[Prev][Next][Index]
Yucks Digest V3 #33 (shorts, mostly)
Yucks Digest Fri, 5 Nov 93 Volume 3 : Issue 33
Today's Topics:
Another entry in the "Some people have too much time on their hands" list
APPRECIATION IS THE GLUE
B&B auf Deutsch
Bestsellers.Netguides
church vs state vs traffic barrier
cutie (3 msgs)
english as she is wrote
Have you ever ... [Yucks submission]
Jehovah's Witness's
Life in the aisle seat
Quote of the day (2 msgs)
Sign entering Henry, Illinois
The price of politics
When Nature Calls, She Calls Collect
White House NAFTA Jobs Day (fwd)
The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual,
the sometimes risque, the possibly insane, and the (usually) humorous.
It is issued on a semi-regular basis, as the whim and time present
themselves.
Back issues and subscriptions can be obtained using a mail server. Send
mail to "yucks-request@cs.purdue.edu" with a "Subject:" line of the single
word "help" for instructions.
Submissions and problem reports should be sent to spaf@cs.purdue.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 93 17:00:32 PDT
From: spl@szechuan.UCSD.EDU (Steve Lamont)
Subject: Another entry in the "Some people have too much time on their hands" list
To: yucks
bmaglari@moose.uvm.edu (Basil T. Maglaris) writes:
:Sorry if the news of my Spam launching didn't get to the alt.spam
:newsgroup. I believe it got sent to the alt.sci.physics.spam group, but
:here is the original declaration of the launch in its entirity:
:
:------------------------------------------------------------------------------
: SPAM LAUNCHING IN VERMONT!!!!
:
: Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's been done. Today, on this Sunday
:the 24th of October, a small group of rocket scientists gathered in a field in
:Jericho, Vermont, to conduct the first documented free-standing SPAM launch in
:the history of processed sandwich meats. Today we overturned the universally
:accepted scientific standard that dictated: "you just can't launch meat."
:We discovered, however, that it is not only possible, but portends
:unfathomable implications for the world of scientific endeavour!
: Using a 1.5 pound Spam specimen, a C-65 model rocket engine, some
:Scotch tape and plastic straw for the gantry system's launch lug, and
:toothpicks for elevation, we successfully sent our sandwich Spam into the
:stratosphere, rocketing toward the heavens with the ambitious intention of
:going "where no luncheon meat has gone before." While the specimen was
:not completely aerodynamic, spinning tumultuously toward the sky, it
:proved to be quite resilient, landing completely intact. It even survived
:a second launching, after which we called it a successful day and had it for
:lunch. (O.K., I embellished that part, but it did survive a second
:launching)
: This has truly been a great day, as we've written another page in the
:history of the young science of processed meat propulsion. The launch was
:authentically documented on videotape, and copies will be distributed
:those in the media who matter (Dave Letterman, America's Funniest Videos,
:Geraldo...) While it remains to be seen, whether copies of this tape will
:be made available for general sale (including a compilation of our
:endeavours in the realm of organic rocketry and produce propulsion), I
:felt that you, my colleagues in the Physics of Spam newsgroup, should be made
:aware of what today was a small step for a tin of processed meat, but a
:giant step for all of mankind...
: Basil T. Maglaris
------------------------------
Date: 29 Sep 1993 22:55:59 GMT
From: fawcett@nynexst.com (Tom Fawcett)
Subject: APPRECIATION IS THE GLUE
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Walking around the halls upstairs, I discovered a large room
used for management training. On the walls were lots of
posters with big bright lettering. The posters all had to
do with managing people and and developing personal skills.
The place looked like a kindergarten for businessmen.
One of the posters said:
ENTHUSIASM
MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE!
YOUR ENTHUSIASM
FUELS THE GROUP!
Another:
HOW YOU PLAY THIS GAME
IS
HOW YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE!
and another:
APPRECIATE YOUR CO-WORKERS!
A P P R E C I A T I O N
IS THE GLUE
THAT HOLDS
THE TEAM TOGETHER!
I APPRECIATE YOU FOR:
and a big empty space.
I looked at this one for a few minutes.
I picked up a pencil and completed the sentence.
