The issue became moot as I decided to stand mute

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/09/11 05:31 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/09/11/8944147.aspx

It was yesterday in It is the [unexpected] gratitude from people you respect that makes a [stubborn] Bulldog feels best! where I mentioned that I was $20 in the trivia contest.

Without explaining what I meant.

Basically it was part of the evening's excitement, here is the poster about it, which I swiped from the bulletin board as everyone was packing up:

Notice the thing about the trivia questions and cash prizes at the bottom? :-)

The two questions I had the answers to were:

1) What are the countries that are or have been member of Unicode?

The answer is India, Pakistan, and Tamil Nadu (all three are currently members).

Not too impressive, though the reason I knew this one since I had actually had contact with each over the last few years at various timjes on Unicode issues. Though since Tamil Nadu is not an actual country it was the one I named last (after they did not declare my answer right after I named the first two and just kept looking expectantly)....

2) Who is the person behind Sarasvati?

I should explain that this was preceded by a question of who is Sarasvati -- Hindu goddess of knowledge and the arts (similar to but not the same as one of the Greek muses, though in addition to the job differences Sarasvati's status was somewhat higher since she was Brahma's lover/consort), and also the secret person who helps keep The Unicode List from getting out of hand. Any time someone stepped over the line too far, The Effulgent One would come and save us all from ourselves.

I raised my hand for that question too, since I knew both answers, but someone else was called on. That person did not answer the question correctly, but then the above question came in as the follow-up.

I knew this one because the person behind The Effulgent One had, in a past situation of extreme tension, not been as careful about IP addresses and the machines being worked from as is done today, and unintenionally allowed me to reverse engineer the identity.

This answer will not be posted here, out of respect for the Goddess. Witnesses to the revelation whereby I made half of the $20 for my response should likewise respect this. :-)

Anyway, as the poster indicates, part of the evening's entertainment was a song/poetry contest, and given my foolhardy nature about such things I was considering 'Unicodized' versions of one of the following two songs:

• Tal Bachman's She's So High -- the theme was going to be about a Unicode character with a lower number that feels unworthy of the romantic attention of a character with a higher code point value;
  
• Len's Steal My Sunshine -- with the help of a friend I met at a previous IUC who has a wonderful singing voice, the key tag line in the chorus "If you steal my sunshine" would have been replaced by "If you show my letters".

I'll let you imagine the lyrics I had come up with both of them for yourselves.

Of the two, I thought the first was the coolest though the most embarrassing for me to actually perform since I lack Tal's vocal range; the second with a stong singer handling the woman's part in the song would have had as much better chance of not being off key or out of range.

Though the issue became moot (and I instead stood mute) after (in the words of Joey Tribbiani) it became a moo point.

Basically after Jim DeLaHunt sang his Unicode Doggerel (”I am the very model of a modern text encoding scheme”), which was hilariously funny, especially lines 14-16 and line 18 and line 22.

I knew I could not top this one so I decided not to try -- some acts you just don't try to top!

Perhaps I'll share some or all of the lyrics of the above two at some point as they were a lot of fun to do.

Next, I'll unpack the Bulldog Award, take some pictures of it, and tell the tale of my adventure getting it home....

This blog brought to you by ꖒ (U+a592, aka VAI SYLLABLE MOO)

Phylyp on 11 Sep 2008 9:27 AM:

John Cowan on 11 Sep 2008 11:14 AM:

Sarasvati on 12 Sep 2008 8:04 PM:

Michael S. Kaplan on 13 Sep 2008 3:25 AM:

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