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Subject: Life C.Q
To: jwry.dli@netcom.com
From: "cate3@netcom.com" [Henry_Cate_III@netcom.com]
Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com
Status: R
---------------------------------------
Date: 30 Mar 94 17:00:06 PST (Wednesday)
Subject: Life C.Q
The following is from dsc.cuties, run by:
lindsay@dscatl.atl.ga.us (Lindsay Cleveland)
----------------------------------------------------
Peas create road havoc
BONN, Sept 9, 1991 (AFP) - A farm truck caused chaos at Hattstedt, northern
Germany, late Sunday when it overturned and spilled 14 tonnes of peas over the
road.
A car and a motorcycle skidded on the green slick, but their drivers were
unhurt. Traffic was blocked for several hours.
[It could have bean soy much worse -- corn you imagine the story that
might turnip if it had happened at another thyme, like rush hour? The
news-peppers would have stories of cars squashed and people kale-d.
And did the German Greens party protest?
Lettuce leaf this subject before you feel compelled to beet me ...
assuming you don't carrot all about puns. --spaf]
--------------------------
Contributed by: durway@rtp.dg.com (Lindsey Durway)
Someone just told me about this one, so I went and verified. It's
another case of development slipping one past the "suits:"
When the spelling checker of FrameMaker 2.1 encounters the word
Interleaf in a document, it flags it as a misspelling. What does
it offer as the correct spelling? "FrameMaker"!
(FYI, FrameMaker and Interleaf are competing documentation products.)
--------------------------
Quotes from "Country" Magazine (Dec 1993):
Pleasant days are just ordinary days made better by good people.
--
Yesterday's nest egg will hardly buy today's birdhouse.
--
Kind words are short to speak, but their echos are endless.
--
All the good maxims have been written. In only remains to put them into
practice.
--
--------------------------
Contributed by: monet01%umcvmb.bitnet@utcs.utoronto.ca (Gerry Howser)
Heard on the local radio KJMO "Joke of the Day" 6/11/91:
Q: Why can you only have two doors on a chicken coup?
A: If it had four it would be a chicken sedan.
--------------------------
Contributed by: merriam@ecst.csuchico.edu (Charles Merriam)
I made this up after we hired a programmer from Hewlett-Packard.
A programmer for Hewlett-Packard went to the doctor complaining
about pain in her wrists. The doctor poked and prodded her (with
cold instruments) for a while and issued of a prognosis.
"You have carpal tunnel syndrome, but its in its early stages.
You should be able to continue work, but you should give up
half of your programming."
"Which half? Writing memos about it or attending meetings about it?"
--------------------------
Contributed by: zook@server.cs.jhu.edu
Does anybody really know what time it is?
This was relayed to me by a friend who went to Sweden for training in
psychoanalysis. As an introduction to the subject, he had to answer
the following question:
You are a novice psychoanalyst, and your first patient enters the
room. The patient asks, "What time is it?" Do you answer
a) Tell me more about yourself.
b) Have you ever asked your father/mother that question?
c) We still have fifty more minutes.
d) What time do _you_ think it is?
submitted by Sheila Braun, as told by Frank Castro.
--------------------------
Contributed by: walrus@bessel.umd.edu (Grig Larson)
Based on ther message on how to deal with stockbrokers who try to sell you
their garbage by calling you right before lunch break, here is a similar
story based on one very boring afternoon at home with a Long-Distance
Company [this was done just after AT&T Broke up, some names have been altered
due to poor memory].
RING RING RING
Me: Hello?
SM: Hello, I am Gern Blanston representing the Flint Long Distance company. How are you today, sir?
Me: [bemused] Fine.
SM: May I ask you what type of long distance company you are using?
Me: [now witha devilish grin] Duuuh... I duuno....
SM: You don't know? Well how would you like to be hooked up with the best
sattelite phone network of the 80's? We use-
Me: Duh, sure. Can I call my freind from, uh, far away?
