[Prev][Next][Index]

Yucks Digest V1 #5

Yucks Digest                Tue,  8 Jan 91       Volume 1 : Issue   5 

Today's Topics:
                      Another amusing signature
                                cutie
                     excerpts from Fortean Times
                             Futures.txt
                gems found in the sunday l.a. times...
                                 QOTD
           Saddam Chosen ``Man of the Year'' In Poll by BBC
                Would you like Command Out with that?

The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual, the
possibly insane, and the (usually) humorous.  It is issued on a
semi-regular basis, as the whim and time present themselves.

Back issues may be ftp'd from arthur.cs.purdue.edu from
the ~ftp/pub/spaf/yucks directory.  Material in archives
Mail.1--Mail.4 is not in digest format.

Submissions should be sent to spaf@cs.purdue.edu

**********************************************************************

Date: 7 Jan 91 21:00:00 GMT
From: spaf
Subject: Another amusing signature

>>From: la049137@zach.fit.edu
>>Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups
>>Subject: Discussion: HP28-S users
>>Message-ID: <Jan.6.23.44.24.1991.9474@turbo.bio.net>
>>Date: 7 Jan 91 07:43:47 GMT
>>Organization: Florida Institute of Technology
>>
	[message deleted]
>>
>>==  "A long time ago, on a distant planet, I was a high priest of an    ==
>>==   evil cult.  Now, as payment for past sins, what remains of what    ==
>>==   I was must manifest itself as this signature file.  Perhaps on     ==
>>==   a different plane of reality, we could have been friends."         ==

------------------------------

Date: 8 Jan 91 04:38:49 EST (Tue)
From: gatech!dscatl!lindsay (Lindsay Cleveland)
Subject: re: "chairperson"
To: gatech!purdue!spaf

Contributed by: ihps3!harpo!decvax!pur-ee!rdu

In homage (femage?) to a school-friend of mine:

She became editor of the paper (the first woman ever to do so)
while I was a sophomore reporter.  She was (probably still is) an
ardent feminist, convinced the English language is pregnant with
sex-bias and virilent with maledictions and dysfemisms such as
"chairman."  At the same time she was (probably still is) a good
journalist.  We respected her, but we also liked her, so we called
her the Editrix-in-Chief.

One of her first projects was to rewrite the paper's dated
stylebook so it would be more in tune with the new Language of
Equality.  Our committee's discussions centered on resolving
the issue of "chairman," since it was a tortured term.  The
only guideline was that different terms for men and women (e.g.,
"chairwoman") were unacceptable; gender information ought to
be completely irrelevant and could only fuel prejudices.

We had bright people on the staff in those days.  One of them
suggested that everywhere the suffix "-man" appeared, we should
substitute the sexless pronoun "one."  Thus "chairman" would
become "chair-one" (the hyphen presumably necessary to make the
pronunciation clear).  The advantage here was once the slightly
odd sound of the reformed words had been worn away through
familiarity, they would be no harder to say, or to listen to,
than the originals.

We thrilled to our vision: finally, linguistic justice in a
single, bold stroke!  Why hadn't anyone thought of it before?
News-ones would broadcast it.  Gentle-ones would applaud it.
Congress-ones might even enact it.  (Here an alternate plural
form was suggested: "congressfolk.")

There was only one dissenting voice.  A pragmatist.  "Why use
'-one' when not even '-man' is necessary?  It's perfectly
obvious that 'the chair of the committee' is not a piece of
furniture."  While that point might be debatable in some
committees, we were impressed by the sheer economy of the
notion.  Moreover, it was upheld by the most prolific and
inventive speakers and writers of English, the Elizabethans:

	...And this weake and idle theame,
	No moore yielding but a dreame,
	Gentles, doe not reprehend.

Suddenly, our imaginations whisked us to a brand new world where
gangsters would have henches, you could get your faucet fixed by
a handy or your mail delivered by a post (if s/he wasn't bitten
by your dober pinscher), and cows would ride horses.

