Date: 22 Mar 90 10:19:20 PST (Thursday) Subject: Life 6.5 ---------------------------------------------------- Steven Wright: I'm going to get a tatoo over my WHOLE BODY ... of ME, but TALLER! I bought some land that was kind of cheap. It was on someone else's property. I bought a cordless extension cord. Yesterday I bought a decaffeinated coffee table. And you can tell by looking at it. I hate to think about the past. It just brings back so many memories! Sponges grow in the ocean. That kills me. Imagine how deep the ocean would be if you took them out! I woke up and started folding my bed back into a couch and almost broke both my arms, because it's not one of those beds! I got a new shadow. I had to get rid of the other one. It wasn't doing what I was doing. I tried to DRAW my shadow once, but I couldn't ... my arm kept moving. I bought a blank tape at the stereo store, and came home and put it on my stereo. A few minutes later there's a knock at my door. It's a neighbor complaining. He's a mime. (I didn't REALLY hear him knock!) I didn't know it then, but looking back, in hind-sight, I realize that when I was younger I could see into the future. Now I'm getting all my premonitions as flashbacks! ---------------------------------------------------- Wesley: Gosh, Worf, how do Klingons get baptized? With water? Worf: Klingons do *NOT* get baptized with water. We prefer fire. ---------------------------------------------------- We are not so concerned with what the members of the Church of Jeasus Christ of Latter-day Saints think, as we are that they think. (Hugh B. Brown said something like this. Can't find the quote.) ---------------------------------------------------- I'm PROUD to be a CARBON-BASED life form! ---------------------------------------------------- What is your favorite subatomic particle: Q: What is the definition of a tachyon? A: It's a gluon that's not completely dry. ---------------------------------------------------- Heard from Jay Leno on The Tonight Show: They're filming Rocky V now. This one's being billed as "Rocky's Greatest Challenge," so I guess there's an IQ test involved. ---------------------------------------------------- These two old guys (I mean, they were really _ancient_) were sitting on a park bench warming themselves in the summer sun. A very shapely young lady walks past them. One of them turns to the other and says, "Say, do you remember how we used to chase after such young women?" The other guy thinks for several minutes and then says, "Yes, I can remember chasing them, but I don't remember why." ---------------------------------------------------- Why is there no meat in the Soviet Union? The courageous Soviet peoples have made such great strides on the road to communism that the cattle could not keep up. (from The WSJ, 3/7/90) ---------------------------------------------------- The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon resulted in many dogfights between Syrian and Israeli jet fighters. In the end, the Syrians lost over 80 planes and had a number of SAM batteries knocked out, while the Isrealis lost no planes. Sometime later the Syrian Defense Minister was shopping for weapons in Moscow. His host, the Soviet Defense Minister, was embarrassed about the scorecard from Lebanon. He told his Syrian guest, "Take anything you want - our best tanks, rifles, or surface-to-air missiles." "No, no - you don't understand!" the Syrian replied. "Last time you gave us surface-to-air missiles. This time we need surface-to-jet missiles!" ---------------------------------------------------- Bush and Gorbachev decided to get themselves frozen for a hundred years to see how the current political situation resolved itself. After the time was up they were thawed, and started to read newspapers to catch up on the situation. Gorbachev started to laugh. In response to Bush's question he said, "I see that the dollar is still getting weaker." Then Bush started to laugh. In response to Gorbachev's question of why, he said, "I read that there is renewed fighting on the German-Chinese border." ---------------------------------------------------- According to American Rifleman: Romanian national shooting team members, including 1988 free pistol gold medalist Sorin Babii, were cited for "genuine acts of heroism" by the Romanian news agency. Although reports were rather sketchy, it would seem the marksmen applied their skills to wipe out a group of "terrorists" that presumably were loyal to deposed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. To me, this would seem to make the marksmen professionals rather than amateurs and thus disqualifies them from future Olympic competition. ---------------------------------------------------- Did you hear the one about.................. There is a lady driving down a one way street going the wrong way, and a policeman hails her over to the curb and says, "Hey, lady! Didn't you see the arrows?" To which the lady replies, "Sorry, officer. I didn't even see the indians!" And along the same vein (Cartoid, in the throat).............. The same lady is driving down another one way street going the wrong way, and ANOTHER policemen waves her down and says, "Hey lady! This is a one way!" To which the lady