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Yucks Digest V2 #4
Yucks Digest Wed, 15 Jan 92 Volume 2 : Issue 4
Today's Topics:
Basic rules for driving in Boston
BITE-A-THON: ADVISORY/Little `Bears' take a bite for
Brain editing
Cat's Ass [margaret atwood novel?]
cutie, possibly for Yucks
David Duke / Oliver North in '92
Dog antics (was: Cat's Ass)
Duh...
How (not) to Keep Batteries Warm
MISC: Microwave Alien
National Battery Ingestion Hotline
New World Order Nut
OTD
Radio Shack Q&A
The Satirist and the Inker
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: 11 Jan 92 11:30:04 GMT
From: JBOLOGNA@bentley.bitnet
Subject: Basic rules for driving in Boston
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
Basic rules for driving in Boston
Boston is often acclaimed as the most exciting city in America in
which to drive. Who would argue? Herewith, for newcomers and visitors,
are a few basic rules of the road for driving in these parts:
- To obtain a general idea of how to drive in Boston, go to a
Celtics game and carefully watch the fast break. Then get behind the
wheel of your car and practice it.
- Never take a green light at face value. Always look right and
left before proceeding.
- When in doubt, accelerate.
- Very generally speaking, the intransigence of the Boston driver
is directly proportional to the expense of his American-made car, and
inversely proportional to the expense of his foreign-made car. But in
applying this formula, bear in mind that they are all more or less
intransigent.
- In the long run, parking your car in a lot is always cheaper than
parking it at a meter.
- Drivers whose cars sport "I Brake For Animals" bumper stickers
may brake for animals, but they may not brake for you. Watch it.
- Never drive behind a person whose head doesn't reach the top of
the steering wheel.
- Teenage drivers believe they are immortal. Don't yield to the
temptation to teach them otherwise.
- Taxicabs should always have the right of way, unless you are bent
on suicide.
- Never, ever, stop for a pedestrian unless he flings himself under
the wheels of your car.
- The first parking space you see will be the last parking space
you see. Grab it.
- Learn to swerve abruptly. Boston is the home of slalom driving,
thanks to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, which puts potholes in key
locations to test drivers' reflexes and keep them on their toes.
- Steer clear of people with antinuclear bumper stickers pasted on
their cars. They are interested in preserving mankind, which is
admirable. But they are not necessarily interested in preserving you,
or themselves, for that matter. They have more important things to
think about.
- Never get in the way of a car that needs extensive body work.
- Double-park in the North End of Boston, unless triple-parking is
available.
- Always look both ways when running a red light.
- While it is possible to fit a 15-foot car into a 15-foot parking
space, it is seldom possible to fit a 16-foot car into a 15-foot
parking space. Sad but true.
- There is no such thing as a short cut during rush-hour traffic in
Boston.
- It is traditional in Boston to honk your horn at cars that don't
move the instant the light changes.
- Never put your faith in signs that purport to provide directions.
They are put there to confuse people who don't know their way around
the city.
- Use extreme caution when pulling into breakdown lanes. Breakdown
lanes are not for breaking down, but for speeding, especially during
rush hour.
- Never use directional signals, since they only confound and
distract other Boston drivers, who are not used to them.
- Similarly, never attempt to give hand signals, Boston drivers,
unused to such courtesies, will think you are waving them on to pass
you.
- The yellow light is not, as commonly supposed outside the Boston
area, a signal to slow down. It is a warning to speed up and get
through the intersection before the light turns red.
- Never pass on the left when you can pass on the right.
- In making a left turn from the right lane, employ the element of
surprise. That is, do it as suddenly as possible, so as to stun other
drivers.
- Speed limits are arbitrary figures posted only to make you feel
guilty.
- Whenever possible, stop in the middle of a crosswalk to insure
inconveniencing as many pedestrians as possible.
- Remember that the goal of every Boston driver is to get there
first by whatever means necessary.
- Above all, keep moving.