SM: Er, yes. Our long distance service uses the best-
Me: [trying to keep from giggling] He lives in Pango Pango...
SM: Yes, I see. Well you can call your friend overseas at a rate you'll-
Me: He has a lizard you know.... his name is Ralph.
SM: I see, well you can-
Me: Ralph the lizard. He is green and sits in a tree.
SM: Well-
Me: A palm tree... with lots of, uh... leaves.
SM: [haggardly] Well, you will save money by using our new optical-
Me: Save money? Really?
SM: Of course! And if you-
Me: Well, how much is it per yard?
SM: Pardon me? [really threw him there]
Me: How much is it per yard. Pango Pango is pretty far away from here...
SM: Well, I never really thought about it that way, but I can assure you-
Me: Will you have to drill a hole in my roof?
SM: Ah, no. You see, it works like this-
Me: 'Cause my friend Tom got one of them black dishes that you put on your
roof... and then he fell off and hurt himself real bad...
SM: Well, me don't actually come to your house-
Me: Crushed his wife's poodle. Flattened him right out, he did...
SM: If you could give me a minute to explain the proceess-
Me: Did I tell you I had a friend in Pango Pango?
I kept doing this act for about 20 minutes before the guy just finnaly gave me
his number to call him back. That salesman hung on like a pit bull! I guess
he must have thought I was so stupid, he would eventually sell me something.
--------------------------
Contributed by: langer@sfu.ca (Steve Langer)
In an article about the merits of zoos, the Georgia Straight, a free
Vancouver weekly, reports
Dr. Peter Crowcroft of the department of zoology at the University of
Texas is a former director of zoos. In a UBC lecture earlier sponsored
by the Vancouver Institute earlier this year, he said: "You cannot
overestimate the ignorance of the average person. We once did a very
interesting experiment. We had an empty pen with a barn at the back. We
left the barn door open and put up a sign that read: 'UNICORN. EXTINCT
DUE TO EDUCATION. FEEDS ON FLOWER PETALS. ATTRACTED TO VIRGINS.' Most
people that came along tried to peer in the open door, convinced that
the unicorn was hiding somewhere in the barn. Except for one little boy
who said to his father, 'But Daddy! There's no such thing.' To which
Daddy replied, 'Don't be stupid. Can't you read the sign?'"
--------------------------
Contributed by: mrspoc!apple!mrspoc.transact.com!itkin@apple (Steven List)
[ I don't know where this came from. My mother gave me a photocopy with
no attribution. But I liked it! ]
Children!
Tired of Being
Harassed
By Your
Stupid Parents?
ACT NOW!!
Move out, get a job
Pay your own bills...
While you still know
Everything.
--------------------------
Contributed by: thompson (Ken Thompson)
Kruschev was giving a speech in which he condemned Joseph Stalin as a
tyrant and who should have been shot early on. An unknown member of
the audience asked, "if you knew this, why didn't you do something?"
Kruschev stopped, scanned the audience, and demanded, "who said that?"
There was no response--total silence from the audience. After a
moment Kruschev continued, "that is why!"
--------------------------
Contributed by: thompson (Ken Thompson)
(to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
in a flash.
Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
--------------------------
Contributed by: jerbil@ultra.com (Joseph Beckenbach {Adapter Software Release Engr})
_A_Guide_for_Scientists_and_Other_Professionals_, originally cited to
Deborah Andrews and Margaret Blickle. -- Joseph]
If you have any doubt whether your reader will understand an
abbreviation, write the term out in full. Otherwise, he will be left in
the position of the farmer who shot a crow, then noticed the tag on its
leg: "Wash. Biol. Surv.". The next day he was talking with his neighbor
about the last night's dinner: "I followed the directions, washed it, boiled
it, and put it on the table. Damn crow still tasted awful."
