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From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
Message-Id: [199408181412.HAA21474@netcom6.netcom.com]
To: JWry.dl@netcom.com
Subject: Life B.K
Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com
Status: R
---------------
Date: 21 Dec 93 15:53:33 PST (Tuesday)
Subject: Life B.K
All of the following are selections from Keith Bostic's mailing list
bostic@vangogh.cs.berkeley.edu
--------------------------
From: welty@balltown.cma.com (richard welty)
To: italian-cars@balltown.cma.com
And so it came to pass as european unification progressed that an
important decision was made: in order to pacify the british right
wing, continental europe would switch to driving on the left side
of the road. the date for the change was set, and widely publicized.
the day of the change over came.
in Germany, every single driver switched sides.
in France, not one single driver switched sides.
in Italy, no one could tell the difference.
--------------------------
Dust was the color of the sky.
Dust was the color of the town.
The young sheriff moved toward the railway platform, pausing
only to wipe his moist palms on his holsters.
He watched the Union Pacific engine hurtle around the bend and
screech to a clanging, hissing stop. Silently, the Dalton boys swung
from the train onto the station platform. Suddenly the sheriff found
himself staring down the barrels of their shotguns! The street behind
him was empty but for the rolling tumbleweeds.
There was nowhere to turn for help.
As his hands crept slowly toward his gun belt he knew he had
to say it now or forever hold his peace. A crooked smile played about
the corners of his mouth, as he drawled, "Boys, I want you to hear me
and hear me good. Just remember, that Xerox is a registered trademark
of Xerox Corporation and, as its brand name, should be used only to
identify its products and services."
--------------------------
Subj: Re: Athena Design Announces Psychic Tech Support Hotline
From: Mike Jittlov [jittlov@gumby.cs.caltech.edu]
Bunch of loonies, if you ask me.
I've telepathed my phone number at them NINE TIMES,
and they still haven't called. Might as well be attorneys.
--------------------------
From: schmidt@pixar.com (Andrew Schmidt)
Choose two:
1) Enjoy the work.
2) Make lots of money.
3) Operate within the law.
--------------------------
"Sweating Hydrogen." Chemical & Engineering News 71(45):66, 8 November.
A number of C&E News readers have noted that the November 1993 Lands'
End catalog carries an ad for thermal underwear which claims to remove
"H2O (also known as sweat)" through evaporation by separating the "H2"
from the "O". One reader noted that "`one wouldn't want to light a
match in a room full of people wearing this underwear.'"
--------------------------
From: "Saturday Night Live" 11/13/93
"While Americans are divided on NAFTA, the North American
Free Trade Agreement, they fully support NAPTA, the North
American Perot Trade Agreement. This agreement would allow
the US to trade Ross Perot to Mexico for a less annoying
politician to be named at a later time."
--------------------------
From: Nik_Gervae (Nik Gervae)
Shamelessly copied out of today's Merc:
Calling all wimps: If you've ever dreamed of crushing and toppling
foes, of becoming a 500-pound warrior, wish no more. Head instead to
Sharky's Beach Bar & Eater and check out what has become one of
Seattle's trendiest bar games.
Forget billiards and darts, even Velcro wall-jumping. The game to try
these days is inflatable sumo wrestling.
People offended by ethnic lampoons and fat jokes may want to avoid this
one. Sumo wrestling is a revered national sport in Japan. Interest
spread to the United States earlier this year when Chad Rowan of
Hawaii, wrestling under the name Akebono, became the first American to
be crowned yokozuna, or the sport's grand champion.
Plastic Sumo
Inflatable sumo wrestling, though, has nothing to do with the sport. In
this bar game, players slip into a rubberized plasic suit that zips up
like a sleeping bag. The approximately $2,400, flesh-colored suit,
which features breasts and a thong-like diaper, is pumped with an air
compressor.
In one instant, the suit produces thunder thighs and a monstrous gut. A
helmet with a black wig cut in a blunt chop with a pigtail on the crown
is put on.
Rick Kirkland, managing directory of the Napier, New Zealand, company
that created the concept, said the genesis of the suits was "almost
accidental."
He said they started out as safety suits for a different game --
horizontal bungee jumping, in which people are flung sideways by
elastic cords.
"Then someone said, hey, it sort of looks like a fat guy!" said
Kirkland.
Belly Bumping
After the suit is on, players hop and waddle on a wrestling mat, where
they bump bellies and bounce off each other. Some get seriously
airborne. When a player is down, he or she can't get up without the
help of two assistants.
"It feels like a nurse is doing a blood-pressure check on your whole
body," said Kevin Caldwell, a 23-year-old Seattle work-release prison
counselor, who had just wrestled his friend and won.