I APPRECIATE YOU FOR the way you crawled from the
wreckage, your knees and elbows scraping on the
sand, and the thick smoke burning your eyes. I
can't imagine how you found the strength to crawl on
your hands and knees in the desert night, away from
the carnage and the burning twisted aluminum. I
picture you struggling among charred rocks in the
garish light of blazing aviation fuel. I imagine
you crawling across desert flowers and cactus
quills. I see you crawling slowly, finally coming
to a small dune where you could breathe without
choking -- free to run, free to escape.
But you didn't escape. You caught your breath, you
gathered your strength, and you went back into the
twisted wreckage. Back to the burning fuel, the
shattered glass and the melting plastic. There you
found me and dragged me out. I'll never understand.
I don't have your courage. You pulled me away to
safety, and then went back for the others.
Later, long after you had disappeared again into the
wreckage and failed to come out, it occurred to me
what had happened. You must have passed out. But I
don't have your strength or your will. I stayed
where I was. I didn't move to save you. I let you
die. I let the team die.
I had the long night to think about this. I thought
about who might find us. I thought about what they
would see, and what they would conclude. In the
morning I carefully erased with my boot all traces
of your path in the sand.
When I got the promotion they moved me into your old
office. I really enjoy the large window and the
beautiful view of the desert.
At the bottom of the poster I drew a picture of a cactus
next to an airplane wreck.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1993 11:20:31 -0400
From: bhahn@world.std.com (William D Hahn)
Subject: B&B auf Deutsch
To: eniac
German-speaking fans of Beavis and Butthead can read about them
in the 18 Oktober issue of <<Der Spiegel>>, Seite 272. The article
is appropriately entitled <<Hehehe, uhuhuhu>>. They say:
Schnelle Clips kommentieren sie mit <<cool>>, langsame
mit <<that sucks>> (a\"tzend), und in diese zwei
Kategorien teilt sich ihre ganze Welt.
-Bill H.
P.S. I was reading this article and looked up at CNN just in time
to see Senator Legho...er, Hollings refer to them as "Buffco
and Beaver".
------------------------------
Date: 26 Oct 1993 10:52:10 -0800
From: "Will Kreth" <will@wired.com>
Subject: Bestsellers.Netguides
To: silent-tristero
Subject: Bestsellers.Netguides
I'm surprised no one mentioned that blockbuster net.novella-
"The Routers of Madison County"
Kincaid is a federal UNIX weenie out of Washington D.C., on
assignment in the Midwest as part of the NII's Techological
Extension Service for rural connectivity. Francesca's SLIP
link goes down during a massive flood............
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 09:39:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: Miles O'Neal <meo@pencom.com>
Subject: church vs state vs traffic barrier
To: spaf (Yucks List)
John Steczkowski said...
remember that picture I showed you in the paper? [of a 4-foot
high, rather fat, cylinder - concrete or rock - with worhsipful
Hindu beside it - meo]
From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes)
Well the paper here didn't have a picture, but here is the story they printed.
A former traffic barrier dumped in Golden Gate Park years ago has grown
into a religious shrine that is drawing pilgrims from as far away as India
to worship before its phallic form.
But for city officials, the latest park attraction is turning into more
of a constitutional quagmire than a gift from heaven.
The center of all the attention is a 4-foot-tall bullet-shaped rock tucked
away in a glen behind the world-famous Japanese Tea Garden.
The onetime traffic plug suddenly appeared in the park a couple of years
ago and has since become an ad hoc shrine for Hindus and New Agers who
come to pray, meditate, and make offerings to the phallic fetish.
"People come from all over to see it. They say it can cure whatever ails
them," said park gardener Cloyd Buck. "I was told about one guy who had
arthritis so bad he couldn't button his buttons. He came here and the
next thing they say he was moving stones around."
The origins of the rock are as mysterious as the responses it evokes in
admirers. But the gardeners believe that the rock was dumped in the park
by a truck driver.
Somewhere along the line, the rock caught the eye and hearts of local Hindus,
who saw the bullet-shaped mass as a symbol of devotion to the deity Shiva.
