A Hermit's Story
in a
quiet third world hamlet known as Trenton, New Jersey, there lived
a noble unassuming charitable peep who loved and cherished wee
critters of all kinds, from bedbugs to bats, tarantulas to Amphisbenids.
His donations to those in need were known throughout the Kingdom of Apple, and the town criers constantly announced his magnanimous gifts in the Apple village squares. Some rural inhabitants who probably traveled a lot less, questioned the charitable nature of these friendly helping hands, asking questions such as, were they really charity contributions, and whether those receiving his help were actually in such dire need. Those who do less and were perhaps jealous of his generosity always seemed to question the motives of the many wonderful peeps who go out of their way to alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate.
He was an exceptionally kindly old coot, who played with computers a lot, noted for partaking of his often seemingly sparing monastic dinners, accompanied by red wine, right in front of the keyboard on numerous occasions, and then dozing off for hours in his swivel arm chair. His computer table top is a 2" thick light oak solid butcher block of ample proportions -- he enjoys the warm glow and olde tyme charm of natural woods. He is widely known the world over by the user name, SunCat.
Some even whispered that he was related by nine degrees of genealogic affinity to the fabled golden Sun Kings of yore. Among the few outward symbols of ostentation noted on his august person are the occasional 24k neck chain, ring, or pendant -- he was much too humble to even own an auraceous crown, not that he could afford one.
And then it came to pass that a new breed of church mouse appeared on the scene -- it was quite unlike any other mouse before it. An ancient breed of rodent, monorchid they were, was abundant in the olde daze. Some theorized that it only had a single ball due to the radiation effects of the device they were so near to throughout their lives.
This new species of Rodentia spent countless hours accompanying our hermit in his solitude. Instead of the usual dualie eyes on its head, it only had one, sort of rectangular with rounded extremities, and it was fiery red -- not only that, but it was located on the underside of its sleek, hairless body! Genetic mutations caused its ocular ability to be extremely fine tuned.
Its long tail always seemed as if it were attached to the keyboard. And if you lifted it to scratch its belly, the red light could be seen for miles, reflected on diverse surfaces. There were several reports of strange beams appearing in cockpits of planes flying overhead. Lady Liana noticed strange colored lights flashing on her lead crystal. Could they have been the result of these happy fun critters rolling on their backs as they ROFLOL?
The mousey was very active while our hermit, Lord SunCat, Laird of Glencairn, played with his computer toy -- until one dark day the poor little critter seemed to start dying of obviously premature aging -- its red eye would cease to function unless SunCat would twist its tail to attempt to stimulate and revive it. Even that did not help, for after many weeks of quiet, resigned decline, his constant companion finally gave up its pseudo mammalian ghost while woefully nestled in SunCat's warm right hand!
According to the coroner's report, death was due to a congenital neuralgic abnormality in its tail, much like other pedigreed hairless pets which are bred for specific traits, but which are prone to some undesirable secondary characteristics such as blackheads on their tails.
SunCat, in his ever inquisitive search for potential connections between seemingly diverse conceptual constructs, wondered whether the glowing red eye of his former friend might have been affected in some way by the massive oak table top on which it usually resided. Perhaps the reverse was possible, that the eye itself, as hellish as it appeared, might, in some manner, negatively harm the bare wood surface. Did it need a different kind of surface to rest on? They were readily available in the Dark Kingdom, and were usually referred to as mouse pads to crash in. There were many of these crashes on the Dark Side, but very few in the wonderfully advanced Kingdom of Apple.
Our hero posed a question to the soothsayers, who ostensibly abounded in the Kingdom of Apple. Was it possible that the intrinsic red eye, usually referred to as IR, could produce harmful effects to its surroundings? The crystal balls of these wizards suddenly went foggy on them, and they never answered his query. It was even rumored that they did not even have the balls needed for such oracular replies!
Lord SunCat was devoted to maintaining his beloved oak surface as spanking clean as possible, without becoming terribly sadomasochistic about it. When he noticed that it became noticeably schmutzig after some weeks, he would spray it with magik windex (NO, not that other operating system -- he never did windows), and then apply a lemon pledge of confidence. It seemed to glow in the oblique rays of the halogen lamp on the desktop following such routine maintenance.
Our Laird was inconsolable for many daze at the loss of his beloved companion. The gawds and gawdesses shed copious tears upon seeing him so despondent -- the tear drops caused veritable tsunamis to sweep across the Earth.