"It's like your surrounded by a trampoline," he added. "I hit him (his
friend) and I automatically flipped and did a 180 in the air."
"It's very popular now, the way karaoke was the big thing for a while,"
said Mark Eckardt, bar manager of H D Hotspurs, which features the game
every Wednesday night.
--------------------------
Subj: Can you tell these people have too much time on their hands?
CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTS UP VIA THE INTERNET
[PRESS RELEASE]
Dec. 7, 1993 - Employees of Cygnus Support in Mountain View,
California, discovered when they came to work today that they can
light the company Christmas tree without leaving their computer
consoles. Engineers at this four-year-old software startup last night
reprogrammed the company's internal computer network to enable users
of the network to issue commands to the decorations on the tree.
A Cygnus engineer sits in front of his Unix XWindows
workstation and brings up a windowed, mouse-drive application called
"xmastree". Clicking the mouse over the correct gadget turns on
lights on the seven-and-one-half foot tall evergreen in the
lobby of Cygnus Headquarters. Clicking the mouse over another gadget
turns other decorations, including bubble lights and musical bells, on
or off.
Currently, only users on Cygnus's internal network can
actually control the Christmas tree, but anyone at any Internet site
anywhere can discover the current status of the Cygnus christmas tree
by issuing the command, "finger xmastree@cygnus.com". The command will
report whether the lights, bubbles, and bells are on or off.
Cygnus engineers, when not playing with their Christmas toys,
write and maintain software tools such as compilers, tools which enable
programmers to create new computer programs. Since many of Cygnus' customers
are engaged in embedded systems programming, Cygnus uses X-10 controllers
to enable and disable target single board computers during testing.
"Cygnoids" Jason Molenda and Brian Smith extended the principle to the
Christmas tree this year and added the spiffy graphical user interface
called "xmastree" for the amusement of their fellow employees.
The cost of the decorations plus control hardware used on the
tree itself (exclusive of the computers on the Cygnus network) was
about $100.
For further information, contact Cindy Jepsen, Cygnus Support,
1937 Landings Drive, Mountain View, CA (415) 903-1400 (email cindy@cygnus.com).
--------------------------
From: Markus Weber [weber@dfki.uni-kl.de]
I found this gem in O'Reilly's "!%@::" book:
Is there a message in your mailbox with a very long address running off
your screen? This is probably mail from Germany showing the whole name
of the host, one or two organizational subdomains, and the organization
plus town, as shown in the following example:
anke@laura.irb.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
The Germans are logical and precise in their addressing. On the other
hand, paper mail bearing those email addresses has already been properly
delivered by the German surface post office."
--------------------------
Subj: Clever Pranks
]From a Washington Post Contest of a few weeks ago:
Get a number of cats with the same colors and markings as Socks.
Release them at various points on the block surrounding the White
House. Watch the tourists and secret service scramble.
Contact CNN at Noon on Thanksgiving day and tell them that the
little pop-up thermometers on frozen turkeys whave been discovered
to be used hypodermic needles.
--------------------------
From: mo@uunet.uu.net (Mike O'Dell)
Also, if you like the SR71, you MUST have the two books "Sled Driver"
and "The Untouchables" put out by Mach One press. Beautiful coffee
table books. written by a real Sled pilot and full of his photographs
(now a pro photog in retirement). "More people have stood on the top
of Mt. Everest than have been in an SR-71."
In one section, the high-speed photo-recon run over Lybia (after the
F111 strikes), he is reading the Mach-meter - the last number he
mentions literally is Mach 3.71 - and then later goes on to say, as she
is still accellerating, that he looks up at the Mach meter and sees
numbers he's not supposed to see. [...] Since France wouldn't let them
overfly, they went from England, down around Portugal, in through the
Straights of Gibraltar, over to Lybia and back to Englad the same route,
long way around. Just a little over 6.5 hours. Look at a map.
--------------------------
From: Marie Eaton [eaton@henson.cc.wwu.edu]
The National Rifle Association's Good Neighbor Award for 1993 went to
the thoughtful Mark Jones, who had the forsight to put a silencer on
his M111 assault rifle when the rabbit he was hunting ran into the local
library. Good job Mark!
--------------------------
From: brennan@hal.com (Dave Brennan)
December figures from the International Monetary Fund reveal that
the U.S government's subsidy to the dairy industry in 1986 worked
out to $1,139 for every cow in the country. (That is the greater
than the average annual income for half the world's population.)
--------------------------
You've got to remember, there are at least 35 schools in the top 10.
-- From the Dean of a business program to the Chronicle
of Higher Eductation, on nationally published rankings
of schools.
