Virge's blog

In my dream this morning I was a young boy attending a youth club, yet old enough to drive a car. The dissonance didn't jar in the dream. It didn't even register until I reviewed my dream after waking.

I jumped as high as I could, straight up, arms stiff at my sides. Not very good. A basketballer I am not. The next boy jumped higher. A supervisor was chalking the heights on the wall. We had to get our heads as high as possible in each jump. Who knows what this activity was all about. To me it was just another physical activity. My poor altitude didn't phase me. I was never an athletic kid.

It was my turn again. I decided to try something different. I jumped with my arms straight up, then brought them down to my sides as I was nearing the top of my trajectory. It made a huge difference. I could easily beat the rest of the wall marks. I demonstrated my technique again and nearly touched my head to the ceiling of the old hall.

I wasn't aware of anyone else attempting to emulate my technique. I kept on jumping because it was a good thing to do. It was new and different. I could do it, so I did.

I tried to demonstrate it to another supervisor, but it didn't work. The ceiling was a long way away. There was another technique I had to use. Starting with my arms down low, I swung them up during my spring to give my body more upward momentum, then just before my head hit the ceiling I pulled my arms down to extend my jump. By pulling my arms down slowly I could hover for a while at the top of my arc with my head against the ceiling. This wasn't flying, but it came pretty close. It was a strange ability, but not strange enough to make me realise it wasn't real.

My car was outside. I left the hall, intending to go home but couldn't find my car. There were cars parked on either side of the street -- none of them mine. Of course! I'd driven my parents' old Morris Major and it was in the car park. I headed back to the off-street car park and woke up.

What does the dream mean? I can't relate the dream events to any recent concerns. The scene in the youth club is a poor match to my childhood memories of similar physical activities.

My parents' old Morris Major was what I drove in my university days. The car search could have been triggered by a moment's amusement last night in the car park of the gymnasium. As WifeOfVirge and I were getting out of the car, a woman exiting the gym wandered up to the black BMW parked beside us. She stopped, turned and walked back to a black Audi, two cars further along. I chuckled to myself, figuring she was probably now feeling very embarrassed and hoping that we hadn't noticed. The cars were both black, but not really alike.

Would that 30 second incident have been enough to trigger a dream? Was the association of mistaken car and gymnasium enough to dredge up childhood memories of gymnastic activities? Were there symbolic messages hidden in my jumping techniques? When BossOfVirge says "jump!" should I ask "would you like dints in the ceiling with that, sir?"

When you look at the fuss the US media make about one breast, you have to sit back and laugh. How can any of them expect to be taken seriously?

I couldn't resist a little limerick for the world-shattering, absolutely sensational, how-could-they-let-this-happen Janet Jackson's Tit Scandal.

It left all the prudes in a titter
when Justin exposed Janet's glitter.
It's only a breast,
so why get so stressed?
Hell! We couldn't care if he bit 'er.

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I read my page stats
to find some encouragement;
Pathetic, I know.

I found the answer to two riddles in my page statistics. Over the Christmas break I designed a simple detective game specifically for playing on a community forum. Each player makes a move by interacting with a PHP program on my site, then posts the html code generated by the game into a message on the forum. After playing a couple of rounds on EK in early January, the game died a natural death of disinterest.

While browsing my web page statistics today I noticed that the game page was still being accessed. People were still playing. I looked at the game state data to find out who was playing, only to find a list of nicknames I didn't recognise. A moment's googling answered another riddle. The names showed up on a private community that I'd observed (with some curiosity) linking to my site.

So, a special GreetingOfVirge goes to Eamane, Oogg, Domine, Saealorn, Dannalyn, Arigon, Cienya, Feni, Aarlaorn, fairsong, Celtin, Aliciarose, mindaarie, Lore, Dynamyte, Metelaze and Thorena (and any other names I might have accidently missed). I got a kick out of seeing your creative choice of weapons, suspects and locations.

glompless gloomivated
unsquee incynical unbounced
isolazy insignitpicky moodoubty unquisitive
shwhining blobful hungreed gormified sparkfree
shrugly gustly antigruntled deciwitted bleaghed hypathetic

Normal virgilantics will resume as soon as possible.

I found this auto-epitaph this morning as I was digging through some old text files looking for a couple of hundred whimsical words I wrote a while back. I'll have to keep looking for the other text. I remember roughly what it was about, but not enough of the content to easily search for it.

This is the grave of Virgil Keys
Who wanted us his corpse to freeze
In case one day a cure they find
For death, the master of mankind.
But his estate remains in debt
And creditors pursue us yet.
He over-spent on worldly joys,
On holidays and costly toys.
His soul, I guess, to hell was sent
I wonder where his body went.

