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Yucks Digest V1 #73
Yucks Digest Sat, 17 Aug 91 Volume 1 : Issue 73
Today's Topics:
compiler errors
disappointment
Divine Whois
Dumb Ads & Newspaper Headlines
Future Risks
Giant Medieval War Machine is Wowing British Farmers and Scaring the Sheep
Great moments in equal access
Joke of the day
On the Apple/IBM alliance
Rawmacs!
self-referential riddle [original]
Software Graffitti
Some daze nothing goes right
Space Aliens & cows
Talking meat
The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual, the
possibly insane, and the (usually) humorous. It is issued on a
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 91 08:47:00 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: compiler errors
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
From: tjc@castle.edinburgh.ac.uk (A J Cunningham)
These are some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C
compiler. These are all real. (If you must know I was bored one
afternoon and decompiled the String resources for the compiler.) The
compiler is 324k in size so these are just an excerpt I hope. I'm not
sure where I stand on the copyright issue.
Tony Cunningham
"String literal too long (I let you have 512 characters, that's 3 more
than ANSI said I should)"
"...And the lord said, 'lo, there shall only be case or default labels
inside a switch statement'"
"a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program"
"'Volatile' and 'Register' are not miscible"
"You can't modify a constant, float upstream, win an argument with the IRS,
or satisfy this compiler"
"This struct already has a perfectly good definition"
"This onion already has a perfectly good definition"
"type in (cast) must be scalar; ANSI 3.3.4; page 39,
lines 10-11 (I know you don't care, I'm just trying to annoy you)"
"Can't cast a void type to type void (because the ANSI spec. says so,
that's why)"
"Huh ?"
"can't go mucking with a 'void *'"
"we already did this function"
"This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this
label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initializer AND your
window wasn't wide enough to read this whole error message"
"Call me paranoid but finding '/*' inside this comment makes me suspicious"
"Too many errors on one line (make fewer)"
"Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from
your local Apple dealer"
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 91 02:25:23 -0700
From: Tom Maddox <tmaddox@milton.u.washington.edu>
Subject: disappointment
To: eniac@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
So the judge sets Dalmer's bail really high--an arm and a leg. And
Dalmer says, "Come on, judge. Have a heart."
------------------------------
Date: 6 Aug 91 15:15:57 GMT
From: brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe)
Subject: Divine Whois
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
% whois god
Davisson, Gordon O. (GOD) gordon@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU (206) 527-0832
Tria, Brian (BT53) god@SBCS.SUNYSB.EDU (516) 632-8751
To single out one record, look it up with "!xxx", where xxx is the
handle, shown in parenthesis following the name, which comes first.
Gordon's secret is out. Now you know.
------------------------------
Date: 14 Aug 91 23:30:05 GMT
From: K.BISHOP@genie.com
Subject: Dumb Ads & Newspaper Headlines
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
One of the worst positioning of headlines occurred in the San Jose
Mercury News on the day that former baseball player Dave Dravecky
announced that he would have his arm amputated and the Chicago Bulls
won the NBA title.
Front page - Next to each other:
DRAVECKY TO LOSE ARM THE BULLS PULL IT OFF
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 91 02:54:22 PDT
From: ho (Hilarie Kauiolani Orman)
Subject: Future Risks
TINY BUG IN H.S. "GENOME" CAUSES MASSIVE HUMANITY FAILURE
Officials responsible for a spiral galaxy near the middle section of the
universe revealed today that a small error in an encoding for the life form
"Homo sapiens" was responsible for the near extinction of the partly
intelligent species. The change had been introduced during routine maintenance
of the life form. Officials explained that the maintenance had been intended
to improve the survivability of the species, but inadequate testing had caused
it to become suspectible to a new sexually transmitted disease.
Senior universe officials expressed disappointment in the control of
the life forms in the galaxy, citing a series of malfunctions,
especially near a yellow star at the edge. The H.S. species has
required several patches in the field and still seems unstable. The
latest change was not tested in alternative universes due to lax
controls and lack of funding.
Other officials cited inadequate specification and design review. "How can we
guarantee that the species works without a formal definition of what it is?"
lamented one senior observer. "These things just look like collections of
cells - they just sort of grow. There's no mathematical model that can be used
to verify it. I don't see how they ever got it started in the first place."
Insiders feel that the species can be rescued, but expressed doubt
about its long-term viability. The estimate of the time needed for a
thorough review of the documentation, writing the formal specifications,
and verifying the genome encoding, expressibility, and environmental
testing, is greater than the lifetime of the universe.
Meanwhile, yet another mutation and alteration of the local laws of physics
will be required to back out of this particular upgrade. With funding
already stretched, this setback might just spell the end of H.S.
