Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: EMERGENCY 2999 [001/113]
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 11:54:34 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Caton (caton@netwin.co.nz) wrote:
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote:
>
> > Something about the Atari 2600 Pac-Man "BLEE BLEE BLEE BLURT" music
> > should go here but I'll let you do that part.
>
> Attention: The following transmission was brought to you by
> Nostalg-O-matic.
>
> BLEE BLEE BLEE BURT. BAHNG ... BAHNGBAHNGBAHNG BAHNG BAHNG BAHNG
> BAHNGBAHNG BAHNG BAHNG BAHNG BAHNGBAHNG
> BIP BAHNG BAHNG BIP WUUURP BAHNGBAHNG BIP WUUURP
> BIP WUUURP BAHNGBAHNG BAHNG BAHNG BAHNGBAHNG
> BEBURDLE BURDLE BURDLE
> (The BURDLEs must be executable with increasing pitch)
Hmm, yours must be defective. Mine always went
BLEE BLEE BLEE BLURT. BONK... BONKBONKBONK BONK BONK BONK
BONKBONK BONK BONK BONK BONKBONK
BOOP TWEE! TWEE! TWEE! BONK BONK BOOP WOOOOOP BONKBONK BOOP WOOOOOP
BOOP WOOOOOOP BONKBONK BONK !EEWT !EEWT !EEWT BONK BONKBONK
PEE-YOU-YOU-YOU!!!!
but maybe that was just because I always liked to play it with the
"BLACK & WHITE/COLOR" switch halfway between the two because my TV set
wasn't all that colorful.
Also I bought my Atari 2600 back when they actually cost $2600.
In its day it was a real computer, you know. Just like a WebTV is today!
1977 Atari 2600
1997 WebTV
from this we can extrapolate the rest of the history of pathetic home computing:
1957 those rectangles of clear plastic that are blue at the top and
green at the bottom that make any TV set display color
1977 Atari 2600
1997 WebTV
2017 the same thing, only they make old analog NTSC TVs into
three-dimensional digital HDTV
2037 abandonment of physical instrumentality; fourth primary color
discovered; Pez dispenser becomes President; water banned when
it is found to cause cancer; someone admits liking Tracy Ullman
> Sigh... The diffcultly peaked fairly quickly on that thing, and it was
> fairly easy to clock it even then, so I was possible, in principle, to
> just keep playing it for hours and hours and hours and hours.
>
> I have to lie down now.
Relax! Play a game of Yar's Revenge. That always relaxes me to tears.
-- K.
I always figured they said,
"Hmm, we can't figure out how to
keep this thing from filling half
the screen with static if we
overburden the processor by making
a hyphen move around slowly, so
we better call the static
an Ion Zone and mention it in
the commercial."
David Pacheco will now sing the
"Yar's Revenge" jingle, including
the long-lost second verse which
explains why that game had a jingle.
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Your Kibological Quotient
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 13:00:18 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Nick S Bensema (nickb@primenet.com) wrote:
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote:
> >
> > The two other things that bugged me were when the girl turned into the
> > ellipsoidal blueberry in that damn Willy Wonka movie, and when people got
> > hit in the face with cream pies on "Beat The Clock" because my mother
> > kept assuring me that anyone who got whipped cream in their eye was going
> > to go blind.
>
> Ah, moms say lots of things make you go blind.
Please post a complete list of everything that used to make you go blind,
so that we can do the appropriate experiments to see whether these things
make us go more blind or less blind now that we know better.
Like, if your mom wouldn't let you buy a can of "Slime(R)" because
you might get it in your eyes and go blind (because it would be too tiring
for your mom to explain that getting it out of the rug would be work)
we need to run out and get cans of "Slime(R)" and put them in our eyes
to see whether Mom is now more right or less right than she ever was.
Also, we must search the medical journals for the strangest reported
cases of blindness we can find. Especially any involving cream pies,
"Slime(R)", the "Victoria's Secret" catalog, or the famous case of the
kid who was sitting EXACTLY six feet from the TV and thus only the front
parts of his eyeballs were damaged.
-- K.
And I demand a free subscription
to the Braille version of
Playboy -- on audiotape.