The next thing anyone knew, chalk symbols started showing up on the rock,
followed by flower offerings and now finally the latest addition -
a Stonehenge-like rock garden constructed out of the remains of a Spanish
abbey that was donated to the park decades ago by William Randolph Hearst.
Now, devotees want permission to build a permanent shrine over the rock,
and that has put park officials on the spot.
Park officials want to be sensitive to the Hindus, but on the other hand
they don't really want an openly religious shrine in the park.
"These are very, very nice people. We're trying to be as sensitive as we
can, but it's just not appropriate to build a shrine in the park," said
park spokeswoman Deborah learner.
Rand Castile, director of the park's Asian Art Museum, sees no harm in the
statue.
"This is a very serious religious statement in the Hindu religion. It's
no laughing matter," Castile said.
As for the church-state rub, Castile said, there is already a Russian cross
in the park - not to mention the oft-debated cross up on Mount Davidson.
While park officials try to decide where the separation of church and state
lies in the park, the phallus charms devotees and simples passers-by
like Sunset district resident Carol mcClellan.
"It's really pretty, not at all offensive. I'm glad the park hasn't tried
to remove it," McClellan said.
Not yet, anyway.
By the way, it's said to be good luck to walk three times clockwise around
the rock and then make a wish.
------------------------------
Date: 2 Nov 93 04:31:38 EST (Tue)
From: dscatl!lindsay@news.gatech.edu (Lindsay Cleveland)
Subject: cutie
To: gatech!cs.purdue.edu!spaf
KINKY SEX REVISITED
Sonja Henie, three-time Olympic skating champion, knew her
limitations as an actress and had no delusions of grandeur.
Once, when Tyrone Power threw her on a bed for a love scene,
(both of them completely clothed), she complained, "I could do
this much better if I had my skates on."
-- Anita Summer
------------------------------
Date: 22 Sep 93 04:31:24 EDT (Wed)
From: dscatl!lindsay@merlin.gatech.edu (Lindsay Cleveland)
Subject: cutie
To: spaf
Contributed by: unisoft!alan
Once upon a time there lived a fearsome troll named Og. So
nasty and uncivilized was he that he refused to wear
clothes; he stomped around the village completely nude,
scaring the children and embarrassing the quiet townsfolk.
Down the road from Og's cave was a DEC sales office. It was
only two weeks before the end of DEC's fiscal year, and all
the DEC salespeople were in a panic, for they were far short
of their quota for the year. Especially were they short of
sales for their Unix-based software for VAXen, yclept
"Ultrix;" for most potential customers were suspicious, say-
ing, "That soundeth like a name for a brand of leggings." So
they were desperate to make even one more Ultrix sale.
Suddenly an idea occurred to the youngest DEC salesman in
the office, yclept Harald the Slow. "Why don't we try to
sell a VAX Ultrix system to Og!?," he exclaimed. "After all,
he has much treasure stored in his cave, so we can offer him
an attractive cash discount. And a good all-DEC 780 system
will surely help him with tax accounting for his bridge toll
franchises."
"A wondrous suggestion!" said his supervisor, yclept Arnold
the Superfluous. "Why don't you bring in Og for an Ultrix
demo? I'm sure we can make the sale right on the spot."
So Harald the Slow went up the road to Og's cave, and after
much flattery and persuasion convinced Og to come into the
DEC sales office for a paws-on Ultrix demonstration. All
went well for awhile; Og was familiar with secret passwords
from his dealings with wizards and elves, and he was soon
logged in at a terminal and ready for more.
But soon confusion set in, for though Og was large of body
he was rather small of brain. "Awk?" he said. "Grep?
Nroff?? Mkdir??? This be not software, this be Black Magic,
and you be tools of the Dark Forces." Og stood up in a
rage, and with a swipe of his paw sent the terminal crashing
to the floor. Then, lashing about him with both paws, he
laid waste to the entire office, finally crashing through
the machine room to strike deadly blows at the VAXen therein
before bursting through the wall and stomping off to his
cave.
Harald the Slow and Arnold the Superfluous slowly picked
themselves up from the rubble of their office. Looking at
his underling ruefully, Arnold could only mutter, "We really
should have known better .... after all, everyone knows
that you can't teach a nude Og Ultrix!"