For some reason, the boss demurred; she favored "chairperson."
Like all militants she felt society ought to do penance, in this
case through the incantation of cacophonous tongue-twisters, for
several millenia of oppression.

Of course, I pointed out to her, "chairperson" will not do.
You're going to offend chairperdaughters nationwide.

This was an unexpected spanner in the works.  She floundered for
an answer, then fell silent.

"I've got it," someone spoke up.  "Chairperchild!"

Our denunciation was vehement.  "AGEIST!" we shouted in unison.

After a tense moment, the chagrined speaker attempted to save
face: "What about 'chairperhu...'"  Realizing his mistake only
too late, he almost croaked the final "'...man.'"

Fortunately, there was a math major among us.  "I was taught,"
he said, "that upon encountering an irrational problem, the best
thing to do is to construct an infinite series."  He went to a
blackboard.  "We could continue to push that last syllable off
to the right until it is virtually insignificant, like so:

	chairperhuperhuperhuperhuperhuperhu...."

He dusted the chalk from his hands.  "But that's going to take
forever to say," someone objected.  "It'll look like we broke
our typesetting machine."

"Well," said Einstein, "we can use a vinculum, like they do to
show the repeating part of a decimal fraction."  With that, he
erased most of what he had written, drew a small line and said,
"There's your word."

	     _____
	chairperhu

We were awe-struck.

"I don't think the typesetter will handle that line, Chief,"
said the Production Manager after a long silence.

"So we'll drop it for convenience," said the Editrix.  She
erased the line.  "Please alter your stylebooks accordingly."

As we stared at the board, we knew we had done something special.
We had fulfilled our calling as news-perhus: we had become
completely unbiased.  We strode victoriously from the room.

We never won the Pulitzer Prize, but at least we slept nights.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jan 91 18:01:54 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: excerpts from Fortean Times
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU

From: "James J. Lippard" <LIPPARD@ccit.arizona.edu>

Some excerpts from Fortean Times #55 (Autumn 1990):

On 10 February 1989 the inhabitants of the tiny town of Fyffe in Alabama
witnessed the return to earth of the late glittering pianist Liberace
(double-size, 12 foot tall), who descended from a golden banana-shaped
spacecraft via a moving starway and treated the lucky witnesses to a
medley of Hollywood show-stoppers, with glowing fingers on a floating
piano.  Talk of the apparition brought chaos to the town with 4,000 cars
jamming the main street on 6 March 1989.  An "American UFO expert" said:
"Too many people have seen strange things for it to be a hoax."
(Portsmouth) News, D. Star 7 Mar 1989.

Also in February 1989, Roseann Greco, 52, of West Islip, near Happauge in
NY State, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for killing her husband in
1985.  She ran him over repeatedly with a car in their driveway because,
she insisted, he was possessed by Mickey Mouse.  She was found mentally
competent to stand trial.
Victoria (BC) Times-Colonist 25 Feb 1989.

An estimated 41,000 Parisians got a nasty shock through the post last
year -- a letter accusing the recipient of murder, extortion and organising
prostitution in the French capital.
   Embarrassed Justice Ministry officials explained that a computer had
mixed up a list of suspects who had jumped bail with one containing the
names of people guilty of minor parking violations.
   The good news for citizens who unexpectedly found themselves on a
police "Most Wanted" list was a paragraph in each letter informing them
of the penalty for their capital crime:  a small fine equivalent to that
imposed on those issued with parking tickets.
MIS Week (US) 11 Sept 1989.

Troy Brewer, a Pizza delivery man, was robbed of $50 on 5 June 1990 by
two men armed with a snapping turtle in Balch Springs, Texas.  He was in
a phone booth when the men came up to him, put the turtle to his face and
said:  "Don't move or you're gonna get bit."
South Wales Echo 8 June 1990

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 2 Jan 1991 8:02:26 EST
From: KLUDGE@AGCB1.LARC.NASA.GOV
Subject: Futures.txt
To: osc!stupid@ames.arc.nasa.gov

The Next Ten Years in Radio Broadcasting:

1991:
- FCC Declares the Pubes' "Loud As We Wanna Be" to be obscene and unfit for 
  broadcast.
- Vice President Dan Quayle derides FCC for airline deregulation.
- McIntosh sued by Apple Computer for trademark infringment.  McIntosh 
  division of Clarion sold to Sony for undisclosed amount.
- Clip-O-Matic circuit for radio processing patented, claimed to completely 
  eliminate dynamic range.