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Your Kibological Quotient
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 15:21:33 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
"Thrones of Corn, Waves of Pain" (tagutcow@nr.infi.net) wrote:
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote:
> >
> > That's why you grew up to hold a job where you work with hideous faceless
> > blobs,
>
> Back in the day when one could easily count on one hand the number of
> programming hours Fox had per day, a man named Billy Bob- an ur-good ol'
> boy of an unassuming, laconic manner,- armed with only his weekly rotation
> of grade schoolers, his sidekick Junior Prankster (-- some UNCG slacker
> operating a puppet from within a hollowed-out video game kiosk,) his
> signature tagline ("too funny") and his no-budget television show on the
> then local UHF channed-slash-Fox affiliate, rose to such considerable
> celebrity over such a narrowly defined locality that this author believes
> he'll carry to his grave the reflex-like triggering of the mental image of
> Billy Bob upon any occurance of the phrase "local celebrity." Billy Bob is
> the closest thing to a Krusty the Klown I've ever known. One day he had a
> special *VERRRRYYY SCCCAAAARRRYYY* Halloween episode of Billy Bob's
> Funhouse in which, as a special Halloween treat, he had a storyteller come
> on to relate a very special, *VERRRRYYY SCCCARRRYY* special Halloween
> story. The storyteller- a middle-aged woman who could have very well been
> a middle-school teacher- proceeded to give lay to her story in which a
> man- not too unlike you or I- one day finds his world turned upside-down
> when everybody except him suddenly has a face "like an egg-- no eyes, no
> ears, no mouth, nothing (smudgy-smudgy motions with fingers over
> respective facial features.)" After having numerous horrifying encounters
> with people with egg-like faces, the man sees from behind the local police
> officer; surely the police officer can be counted on to set things right
> and/or to give a reasonable explanation for this horrifying, bewildering
> turn of events. After relating his horrifying experiences to the
> away-facing officer, the officer turns around and our protagonist
> discovers- to his horror- that the police officer, too, has "a face like
> an egg- no eyes, no ears, no mouth, nothing. And he has... A THING!"
>
> That's the story. The police officer has an egg-like head, too, plus he
> has A THING!
>
> "Whoah, that was a really scary story," Billy Bob remarked, although we
> could see he was as visibly disconcerted as we at the story's seemingly
> premature conclusion.
THIS IS THE WORST "STAR TREK" EPISODE EVER!!!
Wasn't there supposed be to be something about them all wearing pantyhose
over their heads, too?
Also, what's the deal with the puppet who comes out of the video-game cabinet?
How do the other people in the world terrify our hero given that none of
them can talk or see or hear or breathe any more? Wouldn't they all just
be trapped in their own beds quietly suffocating while our hero is wondering
why the streets are empty?
And what about Humpty Dumpty? He had a face like an egg but he had eyes
and a mouth and no thing.
And how much did Billy Bob pay this professional "storyteller" to tell
this deeply disturbing yet inept story-like chunk of words?
And why weren't there disturbing illustrations accompanied by scary Moog noises
just to ensure that the little kids would grow up to be neurotic?
In order to answer these questions, I am starting a new TV network:
THE LOCALLY-PRODUCED AMATEURISH KIDS' TV SHOWS FROM THE SEVENTIES NETWORK.
(We'll include a few shows from the eighties, too, just to get Billy Bob in,
and all the classics from the fifties and sixties.)
We need this TV network because there was clearly an endless supply of this
material -- which is probably even cheaper to buy now than it was in the
seventies! -- and yet most of it was only seen in small areas. I mean, until
the whole world can experience the horror of "Freddie Freihofer"'s giant
face staring at you with its moving eyes, or the kid yelling "RAM IT, CLOWN!"
at Frank Avruch, or the kids on Jabberwocky learning about how Muhammad Ali
with Jackie O's face is still Muhammad Ali, you're not culturally literate
in my book. NOW WHO WANTS TO SQUIGGLE?
And if we ever run out of material we could just pad it out with "Gumby"
cartoons. Each of which would end with Gumby's face falling off and then
he'd turn around to reveal he has... A THING!!!
-- K.
I think Archimedes Plutonium
should have his own show, too.
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Stuff That Doesn't Explode On Contact
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 13:15:03 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Chris Franks (chris_franks@hp.pants.com) wrote:
>
> David Pacheco wrote:
> >
> > "Have you ever noticed that elevators only go up or down? I mean,
> > what's up with that?"
>
> The elevators inside the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas go sort of
> diagonally sideways, in the same direction as the sides of the pyramid.
A-*HEMNH*.
Not only are you confusing the elevators with the escalators, but,
as someone who has not only been in the Luxor but has seen every episode
of "Battlestar Galactica", I think you should know that you are the bozo here,
because the Luxor does not have any escalators. The Luxor has INCLINATORS,
which are better than escalators because they go diagonally, not straight up.
