Happy Birthday, Emoticon!

By Tony Long, Wired


1982: At precisely 11:44 a.m., Scott Fahlman posts the following electronic message to a computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University:
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)From: Scott E Fahlman

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:

:-(

With that post, Fahlman became the acknowledged originator of the ASCII-based emoticon.

...forever replacing the little heart over the "i"

that girls are so fond of...

Ye Have the Buckles--Swash Them!

Yes, once again, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day. Where did the year go?


Posted on Sun, Sep. 08, 2002
Arrrrr! Talk like a pirate -- or prepare to be boarded
BY DAVE BARRY

Every now and then, some visionary individuals come along with a concept that is so original and so revolutionary that your immediate reaction is: ''Those individuals should be on medication.''

Today I want to tell you about two such people, John Baur and Mark Summers, who have come up with a concept that is going to make you kick yourself for not thinking of it first: Talk Like a Pirate Day. As the name suggests, this is a day on which everybody would talk like a pirate. Is that a great idea, or what? There are so many practical benefits that I can't even begin to list them all.

Baur and Summers came up with this idea a few years ago. They were playing racquetball, and, as so often happens, they began talking like pirates. And then it struck them: Why not have a day when EVERYBODY talks like a pirate? They decided that the logical day would be Sept. 19, because that -- as you are no doubt aware -- is Summers' ex-wife's birthday.

Since then, Baur and Summers have made a near-superhuman effort to promote Talk Like a Pirate Day. As Baur puts it: ``We've talked like pirates, and encouraged our several friends to, every Sept. 19, except for a couple where we forgot.''

And yet, incredibly, despite this well-orchestrated campaign, the nation has turned a deaf shoulder to Talk Like a Pirate Day. In desperation, Baur and Summers turned to me for help. As an influential newspaper columnist, I have the power to ''make or break'' a national day. You may recall that almost nobody celebrated Thanksgiving until I began writing about it in the 1970s.

I have given Baur's and Summers' idea serious thought, looking for ways to improve it. One variation I considered was Talk Like a Member of the Lollipop Guild Day, on which everybody would talk like the three Munchkins in the film version of The Wizard of Oz who welcome Dorothy to Munchkin Land by singing with one corner of their mouths drooping down, as though they have large invisible dental suction devices hanging from their lips. But I realized that would be stupid.

So I have decided to throw my full support behind Talk Like a Pirate Day, to be observed this Sept. 19. To help promote this important cause, I have decided to seek the endorsement of famous celebrities, and I am pleased to report that, as of today, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Britney Spears, Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, the Osbournes, Tiger Woods, Ted Koppel, the Sopranos, Puff Doody and the late Elvis Presley are all people who I hope will read this column and become big supporters. I see no need to recruit President Bush, because he already talks like a pirate, as we can see from this transcript of a recent White House press conference:

REPORTER: Could you please explain either your foreign or your domestic policy?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Arrrrr.

To prepare for Talk Like a Pirate Day, you should practice incorporating pirate terminology into your everyday speech. For example, let's consider a typical conversation between two co-workers in a business office:

BOB: Hi. Mary.

MARY: Hi, Bob. Have you had a chance to look at the Fennerman contract?

BOB: Yes, and I have some suggestions.

MARY: OK, I'll review them.

Now let's see how this same conversation would sound on Talk Like a Pirate Day:

BOB: Avast, me beauty.

MARY: Avast, Bob. Is that a yardarm in your doubloons, or are you just glad to see me?

BOB: You are giving me the desire to haul some keel.

MARY: Arrrrr.

As you can see, talking like a pirate will infuse your everyday conversations with romance and danger. So join the movement! On Sept. 19, do not answer the phone with ''hello.'' Answer the phone with ''Ahoy me hearty!'' If the caller objects that he is not a hearty, inform him that he is a scurvy dog (or, if the caller is female, a scurvy female dog) who will be walking the plank off the poop deck and winding up in Davy Jones' locker, sleeping with the fishes. No, wait, that would be Talk Like a Pirate in The Godfather Day, which is another variation I considered (``I'm gonna make him an offer that will shiver his timbers'').

But the point is, this is a great idea, and you, me bucko, should be part of it. Join us on Sept. 19. You HAVE the buckles, darn it: Don't be afraid to swash them! Let's make this into a grass-roots movement that sweeps the nation, like campaign-finance reform, or Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I truly think this idea could bring us, as a nation, closer together.

But not TOO much closer. Some of us will have swords.

© 2002 Dave Barry. All Rights Reserved.http://www.miamiherald.com

Web Photo of the Day

Who's a happy dog?

"Imagine You Are a Rosebush," or The Young Man is Jealous

This picture is from an exercise I did in class last night. It’s me if I were a rosebush.

Yeah, really.

After being taken through a brief relaxation exercise, we were told to imagine that “for the next few minutes, you are a rosebush. Are you in bloom? Do you live in a park, a front yard, or do you sprout from a crack in the concrete? What color are your blooms? Do you have roots?” Apparently this is used a lot with children, especially adolescent girls.

