December 16, 2006
-
As befits a community pillar such as myself, I attended the City of Salem Christmas party last night, hobnobbing slightly with fellow pillars but not as much as might be expected since I had to leave early. I don't know if you've ever seen pillars hobnobbing, but it is an impressive sight indeed.
There was an excellent meal catered by a local grocer. Shortly after I sat down with my plate full of food and a glass of lemonade, a leaf from a poinsettia plant on my table somehow lightly came into contact with the top of my lemonade. Having heard that poinsettias are poisonous, I was somewhat reluctant to drink it, lest I keel over and the entire city of Salem come crashing down due to the falling of such a key community pillar. That kind of thing would not do at the City Christmas party, where joy and happiness and Christmas spirit should ever abide.
After the meal, unfortunately, I had to leave before the mayor's purportedly long speech (approximately 45 minutes in past years, so I was told by some friends). These friends also told me that in past years the sound system and acoustics were rather bad in that room and that speakers there tend to sound unintelligible, like Charlie Brown's teacher. I am sure that it was a most excellent speech, but regretfully, I had to go to my friends' house and play "Apples to Apples" and "20Q" instead.
I don't know if you have ever played "20Q" but it is a remarkable little handheld machine (based on an internet program) that asks questions and somehow figures out what object you are thinking of with amazing accuracy. It even taunts you as it goes throught the process of answering the question. I could swear it has a little microphone and speech analyzer in there, because the questions don't always seem like they would narrow it down enough. It got "broom", "bubble", and even "capybara". However, I did stump the arrogant little device on "zephyr". It didn't even come up with breeze on that one. Supposedly it uses some kind of artificial intelligence and has words in various subsets, narrowed down by each question. It would seem to depend on the reliability of the human's answers, of course, so you could "stump" it by being dishonest in your answers--but that would be effectively cheating. I think I will test out its self-awareness some time and see if it can guess "20Q". My guess is that it won't, but will be able to narrow it down to some type of handheld electronic device.
And poinsettia poison must be slow-acting. I feel just a little sick to my stomach this morning.
Comments (4)
Sounds like it was a tremendous amount of fun! I have never been to one of their Christamas parties...perhaps next year (if I get another invitation) I will attend.
It was fun, while I was there. I'm sure nobody else had fun after I left, though.
I did not get an invitation until last year. I think I received it for being on the Theatre Board, but must have been overlooked earlier because I had been on the board in previous years.
By the way, 20Q's first guess was "8-ball" which was remarkably close. Then after a few extra questions, it said "drumstick". Not even close. However, it was then able to guess "lightning bolt" afterwards.
Yeah, that 20Q's is amazingly accurate! It's a lot of fun too.
I think that is what my true love gave to me on the 13th day, thirteen pillars hobnobbing! Merry Christmas.
Comments are closed.