(When I was there one of the inclinators had a sign on it saying
that this "AMUSEMENT RIDE" carried "ASSUMED RISK".)
The Luxor's elevators go straight up, which is why most people don't ride
them because when the doors open you're looking down at the outside of the
pyramid, and that fifty-billion-watt light bulb is shining up into your
face, which will either toast your skin to a Roy Schieder-like brown or
at least make you look evil like Jon Colicos on "Battlestar Galactica",
the show that inspired THE SECOND COOLEST CASINO ON THAT BLOCK IN LAS VEGAS!!!
Also, the Internior of the Luxor is covered with Real Egyptian Hieroglyphs,
complete with upside-down and backwards ASCII characters with slashes
through them. You know, sort of like the International Phonetic Alphabet
only silly-looking.
And my favorite site in the Luxor was the genuine Egyptian-style spray-painted
wall mural of Isis or Commander Adama or whoever, with a toilet plunger
(marked "FLOOR 5") standing in front of it.
Luxor contains a miniature New York City street, which is almost as cool
as the giant miniature New York City across the street, with the roller-coaster
going around the tenements.
There's nothing realer than Las Vegas, except maybe if "New York New York"
contained a miniature Las Vegas which contained a miniature miniature
New York City inside both the miniature "New York New York" and the miniature
Luxor so that we could recurse and bifurcate at the same time, not unlike
trying to decide what ice-cream toppings you want in the afterlife.
-- K.
Me, I believe that there is an
afterlife, but it's NOT infinite,
it's only a season long. Then you
get cancelled and replaced with
reruns of "TV's Bloopers &
Practical Jokes".
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: I'll never get it, NEVER!
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 13:17:22 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Francesco Benvenuto (frances+dejanews@fis.unico.it) wrote:
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote:
> >
> > By the way, lately I've been busy enough to read mostly blue and brown and
> > tan and purple articles. So if I've said something to you, you're probably
> > a funny color. Also during those days when I don't post there are no
> > brown articles and a.r.k's IQ goes WAYYYYY down.
>
> WAAAAAAHHH! Kibo spoke to me and now I am a funny color!
That still doesn't explain Roy Scheider, George Hamilton, Michael Jackson,
Mario, or the Simpsons.
Also, when I talk to God, He turns a funny funny funny color, which proves
that I'm bigger than God, although He is funnier.
-- K.
Also He has Marge Simpson's hair.
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Another Kibology/Star Trek/snack foods connection
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 13:29:12 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Sean Smith (smthsen@bcvms.bc.edu) wrote:
>
> My mother-in-law, who lives down Atlanta way, often sends us cans of boiled
> peanuts for Christmas, birthdays and the like. Boiled peanuts, for those of
> you who've never indulged, are much like regular peanuts, only much softer,
> easier to open and considerably saltier.
You know, Sean, Boston *does* have a Chinatown, where some, if not all,
of the grocery stores have those lame beige un-fried peanuts... dried
olive pits, too. Mmm-mmm.
> But that's not the point. The company that makes this particular brand of
> canned boiled peanuts?
>
> "Roddenberry's"
That's nothing. Did you know that Mr. Peanut personally wrote every episode
of NBC's "seaQuest DSV"?
> Which means that when I say how much we all really enjoy Roddenberry's
> peanuts, I am one omitted or excised "t" away from being vulgar,
> offensive and insulting to Majel Barrett.
>
> So, for Heaven's sake, KEEP THE "T" IN RODDENBERRY'S PEANUTS!11!
Sean, the (T) hasn't gone to Roddenberry's Peanuts since Dukakis left
Massachusetts when he won the Presidential election. Now you have to
ride a Bonanza Bus to Roddenberry's Peanuts.
Or, just wait until the world of the future and take the Sub-Shuttle
after you get thawed out and chased around by Diana Muldaur and/or
the many other gals who got on "Star Trek" by sleeping with Gene,
including everyone in "The Gamesters Of Triskelion", especially the tranny.
-- K.
"BRING ME THE DINK EXTRACT!!!"
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Another Kibology/Star Trek/snack foods connection
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 16:04:28 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Sean Smith (smthsen@bcvms.bc.edu) wrote:
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote:
> >
> > You know, Sean, Boston *does* have a Chinatown, where some, if not all,
> > of the grocery stores have those lame beige un-fried peanuts... dried
> > olive pits, too. Mmm-mmm.