The formally verified Vulcan species, originally slated for production
next year, has been delayed due to a series of technical problems and is
now scheduled for beta testing after the next big bang.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 11:11:04 GMT
From: gkn@Sdsc.Edu (Gerard K. Newman)
Subject: Giant Medieval War Machine is Wowing British Farmers and Scaring the Sheep
To: spaf
[Pinched without permission from _The Wall Street Journal_, 30 July 1991, p1]
A Scud It's Not, But the Trebuchet Hurls a Mean Piano
Giant Medieval War Machine is Wowing British Farmers and Scaring the Sheep
By Glynn Mapes, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
ACTON ROUND, England -- With surprising grace, the grand piano sails through
the sky a hundred feet above a pasture here, finally returning to earth in
a fortissimo explosion of wood chunks, ivory keys and piano wire.
Nor is the piano the strangest thing to startle the grazing sheep this Sunday
morning. A few minutes later, a car soars by -- a 1975 blue two-door Hillman,
to be exact -- following the same flight path and meeting the same loud fate.
Pigs fly here, too. In recent months, many dead 500-pound sows (two of them
wearing parachutes) have passed overhead, as has the occasional dead horse.
It's the work of Hew Kennedy's medieval siege engine, a four-story tall,
30-ton behemoth that's the talk of bucolic Shropshire, 140 miles northwest
of London. In ancient times, such war machines were dreaded implements of
destruction, flinging huge missiles, including plague-ridden horses, over
the walls of besieged castles. Only one full-sized one exists today,
designed and built by Mr. Kennedy, a wealthy landowner, inventor, military
historian and -- need it be said? -- full-blown eccentric.
A Pagoda, Too
At Acton Round Hall, Mr. Kennedy's handsome Georgian manor house here, one
enters the bizarre world of a P.G. Wodehouse novel. A stuffed baboon hangs
from the dining room chandelier ("Shot it in Africa. Nowhere else to put
it," Mr. Kennedy explains). Lining the walls are dozens of halberds and
suits of armor. A full suit of Indian elephant armor, rebuilt by Mr.
Kennedy, shimmers resplendently on an elephant-size frame. In the garden
outside stands a 50-foot-high Chinese pagoda.
Capping this scene, atop a hill on the other side of the 620-acre Kennedy
estate, is the siege engine, punctuating the skyline like an oil derrick.
Known by its 14th-century French name, trebuchet (pronounced Tray-boo-shay),
it's not to be confused with a catapult, a much smaller device that throws
rocks with a spoon-like arm propelled by twisted ropes or animal gut.
Mr. Kennedy, a burly, energetic 52-year-old, and Richard Barr, his 46-year-old
neighbor and partner, have spent a year and #10,000 ($17,000) assembling the
trebuchet. They have worked from ancient texts, some in Latin, and crude
wood-block engravings of siege weaponry.
The Big question is why.
Mr. Kennedy looks puzzled, as if the thought hadn't occurred to him before.
"Well, why not? It's bloody good fun!" he finally exclaims. When pressed,
he adds that for several hundred years military technicians have been
trying fruitlessly to reconstruct a working trebuchet. Cortez built one for
the siege of Mexico City. On its first shot, it flung a huge boulder
straight up -- and then straight down, demolishing the machine. In 1851,
Napoleon III had a go at it, as an academic exercise. His trebuchet was
poorly balanced and barely managed to hurl missiles -- backward. "Ours
works a hell of a lot better than the Frogs', which is a satisfaction,"
Mr. Kennedy says with relish.
How it works seems simple enough. The heart of the siege engine is a
three-ton, 60-foot tapered beam made from laminated wood. It's pivoted
near the heavy end, to which is attached a weight box filled with 5.5 tons
of steel bar. Two huge A-frames made from lashed-together tree trunks
support a steel axle, around which the beam pivots. When the machine is
at rest, the beam is vertical, slender end at the top and weight box just
clearing the ground.
When launch time comes, a farm tractor cocks the trebuchet, slowly hauling
the slender end of the beam down and the weighted end up. Several dozen
nervous sheep, hearing the tractor and knowing what comes next, make a break
for the far side of the pasture. A crowd of 60 friends and neighbors buzzes
with anticipation as a 30-foot, steel-cable sling is attached - one end to the
slender end of the beam and the other to the projectile, in this case a grand
piano (purchased by the truckload from a junk dealer).
"If you see the missile coming toward you, simply step aside," Mr. Kennedy
shouts to the onlookers.