One of these monster waves washed a very heavy craft named The eMac all the way from the area of the Indo Pacific, right smack to the secure tower door of SunCat, located inland on higher ground. Lo and behold, another mouse, of the same race as the previous one survived the catastrophe, by riding along with the eMac vessel, which miraculously remained intact.
The new mouse was overjoyed at being rescued by such a caring, friendly monk, and took up residence in the exact same place on the table as its predecessor.
It had been several weeks since the table top had been ritually cleansed. Laird SunCat began to notice strange cuneiform like incantations appearing beneath the mouse in December. They were about the size of the red glowing orb beneath the rodent, and in strikingly similar linear orientation corresponding to the usual movement of the beast -- he named them Linear M script, continuing the designations of similar historic artifacts made by other published palaeolinguists of the tyme.
In order to bring these observations to the attention of those in the Kingdom of Apple, he commanded his man servant, known simply by his loyalty code, DC3400, to produce an illuminated manuscript depicting this remarkable discovery. The first result was overly influenced by a tribe of moving megapixies in flash mode, and the image was not as crisp nor defined as might have been desired -- one is able to note the mouse in question, in rest mode, to the left of the enigmatic inscription --
DC3400 was later able to produce a much more precise document, designated as DCP_0988.JPG, which necessitated the use of the magik crystal of Atlantis to reveal its secrets -- no flash was involved. This example was taken by the light of the eternal flame of the halogen candle on the hermit's desktop.
You will observe that the rodent still wears the same raincoat it was attired in when rescued. Laird SunCat always was meticulous in attempting to maintain everything in absolutely pristine minty condition.
Please note that Linear M apparently connects the concepts in one line of script with others above and below it via disjunct vertical elements. It is much more complicated than the usual adjectives, adverbs or other linguistic devices which most societies utilize to reduce excessive prolixity which only serves miniscule purpose save to exacerbate misconceptions, enforce intransigence, and obfuscate that which is veracious, with the net effect of diminishing spiritual spizzerinctum.
DC3400 now proceeded to hand transcribe the Linear M segment of the document in black and white, which might facilitate the potential transliteration of the mysterious ancient text --
it was a long and tedious herculean project, taking many Moons and arduous labors to accomplish. The final result was most impressive, and to compensate his tireless efforts, DC3400 was offered a free iPod if he would fill out seemingly endless pages of personal data. He refused. The ever generous Lord SunCat may consider presenting him with his first generation iPod, which he recently revived from its coma like year long slumber by replacing its tired olde power source -- but that is another story, yet unwritten -- the gawddess Flinny has been secretly weaving the threads of that saga fabric for a possible future special report -- she had a great teacher, Ariadne!
This drawing was then presented to the most pompous translator in all the known Universe, who advertised himself as Sir Gigglesalot. His learned opinion was that, notwithstanding the many embellishments and flowery adjunct glyphs, complicated by subroutine annotations, suggesting that some letters may have been in virtual color. The Chromatalists then voiced their opinions -- one said that instead of colorie, what she saw was mostly whitie -- another suggested that if any colour was essential that it would have to be the red of the floor of the Roman Coliseum, or even the Grecian gold of the fabled statue of Zeus -- Princess Martha chimed in that it wasn't a color at all -- it refers to the original paisley background texture of the stone it was first chiseled on. The grapevine has it that her word is as good as Grecian gold, after all, she was judged chiseler of the year, even though the ones in charge of the award were very biased in her favor.
Sgal, a map seller well known for his remarkably short and always highly debated wonderfully documented contributions, stated that it only dated to approximately 2000 to 3000 years ago, even after a much venerated dragon already said that, correlated with tables of Chinese dynasties, it pertained to a predynastic period much before the archaic Qin dynasty, many millennia older!
To make things worse, following page after page of opinion, conjecture and many comments which did not even appear to be distantly related to the search at hand, Giggglesalot determined that he was unable to translate the material due to lack of information! As the wise Laird of Glencairn frequently has written, What can you expect from a free service?
The entire interNUT world held its breath on the eve of the official translator's quarterly report. Bets were placed as to its content, and the numbers swung widely as the date drew near. This Q1 report was due in the Moonth of January, which, as we all know, is the Janus Period, ruled over by that two-faced gawd who always attempted to play both sides, just for fun and obvious profit.