------------------------------
Date: 28 Oct 93 04:31:34 EDT (Thu)
From: dscatl!lindsay@news.gatech.edu (Lindsay Cleveland)
Subject: cutie
To: spaf
Contributed by: akgua!rbk
Dear Friend,
I don't know if you will be interested in this, but I thought I
would mention it to you because it could be a real "sleeper" in
making a lot of money with a small investment of $50,000.
A group of us are considering investing in a large cat ranch
near Hermosillo, Mexico. It is our purpose to start rather
small with about one million cats. Each cat averages about
twelve kittens a year; skins can be sold for about $.20 for
the white ones and up to $.40 for the black. This will give
us twelve million cat skins per year to sell at an average
price of around $.32, making our gross revenue about $4
million a year. This really averages out to about $11,000 a
day, including Sundays and holidays.
A good Mexican cat man can skin about 50 cats each day, at a
wage of $3.15 a day. It will take 663 men to operate the
ranch, so the net profit would be over $9,200 per day. Your
$50,000 investment would be recovered in 5.4 days, which sure
beats the stock market!
Now, the cats would be fed on rats exclusively. Rats multiply
four times as fast as cats. We would start a rat ranch
adjacent to the cat farm. If we start with a million rats, we
will have four rats per cat per day. The rats will be fed on
the carcasses of the rats we skin. This will give each rat a
quarter of a cat. You can see by this that the business is a
clean operation -- self supporting and really automatic
throughout. The cats will eat the rats and the rats will eat
the cats and we will get the skin.
Eventually it is our hope to cross the cats with snakes, for
they will skin themselves twice a year. This would save the
labor cost of skinning as well as give us two skins for one
cat.
Let me know if you or any of your friends are interested. As
you can imagine, we are rather choosy about whom we want to
get into this new skinning operation, but we are reserving
several very attractive engraved certificates for you and any
people you could vouch for.
Best wisher,
O. U. Kidder
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 14:32:58 GMT
From: Mark Smith <msmith@discreet.demon.co.uk>
Subject: english as she is wrote
To: eniac
Found on the December 1993 Personal Computer World letters page:
Regarding the free disk supplied with your August issue, I enclose
an analysis by the program Prostyle of a file called Rubbish, which
speaks for itself. Prostyle even has the nerve to ask people to
send money! Is this a con or what? I should also mention that if
you analyse Prostyle's own Help pages with the product, you will
find that its own style of writing is classified as only fair to
average.
The file goes: "Tne jpooyt gohj tooyuoririty whiu qworty direetyweop
dirreectopn wehty qistyuiop weyt hifggbiuyt doop foopt aoup ertwoping
wert. Wourt we hgfu qudso scpvd oerty soiun qulopted hgoodroty
sdwoed trip maltiggataie. Fimth oloxhart? Habitiot ela callentnuero
dhaeoonf y quirrecir quertset puoi artic."
The analyses are as follows:
QUICK COMMENT ON RUBBISH: This writing is average. The style fault
ratio is high enough to be noticeable without difficulty, but is
normal and perfectly acceptable.
COMMENTS ON THE OVERALL STYLE OF RUBBISH: Your style is direct and
lively because you use verbs, which keep the reader clear at all times
about who is doing what.
COMMENTS ON THE CLARITY OF RUBBISH: Your writing is hard to follow
because you use too many abstract terms -- perhaps you harbour a desire
to write classical novels... Your sentences are generally too complex
because you have not found the right balance between natural pauses
and difficult words.
COMMENTS ON THE OVERALL IMPACT OF RUBBISH: Your writing is punchy and
alive, because you keep all your verbs out in the open where they work
best.
COMMENTS ON THE STANDARD OF GRAMMAR USED IN RUBBISH: Your standard of
grammar is excellent, and you have avoided some of the common pitfalls
that even some of the better writers can fall foul of. Rubbish best
fits the category of Literary Novel.
Lawrence Simpson
Sliema, Malta
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1993 18:04:34 -0800 (PST)
From: knauer@ibeam.intel.com (Rob Knauerhase)
Subject: Have you ever ... [Yucks submission]
To: spaf
A friend of mine came up with this, submitted to _Yucks_ with his
blessing...