Then, with a great groaning, the beam is let go. As the counterweight
plummets, the piano in its sling whips through an enormous arc, up and over
the top of the trebuchet and down the pasture, a flight of 125 yards. The
record for pianos is 151 yards (an upright model, with less wind resistance).
A 112-pound iron weight made it 235 yards. Dead hogs go for about 175 yards,
and horses 100 yards; the field is cratered with the graves of the beasts,
buried by a backhoe where they landed.
Mr. Kennedy has been studying and writing about ancient engines of war
since his days at Sandhurst, Britain's military academy, some 30 years
ago. But what spurred him to build one was, as he puts it, "my nutter
cousin" in Northumberland, who put together a pint-sized trebuchet for a
county fair. The device hurled porcelain toilets soaked in gasoline and
set afire. A local paper described the event under the headline "Those
Magnificent Men and Their Flaming Latrines."
Building a full-sized siege engine is a more daunting task. Mr. Kennedy
believes that dead horses are the key. That's because engravings usually
depict the trebuchet hurling boulders, and there is no way to determine
what the rocks weigh, or the counterweight necessary to fling them. But
a few drawings show dead horses being loaded onto trebuchets, putrid
animals being an early form of biological warfare. Since horses weigh
now what they did in the 1300s, the engineering calculations followed
easily.
One thing has frustrated Mr. Kennedy and his partner: They havn't found
any commercial value for the trebuchet. Says a neighbor helping to carry
the paino to the trebuchet, "Too bad Hew can't make the transition between
building this marvelous machine and making any money out of it."
It's not for lack of trying. Last year Mr. Kennedy walked onto the English
set of the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie, volunteering his trebuchet for
the scene where Robin and his sidekick are catapulted over a wall. "The
directors insisted on something made out of plastic and cardboard," he
recalls with distaste. "Nobody cares about correctness these days."
More recently, he has been approached by an entrepreneur who wants to bus
tourists up from London to see cars and pigs fly through the air. So far,
that's come to naught.
Mr. Kennedy looks to the U.S. as his best chance of getting part of his
investment back: A theme park could commission him to build an even bigger
trebuchet that could throw U.S.-sized cars into the sky. "It's an amusement
in America to smash up motor cars, isn't it?" he inquires hopefully.
Finally, there's the prospect of flinging a man into space -- a living man,
that is. This isn't a new idea, Mr. Kennedy points out: Trebuchets were
often used to fling ambassadors and prisoners of war back over castle walls,
a sure way to demoralize the opposition.
Some English sports parachutists think they can throw a man in the air
*and* bring bring him down alive. In a series of experiments on Mr. Kennedy's
siege machine, they've thrown several man-size logs and two quarter-ton dead
pigs into the air; one of the pigs parachuted gently back to earth, the
other landed rather more forcefully.
Trouble is, and accelerometer carried inside the logs recorded a centrifugal
force during the launch of as much as 20 Gs (the actual acceleration was zero
to 90 miles per hour in 1.5 seconds). Scientists are divided over whether a
man can stand that many Gs for more than a second or two before his blood
vessels burst.
The parachutists are nonetheless enthusiastic. But Mr. Kennedy thinks the
idea may only be pie in the sky.
"It would be splendid to throw a bloke, really splendid," he says wistfully.
"He'd float down fine. But he'd float down dead."
------------------------------
Date: 16 Aug 91 10:30:05 GMT
From: jms@netcom.com (John Schonholtz)
Subject: Great moments in equal access
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
[From The San Francisco Examiner, June 9]
International pornography magnate and accused racketeer Reuben Sturman
is converting a landmark North Beach strip joint into a big peep-show
arcade, according to city records.
City building inspectors have allowed the Sturman firm to begin tearing
out the club's interior, but they want assurances that two of the peep-show
booths will be wheelchair-accessible before they will issue a permit for
remodeling....
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 91 10:14:54 PDT
From: brd@bigbrd (Bill Danielson)
Subject: Joke of the day
To: joke-of-the-day@bigbrd
The pretty teacher was concerned with one of her eleven-year-old
students. Taking him aside after class one day, she asked,
"George, why has your school work been so poor lately?"
"I'm in love," the boy replied.
Holding back an urge to smile, she asked, "With whom?"
"With you," he said.
"But George," she said gently, "don't you see how silly that is?
It's true that I would like a husband of my own someday. But I
don't want a child."
"Oh, don't worry," the boy said reassuringly, "I'll use a
condom."
------------------------------
Date: 13 Aug 91 16:20:07 GMT
From: evan@neiman.east.sun.com (Evan L. Marcus [Sun NJ Systems Consultant])
Subject: On the Apple/IBM alliance
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
Seen in USA Today:
What do you get when you cross IBM & Apple?