>
> You'll have to explain that last one to me a little. Couldn't you achieve the
> same end by eating a whole bunch of unpitted olives, then taking the pits and
> leaving them in direct sunlight for a day or so? Or is there _more_ to this
> process than meets the EYE? Sorry, I felt an uncontrollable urge to Burgess
> Meredith that last sentence.
Call me sometime and you can come along on one of my shopping trips to
Ming's and The 88 and Ho Toy and so on. Then you will never, ever again have
any curiosity about large cans of fermented fish with red swastikas on them.
> > That's nothing. Did you know that Mr. Peanut personally wrote every
> > episode of NBC's "seaQuest DSV"?
>
> Was it also his idea to change the title to "seaQuest 2032" (or whatever
> the hell the year was supposed to be)? Did he imagine that the plethora of
> viewers who were undecided as to their program options might look in the
> TV listings and exclaim "Hey, there's a show with '2032' in the title!
> That must mean it takes place in the future! Gosh, I love those kind of
> shows, because in their exposition of possibly fictional historical events
> and social trends, they speak to the issues and concerns of TODAY!"
Sigh. Sean, I hate to embarass you by pointing out that OBVIOUSLY you
didn't see every episode of all three seasons -- everyone, let's all point
at Sean and laugh 'cause he didn't watch enough "seaQuest!" -- but there
was a perfectly good reason for the title.
The first season took place in 2018. But at the end of the season they
blew up the submarine because even the people who wrote the show knew that
there was no chance in Hell that the show could get renewed, you know, like
"Sledge Hammer".
Then NBC renewed it, because they were willing to take a bath on it because
it had Steven Spielberg's name on it and they were hoping he'd write them
another "ER" if they'd keep broadcasting his vanity bombs like "seaQuest"
and "Earth 2". So, the second season began with them having completely
rebuilt an identical submarine (except it was twice as large on the inside
and its inside was now inside an amusement park in Florida) which meant that
the second season had to take place in 2021, because it would be STUPID to
assume that they could build a seaQuest in less than four years, right?
Now, at the end of the second season, the producers/writers said, "Dammit,
we are SO outta here!" at the end of the year and drove away, after writing
the seaQuest into a corner (it blew up on an alien planet and everyone drowned
except the fake Wesley Crusher, the dolphin, and the plaid bald guy.)
So for the third season, which had different producers and writers, they
got out of it by having Cmdr. Ford wake up in the shower back home -- I am
not making this up, I swear -- and the seaQuest turned up intact in the
middle of a Nebraska cornfield, because the aliens revived everyone and
beamed them back to where their last happy thought was, and apparently the
submarine was thinking about corn. Because the new producers wanted to try
to actually come up with a science-fictional universe with a backstory more
complex than "THERE'S SOME STUFF UNDERWATER, A LOT LIKE JABBERJAW", they
also took the opportunity to move the characters eleven years into the
future (2032) so that they could change the world around 'em, a laudable
attempt to actually introduce a science fiction milieu into a stupid show
about a submarine that goes to other planets. (The fans all seem to have
hated the third season, which I think was far, far, far closer to Actual
Science Fiction than the other two seasons, which were sort of like "Knight
Rider" only with a submarine and a talking dolphin.)
To make matters more complicated, NBC changed the title every year in effort
to provide a semblance that they were trying to get people to watch without
actually trying to get anyone to watch (that would involve spending money.)
Remember how, when Pat Sajak's talk show was dying rapidly, they tried to
improve it by... re-upholstering his couch and giving him different sweaters?
This is what happens when the show is clearly circling the drain and nothing
can save it, so you have to make a token effort without looking like you're
trying (and thus failing) to save it. So the three seasons were:
NBC's "seaQuest DSV" (2018) -- boring submarine adventures. Painful spliced-
on "science" segments at the end, not unlike
the life lessons at the end of "He-Man".
NBC's "seaQuest" (2021) -- time travel, space aliens, giant laser-breathing
worms, killed planets, King Neptune, plus they
added Dom DeLuise's entire family to the cast.
NBC's "seaQuest 2032" (2032) -- an attempt to take out all the stuff that
got put into the second season while introducing
a geopolitical structure to the world that
allowed them to fight battles rather than
just sailing around fighting mad scientists.