In an E-mail message, Amit Parghi wrote:
>From: parghi@apple.com (Amit Parghi)
>Subject: Have you ever ...
>
>Have you ever received a bounce message ... for six-month old e-mail?
>
> YOU WILL. [sm]
>
>And the company that'll bring it to you is AT&T.
>
>[insert "Blade Runner"/"Until the End of the World"-style visuals here ...]
>
> From: postmaster@attmail.com
> Date: 28 Oct 93 07:41:55 GMT
> To: parghi@zorro.cecer.army.mil
> Subject: smtp mail warning
>
> Your mail to ncg.scs.ag.gov is not yet delivered.
> Delivery attempts continue.
> ---------- diagnosis ----------
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> can't contact destination
> ---------- unsent mail ----------
> >From attmail!internet!zorro.cecer.army.mil!parghi Tue Apr 6 17:56:56 0500 1993 remote from internet
> From: parghi@zorro.cecer.army.mil (Amit Parghi)
> Date: 7 Apr 93 01:49:59 GMT
> To: [person1]@zorro.cecer.army.mil,
> [person2]@attmail.com,
> [person3]@attmail.com
>
------------------------------
Date: 27 Oct 1993 03:52:51 GMT
From: bdunn@cco.caltech.edu (Brendan Dunn)
Subject: Jehovah's Witness's
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
In article <1993Oct25.141209.25873@bradford.ac.uk>,
CR TURVEY <C.R.Turvey@bradford.ac.uk> wrote:
> They really are quite fervant though aren't they. His opening
>line was "Are there any Christians in your house?" and when I replied
>"well I'm an athiest if that's any good" his eyes lit up and you
>could hear his mind reeling as it screamed "CONVERT, CONVERt, CONVERT"
>at him. Oh well gotta love 'em. Highly entertaining. Oh and one final
>question ....who started them off, like who founded the whole movement?
> cheers
> Colin
No, no, no. The proper answer to the question, "Are there any Christians
in your house?" is one of the following:
1. To person in another room: "[insert person's name], we got any
Christians around here?"
Person in the other room: "Let me check. I think we've still got a
couple down in the freezer."
2. [if no one else is home] "Nope, sorry. Had some last year, but we
called Orkin, and haven't had any trouble since then."
------------------------------
Date: Fri Nov 5 00:52:02 EST 1993
From: spaf
Subject: Life in the aisle seat
To: yucks
So, my life over the past few weeks has been far too eventful. I've
had several crashing disappointments at work, including going out on a
limb with the dean only to have some colleagues saw it off. That has
been coupled with some fascinating airplane rides (and delays), nights
without sleep waiting for those flights, and otherwise just having
more than my share of entropy. (I have not taken a flight in a month
that has not been delayed or cancelled because of weather. That is
probably about 10-12 flights. Geez.)
So anyhow. last weekend, I'm up to 1am on Friday night because the
baby is teething and can't sleep. So we all can't sleep. :-) Then I'm
out of bed at 3am to drive to Indy to catch a 5:30am plane to
Blacksburg, VA. I'm supposed to speak at Virginia Tech, at the
Virginia Computer Users Conference at 1:45. Plane is late.
Connecting flight into Roanoke is waved off twice because of bad
weather (its VFR in a turboprop). So, of course, we get diverted to
Lynchburg. Sigh. Join with some poeple to rent a car and drive to
Roanoke. Pick up my car and drive to VaTech. Get there at 1:30.
Give my talk. Spend the evening with two of my wife's sisters who are
students, and their mom. Pleasant. Don't sleep well (tap dancing
elephants in the room next door). Get up the next morning (Sunday) and
drive to the airport. Get on the plane to Charlotte. Then, the
surreal experience starts.
I can only think that it was a form of cosmic lesson. See, the day
before, a student at the conference had come and said something to the
effect of "I wanted to say hello because I've never met a celebrity
before." I tried to explain that I was not a celebrity, but to no
avail.
So here I am, on a US Air flight to Roanoke, when a group of people
wearing tour group badges troop past me to sit in the seats in the
next 3 rows back. I catch a glimpse of one tag just as I recognize
(barely) the one without a tag in the middle -- Roberta Flack. In
person, she is much more grandmotherly than I would have expected.