Complicating matters yet further, was the proximity of the Pan Apple Kingdom clan gathering in San Francisco, where innovative new toys were often prematurely announced to the always amazed and delighted faithful, clapping attendees. The clap was eventually cured by administering Tetracycline, which, in some cases, turned their teeth yellow.
Could one of these new high tech devices be used to solve this fascinating riddle?
As SunCat, Laird of Glencairn, was pondering these things, he inadvertently rested his elbow on the keyboard, activating some unknown multi button command function. The mouse went wild as the eMac screen became ablaze with colored light shows which reached out and sucked into the screen the black and white manuscript on vintage parchment which DC3400 had produced.
As it fluttered across the monitor, suddenly the ancient PageMill application sprung to life, and a pop up asked if Lord SunCat would like it to attempt to process the document. He clicked the YEAH, WHAT THE HELL button.
Strange symbols flashed into view for at what seemed like a virtual eternity, visions of lost cities, strange forms of life, shrub filled forests and colorful landscapes marched across the screen.
Another message popped up --
the inscriptions had been identified as an archaic form of Linear M HTML, common in prehistoric tymes when mastodons still roamed the earth!
All the gawdesses and babes in the Kingdom of Apple were hushed. You could hear a pin drop, or sense a wardrobe malfunction, as WiFi hot spots across the globe heated up to the sizzling point.
The Slayer, one of the most beloved wonderful multi talented characters ever to have a movie roll, cancelled all his TV ad shootings, Hollywood screen set film shoots, emergency room calls, trips to distribute tons of stuff to the needy, expert witness court appearances, holding lovingly in his arms his two twin grandchildren, yet still being able to post his traditional ever friendly thoughts and comments on the Apple Kingdom kiosks, also anxiously looked forward to whatever news might be forthcoming.
Candy Pooch in Florida, and even the super squirrels in the posh suburb of Maven Landia perked up their ears, awaiting the outcome. Pigs strained their pseudo necks to try to look backwards.
Beijing quickly announced that Linear M was their ancient heritage, and that they would regain their former national territory even by force if necessary.
Satsuma fruits, George's bananas, and green chili peppers miraculously ripened on the plant.
From Vermont to Florida, IdaHoe to Dallas and New Mexico, Point Barrow to Baja California, no need for all those TiVo boxes -- workers stopped gossiping around the water coolers, the stock markets interrupted their trading, absolutely everybody was clustering around the nearest flat panel organic 68" monitors and video enhanced cellular phones, hanging on every transmission.
Mad Max had his aliens working overtime processing data as quickly as otherworldly possible.
Even Billy Goats was glued to the news media on his miserly Philco 8" black and white TV, just in case he might be able to grab something spectacular that he could genetically engineer and call his own when his long delayed clones of longhorned gargoyles might finally be brought to gestation.
Here it comes!
The translation reads :
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to the Laird of Glencairn : Merry Christmas SunCat, you THINK DIFFERENT |
P/S - if anyone on the aol Apple Computer message boards senses being left out of this Special Report, feel free to contact the author asap -- if you have actual text and know where it might best fit in, even better, I'll just add a few more lines.
SMOOCHES to all of you for the many insights, humor, recipes, techy info, and just plain exchange of kewl personal stuff throughout the year, and always remember
20 March 2005, Palm Sunday -- update -- I allowed some 11 weeks to pass since I took the first set of photo, to monitor the progress of these spots. They have, apparently, grown and prospered more than the American and world economies during the interval.
without flash, light from halogen desk lamp
It appears to be a layered buildup, and I noticed that the mouse did not seem to function very well when activated above the crud, ie.: the cursor worked erratically. Running my finger over the spots I sensed that the spots were raised above the base level of the table top.
with flash
I cleaned the desk with Windex, and whatever it was dissolved in the liquid -- I neither saved nor photographed the paper towels used to remove the spots, but noticed that when wiping them, an almost ink-like black was spread to neighboring areas of the wood, but was removed with fresh toweling. What I may do in the future is allow another buildup, then carefully scrape the material with a small craft knife, and save it for someone to do a test of its composition. Incidently, the bottom of the mouse has no crud buildup anywhere, and the general lines of the substance continue to follow the general movements of only the IR part of the mouse and are of about the same height/width, as can easily be observed in the photos. No similar spots have ever appeared on any other portion of the openly visible area of the table top.
Questions
and comments may be emailed to the editor of Apple Bytes at 
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