And good luck. You'll need it.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 92 11:10:32 PST
From: one of our correspondents
Subject: BITE-A-THON: ADVISORY/Little `Bears' take a bite for
To: yucks-request
WHO: Brent Jones, starting tight end for the San Francisco 49ers,
will host the "Grizzy B. Charity Bite-A-Thon: Who Took That Bite?,"
sponsored by Hostess, at Pier 39 to encourage support of the Boys and
Girls Clubs of San Francisco.
WHAT: Members of the Boys and Girls Clubs will challenge each
other in a Bite-A-Thon, a competition to match the "bite" of Hostess
Grizzly Chomps, the snack cake with a missing "bite." Grizzy B., the
"spokesbear" and official "taste-tester" for Grizzly Chomps, will
judge the bites with his "Chomp Stick." The winning team will earn a
donation for the Boys and Girls Clubs, on behalf of Hostess.
WHEN: Saturday, Jan. 11, 1-1:30 p.m.
WHERE: Pier 39
San Francisco Experience, Second Level
Beach and Embarcadero Streets.
WHY: The "Bite-A-Thon" competition is a fun and unusual way for
the children of Boys and Girls Clubs to help raise money for their
organization.
HIGHLIGHTS:
-- Celebrity host Brent Jones available for interviews before and
immediately following the "Bite-A-Thon" competition
--"Unbearably" cute members of children's charity help raise money
for their own chapter
--"Spokesbear" character Grizzy B. will judge competition and
entertain children
--Unique photo opportunity of children's participation in a
worthwhile cause
CONTACT: Hostess
Courtney Hughes 312/836-7169
Diane Worton, 312/836-7382
KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: FOODS/BEVERAGES ADVISORY
[Why is it all the events I want to attend are so far away? --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 92 10:40:47 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Brain editing
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
>From "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett, pages 58-59.
Copyright 1991 Daniel Dennett. Little Brown and Company, 1991.
A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a
young man with epilepsy. As is customary in this kind of operation,
the patient was wide awake, under only local anesthesia, whjile the
surgon delicately explored his exposed cortex, making sure that the
parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by
stimulating them electrically and asking the patient what he
experienced. Some stimulations produced visual flashes or
hand-raisings, others a sort of buzzing sensation, but one spot
produced a delighted response from the patient: "It's 'Outta Get Me,'
by Guns N'Roses, my favorite heavy metal band!"
I asked the neurosurgeon if he had asked the patient to sing or
hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how
'high fidelity' the provoked memory was. Would it be in exactly the
same key and tempo as the record? Such a song (unlike 'Silent Night')
has one canonical version, so we could simply have superimposed a
recording of the patient's humming with the standard record and
compared the results. Unfortunately, even though a tape recorder had
been running during the operation, the surgeon hadn't asked the
patient to sing along. "Why not?" I asked, and he replied: "I hate
rock music."
Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark
that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man, and
I expressed the hope that he would just check to see if he could
restimulate the rock music, and this time ask the fellow to sing
along. "I can't do it," replied the neurosurgeon, "since I cut out
that part." "It was part of the epileptic focus?" I asked, and he
replied, "No, I already told you -- I hate rock music!"
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 92 13:41:04 PST
From: sfisher@Pa.dec.com
Subject: Cat's Ass [margaret atwood novel?]
Could be worse, could be dogs. As near as I can tell my
mother's dogs and all my friends's dogs eat anything
not nailed down. One friend's irish setter ate a couch.
Heh. Let's see, I saw this just the other day... ah yes, here it is.
One or two of you might have seen this before. The rest of you are
fair game. It's, um, graphic.
That's nothing. We used to have a couple of Great Danes. Now,
Danes are sweet dogs but, like most canines, are dumb as a post,
smell bad, have disgusting personal habits, and can't be trusted
with anything they can fit in their mouths. With Danes, this
includes whole standing rib roasts, cats, children under about
six, and most of the engine internals from any imported car.
The funniest what-my-dog-ate story, though, was the time that
one of the dogs -- we never found out which one it was -- ate an
entire box of 64-color Crayola crayons. I mean, we found a
shred of yellow and green paper, part of a Binney & Smith logo,
and the little plastic sharpener, and that was it. But that
wasn't the first clue we had about the dog's dirty deed.
