paralysis. Now there's a tough one. Or blindness.

So, deaf people, I think, these days, don't have it as bad as they think they do or as their grandparents did (or would have if their grandparents had been deaf if they were not). This makes deaf people think they have overcome greater obstacles than they have and so they think they're particularly good at overcoming obstacles, which creates a collective culture of arrogance and a sense of a virtual society of perfection.

Maybe all that is jive, but deaf people really need to lighten up and realize that those of us who can hear really don't think much about deafness, certainly don't think less of deaf people because of their disability, and will gladly accomodate deaf people in ways to ease their burden.

Finally, I've just got to say, if I was an amputee and someone said, "hey, hey! I can grow your leg back!" You better believe I'd let him. I think it says a lot that deaf people in general, if you said, "hey! hey! I can give you your hearing!" would say, "NO!" Come on! If you want stupid, stupid is willingly going through life with one of your senses missing when you don't have to.

Now that is jive.

In the New World, apparently, there is a lot of that.

The Dons of Fudge

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 22:12:50 -0500

The town rose up to meet him on that pivotal day in '47 when Don Kilwin strode in off the snowy plain, riding coat whipping in the cold Northern Michigan winter winds. Don Kilwin knew the odds were stacked against him. He knew it when he set off on foot, a hole already in his boot, from the Orinoco basin carrying only his dream and the Black Bean.

He knew, however, that he could not sit idly licking his lips in his tropical paradise knowing how she suffered in the frozen wastes of the deep north. He was, after all, not called Don for nothing, and it was time he lived up to that which was heaped upon him by the Amazonian Queen, Beanutt, ...

... herself when she dubbed him the title "Don."

And so Don Kilwin left his tropical home with nothing but a cocoa bean and a windy smile and after literally stomping hundreds upon hundreds of miles, stood before the very gates of frosted Hell itself: Northern Michigan.

And that clearly brings us to today's topic: fudge.

I don't really like fudge. Fudge is obscene.

Chocolate is sexy. Take this sentence from the repository of all human knowledge, the Wikipedia: Flavored with vanilla and spices, his chocolate was whipped into a froth that dissolved in the mouth.

Can fudge do that? Can it? NO! Fudge would come out something like Flavored with Mayonnaise and Jell-O, his mouth was whipped until it frothed with fudge dissolved in the mouse

In Michigan there is apparently a town called Northern, into which walked Don Kilwin. Don carried in his pocket a cocoa bean. With a wild look in his eyes and a frosty beard nearly hiding his windy smile, he stepped off the plain and into the very heart of Northern -- which only took one step. He laughed a mighty laugh that howled on the moonlit snow, and he yelled into the cold air, "Who darest?"

To this day, no one really knows what he was getting at, but it was spooky nonetheless and the cowering sips of Northern didn't darest him. They did however cautiously step from their front doors to see this wild man from the south with the windy smile.

The first inhabitant of Northern that Don Kilwin laid eyes on was Katy Whelshckitee, and upon seeing her, Don Kilwin aimed his cocoa bean at her and said, "Take this my bean in thine warm fingers and make of it what it willst becometh."

Katy understandably replied, "what?" but took his bean anyway.

Clowns, the beasts we knew, could breathe fire and occassionally got themselves slaughtered. No, wait, those are dragons. The author stole that line about dragons, by the way, from a song by Yaz.

Despite what dragons can do, clowns don't carry cocoa beans in their big baggy pants. Clowns, like most other people, wear underwear in their big baggy pants. Whereas fudge is awful and chocolate is good, so to are clowns and dragons awful and good respectively.

Now, Katy understood this, and that is exactly why she took Don Kilwin's bean and became his wife, but not before the townspeople, upset at his spooky, whipped him in some odd way that involved fudge, a dessert, sandwiches and a mouse. She made from his bean, chocolate. Not very much, of course, but true chocolate, and she gave him children and they opened a Chocolate Shoppe and started a franchise.

Don Kilwin and Katy passed their legacy. on to Don McCarty and his wife, Robin.

Fudge is not chocolate. People think it is. That's because people don't really think. When we say "people think that pigs are made of ham," we are really saying that "someone said pigs are made of ham and so now people think that."

That's what's cool about people. No matter how smart, no matter what your IQ, you still get pimples, you still grow hair on your buttocks, you still stink if you don't bathe, and you still think some of the things you think just because a lot of other people think it too.