Acts that way too. Amusing I think.
Then I happen to look to the front of the plane. Who should come down
the aisle but Dan Quayle. By now, I think maybe I should have gotten
more sleep, but sure enough, it was Danno.
When we got off in Charlotte, Dan (and a young man who I believe was
his son -- and when I was a teenager I thought *my* parents were
sometimes embarassing!) were walking about 50 feet in front of me.
After all, we were all going on the same flight to Indianapolis. It
was great fun to watch the people in the terminal walk past him, then
stop suddenly as they realized who it was they passed. Even funnier
is when someone didn't notice and plowed into the stopped people
trying to turn around and catch a glimpse....
I get on the plane first. Dan & son were dallying in the giftshop.
Then he gets on the plane. I notice that the seats on both side of me
are empty, and most of the other rows have several people in them. He
heads back towards where I am sitting. Could it be? Gee, I got
nervous -- a whole 90 minute flight for me to actually live a Dan
Quayle joke! "What can you tell me about Hawaii, Mr. Quayle? Is it
really in the Pacific?" or "Isn't it a terrible thing to lose one's
mind, or to never have one at all?"
As fate would have it, they went back two rows behind me, and I never
got the chance. Shucks.
However, as I drove home from Indy, it struck me how to describe my
lack of celebrity to that student if I ever see him again.
Back home again, I would tell people about how I was on the same plane
as Dan Quayle and Roberta Flack. Roberta Flack would tell people how
she was on the same plane as Dan Quayle. Dan Quayle would get off the
flight and tell people he was glad to be back in Indianae. But nobody
would get off the plane and tell people they were on the same flight
as Spaf.
I think I like it that way.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 93 05:50:02 MDT
From: qotd-request@ensu.ucalgary.ca (Quote of the day)
Subject: Quote of the day
To: qotd@ensu.ucalgary.ca
Just as Hieronymus Bosch set down the most diabolical and blood-curdling
details with a delicacy of line and a Puckish humour which left one with
a sense of the mansions of horror attendent upon Hell, so too does
graduate school leave you with an intimate, detailed vision of what Hell
might be like, a Hell which may be waiting as the culmination, the final
product, of the scientific revolution. At the end of medicine is dope;
at the end of life is death; at the end of the school year may be the
Hell which arrives from the vanities of the mind. Nowhere, as in this
collection of monsters, half-mad geniuses, cripples, mountebanks,
criminals, perverts, and putrefying beasts is there such a modern
panoply of the vanities of the human will, of the excesses of evil which
occur when the idea of personal or intellectual power reigns superior to
the compassions of the flesh.
- seen on the net...
[Yup, sounds like Purdue. --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 4 Nov 93 05:50:02 MST
From: qotd-request@ensu.ucalgary.ca (Quote of the day)
Subject: Quote of the day
To: qotd@ensu.ucalgary.ca
My favourite election tidbit:
"I congratulate Mr. Manning. I'm looking forward to working with him
and his member."
-- Canada's new prime minister, Jean Chretien, in his victory
speech
[NOTE to our non-Canadian readers: Mr. Chretien, with his French-
Canadian accent, was really referring to working with Mr. Manning and
his newly elected memberS of parliament.]
^
|
[We can only HOPE that is what he meant. --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 93 16:25:16 EDT
From: Mark_Colan.LOTUS@CRD.lotus.com
Subject: Sign entering Henry, Illinois
To: UNIXML::"spaf@cs.purdue.edu"@lotus.com@cs.purdue.edu
When entering Henry, Illinois, via Route 29 South (on your way to Peoria, of
course), check out the welcoming sign:
"HENRY, ILLINOIS
Best town in Illinois by a dam site."
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 93 13:51:28 PST
From: Lisa Chabot <Lisa.Chabot@Eng.Sun.COM>
Subject: The price of politics
To: Diana_L_Chabot@ccm.hf.intel.com, spaf, jeanne@chryse.Eng.Sun.COM
-------forwarding lost---------
At a recent auction at Southeby's in New York, two matching
celebrity photos were put up side-by-side. The first was a
signed photo of the Three Stooges. The second was a signed
photo of Presidents Carter, Ford, and Nixon.