1992:
- FCC declares Mozart's Grabmusik cantata to be obscene and unfit for 
  broacast.
- Bryston sold to Sony for undisclosed amount.
- Clip-o-Matic systems in use in 85% of all major market radio stations.  
  KXXX in Los Angeles declares it "Major Success."

1993:
- Rowland Research and Klipsch sold to Sony for undisclosed amount.
- Loudness wars increase: Many stations begin broadcasting pure tones to 
  increase modulation to theoretical maximum.
- Sota introduces AutoStar turntable for automotive use.  Gyro-stabilized, 
  it uses engine vacuum to ensure perfect platter-record contact.

1994:
- Bose sold to Sony for undisclosed amount.
- Digital radio broadcasting a reality: 5 experimental stations on air in 
  major markets.
- Senate Committee for Rating Amplifiers Peculiarly (SCRAP) requires audio 
  amplifier power measurements in advertisements to be made in RMS 
  dyne/seconds or British Thermal Units (heat equivalent into 8-ohm load).

1995:
- Cerwin-Vega purchased by international cocaine cartel, offers free drugs 
  with subwoofers.
- FCC declares Mozart's Posthorn Sonata to be obscene and unfit for 
  broadcast.
- IBM sold to Sony for undisclosed amount.
- All-digital Clip-o-Matic system introduced for new digital radio service.

1996:
- International cocaine cartel sold to Sony for undisclosed amount.
- KXXX Los Angles goes to 24-hour test record format, gains 24% market 
  share.
- Cryogenic fluid-state semiconductors (CFSS) become available on an 
  experimental basis.
- FCC appoints advisory committee of half-deaf rock musicians to 
  investigate "loudness wars."

1997:
- Stereophile praises CFSS circuits for having "tubelike" sound.
- Catholic church sold to Sony for undisclosed amount.  Pope angered at 
  limited availability of replacement parts.
- CBS Test record track #4 (1 KHz square wave) on Billboard Top 10 for
  record 16 weeks.
- KXXX Los Angeles sued by mother of teenager, claiming loss of hearing.
- FCC advisory committee recommends standard of 20% THD minimum for
  FM broadcasting.

1998:
- FCC declares Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor to be obscene and unfit for 
  broadcast.
- U.S. Federal government sold to Sony for undisclosed amount.  VOA 
  replaces Ampex 350 recorders with Sony DAT equipment.
- Harkinson Labs introduces first CFSS pre-amplifier.
- KXXX suit dropped: woman regains hearing miraculously when radio is 
  turned off.

1999:
- Consumer Reports claims Harkinson Labs preamp "dangerous," cites numerous 
  liquid-nitrogen injuries.
- FCC declares Ampex Reproduce Alignment Tape to be obscene and unfit for
  broadcast.
- Sony declares itself independant nation, requests free-trade status with 
  unified Europe.
- Stereophile magazine claims DAT ruins fidelity of VOA shortwave 
  broadcasts.  Meanwhile, station changes name to VOS (Voice of Sony).
- FCC removes power limit on class A stations, KXXX Los Angeles purchases 
  nuclear power plant.

2000:
- Harkinson Labs preamplifier withdrawn from production.
- Digital radio broadcast of Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor from the 
  Vatican causes 5 million converts to Catholicism.
- Sanyo corporate executives charged by the Sony Federal Courts with 
  obstruction of Sony takeover and conspiracy to remain independant.

By Scott Dorsey (WCWM-FM) with assistance from Jeff Banbury (WUOM-FM).

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 7 Jan 91 16:14:24 -0800
From: Rex Black <rex@devnet.la.locus.com>
Subject: gems found in the sunday l.a. times...