There are several places where people are equal: buried and dead, on the potty, having sex, in fast food restaurants, and in clown outfits.

I've never been to a Kilwin's. I didn't even know the Kilwin's franchise existed until I began my extensive research on fudge about an hour ago. You can find the Kilwin's nearest you by visiting the store locator on their web site at http://www.kilwins.com/stores/list_cities.phtml, and I highly recommend you visit them and buy something.

So, next time you find yourself in a clown outfit facing a fierce fire-breathing dragon with nothing but a cocoa bean and thinking about pigs while snacking on confections at a Kilwins, remember the Dons and Beanutt.

Classy Women

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 21:41:00 -0500

I somehow have come to believe that classy women are better than men. They certainly smell ... ... better.

When I say "better" than men, I mean better. These are some of the ways they are better:

righteouser
eleganter
securer
stronger
gracefuler
smarter
cleverer
prettier
smoother
wittier
mysteriouser
admirabler
respectabler
capabler
adventurouser
fashionabler

These are important adjectives. Actually, all adjectives are important. Without adjectives we couldn't describe things, and this would make people hate each other.

Consider this sentence:
The quick, brown fox leapt over the black, stinking rabbit poop.

Now consider this sentence with the adjectives removed:
The fox leapt over the poop.

See the importance?

Other kinds of words are important, too. Remove the prepositions:
The fox leapt the poop.

Remove the verb:
The fox the poop.

Now, remove the articles:
fox poop.

Do you see what we have done? We have alchemized rabbit poop into fox poop. Since fox poop comes from foxes and rabbit poop from rabbits, this transformation of rabbit poop into fox poop implies that we have craftily and mysteriously altered reality and transformed rabbits into foxes.

Rabbits into Foxes, people! Do you hear?!

And that brings us to today's topic: classy women.

When men think about women, they often think about foxy women. Rarely does a man think about rabbitty women (rarely, but not never).

Adjectives aren't like other parts of speech -- they are powerful and easy to understand. Other parts of speech are extremely suspicious things and difficult to comprehend. Take adverbs, for example. Adverbs are hard to recognize as such. Take this sentence for example:
I am extremely milky.

Where is it? Where is the adverb? You had to think about it, didn't you? That's because adverbs are tricky devils.

Look at this sentence:
I milked vigorously the voracious cow-thing.

What do you think of that? Vigorously. Who'd have guessed it?

Look at this sentence -- this is most insidious of all:
The fox milk spilled forth.

Can you find it? The adverb -- do you see it? You can't, can you. That's what I'm talking about!Oh, it's there, hiding, lurking, waiting to go into your eyes or your ears and burrow into your brain, and once there, it will never come out. Never. Adverbs are all around us all the time. They are like air. Invisible, but always pressing in, pressing in, keeping our blood from boiling, but pushing on us, squeezing into every little pore, sucking themselves into our lungs and then spreading into our tissues throughout our bodies, unstoppable, unquenchable things.

Classy women can spot adverbs a sentence away, and they don't have to think about it first. That's because classy women are foxy, and we have already established that rabbits are really foxes with a different kind of poop.

When I close my eyes and imagine a classy woman, I imagine a very big house with lots of shiny marble and a big fireplace. There is a leather couch and the classy woman is standing tall, elegant, looking down at the couch where sits a man -- her spouse -- watching some stupid sports show on ESPN called Cold Pizza on the big screen TV in the fireplace.

The fireproof TV set is the way to bring couples together. No two people, especially men and women, like to watch the same television shows, but everyone likes to watch a fire. So, while my significant other watches some lame sports show on ESPN called Cold Pizza, I sit quitely beside her with a glass of fine wine and watch the fire burning gently around the television set. Thus, we sit and watch the TV together. She watching some sports show on ESPN stupidly called Cold Pizza, I watching it burn. This brings us closer together and we feel love for each other that manifests itself in forgiveness for passing gas.

Classy women don't pass gas. In fact, Classy women don't defecate at all. This is different than excreting rabbit poop, and therefore classy women are like foxes -- i.e., foxy. No one likes to think of his or her lover actually passing solid waste through his or her anus. Why? Because you lift your lover up such that he/she transcends earthly forms. Romantic love is the spiritual act of deifying another human being, and therefore for love to be present requires that one construct an elaborate illusion that the lover is devoid of all baser human traits.