The Presidents went for $250.00; the Stooges for $1800.00.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1993 22:06:37 GMT
From: renee@netcom.com (Renee)
Subject: When Nature Calls, She Calls Collect
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
When they built the building I'm in some 20-odd years ago,
they saved money on the elevators. Instead of going one-vendor,
top-of-the-line 100% Otis, they jury-rigged 'em together
piecemeal with odds and ends, scraps of metal, leftover bits of
vacuum cleaner hovercraft experiments gone awry, what have you.
Well, push has finally come to shove and they are trying to fix
them.
What this means is they take one out while trying to fix the
other, then vice-versa. What it really means is interminable
delays and a half-hour skippity-bounce ride to get to the 19th
floor, where I'm at.
Well, last week, with a good fifteen to twenty of us in
there, the elevator stopped between floors fifteen and sixteen.
No sweat, this happens all the time. So we waited. And waited.
Called on the emergency phone, pressed the alarm. They know,
they know. After an hour or so I noticed one man seemed a little
more uncomfortable with the situation the rest of us, fidgeting
with his collar, shifting his weight around from foot to foot,
making the whole car even more edgy.
An older woman next to him held his hand. "It's okay. My
daughter's afraid to fly..."
"No," he said, sotto voice, "I have to pee."
Everyone heard it. All our own worst fears realized.
"Just go," someone said. "We'll live."
"I can't. I have an interview."
He *was* looking good.
"Push the door open a little. It'll be okay."
A burly guy in the front of the car opened the door about
half a foot. The poor guy in the suit moved to the front of the
car and we all heard him unzip. And we waited.
And waited.
Nothing.
A whisper made its way through the car. We all turned
around.
It began. A few seconds later, the unthinkable.
"Hey, what the fook!?" echoed up through the shaft. Now you
*don't* want to pee on the heads of grouchy elevator repairmen
who've been working round-the-clock, apologizing for what wasn't
their fault anyhow.
"Quick. Stop."
He couldn't.
The car lurched and dropped about half a floor. He stopped.
"Don't do that, Tony! That car's near capacity, you
stupid fuck." We could hear it all, clear as if we were on the
ground.
"I'm sorry," the guy yelled down. "Sorry."
But the rest of us had only just begun.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1993 13:47:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: lost in processing
Subject: White House NAFTA Jobs Day (fwd)
To: yucks
In an E-mail message, carl@radio.com wrote:
>[About a demonstration at the White House...] Though
>our project proposal was approved for Internet connectivity,
>some slight logistical misunderstandings resulted in a
>decision by White House staff that no power would be available
>to any of the vendors, making operation of our computers a real
>challenge.
>
>We went ahead and made sure that our configuration would work
>both with and without power in our facilities and at other
>remote sites. The system worked beautifully but, due to the
>no-power requirement, during our actual installation we reverted
>to Plan B and installed the world's first Powerless LAN (pLAN).
>
>We're pleased to report that this pLAN worked and implementation
>was flawless. The boxes sat on the table and were able to
>do everything you would expect out of a computer with the power
>switched off. At this level of functionality, we successfully
>demonstrated interoperability between machines from Sun Microsystems,
>Persoft, Intel, Hewlett Packard, and many other leading firms
>in the computer and communications industries.
I heard not only that the MS-Windows machines interoperated with no
problem, but also that they did not have to be rebooted even once.
Rumors that the White House is powerless when Hillary is out of
town remain unconfirmed.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 22:45:00 GMT
From: jstearns
Newsgroups: alt.comedy.firesgn-thtre
From the back page of the Variety Section of the Minneapolis Tribune,
Oct. 28, 1993. An article written by Mike Harden, Scripps Howard News
Service.
Headline:
FOR DECADES, SHE'S HELPED SUPPLY SHOES FOR DEAD
It's about Alyce Maddox who's worked over forty years for Practical
Buriel Footwear, a company that makes special shoes for mortuaries
to bury people in. Bottom of third column:
"Shoes for the dead? Why bother?"
Holy mudhead, mackerel! Life imitates art.
------------------------------
End of Yucks Digest
------------------------------