The last few episodes of "2032" were aired only under extreme contractual
obligation -- remember how long after "Amazing Stories" was cancelled, they
still had episodes of that (Spielberg) flop that turned up after rained-out
baseball games three or four years later, because they had to show 'em all
eventually? Well, the last episodes (including some that were above average)
were disposed of that way -- a year or so after "2032" was gone, episodes
would turn up to fill out the time difference between the West Coast and
East Coast network feeds after baseball games, the result being that those
final episodes were unscheduled, unadvertised, and shown only on one coast.
The Sci-Fi Channel was proud to air the "lost" episodes of "seaQuest 2032",
a fact which made all the fanboys drool even though they all professed to
hate "2032" even more than the second season.
> Or was it because the focus groups complained that the term "DSV"
> made them think it was a show about some kind of recreational or
> sport utility vehicle?
What I liked best about the sub was that its full name, in the "seaQuest" logo,
is "seaQuest DSV 2600". Which means that either the submarine is powered
by an Atari product, or else it illegally makes free phone calls.
Excuse me, I meant "PHR33 F0N3 KALLZ".
> > Sean, the (T) hasn't gone to Roddenberry's Peanuts since Dukakis left
> > Massachusetts when he won the Presidential election. Now you have to
> > ride a Bonanza Bus to Roddenberry's Peanuts.
>
> Geez, what a relief -- I thought you had to settle for Peter Pan Lines to
> make those trips. You know, the buses with the faux neo-Romantic style logo
> of PP, where he's gazing slightly backward as he (presumably) flies? I think
> that logo may be the reason I never had much confidence in Peter Pan Lines
> to provide the reliable, steadfast transportation service I, as a consumer,
> demand.
It's the names of the buses that bother me. I mean, I don't want to ride
Tinkerbell to Springfield. The last two I were on were "Tinkerbell" and
"Captain Peter". Why can't they give the buses studly names, like "Captain
Hook"? (I can see it now: The CEO, in Sprinfield, shouts "A PIRATE IS NOT
THE CORPORATE IMAGE WE WANT FOR LONG JOHN SIL^W^W^WPETER PAN BUS LINES!")
Yes, Peter Pan's hub is in Springfield. Just another reason to avoid 'em.
> If I'm traveling somewheres, I wanna go on a bus that either has a picture
> of a really fast dog at full gallop on the side,
And on "The Simpsons" they also have a pet greyhound who runs really slowly.
See? See? The whole show is just a plug for Peter Pan Bus Lines!
> or a name that calls into mind Lorne Greene's other contribution to humanity
> besides "Battlestar Gallactica,"
Alpo has a bus company?
> not a bus with some cutsie-wootsie elf who looks like he's trying to politely
> encourage someone behind him to pass.
He's not an ELF! He's a BOY WHO REFUSED TO GROW UP! Then he turned into
Robin Williams and little kids spend about an hour smearing colored mashed
potatoes all over his body and Steven Spielberg personally took an hour off
his busy schedule of supervising "seaQuest" to come down to the set to
watch the little kids smearing glop on each other.
> We need a Peter Pan logo with guts and fire! We need a Peter Pan logo for the
> 21st century, with bulging muscles, ripped tunic, sweaty brow and steely,
> defiant glare! Then I'll ride their damned bus!!11!
Someday I'll have to post that logo I drew for the (T)'s "Crosstown Express Bus"
logo contest (it looked like the (T) logo sitting behind the wheel of a bus
that was coming right at you, and the bus was all rounded-looking to make it
friendly and make it look like it wanted to be a subway, because the whole
point of the stupid "Crosstown Express" buses is that the (T) wants you to
think they're not a subway line and just three buses that have the wrong color
of stripe on them.)
> > Or, just wait until the world of the future and take the Sub-Shuttle
> > after you get thawed out and chased around by Diana Muldaur and/or
> > the many other gals who got on "Star Trek" by sleeping with Gene,
> > including everyone in "The Gamesters Of Triskelion", especially the tranny.
>
> Was that the buxom domanitrix type who kept trying to force herself on
> Chekhov?
What, you think maybe instead Angelique Pettyjohn was a guy? You need new
glasses. Of COURSE I mean the "woman" with the huge feet and the Adam's
apple and the giant jawline and trowled-on makeup and deep, male voice,
not the sexy gal in the little silver bikini. (Incidentally, said sexy
gal actually was a dominatrix. Gene Roddenberry's casting sessions must
have been very unusual... but then again, maybe in Hollywood that happens
all the time.)
> I ask because it gives me the rare opportunity to use two words with the
> letter "x" in a sentence right next to each other.
Your obsession with sex sux.