At that time in my life, it was one of my household chores to
go around the back yard and clean up the canine detritus so that
it didn't get sucked into the lawnmower and kill our gardeners.
So the morning before the gardeners were going to show up (anything
worth putting off till tomorrow is worth putting off till next
week, I always say), I set out, shovel in hand and gumboots on
feet, to scrape up the steaming mounds of used Eukanuba and bury
them out in the toxic waste dump that we euphemistically referred
to as The Side Yard.
Now, it's easy to tell where to look for the spoor, so to speak,
of a Dane. You can identify Dane leavings under a 4" blanket of
fresh snow. They're roughly the size of an average Hungry Man
frozen dinner, mounded into a little hill that sits like some
sort of repellent melon on the surface of the yard. So I just
looked for the skyline and trudged out to the lawn to begin my
morning's ritual recitation of my two mantras, which were "I
gotta move outa this stinking place" and "I hate dogs, I hate dogs."
Imagine the surprise on my youthful visage when the first mound
I encountered was studded with little bits of Prussian blue, flesh,
orange-yellow, magenta, and brick red. Amused but not yet pleased,
I started chipping at the base of the clump, trying to avoid the
oh-so-fragrant steam that rose from the middle after I broke the
crust that had dried on this particular dropping overnight. I got
most of it on the shovel and carried it over to the side yard.
It looked almost festive.
The next one was studded with peach, fuchsia, midnight blue,
lemon yellow, and -- my personal favorite -- copper. A few hacks
of the spade loosened the moorings that this one had set into the
crabgrass, and it too went over to the growing pile under the ivy.
Apparently the wax, though non-toxic as we'd always seen on the
side of the box, isn't good for the digestive system of a Dane.
The next one I found was flat, looking like congealed liquid
lava, the little ripples of fluid dog excrement having dried in
widening concentric ringlets like mushrooms at the side of a
rotting tree, but bespangled with leaf green, red-violet, silver,
carnation, and -- though in this last case it was more difficult
to tell figure from ground -- burnt umber and siena. Fortunately,
this last loose one had dried flat and fairly stiff, so it was easy
to scrape up from the grass. Unable to resist the temptation, I
tried flinging it sideways with the shovel, like some kind of
feculent Frisbee, but its aerodynamics weren't stable and it
tumbled end over end, breaking up as it hit the ground.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1992 14:32:23 -0500
From: heaphy (Kathleen A. Heaphy)
Subject: cutie, possibly for Yucks
To: spaf
A joke seen in the Jan. 7, 1992 issue of "Indiana Prairie Farmer" magazine:
The Russians have no food or money, and this week George Bush told Boris
Yeltsin, "Don't worry, we'll give you plenty of the green stuff." Yeltsin
said, "Money?" Mr. Bush said, "No -- broccoli."
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jan 92 17:20:07 GMT
From: steve@nero.clearpoint.com (Stephen Steir)
Subject: David Duke / Oliver North in '92
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
I got this one from my father and I'm not sure where he got it from.
If Oliver North became David Duke's running mate, they'd be known as
Ku Klux Klan and Ollie.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 92 15:24:04 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Dog antics (was: Cat's Ass)
To: eniac@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> I must say, though, that I wonder how many of you support the
> use of cats for scientific research?
We tried it once but the cats really weren't up to it, bad writing
skills and few worthy PHD's among them. I don't think any of them
actually got tenure, which is sort of sad.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 92 14:31:04 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Duh...
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
Percentage of Americans who think oatmeal is made of wheat: 48%
-- Harper's Index
------------------------------
Date: 9 Jan 92 20:35:22 GMT
From: hall@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Hal Lillywhite)
Subject: How (not) to Keep Batteries Warm
Newsgroups: rec.backcountry,rec.climbing
OK, this story is true and I think kind of fun (at least for those
of us with the appropriately warped sense of humor). For a rescue
training exercise on Mt. Hood several people were playing "victim."
