WEEKLY WHINE

Maximum goobosity

You know, you just don't have enough goober lines.

If you knew what that meant, you probably operate either this site or this site. Or maybe something else. For the rest of you, this is an attempt to inform you of how the GOOBER came into existence.

My familiarity with the GOOBER began way back in my sophomore year at good old West. I was in a pre-engineering drawing class with Jim Bruce and Brett Ian Taylor, taught by Tom Tammaro. Throughout that year we were involved in many odd things, such as ping-pong ball bouncing, tennis ball launching, paper airplane launching, orange nylon tent building, and so forth. That, of course, was when I became exposed to SnakeBall. That is something else again, but the two are closely related.

So while we were drawing before engineering, we often had to draw goober lines. For the uninitiated as far as technical and engineering drafting, you need center lines and other lines to line up the stuff you'll be drawing, which often require their own dotted line pattern. In AutoCAD R12, you can set LAyers for whatever types of lines you need, like hidden lines, center lines, dimension lines, and whatever else you come up with. They routinely set a LAyer called GOOBER. Their explanation was that this is necessary to make goober lines.

Makes perfect sense, right? Anyway, goober lines fulfill the requirements for center lines and other lineup lines. They would usually make their goober lines green or yellow. If they needed sets with different functions, they'd just create a GOOBER2 LAyer in the other color. I have to admit that despite my involvement with the GOOBER, I did not actually use goober lines, instead naming my LAyers BING, LING, PING, and ZING. So we have a historical basis for using the GOOBER to represent something other than a slang term for peanuts, or the brand name of the chocolate covered peanuts.

Then, we discovered the AutoCAD prompt, Ambiguous response. Please clarify..., which of course was extremely interesting. This has nothing to do with the GOOBER, but that's a pretty funny prompt nonetheless.

So, aided by our excessive play of SnakeBall, the use of the GOOBER was extended, although the most frequent form was contracted to simply GOOB. This was commonly used while playing SnakeBall: "Goob! You had a clear shot!" Development of the prompts in SnakeBall soon began to use the GOOBER and the GOOB, as in: "Hey goob, register!"

Then, when Jim and Brett graduated, they entrusted me with continuation of the GOOBER. In fact, Jim's senior will left: "the GOOBER to Nathan Brown." He wanted it to read "the word GOOBER", but someone at the newspaper took it out. You know who you are.

Anyway, here I am, protector of the GOOBER at West High. Let's be honest. For most of that time, the GOOBER was not used often. Over the past couple of weeks, though, spontaneous use of the GOOBER has emerged for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Carrie was one of these. I will not attempt to spell her last name.

I think the single biggest boon to the GOOBER cause has been Parag Pathak. His use of the GOOBER was mainly concentrated on his addressing me as "GoobaDogg" and then "Goobs". Very recently in college Spanish, a discussion of the GOOBER arose among him and his cohorts: the Fromherz Brothaz, Matt Chandler, Kevin Adriance, and Amino Acid Fadaifard. Among the proposals: having my teachers refer to me with any name involving the GOOBER or its derivative. That's an improvement, but it misses the real purpose of the GOOBER.

The GOOBER should be free for use in any context. If someone is annoying you, or if you just want to grab someone's attention, it's a perfect time for "Goob!" These words can fill whatever needs you have as far as word shortages. Especially if you use them around lots of people.