I do hope I wasn’t the only one in my class who had to bite her lip hard enough to draw blood upon hearing that I was a rosebush. I hardly think giggling about it would have endeared me to my professor.

Am I the only one, or is that the last thing you think of when you’re trying to relax?

The Young Man has decided that grad school is far more entertaining (if not considerably more weird) than eighth grade, and that for him to do Algebra and Science while I’m considering the many meanings that simple nuance adds to the phrase “Son of a Bitch” is just not fair.

I can’t say I blame him at this point…especially since I told him that after that exercise we were told to imagine we were a cookie.

I’d take him to class with me, but who knows what they’ll have him doing—baying a the moon, dancing ‘round the room and clucking like a chicken, imagining he’s a dandelion or a wad of chewed gum or a copy machine?

At least there will be 15 adults in the room with him all doing the same thing. Perhaps that’s the most scary thought of all…

You Are 0% Goth

Goth? No. Definitely not. You hardly even wear black clothing. And to be honest, dark, brooding goth types freak you out a little. To the extent that you have any goth interests, it's only because some goth stuff has become mainstream. There's no chance anyone's going to find you in a graveyard after dark, that's for sure!

Are You Goth?

Thank goodness! I was beginning to get a little worried...

Web Photo of the Day

It's a bit early, but we're ready! Bring on the snow!

Graduate School=Arts and Crafts

My Jungian Mandala for Theories Class

Who would have thought that grad school would involve so much cutting and pasting?

For my Techniques lab, Dude said, "Make a collage to give your classmates ideas for interview questions."

For Theories class, Prof said, "Bring some colored pencils to class and we'll make some mandalas during psychoanalysis week."

It got to where last week Mom said, "So, did you make something out of popsicle sticks in class today?" It was a Foundations and Logic class, so who knows? We may yet.

Last night Prof for Theories said, "Bring your colored pencils again, we're studying Gestalt theory next week!"

I just hope we don't have to know how to crochet or something...

I do know that if we have to sprout a Bob Ross 'fro and blithely mutter about "happy little trees" I'm seriously going to question where my tuition dollars are going.

Computer Woes...or, Whoa's!

Sometimes you just have to look at the experts and say, "You know what? I'm clueless. Please help me before I destroy something."

That's usually what I say to the nurses at the hospital when a patient wants to make a phone call or something. Hopeless, huh? Good thing they're patient folk.

This computer thing of mine is different. For many a year, as Big Brother explains some of the intricacies of computer hardware, no matter how hard I try to understand, my eyes glaze over and I am reminded of that Far Side cartoon where the dog is listening to his master talk and all he hears is "blah blah blah blankety blah Rover blah blah...." Eventually he catches the look on my face and sighs heavily...poor guy. He then says something like, "You know what? Why don't you just give me that and I'll do it myself" and I know he's finishing it in his head "...before you try to do it and I have to fix it...again."

He speaks from experience. Really.

The man is literally three states away, and I heard that same sigh Saturday evening. The Tall Bald Guy and I took the laptop to the campus library with us to install the whatsie (or download the whoozit, or whatever we were supposed to do to the thing) to be able to get on the wireless internet there should I need it at school. We turned the thing on, we went to the OIT website, we followed the instructions, and...you guessed it. The laptop said, "You want me to do what?"

We tried getting a secure connection, an unsecure connection, a rainbow connection, a French connection--you name it, we tried it.

We printed out the directions lest we remember something later on, and got our books and went home.

After we got home, the Tall Bald Guy continued working on it. He just won't admit defeat. I sorta like that, especially when I know I've overlooked something obvious and I don't really wanna tell him unless I know I can run faster than he can.

After a couple of hours of searching, cussing, dog-scritching (The Dog is really who he comes to see, don't you know), and Diet-Dew-fueled dragging, clicking, and searching, he finds the manual that Big Brother so thoughtfully saved in the bowels of the laptop for handy reference.

You know what? It turns out the wireless internet thing won't work at all unless you've pushed the little round silver button on the front of the thing and that cute little orange light comes on. Whoda thunk?

I do hope I was convincing enough when I said to the Tall Bald Guy, "Well, will ya look at that?" because I heard Big Brother's words come rushing back to me just then-something about making sure that button is pushed.

Did you hear that? Somewhere in Wichita, Big Brother is sighing in disgust, and Sis-in-Law and the Redheaded Munchkin are giggling.

Now I'm going to try and install an Adobe reader on The Young Man's computer so he can do his schoolwork. I am attempting this during the week instead of on the weekend when the Tall Bald Guy is here because Language Arts just has to get done and The Young Man doesn't need any more excuses not to do his work...

Look to the east! If all is peaceful, you will know I have succeeded. If I'm not, the converging storms Gustav and Hannah will surely blow away the mushroom cloud before I'm found out.

Come to think of it, the Tall Bald Guy has developed a disgusted sigh of his own lately...can we blame him?