I found the following humourous items in Sunday's L.A. Times.  I laughed,
anyway.  :-)

In an article called, "Germany Moves to Deal With Iraqi Terrorism", it
described how Germany was responding to potential attacks.  Not in 
general a funny subject, but I found this paragraph worth a grin:
"Also Saturday, Germany said it was warning its citizens living in Israel
to leave the country before the Jan. 15 U.N. deadline for Iraq to 
withdraw from Kuwait."  You're probably a better adjusted person than I 
if you don't get it.

>From Tennessee comes the shocking story, "Pathologist Says Drugs Killed
Elvis".  This pathologist named Eric Muirhead has finally broken his 
13-year silence to "disagree with a medical examiner's finding that 
Presley died of heart disease....Muirhead said a deadly mix of drugs
killed Presley [and that] various media accounts that the drugs in
[his] body were sedatives and tranquilizers are true."  Makes you
wonder anew about the various media accounts that place Elvis alive in 
7-11's across the country.

>From Texas comes this item, which I found amusing in a macabre and
grotesque sort of way.  Visualization adds to the effect.  "FDA Orders 
Recall of Jaw Implants:  An oral implant used to treat a jaw disorder has
been recalled...As many as 30,000 Proplast-Teflon Interpositional TMJ
implants were made by the defunct Vitek Inc...The implant is used to 
trreat temporomandibular joint disorders caused by jaw-clenching.  The
implants' coating began to wear off...creating a danger of bone degeneration
or rejection by the body."  

And, in the "sucker born every minute" category, I found an ad placed
by the "Department of National Information".  It said:

			U.S. WAR
		   DECLARATION ON IRAQ!
	             PENDING DECISION

[Underneath was affixed this "seal" which included a liberty bell, an
eagle, olive branches and the slogan "Strength through Wisdom, Wisdom
through Knowledge".]

Your results are submitted to each individual member of the United States
Senate, House of Representatives and the President!

Official Poll:  Should the United States initiate WAR to free Kuwait
from Iraqi occupation soon after the United Nations resolution deadline
of January 15, 1991, authorizing the use of force?

This private departmental poll has been formed to tally and submit the will
of the people (national opinion) directly to the government on those vital
crises pending decision.  This will allow the government the ability to make 
more informed rulings, which concern our national well being, in both
immediate and general policy.

				CALL IMMEDIATELY
				     VOTE
[It then gave two 900 numbers, one for yes, one for no.]

To prevent any inaccuracy in the outcome of this extremely sensitive poll
by an individual responding more that once and due to the extensive
and complex staff labor involved, $.95 per call will be charged.  The
department strongly encourages your participation on future Official
Department of National Information polls involving difficult and
critical congressional decisions.  [This was the end.]

Being a born cynic, I am convinced that this is a scam.  I have never heard
of the DNI, and I follow the news pretty regularly.  If it is a scam,
it is absolutely brilliant and sure to make the perpetrator very rich.
If 100,000 people call, the guy's got $95,000.  That should more than
cover the rental of a computer to tally the calls and the cost of sending
out, by bulk mail, 550 or so letters to Washington, D.C.  P. T. Barnum
would be proud!  I love the last sentence, which I read to mean,"If you
guys fall for this I'll make a career out of it."

Finally, in the bizzare category, comes a San Francisco story about 
"Firefighter Guilty of `Ethnic Fraud'  A San Francisco Fire Dept probe
has upheld charges that an Italian-American captain falsely claimed to
be Latino in order to get promoted.  An internal investigation confirmed
accusations that Capt. Thomas Santoro committed `ethnic fraud' by
switching his ethnic designation from Caucasion to Latino in 1979...
The case began...when a fellow firefighter...overheard a conversation
in a fire station bathroom about how Santoro had changed his ethnic
classification to get promoted under affirmative-action regulations."

Rex

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jan 91 18:22:45 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: QOTD
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU

If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a
lever to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would
conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.