replies, "But officer, I'm only going one way!" Once again (this could get sickening after awhile)........... The lady is driving down ANOTHER one way street going the wrong way, and another policeman pulls her over and says, "Hey, lady! Where do ya think yer goin?" To which she says, (she's getting good at this by now) "I don't know officer. But I must be late. They're all coming back!" ---------------------------------------------------- ]It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad ]crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed ]until the other has gone. ] In one of those "true facts" books there was an explination for this law. It seems that one of the state senators did not want a law passed. To to keep this particular law from passing he attached the train law to it. Hoping that that his fellow senators would discover the train law attached, see how rediculous it was, and not pass the laws. Nobody saw the the train law attached and passed both laws. This may not be the real reason, but it sounds good. And it might explain some of the laws we have to live with. ---------------------------------------------------- Years ago, I read that habaeus corpus (the principle that a person cannot be held in jail without a warrant) originally passed in the English parliment when the person counting the votes jokingly counted a fat legislator as ten votes. According to the article, the bill would not have passed otherwise. (If anyone has a solid reference for this story, email it to me. I read it in Parade magazine. I'm posting this to two very different groups, so direct follow-ups accordingly.) ---------------------------------------------------- 3 Funny telephone answering machine messages: [imitating Ensign Chekov] "Oh, sair...it was *Khan*! He made us say things...do things...he kept us from answering the phone! But Keptin was strong, and if you leave your name and number, Keptin will get back to you as soon as he can!" [BEEP] A friend of mine at school has this message, read by three people while the STAR TREK theme plays in the background. 1: Room 17, the final frontier. 2: These are the messages of Chad's answering machine. Its 2 semester mission: to seek out your name and your telepohne number. 3: To boldly inform you to wait for the tone. [BEEP] "Starship Enterprise, Uhura here, can you hold please? -- Captain, there is a transmission coming in on hailing frequency seven, do you want it on screen?" [BEEP] ------------------------ Originally-From: aurenz%tle.DEC@decwrl.dec.com (Scot Aurenz, zko2-3/n30) The Five Yorkshiremen: The Next Generation Y1: Who would've thought that we'd be on a ship that could separate in times of battle and keep most of the crew safe? I remember when the whole ship used to go to yellow alert every time we entered an ion storm. Y2: You were lucky. We had to go to double yellow alert whenever the captain fell into an obelisk, came out thinking he was a god, and married an Indian woman. Y3: You were lucky. We had to go to yellowish-red alert every time a woman came on board and stole the first officer's brain. Y4: You were lucky to have a woman on board. We had to go to red alert when we were attacked by a mutant salt creature disguised as a woman. Y5: Luxury! We had to go to double red alert every time the captain found an overloading phaser in his quarters. Y1. Oh, we used to dream of having an overloading phaser in the captain's quarters. We had to go to triple red alert every time the blood- sucking gas cloud got into the ship through impulse vent number two. Y2: You were lucky. We had to go to quadruple red alert, blow up our own ship, steal a Klingon bird of prey (which doesn't even have a red alert), go to Vulcan to revive the dead captain, go back in time and get two whales, come back and crash land in San Francisco Bay, all on a Klingon triple black alert. Y3: And if you'd try to tell that to these young officers today, they wouldn't believe you. Others: Nope. No they wouldn't. ---------------------------------------------------- The following is quoted from an interview with Freeman Dyson in the Spring 1988 TECHNE Journal of Technological Studies from the VTS department at Stanford. There are lots of idiots, of course, in NASA, but my view of NASA is rather like the Royal Air Force used to be in the old days when I worked for the Royal Air Force during the war. If you had an officer who was a dud, you put him in the command headquarters because he would do less damage there than he would out in the squadrons. So all the duds accumulated at the headquarters -- this is what has happened at NASA for the last thirty years or so. Acutally, there are lots of very fine things, but they're all out in the stations. If you look at JPL out here in California, or you look at Goddard which is in Maryland, they're doing very well. I think JPL is running the Voyager missions, which of course have been beautifully done. The Voyager went to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and will go to Neptune next year. That's a fantastically good mission, which is run at JPL, and then there is the IUE, run at Goddard. So there are these very good, what NASA calls, the centers, these places where the technical work is done. And there is