IBM.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 91 16:47:25 -0500
From: chk@rice.edu
Subject: Rawmacs!
To: spaf
(Unfortunately, I don't know who the original author of this is - it
certainly isn't me!)
RAWMACS
---------
Scrollin', scrollin', scrollin'
though the clock tick's stolen
keep them hacker codin',
emacs!
Through co-ax, chips, and ether
write programs built to measure
and then compile at the other site.
All the things I'm missin':
source code, .o's, and sys bins,
are waiting at the end of the night.
Load it up! Swap to disk! Read 'em in! Swap 'em out!
Make a change! Recompile! emacs!!!
Swap to disk! M-x mode! Write it out! Swap to disk! emacs!
Codin', codin', codin'
with kernel mods a rollin'
keep those text files scrollin',
emacs!
Don't try to understand 'em
just caffeine, dope, and Rand 'em
soon they'l forget hackin... vi.
My boss is calculatin'
good code will be a waitin'
for her at the end of the night.
Load it up! Swap to disk! Read 'em in! Swap 'em out!
Make a change! Recompile! emacs!!!
Swap to disk! M-x mode! Write it out! Swap to disk! emacs!
------------------------------
Date: 13 Aug 91 10:30:04 GMT
From: ark@research.att.com
Subject: self-referential riddle [original]
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
Q: How do you spell `onomatopoeia?'
A: The way it sounds.
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jul 91 17:39:52 GMT
From: (null)
Subject: Software Graffitti
Seen painted on a rock on the shore of Lake Michigan:
IF (X.LT.0) CALL
GO TO 1140
WRITE (1,4) DATA,
DO 7,I=1,N
DIMENSION RANK
MATRIX(I)=INVER
INTEGER IMAP
This is in faded blue paint, with letters about 2 inches high, and I
suspect that there used to be more before the ravages of time and ice
erased part of it. I can't see any sense in what is left, but it is
clearly FORTRAN.
It's in Chicago on a limestone block in the seawall that keeps Lincoln
Park from eroding away, about 200 yards north of the mouth of Belmont
Harbor.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 91 10:31:20 PDT
From: Pete.Stpierre@Eng.Sun.COM (Bob "Pete" St.Pierre)
Subject: Some daze nothing goes right
To: spaf
[This is an oldie...but I haven't heard it recently, so maybe some of
you haven't either. Some people go through their whole lives like this.
--spaf]
A small balding man storms into a local bar and demands "Gimme a
double of the strongest whiskey you got! I'm so pissed I can't even
see straight!"
The bartender, noticing that the little man is a bit the worse for wear,
pours him a double of Southern Comfort.
The man swills down the drink and says "Gimme another one!".
The bartender pours the drink, but says "Now, before I give you this,
why don't you let off a little steam and tell me why you're so upset?"
So the man begins his tale:
"Well, I was sitting in the bar next door when this gorgeous blonde
slinks in, and actually sits beside me at the bar. I thought WOW,
this has never happened before. You know, it was kind of a fantasy
come true. Well, a couple of minutes later I feel this hand moving
around in my lap and the blonde leans over, licks my ear, and asks if
I'm interested? I couldn't believe this was happening! I managed to
nod my head yes, so she grabs my hand, and starts walking out of the
bar. So of course I went with her. This was just too good to be
true!"
"She took me down the street here to a nice hotel and up to her room.
As soon as she shut the door she slips out of her dress. That was all
she was wearing! I tell you it didn't take me much longer to get out
of my clothes! But as soon as I jumped into the bed, I hear some keys
jingling, and someone starts fumbling with the door."
The blonde says "Ohmygod, it's my boyfriend. He must have lost his wrestling
match tonight, he's gonna be real mad! Quick, HIDE!"
"So, I opened at the closet, but I figured that was probably he first
place he would look, so I didn't hide there. Then I looked under the
bed, but no, I figured he's bound to look there, too. By now I could
here the key in the lock. I noticed the window was open, so I climbed
out and was hanging there by my fingers praying that the guy wouldn't
see me."
The bartender says "Well I can see how you might be a bit frustrated at this
point."
"Well, yeah, but I hear the guy finally get the door open and he yells
out 'Who you been sleeping with now, bitch?' The girl says 'Nobody,
honey, now come to bed and calm down'. Well the guy starts tearing up
the room. I hear him tear the door off the closet and throw it across
the room. I'm thinking 'Boy, I'm glad I didn't hide in there.' Then
I hear him lift up the bed and throw it across the room. Good thing I
didn't hide under there either."
