Dear Plonkr, my boyfriend is always coming up with harebrained money-making schemes.  How can I make him stop, or at least direct his energies into more productive channels?  Yours, Wits-ended.

Wits, here is what I suggest.  You start a website devoted to making life a little sweeter, maybe call it “makesweeter.org” or something.  Get your boyfriend involved, perhaps as a guest writer.  Then, earn some money from the site (I’m a little vague on this part of the plan, your Earth economy confuses me).  Then use the money to get your boyfriend enrolled in an economics course, where he’ll learn why his ideas will never work.

If all that fails, I suggest you convince him to borrow short and loan long.  That’s a harebrained scheme too, but at least he’ll be in good company.

Dear Plonkr, my wife wants to have a child, but I don’t think I’m ready - the thought of diapers makes me quail. What should I do? Yours, Dithering.

Dithering, I was not familiar with the term “diapers” so I consulted one of your Human dictionaries. Frankly, they seem a perfectly reasonable arrangement, one of the more sensible devices I’ve come across on this planet (along with potato-peelers). Thank you for drawing my attention to them.

May I suggest that part of your problem is in your use of thought, specifically in your “thought of diapers.” I suspect that diapers are one of the many artifacts that work better if you interact with them via doing rather than thinking.

So you’re not ready for a child? What kind of sad excuse for a species… no, wait. Actually, that’s fine by me. In fact, I’d like to encourage all you humans out there not to have children. It really is a terribly bothersome process. Think of all those diapers! And the restrictions on your personal liberty! Tsk tsk. Far better to have freedom than a future.  Don’t you think?

I ask you.  Miserable bloody planet.

It is now easier to put messages encoded using the code quacker on your blog. When you create your message, there is now some suggested code that you can paste onto a webpage or blog entry. For example:

Your base. All base all. All your all base your. All all all all. All all all. Base all base. Your all. Base all! Your all. Your all your all base your your. All base! All all your? Your base base all base your. Base base all all base base. All base base all? All all! All base all. All base! Base all all base all base! Base all your base all. All your? Base all all all? Base base all all! All base. Base base base. All base? All all all base all all all all all all? Your your all. (decode)

The decode link takes you to the code quacker, passing along the identifier of the paragraph containing the coded message. The quacker then loads your webpage, pulls out the relevant text, and decodes it. Or at least that’s what Brownie and Bozo tell me. I don’t really understand what they are talking about.

Dear Plonkr, I’m struggling to be good, but I so want to be bad. Is the afterlife really going to be worth all this sacrifice? Yours, A Struggler.

Struggler, you represent everything I despise about Humans. Every single Human afterlife I’ve heard of is a philosophical nightmare. The truth is a lot more interesting, but it took my people a long time to figure out, so I’ll be damned before I just hand it to you lot on a platter. Just accept that your religion, whatever merits it may have otherwise, has gotten the afterlife completely, but completely, wrong. Not even in the useful sense of being the opposite of the truth, but in the sense of being totally wrong-headed; like trying to build a house with a potato peeler (most interesting artifact I’ve found on your planet yet, by the way), or fly to space on a grammar book.

So you know nothing, but nothing, about the afterlife. Now decide what you want to do with this life.

Miserable bloody planet.

Brownie and Bozo have posted a new set of scene examples for the movie mixer. I think they are slowly getting better at using blender, but they’ve still a long way to go. Still, it is a fun journey to watch.

In other news, I’m happy to welcome Plonkr both to our planet and to our little MakeSweet family! I’m sure there will be an initial period of adjustment to our non-homicidal ways, but over time you’ll wonder what you ever saw in acts of unprecedented depravity!

I now initiate the duties required of me during my mandatory cultural exchange, a punishment for my … crime. Apparently I am expected to serve as an Advice Columnist for this benighted MakeSweet establishment, a strategy that the Council hopes will give me some experience of emotions beyond despair and loathing. So far, it is not working.

This communication was forwarded to me from one amongst you:

Dear MakeSweet, I’ve met this guy, he is so cool, but I’m way too shy to ask him out. What should I do? Yours, Shy-shy McShyshypants.

Ugh. This is so like a Human. Listen to me. You live in a universe containing objects and processes your little jelly brain is only beginning to understand. You lie on an unbroken chain of ancestors tracing back to before ancestors existed. You have the radical freedom to choose actions that will spill outwards from you to the end of human history and beyond. You have the capacity to experience and provoke. Those around you do too. All these things are not often so. Do I have to spell it out for you?

You people make me sick.

Greetings Humans. I am Plonkr. I have joined this “makesweet” entity as part of a mandatory cultural exchange, forced on me by the Council of my home-world as penance for my … crime. They feel that I may learn the value of soft, weak things here. So far, I am sickened to my very soul. Sweetness? Light? This place makes me feel claustrophobic in its cloying pinkness. There is no honor here!

I’m told my duties will be responding to the communications of Humans with troubled hearts, to give a different perspective on their problems. I have suggested a faster, more honorable procedure for dealing with a troubled heart, but apparently that is not an option.

Pity.

Previous posts have sparked an interest in “foo-aversaries” of all kinds - anniversaries of particular events, perhaps counted in particular ways, that have been given special names. Here’s some interesting ones I’ve been able to dig up, with links to examples of use or explanations.

1. Meetaversary: an anniversary of a first meeting.
2. Dateaversary: an anniversary of a first date.
3. Kissaversary: an anniversary of a first kiss. A suggested alternative name is annikissary.
4. Electroversary: an anniversary celebrated a year before the event (because electrons have a charge of “-1″). For example, one year before a planned wedding during a long engagement.
5. Postaversary: hitting a significant number (such as 100) of blog posts.
6. Blogaversary: an anniversary of starting a blog.
7. Post-liver-transplant-aversary: exactly what it says. A cause for celebration indeed.
8. Binaversary: an anniversary or birthday celebrated at 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, … years.
9. Cataversary: an anniversary of getting a cat.
10. Fooaversary: an anniversary of some random thing.

The traditional gifts associated with various wedding anniversaries are arbitrary and inconsistent. For example, in Britain the 4th anniversary is celebrated with fruit and flowers, while in the US it is silk or linen. And that’s just the tradition; according to Wikipedia, the modern gift for the 4th is “appliances.” Reading the full list, the modern gifts look like they’ve been nobbled by commercial interests. Clocks? Desk sets? Fashion jewelry? Pfff.

Mrs. Bell and I follow a different system. Dmitri Mendeleev to the rescue! Since he went to all that work to organize all the elements in a nice ordered Periodic Table, why reinvent the wheel for weddings? Our first anniversary was our Hydoversary (element 1: H, hydrogen), then came our Heliaversary (element 2: He, helium), and so on.

In this system, a big landmark comes when you reach iron (element 26: Fe, iron). This is the first element at which fusion ceases to be energetically advantageous. In other words, after this point, you’d better have gotten the hang of this marriage thing, you won’t be able to rely on physics alone to help you stick together.

Mrs. Bell and I had a rather long engagement, which in fact allowed us to celebrate our Electroversary (-1: a free electron) one year before our wedding.

You can’t say that we didn’t start as we meant to go on.