--------------------------
Contributed by: margaret@bucolix.ece.ncsu.edu (Margaret Hudacko)
Heard several places around campus:
A Department Head, Assistant Head, Full Professor and Assistant
Professor decided to go fishing. Early the next morning the four got
up and headed out to the lake. They had gotten almost clear to the
other side to a favored fishing spot when the Assistant Head exclaimed
that he had forgotten the bait. "No problem," said the Assistant
Professor and jumped out of the boat, ran across the water to the dock
on the other side of the lake and returned with bait in hand. "I don't
know," groused the Department Head, "do you really think we should
grant someone tenure that's never learned to swim?"
--------------------------
Contributed by: ting@Barra.COM
[ These are actual news stories from 1992, compiled by Bill Mandel
of the San Francisco Examiner. ]
One of the men arrested for looting in the L.A. riots is a $3 million
Lotto winner who recieves $120,000 a year from the state.
A Polish pro soccer team acquired two top players from a Kiev squad for
a truckload of potatos.
An off-duty Oklahoma city police officer ran from the stands at a high
school basketball game and arrested an official who, the cop claimed, was
not calling enough fouls against the visiting team.
The CIA classified as "secret" the report of its Openness Task Force.
A color-bar test pattern on a Los Angeles television drew higher ratings
than two competing stations' 10 p.m. newscasts.
--------------------------
Contributed by: urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs)
Grave winters?
Good news for people who get lethargic when winter arrives:
A German physics lab has reported that the onset of winter increases
the Earth's gravity. Finally there's a scientifically confirmed excuse
for not getting up when it's cold out there!
The real reason, unfortunately, turned out to be that the basement of said
lab was used to store a big heap of coal, for heating during the winter.
Apparently these things are big enough to reliably affect gravitometers.
--------------------------
The liar's punishment is not simply that he is not believed, but
that he cannon believe anyone else.
-- George Bernard Shaw
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
-- Elbert Hubbard.
--------------------------
Contributed by: VSLARRY@weizmann.weizmann.ac.il (Larry Israel)
Modern Youth
A boy with a bad cold was taken to the doctor by his mother. After examining
him, the doctor said, "There is not much I can do. He has a virus."
After they left the doctor's office, the boy said to his mother, "That doctor
sure is dumb. He thinks that I am a computer."
--------------------------
Contributed by: uunet!frame.com!sbs (Steven Sargent)
Subj: FUN: Grammatically correct C declarations....
auto accident;
register voters;
static electricity;
struct by_lightning;
void *where_prohibited;
char broiled;
short circuit;
short changed;
long johns;
unsigned long letter;
double entendre;
double trouble;
--------------------------
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered, either by
themselves or by others.
-- Mark Twain
Why doesn't the fellow who says "I'm no speechmaker," let it go at
that instead of giving a demonstration.
-- Kim Hubbard
--------------------------
Gold star: Henry Smith, arrested moments after returning home with a
stolen stereo. His error was having tattooed on his forehead in large
capital letters the words "Henry Smith". His lawyer told the court:"My
client is not a very bright young man".
Silver star: Michael Robinson, who rang police to deliver a bomb hoax,
but became so agitated about the mounting cost of the call that he
began screaming "Call me back" and left his phone number.
Bronze star: Paul Monkton, who used as his getaway vehicle a van with
his name and phone number painted in foot-high letters on the side.
--------------------------
While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is
busy making mistakes and becoming superior.
-- Henry C. Link
You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with
the won-lost record of the referee.
-- John H. Holcomb
--------------------------
Contributed by: gatech!ncrws1.peachtreecityga.ncr.com!jfruecht (John Fruecht)
This is compliments of Jerry Walker:
This story was related by a baseball announcer, who attributed it to
Honus Wagner.
Way back when Honus played, they didn't have stadium lights, and
when it got dark you couldn't see what you were doing very well. One
time he was playing in the outfield and the ball was hit his way, but
he just lost it in the darkness. Fortunately a rabbit was running by
at the time, and he grabbed it and threw it to first for the out.
This was the very first time anyone was ever thrown out by a hare.
--------------------------
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