"Then I here him say 'What's that over there by the window?' I think 'Oh Shit,
I'm dead meat now'. But the blond by now is trying real hard to distract him
and convince him to stop looking."
"Well, I hear the guy go into the bathroom, and I hear water running
for a long time, and I figure maybe he's gonna take a bath or
something, when all of a sudden the asshole pours a pitcher of
scalding hot water out of the window right on top of my head! I mean
look at this, I got second degree burns all over my scalp and
shoulders!"
The bartender says, "Oh man, that would have pissed me off for sure."
"No, that didn't really bother me. Next the guy starts slamming the
window shut over and over on my hands. I mean, look at my fingers.
They're a bloody mess, I can hardly hold onto this glass."
The bartender looks at the guy's hands and says "Yeah, buddy, I can
understand why you are so upset."
"No, that wasn't what really pissed me off."
The bartender then asks in exasperation, "Well, then, what DID finally
piss you off?"
"Well I was hanging there, and I turned around and looked down, and I was only
about 6 inches off the ground!"
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 91 14:35:03 CDT
From: microsoft!trsvax!techsup!qat!valsee
Subject: Space Aliens & cows
To: techsup!trsvax!microsoft!decwrl!mejac!eniac (Eniac Mailing List)
a followup on space alien cows...
From: newcomb@world.std.com (Donald R Newcomb)
>From: Huw Jonathan Rogers <huw@spls5.ccs.mt.nec.co.jp>
> Various farmers in a certain area of the US (I forget the state
>that was mentioned) regularly discovered bloodless (drained) cattle in
>various stages of dismemberment in the early morning. These animals had
>had certain glands, body parts, or body fluids surgically removed with a
>precision beyond the capabilities of all but the most advanced surgical
>laboratories. This problem was so bad that in one place a farmer was in
>danger of going bust due to loss of cattle. One explanation advanced was that
>aliens were using these cattle as a convenient source of various rare
>chemicals/tissues.
I hate to see this line start on sci.military and feel worse about
dignifying it with a comment. My brother runs a meat packing plant
in the midwest. About 1983 cattle were being frequently found dead
in the fields with parts "surgically removed." UFOs, or Satin worshipers
were blamed. It was frequently on the evening news. When I asked my
brother about it, he laughed and explained:
1. Like other businessmen, ranchers and cattlemen have production
insurance. Cattle insurance covers abnormal losses, the barn burns,
truckload of cattle runs off cliff, plane crashes into heard, rustlers,
space aliens and satinists. It does not cover normal "range death"
due to disease, lightning, snake bite, leg broken in praire dog burrow,
etc. Range death is a normal production loss.
2. A dead cow is worth less than nothing. It can't be sold for human
consumption. Even the rendering plants will charge to pick one up.
A "range dead" cow can represent a $1000 loss to a rancher.
A "UFO dead" cow is covered by insurance.
3. The incidence of cattle lost to "UFO death" is directly related to
the willingness of the local authorities to play the game. When the
insurance companies plot the payouts for "UFO death" on a map, it
clearly shows that the UFOs will stop right at county lines, showing
greater respect for law enforcement in rural county vs another.
Odd that aliens from 1000 light years away will show such concern over
a county line.
4. Ranchers "play the game" well. When ever a stranger asks about
cattle death, the ranchers spin long winded tails of lights in the
sky, government scientists etc. Just don't ask to see if there is
any dried blood on his pocket knife.
In short the whole idea of space aliens being responsible for
cattle death is utter nonsense!
Driblig Zorg
Institute of Xenobiological Research
Alpha Centauri
(driblig@xeno.ac.alphac.mw)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 2 Aug 91 10:39:22 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Talking meat
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
A dialogue by Terry Bisson. From a series of stories entitled
"Alien/Nation" in the April issue of Omni.
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of
the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the
through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the
stars."
"They use the raido waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them.
The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made
the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to
believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I 'm telling you. These creatures are the only
sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence
that goes through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several
of their life spams, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea
the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the
weddilei. A meat head with an electron plamsa brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the
weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way
through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of
meat!"
"So... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The
meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying
to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"So what does the meat have in mind."
"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the
universe, contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat?"
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio.
'Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know
how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping
their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through
their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all
sentient races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear,
or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the reconds and forget
the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact
with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say?" `Hello, meat. How's
it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with
here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers,
but they can't live on them. And being meat, they only travel theough C
space. which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility
of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you sid it yourself, who want to meet meat? And the ones who
have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You're sure they
won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads
and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropiate, that we should be meat's dream."
"And we can marked this sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others?
Anyone interested on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class
nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotation ago, wants
to be friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the universe
would be if one were all alone.
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End of Yucks Digest
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