> Remember that scene where she brings Chekhov his food? I bet if you look
> really, really hard at the tray, you'd see a bowl of....
> Roddenberry's Boiled Peanuts!
I like the way, when the SEXY one brings Kirk his food, there's a bit of
dialogue where she says "What is dot dot dot love?" and then "What is dot
dot dot beautiful?" becauxe Xirk ix waxing romantix aboux thx conxept of love --
excuxe me, the x's are catching up with me -- and he calls her beautiful,
but she doesn't know what "beautiful" is, so he holds the silver tea tray
(which the slaves are forced to eat off, boo-hoo, they have silver tea trays
on the prison planet) up to her face and says "This! dot dot dot is beautiful!"
and she has obviously never seen her reflection before, because she must be
so stupid that she's never looked at her tea tray, and thus we can assume
that this stupidity means she's now thinking "'beautiful' means I am a
silver rectangular object of inanimate material! Cool!"
> We're back to Star Trek and snack foods again! The circle is complete!
I like how in "Journey To Babel" when they're eating their Space Food
in their Space Rec Room for the Space Party for the Space Ambassadors,
the "Star Trek" food is -- as always -- random cubes of pink, orange,
blue, and green sponges. Someone went to Safeway and spent 49c on a
pack of sponges and cut 'em up. Then saved even more money by using them
in about ten episodes. But what I like about the sponges' appearance in
"Journey To Babel" is that you see McCoy take a wineglass with a couple
spongue cubes in the bottom, then he pours in some Space Colored Water,
and the sponges start bobbing around on top.
I also like in "The Trouble With Tribbles" that the tribbles are eating
Kirk's plate of sponge pieces and he complains that the tribbles are
eating his chicken sandwich. And in "By Any Other Name" McCoy introduces
a Kelvan to the joy of eating cubes of sponges. In fact, the only episode
where they eat any other sort of food on the Enterprise is in "The Man Trap"
(the first one aired) where the plot requires them to wave salt shakers around
(because the monster craves iodized salt) so they all have to eat CELERY,
because everyone knows that in the 23rd century people will still put salt
all over their celery. And, just to make it Space Celery, it's been soaked
in red food coloring. I'm suprised Mr. Wizard didn't show them how to
split the stalk so they could soak half of it in red Space Colored Water
and half in blue Space Colored Water.
> Sean ("If Peter Pan Lines served complimentary boiled peanuts on their trips,
> their business would improve at least 10 percent") Smith
Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, peanuts are the lowest rung
on the nut ladder ("GOURMET MIXED NUTS: CONTAINS ONLY 75% CHEAP PEANUTS!")
and that if you looked hard enough, you might be able to find or make
boiled cashews, walnuts, almonds, macadamias, filberts, and Wheat Nuts?
Excuse me, I apologize for mentioning Wheat Nuts. I promise to never
mention those horrible industrial by-products again. (Apparently an
agribusiness said "What can we do to get rid of all this brown stuff we
have to throw away when we make white bread?")
This is how Swanson's invented the TV Dinner. They've just repackaged their
turney dinners in a simulacrum of the original box from 45 years ago, despite
the fact that back then they came in sturdy metal trays, not cardboard, and
had three large compartments instead of four small ones. The back of the
box has a blurb about how the things were invented because Swanson's wanted
to help the mom of the future make an easy meal, which is baloney (aka
Swanson turkey loaf) -- the real reason that TV Dinners was invented, and
that turkey was the only kind at first, is that the agribusiness involved
had to grow all these turkeys for Thanksgiving, and so they had all this
turkey left over for the rest of the year, so they had to figure out how to
push frozen turkey on an unwary public. (And of course "TV" was slapped into
the name because it was really hip in the fifties, the way "cyber" gets stuck
onto trade names now.)
-- K.
I apologize for making you think about stuff.
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.tv.game-shows
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: The Game Show Network is making me think.
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 15:25:43 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Followup-To: alt.religion.kibology
I just saw an old episode (is there another kind?) of "Tic-Tac-Dough",
the show where Wink Martindale and his hairpiece stood in front of nine
TV screens which flashed Apple ][ lo-rez graphics.
What I'd like to know is,
Because the nine screens were presumably driven by nine Apple ][s, with
a tenth computer of some sort (another Apple ][ or perhaps something like
a small PDP), exactly what were the details of their hardware setup,
how did the computers communicate with each other, what language was the
control program written in, and how did the various graphics for each
game get into the nine Apple ][s?
