Silicon Soapware #217

[bubbleblower]

Silicon Soapware #217 is out. Look in

http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0217.txt

or check out my main page at

http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                            SILICON SOAPWARE 
       wafting your way along the slipstreams of the Info Highway
                        from Bubbles = Tom Digby
                           = bubbles@well.com 

                      http://www.well.com/~bubbles/

                               Issue #217
                       New Moon of August 17, 2012


Contents copyright 2012 by Thomas G. Digby, with a liberal definition of 
"fair use".  In other words, feel free to quote excerpts elsewhere (with 
proper attribution), post the entire zine (verbatim, including this 
notice) on other boards that don't charge specifically for reading the 
zine, link my Web page, and so on, but if something from here forms a 
substantial part of something you make money from, it's only fair that I 
get a cut of the profits.  

Silicon Soapware is available via email with or without reader feedback.  
Details of how to sign up are at the end.  


                          *********************

It's those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summertime, when the livin' is easy.  
What is comfortable for lying around in a pleasant half-asleep state 
isn't necessarily good for getting the creative juices flowing.

So there's not going to be much in this section this time.


                          *********************

People often give me bubble-related gifts, so I wasn't surprised when 
someone gave me a package of eight tiny bottles of bubble stuff, like you 
might hand out to guests at parties.

Then I got to reading the label: "8 pk mini wedding bubbles" in English 
and in what looked like French.

I gather that the manufacturer expects them to be handed out to guests at 
weddings.  But there were no details given beyond that.

For example, what if, not having any weddings on my schedule any time 
soon, I were to blow some of these "wedding bubbles" at a birthday party, 
or around some random bunch of people who look like they might enjoy some 
bubbles, or just out somewhere at random on a breezy day just for the 
heck of it?  Would there be Dire Consequences?

I looked at the labels again.  There were some warnings, but they were 
the usual admonitions like not giving small objects to children under 
three, not drinking the stuff, and not putting it in your eyes.

There was nothing like

"WARNING: FOR USE AT WEDDINGS ONLY!  Not for use at birthday parties or 
with random groups of people who might enjoy bubbles, or out on a breezy 
day just for the heck of it."

At least there wasn't anything like that in the English-language parts of 
the labels.  And from what I could puzzle out, there didn't seem to be 
anything of the sort in the French labeling either.

As for the bottles themselves, the only labeling was "0.6 fl. oz." on one 
side and "CHINA" on the other.

So I'm guessing that blowing wedding bubbles at a birthday party won't 
give all the guests an irresistible urge to run off and go on honeymoons, 
or anything like that.


                          *********************

Now that my attention had been drawn to what was or wasn't on the labels 
of little bottles of bubble stuff, I noticed that there weren't any 
instructions on how to blow the bubbles.

I know that it's not all that uncommon for makers of certain kinds of 
products to assume the user already knows how to use them.

For example, a piano generally doesn't come with a big long explanation 
of how you make music by pushing down on the keys, and that which keys 
you push in what order makes a difference in what the music you get 
sounds like.  Or at least the ones I'm familiar with didn't come with 
such.

There may be some documentation, but it's more likely to be stuff like 
how to keep the thing clean without ruining the varnish, along with 
safety warnings about how, if it's a grand piano, you shouldn't drop the 
lid on people's heads while they're leaning in inspecting the strings and 
hammers and such, how a piano is not intended as food so you shouldn't 
let children or pets gnaw on it, and so on.

But as for how to actually play the piano, they assume the user will find 
a teacher to give them lessons, or take a course in it at college, or buy 
a "How-to" book separately, or something like that.

So is the recipient of one of these little bottles of bubble stuff 
assumed to have already mastered the art of bubble-blowing at some 
Academy of Bubblery or something?

It would seem so.


                          *********************

That bit with the "Wedding Bubbles" also got me to wondering what would 
happen if you served a birthday cake at a wedding or a wedding cake at a 
birthday party.  Or more generally, what if you served the wrong kind of 
cake at any party or party-like event.

It might have a little more of an effect than blowing wedding bubbles at 
a birthday party, in that it would be more likely to be noticed.  Even if 
you use the correct decorations (candles vs bride & groom or whatever) 
people might notice the shape wasn't right, especially if it's the 
traditional stairstep layer cake at some event other than a wedding.  
Would people want an explanation?  And would "The bakery made a mistake" 
suffice?


                          *********************

There's a phenomenon I first noticed during the Olympics, but it's 
continuing after that event is over.

Quite a few restaurants have background music, usually played at levels 
loud enough for me to notice when a familiar song comes along, but low 
enough to not interfere with conversation.  So far, so good.  I actually 
like the music some places play, and even if it isn't one of my favorite 
kinds of music it doesn't really bother me as long as it doesn't get too 
loud.

But now a number of places I go to regularly have put in TV screens.  
That in itself is OK, again as long as the sound isn't too loud.  I can 
pay attention to anything that catches my interest and (with some 
exceptions) ignore the rest.

But at least two places are doing something that does bother me: They've 
turned the TV sound on without turning the background music off, leaving 
the two to sort of fight it out.  If you're right next to the TV it 
predominates, while in the far corners of the room the old background 
music reigns supreme.  But there's a large in-between area where you get 
a jumbled mixture of the two.

Is this part of their rumored strategy of making the dining room 
uncomfortable so people will hurry up and finish eating and leave sooner 
so as to make room for others?  Is the new generation into multitasking 
to the degree of actually wanting to have several unrelated audio sources 
playing at once?  Or is there some other explanation?