They were equipped with radios for safety. One "victim" wanted to
keep her extra battery pack warm so she slipped it into a convenient
place inside her clothing. Unfortunately it shorted out across her
underwire bra.
She prefers not to discuss the resulting burn!
------------------------------
Date: 12 Dec 91 20:12:24 GMT
From: surfdog@master.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: MISC: Microwave Alien
Newsgroups: rec.food.recipes
EZ Microwave alien
1. Take a peppermint patty. Not the Peanuts character, the candy.
2. Put it on a napkin in a microwave. If it is someone else's microwave,
the napkin is optional.
3. Microwave until the alien is hatched.
Serves Two
[When Easter rolls around, be sure to get packages of little
marshmallow "Peeps" -- the little chicks & bunnies made of (basically)
sugar. Put them in the microwave on about 80% power and watch thru
the window. Once they warm up, they pulsate to the power. When the
microwave is on, they swell outwards, looking all the world like Bruce
Bannister turning into the Incredible Hulk. Then, when the power
lapses (for the 20% part), they almost revert to normal. When the
whole gory scene is played out, they collapse into a mass that cools
and becomes something you need to chisel out. Fun for all ages,
especially mine, whatever the heck that is. --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 92 10:35:03 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: National Battery Ingestion Hotline
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
This is from the instructions sheet for a Motorola ADVISOR Message
Receiver (alphanumeric pager):
WARNING
Do not dispose of batteries in fire - they may explode. Do not swallow
batteries. If an AAA battery is swallowed, contact your local poison
control center, your physician, or the National Battery Ingestion Hotline
at (202) 625-3333.
WARNING
Do not swallow the battery door.
[Was this a significant problem before they printed the warning? Are
the little battery doors covered with appealing candy-cane stripes?
Or is the overall intelligence of our population declining as quickly
as I'm afraid it is? --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 92 09:30:37 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: New World Order Nut
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
New World Order Nut
-- Joe Queenan, Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1991
Shortly after Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, he had a
momentous three-way telephone conversation with tele-evangelist
Pat Robertson and his colleague Lou Sheldon. Messrs. Robertson and
Sheldon offered to prepare a list of evangelicals whom President
Carter might appoint to high government office. The president-elect
thought this was a jim-dandy idea, so long as he could have the list
within two weeks.
A few days later, the pair flew to Plains, Ga., to deliver the list to
Mr. Carter. Inexplicably, the new president broke down in tears. Mr.
Sheldon mistakenly believed that Mr. Carter was weeping because he was
so touched by the gesture. But the more canny Mr. Robertson
immediately realized that the president was crying because ``the
appointment process is out of his hands.'' The cabal of sinister
forces in the thrall of Lucifer that secretly rules America would
never seriously consider any personnel suggestions advanced by the Pat
Robertsons of the world. It's nice to know that _somebody_ in the
Carter administration knew what he was doing, even if it had to be the
Prince of Evil.
Pat Robertson is known to millions of Americans who have velour
tapestries of poker-playing doggies and Confederate flags hanging from
their walls as the chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network and
The Family Channel, and as the host of the talk show ``The 700 Club,''
where his permanent village idiot's grin gives him the appearance of a
trailer-park David Letterman.
But Mr. Robertson is more than a smarmy tele-evangelist; he is also an
author, a philosopher and a statesman. In 1988 he ran a serious
campaign to with the Republican nomination for the presidency,
performingly creditably in the sovereignly bizarre state of Iowa before
quietly fading away. During that campaign, he briefly suppressed the
all-round nuttiness that is his stock in trade, hoping to fuse his
huge following of couch potato airheads with mainstream Republicans to
form a powerful grass-roots coalition. But mainstream Republicans
told him to get lost. Having been rebuffed by the electorate, Mr.
Robertson is now free to return ot the space-cadet political theories
that got him off the ground in the first place. Those theories are
contained in his new book, ``The New World Order'' (Word Publishing,
319 pages, $17.99).