Presumably it would be a simple matter to shove a few bytes at each Apple ][
over the serial port, and the Apple ][s would "page-flip" to bring up the
appropriate graphic which was already stored in memory. But how did those
graphics get in there in the first place? Was there a delay (edited out)
before each game while the controlling computer downloaded the title screens
for all the categories into each Apple?
And, most importantly, why were they still using Apple ][ LO-REZ graphics
in 1985? (Note that that's about when Alex Trebek's version of "Jeorpardy!"
premiered with that Chyron character generator driving thirty-six screens...)
It's also kind of hard to imagine that 40x48 graphics ever looked cool...
(Steve Jobs designed one of the arcade versions of "Breakout" for Atari,
and the story is that those super-wide giant pixels were put in the Apple ][
to be Breakout blocks. Also you can see how simple a hack it was to turn
a screen buffer of ASCII into pairs of sixteen-color pixels half the size
of letters.)
Anyway, after "Tic-Tac-Dough", "Joker's Wild" came on -- one of the episodes
with Bill Cullen, not Jack Barry, the guy who was imitated so beautifully
in Robert Redford's "Quiz Show". One of the big prizes today is
"A HOME SECURITY ROBOT!" made by... Tomy. It's a toy about nine inches high.
Wow, there apparently was an era I missed in the early eighties when
burglars were scared of Tomy products. I bet that if we can rediscover that
period, we'll find that Coleco was making automatic teller machines and
Atari had the air-traffic control market sewn up. (Not to mention Marx's
contract with Norad.)
It's weird that history went this way:
* Before 1975: Nobody cared about robots (except at World's Fairs, where
everyone went insane.)
* 1975-1985: Robots were everywhere! Except they didn't do anything.
* 1985 onward: Nobody cared about robots again.
We went right from "robots are just around the corner" to "we refuse
to acknowledge that we ever thought robots were cool," despite the "Star Wars"
trilogy spanning the whole "almost-robot" era.
Besides, it's strange seeing a toy "home security robot" that we're supposed
to take seriously after we see it advertised on a game show whose gameboard
is generated by a transparent mechanical slot machine mounted on an
overhead projector and controlled by a bowling ball on a giant stick.
On a program which followed one featuring a network of Apple ][s.
Still, some questions remain:
* Which show had dumber questions, "Tic-Tac-Dough" or "Joker's Wild"?
* Which show had a more irritating audio environment, the incredibly lame
Moog synthesizer music of "Dough" or Bill Cullen shouting
"JOKER! JOKER! JOKER!" on "Joker's Wild"?
* The evening version of "The Joker's Wild" was titled "JOKER! JOKER! JOKER!",
so would a second edition of "Tic-Tac-Dough" be called "X! X! X!"?
* What was Wink Martindale's hair made of, and WHY?
* Was the combination of a slot machine and a picture of a devil on
"The Joker's Wild" enough to make everyone who ever watched the show go
to Hell?
* Did the International Tic-Tac-Toe Association ever complain that regulation
Tic-Tac-Toe doesn't have a flashing dragon in one of the squares?
* If they merged "Tic-Tac-Dough" with "The Hollywood Squares", would they
use a three-by-six or a six-by-three board?
* In the Other Universe, is the object of "The Price Is Right" TO GO OVER?
-- K.
Still waiting for a game show
for dogs, so that we can find
out how to insult a dog's intelligence.
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: David Blaine to be buried alive
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 15:46:13 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Aw, damn, the subject line got my hopes up but he's JUST A MAGICIAN.
> NEW YORK, March 30 (UPI) -- Producer James L. Nederlander and
> developer Donald Trump say they will bury magician David Blaine alive
> for one week so he can attempt a feat that mythical magician Harry
> Houdini had contemplated but never undertook.
> On Monday, April 5, Blaine says he will enter a specially designed
> open coffin and will be lowered 6 feet into the ground in front of Trump
> Place at Riverside South, at West 68th Street facing the Hudson River.
COME GAMBLE WHILE LOOKING AT AN OPEN GRAVE AND THE HUDSON RIVER!
> The Brooklyn born Blaine says he would like to finish what Houdini
> started.
What, he's gonna get Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to admit he's a bozo?
> Nederlander and Trump explained that Blaine will remain undergound
> for one week, until 10 a.m. on Monday, April 12, without food and just
> enough water to keep him alive.
> Nederlander says he will be given ``only about three to four
> tablespoons of water a day.''
I assume there's a reason this newspaper report doesn't mention the most
important detail, i.e., whether he has only the *air* that's in the coffin
or whether he will be given enough air to actually keep him alive more
than an hour.