Nothing dispels an illusion like the passing of gas.

Except maybe clowns. At the circus, you can create in your field of experience of the magical whirling lights and sounds an illusion that you are in a surreal, topsy-turvy, happy-place world. Until someone brings in the clowns. When Sillysocks' pants fall down when the bicycle horn toots, the magic spell is broken. You return to your seat, notice the crick in your back, the smells of the laughing people crowding around you, the utter vulgarity of attending a circus. Sillysocks may just as well have broken wind as tooted his horn.

I love a woman who is as close to classy as I have met. I know she utilizes her rectum (though I've never witnessed it) but I have never known her to pass gas. And so when I love her, it is still after more than ten years, with the transcendent illusion of the deification of a lover.

Special Moments for a Lounge Lizard

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 21:51:37 -0400

I don't have time to be making "special moments."

Special moments are for special people, or for people who care. They are also for clowns. Clowns are neither special nor do they care, except the cubic ones. Cube-shaped clowns are special, but only because they are cubic.

If you cube a clown, you still only have one clown. In fact, no matter what power you give a clown, you will still only have one clown. Neither does a clown's specialness, if it is so blessed as to possess specialness, increase if you force an increase up its exponent.

And that brings us to today's topic. Special moments have a smell like ...

... laziness. And laziness does have a smell, thank you very much: it smells like a stale martini with a cigarette butt in it.

People who have time to make special moments clearly haven't enough to do to keep them busy. Because so many of us are overworked to the point that the only spare time we have is consumed by our occasional blogging responsibilities, it is clear that people who have time to make special moments are not pulling their own weight.

Therefore, people who make special moments should be forced to lose weight. The only effective diet plan known to mankind is "The Biggest Loser Diet," wherein one must sweat profusely and make disturbing faces while grunting and then submit to a candid interview about the experience.

All this may be accomplished through a number of different means: exercise, eating a zealous curry, self-flagellation, attending a ballet performed by midget clowns, etc. People who make special moments should be forced to do one of these dieting rituals repeatedly until they have reduced their own weight to a measure they can pull.

I went through my neighborhood last week and collected donations to send to the producers of "The Biggest Loser" for the purchase of a new scale. Clearly, they are very poor, perhaps due to the cost of renting midget clowns.

Midget clowns are the most expensive because midgets are rarer than average-sized people and so there are proportionally fewer midget clowns than average-sized clowns. Midget clowns are also funnier -- if you happen to be the kind that thinks that clowns are funny.

The scale on the biggest loser is obviously a very low-tech, budget device, but for those of you who haven't grasped the obvious, let me draw your attention to the unusually long time it takes for the stupid thing to register the weight of the Loser standing on it. Clearly, it was designed by an engineering grad student desparate for a thesis topic, who entitled her research, "Chaos and Quantum Determination through Probability and Random Selection." Let me summarize the work: instead of performing calculations to determine the quantity you are measuring, make up a range of numbers the quantity is likely to fall in and keep guessing until you guess the target quantity. Or, to summarize, don't waste your time actually working, just guess, and spend the time instead in making your defense a special moment for your advisors.

A lounge lizard is a man who hangs out in hotel bars, hitting on women who will support his hotel bar habit, and who grows scales. Lounge lizards are artists. They make a living at making special moments. They don't pull any of their weight. In fact, on a Biggest Loser Diet, they would cease to be and a hole would open in space-time and we'd all fall through and float around in the Big Nothing, known to evolutionists as "the primordial soup."

The primordial soup was a mildly spicey curry dish. At some point, lightening from Space ignited the soup and a special moment happened and an Armani acid spontaneously formed and coalesced with other Armani acids to form a percale pant and jacket. This product of the first special moment didn't last long, thank goodness and was rapidly consumed by bacteria that had in the meantime been created by God.

The marks of that first special moment, though, could not be erased, and are recorded in the genetic material of all living things and led to the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. Today, they are manifested most acutely in the evolution of the zoot suit, lounge lizards, and cube-shaped clowns.

Some people call the green thing floating in a martini an "olive." I call it a cigarette butt, because of the effect it has on the flavor of the martini. You find martinis and cigarette butts in great quantity in hotel bars, where you will also be likely to find a nest of lounge lizards and an occasional zoot suit or midget clown.

And this is the reason I don't have time to be making special moments.