The way Mr. Robertson has things sized up, the current disarray in the
Soviet Union is part of a secret Russkie plot to lull the West into a
false sense of security. The August KGB coup was deliberately
``programmed to fail,'' so that the U.S. would stop spending money on
defense. Eventually, the role of defending the world will fall to
the hated United Nations, whose armies will suppress Christianity,
wipe out free enterprise, force the entire planet ot live under a
single government - the New World Order - and deliver humanity into
the hands of Satan.
To understand how the World According to Pat reached such a horrible
impasse you must go back to the French Freemasons of the 18th century,
then work your way up through the Bavarian Order of Illuminati and
Buonarrotti's Sublime Perfect Masters in the 19th century, which will
take you right up to Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, who were both working
for the American Money Trust, which, of course, financed the Russian
Revolution and bought Wilson's way into the White House so that he
could set up the Federal Reserve Board and the IRS.
``Until we understand this commonality of interest between left-wing
Bolsheviks and right-wing monopolistic capitalists,'' writes Mr.
Robertson, ``we cannot fully comprehend the last seventy years of
world history nor the ongoing movement toward world government,'' Well
I admit, it did have me a bit confused.
The New World Order is a predictable compendium of the lunatic
fringe's greatest hits. Included in its pages are the usual mad
ramblings about European money powers (and we all know who _they_ are)
who hired John Wilkes Booth to knock off Abe Lincoln, the significance
of the Masonic symbols on the $1 bill, the secret clout of the Council
on Foreign Relations, the recall of General Douglas MacArthur, and the
great granddaddy of both ultra-right-wing _and_ ultra-left-wing
conspiracy theories: the Trilateral Commission.
In his energetically crackpot style, Mr. Robertson weaves a wild tale
of international and extraterrestrial conspiracies, involving everyone
from deposed Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza to Alger Hiss to
Woodrow Wilson - an unwitting tool of Satan, whose role in the
establishment of the Federal Reserve eventually resulted in the
nation's abdication of the most Machiavellian creature of all time:
Paul Volcker. Indeed the only credible idea in Mr. Robertson's book
is his oblique suggestion that demonic forces may have been
instrumental in the birth of the Fed and the IRS.
Still, as paranoid pinheads with a deep distrust of democracy go, he's
a bit of a disappointment. As he rambled on and on about the Panama
Canal and - you guessed it - the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. I found
myself longing for some of my other favorite Bonzo Dog Band
materials. Where, for example, is the stuff about JFK's secret
meeting with Martin Borman in the Bermuda Triangle? Where is the
stuff about extraterrestrials visiting the Mayans and telling them to
give the Spear of Longinus to Elvis? And what self-respecting
harbinger of doom would write an apocalyptic jeremaid _without_once_
_mentioning_the_Knights_Templar_and_the_Holy_Grail?
Amateur.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 92 10:38:49 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: QTD
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
politics, n:
From the Latin "poly", meaning many, and "tic", meaning
little bloodsucking insects.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Dec 91 19:30:4 EST
From: jdwren@aardvark.ucs.uoknor.edu
Subject: Radio Shack Q&A
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
Do these guys at Radio Shack ever get on your nerves, asking you
for a bunch of personal data when you're just there to buy something as
simple as a couple AA batteries? I think we should inconvenience these
people as much as they do us. A while ago I was in Enid buying a printer
cable adaptor and the guy asked me for my name.
"Ghosseindhatsghabyfaird-johnson" I replied
(blank look of confusion)
"How do you spell that?" he asked, obviously not wanting to know.
"With a hyphen" I clarified
"Once more?" he asked
"Ghosseindhatsghabyfaird-johnson"
"Could you please spell that?" he asked, glancing at the half dozen
people waiting behind me.
"Oh... just like it sounds." I said nonchalantly.
Putting down "Johnson", he went on and asked about the address.
"Washburn, Wisconsin, 14701 N.E. Wachatanoobee Parkway, Complex 3,
Building O, Appt. 1382b" I replied.
Almost through writing all this down, I said "Or did you mean
current address?"
Stoping, he said (becoming irritated) "Yes. Current address."
