Fast Wiki

I’ve been in a bit of a nostalgia spin lately, due partially to listening again to Colin Hay’s Man @ Work and realizing that it does not actually suck like I thought it did. I saw Hay perform at the Iota a few years back and bought his Going Somewhere, which is nothing short of masterful. So anyways, I started wondering whatever happened to the other fellows in the band, you know, Greg Ham and those other ones. So I looked up his Wiki, which was painfully short, so I decided to add a bit. I wrote:

“Greg Ham is a supernatural being who can “read and persuade dull minds, who can fly, and who can balance upon one fingertip and hum Girl From Ipanema with his buttocks. He is a vegan, but only for the irony.”

My entry wasn’t up for two minutes before it was yanked. Those Wiki guys sure are on top of it. And I betcha I’m never allowed to post again, least not from this compyooter.

Worth it.

Movin’ Fast, Movin’ Slow

On a liberal listserv I’m on, someone recently asked, as a general polling question, if we “believe in UFOs.”

My reply was something like this:

Strictly speaking, the question itself is inaccurate.

If you see something traveling in the sky but you don’t know what it is, it is, by definition, an Unidentified Flying Object. There is, actually, no question that UFOs exist. They do. Technically speaking, the Frisbee® you don’t see coming is a UFO until it bonks you in the temple.

A question can be raised only if you suspect that the UFO in question might actually be piloted by little green men.

The question, “Do you believe in UFOs,” and the adoption of the term “UFO” to directly refer to space visitors is a prime example of linguistic evolution through lazy thinking. What folks actually want to ask is “Do you believe that aliens from faraway worlds visit us periodically?”