this terrible bunch of idiots in Washington at the headquarters which messes everything up. So I think if you just abolish the Washington office, NASA would be in very good shape. We actually tried that out during World War II. There was a very analogus problem we had in 1943. The German armaments industry was doing very well, they were producing a tremendous lot of armaments and we wanted to put a stop to that. We found out thtat all the head offices of these armament firms were in Dusseldorf and that was where all the paperwork was done. So we decided we would really destroy Dusseldorf and disorganize the whole system. We went in there one night and it was a very succesful operation and Dusseldorf really burned down to the ground. And then, in the next few weeks, the armament production went up like a rocket. ---------------------------------------------------- The following is a BMW ad that appeared in the GLOBE and MAIL last April 1. It was a "genuine" BMW ad. BMW INTRODUCES ITS NEWEST INNOVATION: ROAD WARMERS. Having spend the last twenty years perfecting the sports sedan, BMW has now taken up the ultimate challenge - perfecting the road. Road Warmers are the result of twenty years of German engineering. And represent perhaps the single most important contribution to the automotive industry in the past decade. Road Warmers employ laser technology to ensure constant road conditions. The way in which they operate is simple. Underneath the car, four pivoting convex lasers are mounted in front of each wheel. The lasers are aimed at the pavement directly in front of the tread stance. They work in tandem with five speed turbo fans. So not only do they manage to melt snow and ice, they also dry the road of excess moisture. And virtually eliminate the need to clear your driveway during winter. Inside the car, the driver is continually apprised of climatic conditions through BMW's onboard computer and Active Check Control. This enables the driver to set the road to a temperature that best suits their level of performance. The result is a road that never changes. Four seasons become one. And performance is assured like never before. Eventually Road Warmers will be standard on all new BMWs. But as part of a special offer, your dealer will install them on your present car free of charge. But you should hurry. Currently offer is only available April 1st, so you would be a fool to miss this one. THE ULTIMATE DRIVING EXPERIENCE. BMW ---------------------------------------------------- REAL PROGRAMMERS: Don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts - look how much good it did for them. Don't have a piece of the Berlin Wall on their desk - unless it has some grafitti applauding Gorby. Don't Believe in schedules. Planners Make up schedules. managers "firm up" schedules. Frightened coders strive to Meet schedules. Real programmers Ignore schedules. Like vending machine popcorn. Coders pop it in the microwave oven. Real programmers use the heat given off by the CPU. They can tell what job is running just by listening to the rate of popping. Know every nuance of every instruction and use them all in every real program. Puppy architects won't allow execute instructions to address another execute as the target instruction. Real programmers despise such petty restrictions. Don't bring brown bag lunches to work. If the vending machine sells it, they eat it. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche... Real programmers' programs never work right the first time. But if you throw them on the machine they can be patched into working in "only a few" 30-hour debugging sessions. ---------------------------------------------------- It is not wise to press the break key, my son. When all else fails, burn the instructions. Do not believe in miracles, rely on them. The solution to a problem changes the problem. Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can. That's not a "bug", that's a feature. If you can't debug it, deplug it. It is easier to write an incorrect program than to understand a correct one. Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment. "Confucious say too much." -- recent Chinese saying Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down, byte, byte, byte. Quit reading these messages, and get back to work. Celibacy is not hereditary. ---------------------------------------------------- ANCESTRY WHEN SPEAKING OF OUR ANCESTRY, MY MOTHER'S EYES WOULD SHINE, AND PROUDLY SHE WOULD TELL US ALL: "YOU'RE OF THE TUDOR LINE." BUT FATHER WITH A SMILE WOULD SAY: "WHILE BEARING THAT IN MIND, YOU KEEP YOUR EYES ON GOALS AHEAD; NOT THOSE THAT BE BEHIND." "YOU HAVE A NOBLE ANCESTRY, BUT ALL ARE DEAD AND GONE, 'TIS YOU WHO HAVE TO PROVE YOUR WORTH, NOT THOSE WHO'VE JOURNEYED ON." "AND BACK ALONG THAT TUDOR LINE, 'TIS SORRY TRUTH I STATE, THERE MAY BE SOME YOU CAN'T APPROVE, AND EVEN SOME YOU'D HATE." "THE WAY TO PROVE YOUR ANCESTRY, IS WHAT YOU ARE YOURSELF; NOT BY THE CHARTED FAMILY TREE, IN BOOK UPON THE SHELF." "SO TRY TO BE AN ANCESTOR, WITHIN THE TIME ALLOWED, OF WHOM YOUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN, IN THE FUTURE CAN BE PROUD." ----------------------------------------------------
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