"Diluthian Heights, Mississippi, 1372 S. Tinatonabee Avenue,
Building 14C, Suite 2, Box 138201." I replied quite slowly.
Waiting until he finished I said "No, wait, it's NORTH Tinatonabee
Avenue." Annoyed, he backed up and changed it.
"I think." I interjected.
"And is all this correct?" he asked in a standard manner.
"Of course not." I replied, leaving, "If you want my REAL name and
address, look at the damned credit card receipt."
A little mean, I must admit, but no jury would convict me... At least,
none that had been to Radio Shack.
[We have 3 Radio Shack's in town. The last purchase I made, I got
information at one, and used it at the other. So, the manager of the
first store is now entered into the database instead of me. Anyone know
the name and address of the company president? --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 92 09:36:20 -0800
From: bostic@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: The Satirist and the Inker
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.CS.Berkeley.EDU
The Satirist and the Inker
[ an editorial column ]
The Wall Street Journal, December 18 1991
According to a Universal Press Syndicate promotional pamphlet,
``Doonesbury 1970-1990, What a Long, Strange Strip It's Been,'' Gary
Trudeau has been called ``our leading satirist and commentator'' and
``new, biting, pointed.'' So what happens when someone else pokes fun
at the great satirist? His people don't laugh, and they get legal.
In a November 21 Aside here called ``Garry Vanilli,'' we noted a
report in Entertainment Weekly that for the past 20 years someone
other than Mr. Trudeau has drawn the final version of the cartoon. A
Don Carlton of Kansas City has toiled, largely anonymously, as the
``inker'' of the cartoon. In response to a letter from Mr. Carlton,
who said he inks ``Garry's roughs.'' Entertainment Weekly said it
``overemphasized'' Mr. Carlton's role as ghosting for Mr. Trudeau.
In calls and letters to the Journal, Mr. Trudeau's syndication service
has now demanded retractions and apologies, though our report
accurately disclosed that Mr. Carlton is the one whose finished product
appears in the strip. Then along came the lawyers for the syndicate,
threatening that Mr. Trudeau is not a ``public figure'' for purposes
of libel law. We'd be happy to litigate whether Mr. Trudeau is more
or less a public figure than targets of his cartoons, but we're
happy to say that if our ``Garry Vanilli'' headline and reference to
Cartoon Synching suggested that we consider Mr. Trudeau a complete
fraud, we somewhat overstated the case. We were using what an
experienced satirist might recognize as hyperbole, caricature,
lampooning or burlesque.
Still, Mr. Trudeau's representatives elevate an interesting subject -
how Doonesbury is created. At Yale, Mr. Trudeau did all the work on
his cartoon. However, according to the Kansas City-based Universal
Press Syndicate, about a year after it started distributing the column
- some 20 years ago - the syndicator arranged for Mr. Carlton to help.
Under this arrangement, Mr. Trudeau faxes pencil sketches of the
cartoon to Mr. Carlton in Kansas City, which Mr. Carlton then turns
into the finished cartoon.
The use of an inker for art and lettering is rare for political
cartoonists, though fairly common for newspaper comic strips, many of
which credit the collaborator. Mr. Carlton got no credit for the
strip's 1975 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.
In our attempt to resolve the new-compelling question of who
contributes how much of what to Doonesbury, we asked the syndicate for
a copy of past Trudeau pencil sketches to compare with the final
cartoon. Universal Press Syndicate chose not to provide a copy. The
syndicate's Lee Salem told us he ``couldn't see the relevance.''
Newsweek reported last week that ``Trudeau inexplicably destroys the
true pencil originals.''
Museum curators may be interested. There is in fact quite a
difference between the plain sketches of the pre-Carlton Doonesbury
cartoons collected in ``The Original Yale Cartoons'' and the polished
drawing and toning in today's strip. Artistic styles can change over
time, but in any case Doonesbury's creation remains a far cry from,
say, Thomas Nast, whose Boss Tweed cartoons some 130 years ago for
Harper's Weekly reflected Nasts's study at the National Academy of
Design.