                          *********************

A few days ago when I went to McDonald's I found the Chicken McNuggets 
much less enjoyable than on a previous visit a few days earlier.  There 
seems to be quite a bit of random variation from one visit to the next.  
I've also noticed this with other items, such as their fries, and with 
similar items at other chains.

I don't know all the variables involved, but one main one seems to be 
freshness.  If I happen to get whatever it is hot out of the fryer or off 
the grill, I find it quite enjoyable.  But once it languishes in a 
holding cell for a while, it turns into a sort of food-like blah that may 
assuage hunger but doesn't satisfy beyond that.  So in general I find a 
visit to a fast-food place to be something of a gamble.

I suspect that's part of the reason they encourage the use of dipping 
sauces and tend to pile on the burger toppings: Adding all that processed 
gump makes the overall experience less variable.  It may improve the 
worst cases, but at the cost of sacrificing the best.  I prefer to take 
my chances in hopes of having a peak fast-food experience.


                          *********************

Once there was a city in Cartoonland that had a river running right 
through the middle of town.  Of course they needed bridges so commuters 
could drive back and forth across the river because most of the people 
who had jobs on one side of the river lived on the other side.  If they'd 
lived and worked on the same side there wouldn't have been been any 
story.

One day a big storm came and there was wind and rain and thunder and 
lightning, and it blew a big hole right in the middle of the biggest 
bridge in town.

Now in our world a big hole like that right in the middle of a bridge 
would pretty much block traffic.  But this was in Cartoonland, so those 
drivers who happened not to look down until they had passed the big hole 
in the middle of the bridge made it across OK.  Others who noticed the 
hole before they got to it just turned around and took alternate routes, 
so they were also pretty much OK except for the extra time it took them 
to drive the alternate routes.

The ones who had problems were those who just happened to look down when 
they were halfway across the big hole in the middle of the bridge.  They 
fell down, Ker-SPLASH, into the river and got all wet.  Some them got 
hurt, many seriously enough to end up in the hospital all bandaged up to 
various degrees.

This was not a happy situation.  Something needed to be done, even if 
they didn't have the money to fix the hole right away.

They tried putting big DON'T LOOK DOWN signs on the bridge just before 
the hole.  That helped a little, but there were always a few who couldn't 
resist the temptation to look down anyway.  Ker-SPLASH!

Then somebody thought of using dancing girls.  They built stages just 
above normal eye level on both sides of the hole, so that when you were 
driving across you tended to look up to watch the good-looking dancing 
girls on the stages.  (They also had a few dancing boys because some 
drivers preferred them, but it's too much trouble to keep mentioning them 
all the time so I won't bother.)

Since the stages and the salaries for the dancing girls cost less than 
fixing the hole, at least in the short term, they kept putting it off.  
And as the town grew and traffic got to be more than that one bridge 
could handle they put off building more bridges.

Yes, they would say they were going to build a new bridge here or there, 
but instead of actually building the bridge they would just put stages 
for dancing girls up on both banks of the river, so drivers crossing the 
river where the bridge should be didn't notice that it hadn't really been 
built.

Now the people in charge of roads and such were afraid that if they 
explained all this to the taxpayers it might not work any more, what with 
people possibly paying more attention to the road as they crossed the 
bridges that weren't there.  So they raised the taxes to what the bridges 
would have cost to build, and embezzled the difference.

That state of affairs might have continued indefinitely, except that the 
people who were embezzling the bridge-building money got greedy.  They 
started skimping on the dancing girls' wages.  They also quit providing 
live music for them to dance to, and gave them boom boxes and a bunch of 
obsolete CD's from some thrift store or something.

So the dancing girls went on strike.

One day, right in the middle of rush hour, the dancing girls suddenly 
stopped dancing, pointed down at the water, and walked off the stage.  
Then all the drivers who didn't have the dancers to watch any more got 
curious about what they'd been pointing at right at the end, so they all 
looked down.  And of course once they looked down they fell into the 
river.  Ker-SPLASH!  Ker-SPLASH!  Ker-SPLASH!  Ker-SPLASH!  And so on.

It took them weeks to clear the wreckage, and a lot longer to investigate 
and arrest and try all the embezzlers for embezzling the tax money they 
should have been building bridges with.  And then it took even longer to 
raise new funding and build the actual bridges they'd been fooling the 
public into thinking had already been built.

The next few election campaigns were rather, shall we say, Interesting.  
You may think that politics here can get nasty, but that's nothing 
compared to some of the election campaigns there.

But eventually things settled down, and life went back to being more or 
less routine, until the next adventure, which is something for another 
story.


                          *********************


                         Draining the Last Canal


"It's landed!
 It's finally landed!"

"Let's go see it!"

"What if it sees us?"

"Don't worry. 
 It has eyes only for the physical.
 We could form a mob
 and advance on it with pitchforks and torches
 and plaster it with posters and graffiti
 and make obscene gestures right into the lens
 and still it would ignore us."

"But surely among its masters
 are a few who are not blind.  
 Won't they see us?"  

"They have seen us for centuries already 
 without artificial aid. 
 Physical sight forms a barrier:
 If we want them to see us 
 we must approach from behind,
 lurking just outside the picture:
 Or else retreat behind a dune, 
 or better yet, the horizon." 

"Retreat, retreat, retreat.
 First to remote areas of their world, 
 then to here,
 and soon to places beyond.  
 Will it ever end?" 

"Probably not, 
 since that is why they created us:
 To give them something to follow
 to remote lands, then here,
 and eventually the stars."

"The stars...
 Enough to last quite a while.  
 But then???"  

"We'll think of something."

"We always do."

                              Thomas G. Digby
                              written 0205 hr  7/24/76
                              entered 2225 hr  2/08/92
                              corrected typo 2012-08-21 22:27:37


                          *********************

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