waider: (Default)
waider ([personal profile] waider) wrote2004-10-02 01:08 pm
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my own impersonal response

Neil Gaiman made some mention on his journal about the recurring disappearance of his socks. Wild stuff, to be sure. On a whim, I submitted via his site the suggestion I'd once read somewhere that socks are the larval form of wire hangers, which explains the disappearance of the former and the appearance of the latter. On his journal entry today I saw this:
And incidentally, no, socks are not the larval form of wire hangers. Paperclips are the larval form of coathangers, which later emerge from their closets as bicycles. Avram Davidson demonstrated this conclusively in his 1954 Hugo award winning short story "or all the seas with oysters". If you don't believe me, you can look it up.
Not addressed directly to me, to be sure, since I imagine I was hardly the only person to dredge up the suggestion, but it amuses me anyhow.

[identity profile] zadcat.livejournal.com 2004-10-02 08:04 am (UTC)(link)
Cool.

Mundanely, my friend who owns a laundromat has told me that socks routinely get slurped into the works of his washing machines.
ext_8707: Taken in front of Carnegie Hall (monterey)

[identity profile] ronebofh.livejournal.com 2004-10-02 10:25 am (UTC)(link)
I was always partial to this explanation regarding missing socks (http://cgi.cs.indiana.edu/~oracle/digest.cgi?N=415#415-07) from the Usenet Oracle.