Aside from the question of Mr. Trudeau's inker-who-gets-no-byline,
there is these days some discussion of the satire itself. Some
newspapers refused to print his recent cartoons claiming that Vice
President Quayle used drugs in 1982 and that the government is somehow
covering up. A drug dealer who made this accusation broke down while
being interviewed on the subject for ``60 Minutes'' last year, as a
gambit to get out of jail. Mr. Trudeau has cited another convict,
Brett Kimberlin, now in jail for perjury, marijuana smuggling and
setting off bombs. The Los Angeles Times published an editor's note
saying they'd publish the strip, but that ``Times reporters have
investigated the charges twice in the last three years and found no
evidence to substantiate them.''
This past Sunday in a Washington Post article headlined
``Investigative Cartooning,'' Mr. Trudeau explained his views. He
said, ``Political cartoons are a kind of reality cocktail - part fact,
part fiction, part serious and part frivolous.'' Readers, we guess,
are left to figure out which parts of the reality cocktail are fact and
which are fiction.
------------------------------
From: ATL::NSTRAGUZZI "Nick Straguzzi" 3-JAN-1992 12:28:49.98
To: @BUZZWORD_EVALUATION_COMMITTEE
[This came to me forwarded through about 7 different mailers. The
header have been removed in the interests of having more than just
this one message in Yucks.... --spaf]
"The time has come, the Walrus said,
To talk of things most dear.
Of desirements and vaporware,
Of CPU-eons and man-careers,
And whether pilotage is crossdeckable,
And Buzzword Of The Year"
OK, so the meter's off. If I could write poetry, I'd work for Hallmark.
At any rate....A new year has dawned, and with it comes the traditional and
sentimental remembrance of all the wonderful things the previous twelve months
brought our humble planet. In the case of 1991, this fond reminiscing should
take most people about six seconds, slightly more for those unable to suppress
their gag reflexes.
But before we scream "Good %^&*# Riddance" to 1991 and hurl our old wall
calendars into the trash, there's something we must do. That, of course, is to
rip each page to shreds with a weed eater, then pour gasoline over the
frag....NO! Wait! There's something ELSE we need to do first! We need to
studiously evaluate the damage the most recent crop of buzzwords, the
linguistic equivalent of biological weaponry, have done to our noble language.
Without benefit of a weed eater, to boot.
And so, fellow buzzwordologists, without further ado I bring you the Eighth
Annual Buzzword Of The Year contest! Voting veterans of vermiculated verbiage
-- i.e., those of you know who know what the hell I'm talking about -- may skip
the familiar ten paragraphs that follow and go right to the first-round
ballot, due no later than JANUARY 10TH, 1992. Newcomers, please sit tight and
read The Buzzword Manifesto below.
Buzzword Of The Week was started in March of 1984 by three engineers at RCA's
(now GE's) Advanced Technology Laboratories. It began as a reaction to the
seemingly endless string of monstrosities that hackers and computer science
authors try to pass off as legitimate technical terms. BOTW quickly evolved to
encompass words from all sources, from engineering to politics to sociology to
sports to slang. Its noble (but, alas, quixotic) goal is to stem the assault
on our language from people who are too pompous, too lazy, too weird or too
stupid to speak coherent English.
The current Buzzword Of The Week is posted on a sign by my desk -- sort of the
linguistic equivalent of an old colonial pillory. The BOTW changes every two
or three weeks depending on my mood, so over the course of a year perhaps 20
words will earn their moment of shame.
All BOTWs must have been used in public, preferably public print. On rare
cases, I'll make an exception and post one that's been used only in, say, an
internal memo. I rarely post a buzzword of my own unearthing, preferring
instead to rely on coworkers and colleagues who gleefully supply me with all
the material I can handle. About 60% of the submissions eventually become a
Buzzword Of The Week.