As is our Wednesday habit, we dined at Chez ParentsOfVirge last night. This is one of the few times in the week when I watch that new-fangled picture-box the young'uns call television. When I do watch TV I try to avoid current affairs programs since they recycle the same plots with monotonous regularity. The well known chorus goes:
1. [ small business / pensioner / hard working bloke ] being screwed by [ big business / government department / ruthless con-man ]
2. miracle [ disease cure / diet / guide to eternal happiness ] that has been rejected by a hidebound establishment with a hidden agenda
3. new insidious threat to our [ children / freedoms / right to remain ignorant ]
4. time-slot filler glurge about a pet that [ saved the family / sings the hallelujah chorus / helped disadvantaged diminutive Donnie through the dark days of his disease ]

Last night was no exception. We had a rousing rendition of #3. Fortunately the reporter was prepared to place tongue in cheek at least once during the article. The issue in question was alcohol in chocolate biscuits. Singing the droning pedal point we had Geoff Munro from the Alcohol and Drug Foundation. It's not that the Tia Maria and Kahlua flavored biscuits had any serious alcohol content. With 0.1% alcohol you'd need to eat your body weight in biscuits every hour to get near the legal limit for intoxication (hmmmm what shall I do for my next birthday?).
The whole basis for his argument was "There is no need to be telling children that they should be interested in the flavour of alcohol well before they would be thinking about drinking alcohol." Yes, it's the thin edge of the wedge! It's the first step on the slippery slope of alcohol addiction! I had to wonder what non-prescription drugs Munro had been taking. I wondered how I had missed his public outcry against liqueur chocolates or rum & raisin ice cream being sold in supermarkets. Where were his attempts to educate the public about the dangers of grandma's trifles and brandy puddings?

Could he really have been so blind? Could Munro really have been so outraged at new drink flavours that he contacted a reporter? It's possible. I think there may be a better explanation. Consider the following game plan:
1. Biscuit manufacturer releases a new product with a catchy hook - making naughty chocolate treats even naughtier,
2. Biscuit manufacturer contacts current affairs program with a generous sweetener offer to get them to promote a little controversy,
3. Current affairs reporter contacts known militant anti-alcohol campaigner and presses his buttons,
4. Wind-up-and-let-go campaigner blows his mouth off in front of a camera,
5. Current affairs reporter places tongue in cheek and distances herself from the carefully constructed controversy, then
6. WifeOfVirge buys two packets of biscuits this morning so we can see how yummy they are.

It's a win-win-lose-win situation. The manufacturer wins - the money they spent on advertising will have been recovered in the next day's increased sales. The current affairs program wins - they got funds, a slot filler where they could talk about eating chocolate (sells almost as well as sex) and they can pass it off to the public as a serious issue. Geoff Munro and the Alcohol and Drug Foundation lose credibility.  I win. I get an excuse to sample some new chocolate biscuits. Without seeing that program it may have taken a couple of weeks before WifeOfVirge noticed the new products and realised the crying need to test them.

What can we learn from this? Let's formulate a game plan.
1. Write a book for children and get it "vanity published".
2. Take some sentences out of context from the book.
3. Write letters to various gullible "moral guardian" community activist groups quoting the sentences with a few button-pushing distortions. Sign it "Concerned Parent".
4. Wait.

It's probably not as effective as paying a current affairs program to create a furor, but it just might work.

Making Light drew my attention to comic publishers Marvel and DC, who are claiming to own the term "super hero". I'm not a lawyer, but I would have thought that if the Biro brand name can become generic through extensive use, then "super hero" (a rational juxtaposition of non-proprietary words) should be considered public domain by now.

If Marvel and DC succeed
in owning the words we all read
they should be embarking
quite soon on trademarking
their hero, known only as "Greed".

Perhaps the term "super hero" should be struck from our language completely. It's a discriminatory concept that encourages ideas of superiority of one person over others.

PC has begun a new thrust:
"Superlative names are unjust!"
Now Differently Enabled
Man, miffed and mislabeled,
has hung up his cape in disgust.

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A sixth form of matter has been created -- a fermionic condensate. If you got stuck after "solid, liquid, gas... erm what comes next... fog?"  then this limerick will probably not mean a thing to you.

When Greiner, Regal & Jin
have a field the right strength they begin
to block the romance
of a bosonic dance
pairing fermions to integer spin.

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Ring of Fire
House Elf Bondage
Valentine's? *
Zemmiphobia
Free Drugs for Rats
Packbawky Killed

This one may be a bit hard. I've no idea since I started with the answer then wrote the riddle.

A Thorny Riddle

Give us a lush green field and we'll be seen.
Against bright walls of orange - not a trace.
We often hide inside a cozy nook,
but never in deep darkness can we dwell.

Sometimes you cannot hear us but we swear
we're here, although you'll see our rough ends first,
and here, if there were eyes that would inspect
under the boughs and in unusual troughs.

The way we choose to play may make you mad
and three of us can be a wee bit much.
We know you'll grow to like our company
and when we're missed our absence is a thorn.