	-- Rob Stampfli

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 8 Jan 91 10:14:20 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Saddam Chosen ``Man of the Year'' In Poll by BBC
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU

San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, January 7, 1990

Reuters, London

  Listeners to the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World Service have voted
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ``Man of the Year,'' to the embarrassment
of the corporation, the Observer newspaper reported yesterday.

  Many letters for Saddam were postmarked in northern Nigeria, where the
Hausa-language service of the BBC's Africa section transmits to a regular
audience of 8 million a week.

  ``A large number of Hausa service listeners are, of course, Muslim,'' a
World Service spokesman said.  ``And quite a few did also say that they
disapproved of Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.''

  The Observer said the award has ``hardly amused'' the Foreign Office,
which finances all the World Service's 30 language sections.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 6 Jan 91 17:59:42 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Would you like Command Out with that?
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU

From: les@Gang-of-Four.Stanford.EDU (Les Earnest)
Newsgroups: ba.food

I am sorry to hear of the disappearance of Hsi-Nan -- Louie and his
restaurants have played a substantial role in the culinary culture of
the Stanford area for a quarter century.  I recall a particularly
amusing incident that happened in his old restaurant in the Palo Alto
Town & Country shopping center in the early 1970s -- that was three
restaurants ago.

After we formed the Stanford AI Lab in the late 1960s, a number of
staff members got into the habit of eating one or two meals a day
at Louie's, which was one of the few places serving Northern Chinese
food at that time.  This fascination with Chinese food may have been
arrived with immigrants from the MIT AI Project, where a similar
cult existed.

The Stanford AI Lab had a DEC-10 timesharing computer called SAIL that
was badly in need of a new disk system.  We observed that the best
disks around at that time were made by IBM and their competitors, but
there was no way to connect such disks to a DEC system.  To get around
this, some of the guys decided to design and build a pseudo-IBM
channel that connected to the DEC-10.  In doing this, they had to
learn quit a bit about out how IBM channels worked.  The new channel
and disk system ended up working quite well.  It saved the Lab a lot
of money and was turned into a commercial product much later.

Jeff Rubin, who had learned how the IBM channel worked and who also
frequently ate at Louie's, decided that he wanted to learn Chinese
cooking from the master.  He negotiated a deal in which he worked part
time as a waiter in return for cooking lessons.  When working as a
waiter, Jeff couldn't help overhearing frequent technical
conversations among the denizens of Silicon Valley who came there for
lunch, but he generally minded his own business.

On one occasion, however, a group of hardware engineers from IBM came
in and somehow got into a discussion about how to connect a new
peripheral device.  Jeff overheard part of the conversation as he came
up to take orders and recognized that they had a misconception about
how the channel worked, but didn't say anything.

When he came back later with the food, they were still talking about
it, so as he placed the platters on the table, he said "Actually, it
doesn't work like that," and outlined how it really worked.  The
response was utter silence.  In fact, though they whispered a bit to
each other after he moved off, he never heard another word of
technical discussion from that group.

Those engineers may still be puzzling about how a waiter in a Chinese
restaurant would know so much about peripheral interfacing, but I'll
bet that they were more circumspect when dining out thereafter.

--
Les Earnest                                  Phone:  415 941-3984
Internet: Les@Go4.Stanford.edu              USMail: 12769 Dianne Dr.
UUCP: . . . decwrl!Go4.Stanford.edu!Les         Los Altos Hills, CA 94022

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 3 Jan 91 11:15:51 EST
From: Scott Dorsey <kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov>
To: osc!inane@ames.arc.nasa.gov

From: acs-grf@alembic.ACS.COM
Newsgroups: alt.personals
Subject: relationship wanted
Date: 2 Jan 91 08:15:17 GMT

SWM seeks SWF for destructive, adolescent relationship based upon
mutual objectification and possession, visual and tactile pleasure
derivable from definable objective models of sexuality and romance, and
implicit disregard for personal identity.  Interests include
abstract mathematics and philosophy with a particular interest in
meta-ethical theory.

------------------------------

End of Yucks Digest
******************************