What constitutes a buzzword? That's tough to say. A word needs to have a
certain je ne sais quoi, something that imparts in the reader/listener a mix of
surprise, bewilderment, humor, and disgust. Typos aren't buzzwords. Neither
are foreign words, multiple-word phrases, obsolete terms, spoonerisms/slips of
the tongue, onomatopoeia or words coined in obvious jest (unless someone
doesn't get the joke and reuses it seriously.) Real words need not apply
unless they are very, very obscure or are being used in a thoroughly new
context [e.g., `Stovetop', BOTW 7 August 1990, "(v.) to cook in a conventional
manner, opposite of `to microwave': "I didn't have time to stovetop the
potatoes so I nuked them instead."] Jargon, on the other hand, is welcomed.
A good buzzword is coherent and context-free. Buzzword Of The Week is
politically neutral, though not always politically correct. We've happily
lambasted left-wing tripe (such as the odious `womyn') along with a whole host
of mindless Pentagon doublespeak (my favorite: `attrit', to kill). One thing
BOTW almost *never* does is cite the source for a word unless it's crystal
clear who coined it. I don't want to get sued.
My personal, all-time favorite Buzzword Of The Week is `defaultly', which
appeared in an error message from a popular software package. Why? Because
`default' may be used correctly as three of the four major parts of speech --
noun, verb, or adjective -- but somewhere out there lurks a cretin who insists
upon using it as an adverb.
Each January, the Buzzword Evaluation Committee (of which you can be a member
by simply returning the annual ballot) sifts through the Buzzwords Of The Week
for the past twelve months and selects one which, in their opinion, best
represents the standards of buzzword-dom. This is the Buzzword Of The Year,
and it joins the previous winners in the BuzzHall of Fame:
1990 - Infanticipating (pregnant)
1989 - Mediagenic (an event or person attractive to the media)
1988 - Copylefted (in the public domain, akin to "copyrighted")
1987 - Destaffing (to reduce one's work force; lay off)
1986 - Vaporware (software under development but not yet available)
1985 - Automagical (too complicated for outsiders to understand)
1984 - Skinware (human users of a computer program/system)
In conclusion: A language, it is true, is a living, breathing entity that must
evolve to survive. New words, representing new thoughts or concepts, enter the
lexicon, while obsolescent ones fade gently away. Words take on new usages or
subtly different shades of meaning as dictated by each generation of users.
Buzzwords, however, do none of these. Buzzwords do to a language roughly what
road salt does to car bodies.
Thanks for participating, and keep those BOTW submissions coming.
- Nick Straguzzi
3 January 1992
1991 Buzzword Of The Year -- Official Preliminary Round Ballot
Directions: Listed below are the 19 Buzzwords Of The Week for 1991. Look
through the list and, using any criteria you wish, select up to five
which you feel best embody the spirit of buzzwordology. Send your
picks to me via EMail by FRIDAY, JANUARY 10TH. The top three vote-
getters advance to the final round of balloting, which will begin the
week of January 13th. Voting is open to everyone so feel free to
distribute copies of this ballot far and wide.
Calendarized - Planned, dated, put on a timetable.
Compulation - Run-time ("computed") compilation, self-modifying code.
Deathbelt - Southern U.S. area where capital punishment is used regularly.
Disenroll - To withdraw or be expelled from school.
Ensonified - Describes area of ocean under active sonar surveillance.
Etherogenity - Of unknown origin -or- created from nothing.
Heuristicate - To develop heuristics (rules of thumb) for
Infopreneurs - Businesspeople who run software / computer services companies.
Keystrokology - Study of effective keystroke usage within a user interface.
Lookism - Discrimination by physical attractiveness (>> racism, sexism)
Megafloppage - Computing power in millions of floating pt. operations / sec.
Ombudsperson - Gender-neutral form of "ombudsman".
Optronics - Science of optical electronics (fiber optics, etc.)
Pre-Enjoyed - Used, as in "sellers of fine pre-enjoyed automobiles"
Prepend - To attach a prefix to something (>> "append" for suffixes)
Redundify - Duplicate, make redundant, to add a backup.
Subadult - A teenager or college-age person.
Stiction - "Stick" + "Friction"; what malfunctioning disk drives have.
Workalike - Something which performs in a similar manner to another.
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End of Yucks Digest
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