--------------------------
This was in today's Mercury News, an interview with someone named Brent
Waters:
Q: Why did Mary travel (some 70 miles from Nazareth) in her condition?
Couldn't Joseph have registered for her?
A: Yes. The only reason Mary would travel is because she wanted Jesus
to be born in the place of Joseph's ancestry. That would give him
extra rights, including a tax break.
--------------------------
On the 12th day of Christmas my vendor gave to me:
12 days to set up
11 acronyms
10 more megahertz
9 brand new standards
8 more megs of RAM
7 minor upgrades
6 hidden features
5 tons of docs
4 new API's
3 more months of waiting
2 more SCSI drives
And a bug fix for Windows NT.
(c) 1993 The Bill Gates of Hell Society
--------------------------
[You really have to watch your friends]
Jim Dixon didn't run for office. He only received one vote in the last
election--but that was all it took to be elected as an official in one of
State College's voting precints.
Dixon (junior-industrial engineering) received one write-in vote for judge
of elections in the East Central No. 2 precinct. No one ran for the
position and Dixon's name was the only write-in.
The precinct encompasses Beaver and Nittany avenues and Allen Street. The
polling place is located at 225 E. Foster Ave.
On Election Day, one of Dixon's friends, Joe Schultze of 251 S. Pugh St.,
wrote in Dixon's name for judge of elections.
Dixon was informed of his landslide victory in a letter from the Centre
County Board of Commissioners.
"I didn't even know that he was going to write me in," Dixon said. I didn't
campaign for it or anything."
And now, he doesn't want the job.
After hearing what would be expected of him, Dixon said he could not handle
the responsibilities of being both a student and an elected official. "I'm
not at all interested in politics," Dixon said. "I don't think it would be
a benefit to me."
Dixon said he will be going home to New Jersey for the summer and would have
been unable to work at the primary election. He said he did not want to
miss classes to work in the general election.
--------------------------
'Twas the night before Christmas and Santa's a wreck...
How to live in a world that's politically correct?
His workers no longer would answer to "Elves",
"Vertically Challenged" they were calling themselves.
And labor conditions at the north pole
Were alleged by the union to stifle the soul.
Four reindeer had vanished, without much propriety,
Released to the wilds by the Humane Society.
And equal employment had made it quite clear
That Santa had better not use just reindeer.
So Dancer and Donner, Comet and Cupid,
Were replaced with 4 pigs, and you know that looked stupid!
The runners had been removed from his sleigh;
The ruts were termed dangerous by the E.P.A.
And people had started to call for the cops
When they heard sled noises on their roof-tops.
Second-hand smoke from his pipe had his workers quite frightened.
His fur trimmed red suit was called "Unenlightened."
And to show you the strangeness of life's ebbs and flows,
Rudolf was suing over unauthorized use of his nose
And had gone on Geraldo, in front of the nation,
Demanding millions in over-due compensation.
So, half of the reindeer were gone; and his wife,
Who suddenly said she'd enough of this life,
Joined a self-help group, packed, and left in a whiz,
Demanding from now on her title was Ms.
And as for the gifts, why, he'd ne'er had a notion
That making a choice could cause so much commotion.
Nothing of leather, nothing of fur,
Which meant nothing for him. And nothing for her.
Nothing that might be construed to pollute.
Nothing to aim. Nothing to shoot.
Nothing that clamored or made lots of noise.
Nothing for just girls. Or just for the boys.
Nothing that claimed to be gender specific.
Nothing that's warlike or non-pacific.
No candy or sweets...they were bad for the tooth.
Nothing that seemed to embellish a truth.
And fairy tales, while not yet forbidden,
Were like Ken and Barbie, better off hidden.
For they raised the hackles of those psychological
Who claimed the only good gift was one ecological.
No baseball, no football...someone could get hurt;
Besides, playing sports exposed kids to dirt.
Dolls were said to be sexist, and should be passe;
And Nintendo would rot your entire brain away.
So Santa just stood there, disheveled, perplexed;
He just could not figure out what to do next.
He tried to be merry, tried to be gay,
But you've got to be careful with that word today.
His sack was quite empty, limp to the ground;
Nothing fully acceptable was to be found.
Something special was needed, a gift that he might
Give to all without angering the left or the right.
A gift that would satisfy, with no indecision,
Each group of people, every religion;
Every ethnicity, every hue,
Everyone, everywhere...even you.
So here is that gift, it's price beyond worth...
"May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth."
Notice: This poem is copyright 1992 by Harvey Ehrlich. It is free to
distribute, without changes, as long as this notice remains intact.
All follow-ups, requests, comments, questions, distribution rights, etc
should be made to mduhan@husc.harvard.edu . Happy Holidays!
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