> ``Houdini was very interested in the idea of burying himself alive,''
> Blaine says. ``Unfortunately, his life ended before he got a chance to
> do it. I want to pick up where he left off and, hopefully, discover the
> mystical link between life and death.''
Magicians know that this isn't because he died, it's 'cause Houdini had
spent briefer periods buried alive and concluded it was a stupid trick
which would probably kill him. (Which is why you've seen a couple videos
on TV of bozos having wet cement poured over their clear plastic coffins
which never hold up under the weight of ten tons of cement. Then this
big rectangular air bubble comes up suddenly as the level of cement plummets,
and the backhoes start looking for the corpse...)
Now, if Donald Trump were in the glass box with David Blaine, people might
pay to see that. But there are some magic tricks where there's nothing
to see *unless* the guy dies. I mean, if all goes according to plan,
people will get to see David Blaine lying in a box for a week. You know
the bozos promoting this will start secret hoping he'll die after they
get bored three days into it. (And enough magicians have died doing
short-term burials that the promoters of this event must know it's dangerous.)
> Nederlander, a member of the third generation of the celebrated
> family known for theatrical productions, is chairman of the board of the
> Nederlander Producing Company of America.
> He said he could not pass up the opportunity to be part of the event.
> Trump said: ``This is very scary, but David is the best, and I wish
> him well. All of our tennants at Trump Place will be watching David from
> high above.''
You'll feel like God while you look down at a guy lying in a see-through
coffin with your X-ray vision! While gambling!
> Trump explained on top of Blaine's coffin will be a plexiglas tank
> filled with 4,000 pounds of water so that the curious can look down and
> view Blaine, who will be in a self-induced, trance-like state for most
> of the week.
See! A guy in a glass box going to the bathroom and otherwise just
lying there!
You really gotta wonder whether people will pay extra for hotel rooms
with a good view of the glass box with an inch of urine in the bottom.
Also, "4,000 pounds" isn't a lot of water. I mean, I seem to recall that
a cubic foot is 43 pounds, so we're talking less than a hundred cubic
feet, or about four bathtubs worth.
> He will have no voice communication from the grave,
Just a WebTV.
> but medical personel will be on hand 24 hours a day to monitor his heart
> and brain activity and present daily medical briefings.
That must be a heck of a dilemma: Looking for abnormal brain activity
in a guy who wants to be installed in a glass coffin in a casino in New Jersey.
> A crane will be on hand around the clock, ready to lift the plexiglas
> tank should anything go wrong.
I sense a new variant of an old urban legend forming: "And after the
helicopters put out the forest fire, they found a charred magician..."
> Blaine, who can trace his roots back to the gypsies, says he realized
> at the age of 4 that he was destined to become a magician.
> Blaine, Nederlander and Trump all helped to dig the grave.
When I die, I want Don Trump to dig my grave. But not before.
-- K.
And let's not forget the tenants
of Trump Palace will be making
faces at the guy in the box all week.
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: misc.legal,sci.edu,dartmouth.talk.kiewit,soc.culture.usa,alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Dartmouth's continued persecution of AP
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 16:29:19 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Followup-To: alt.religion.kibology
In misc.legal, sci.edu, dartmouth.talk.kiewit, and soc.culture.usa,
Archimedes Plutonium (Archimedes.Plutonium@dartmouth.edu) wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> The most recent persecution of AP is that AP has the
> worst and most physically demanding job at Dartmouth
But, Arch, this is a sign of their respect for your studly muscular heftiness.
After all, you did those pro-wrestling exercises with the maple-syrup buckets.
Besides, there have to be one or two jobs more strenuous than washing
dishes. Like, weren't you requesting them to have someone build a chapel
out of solid gold last year?
I doubt you're doing all that much heavy lifting. Unless your dishes
are solid gold. And not the disposable kind. (I always eat off those
disposable solid gold dishes I get in the special billionaire's section
hidden in the back of Wal-Mart.)
> [...]
>
> If I had been under a fair boss, I would now be making about $8/hour.
I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it.
I AM NOT GOING TO SAY IT!!!!!
I'll just draw a box around that sentence and let everyone imagine what
I would have said if I were not now the Kindler, Gentler Kibo.
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| If I had been under a fair boss, I would now be making about $8/hour. |
| |
| -- Archimedes Plutonium |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> [...]
>
> Not only am I the most persecuted Dartmouth employee
> by having a perfect work of ten years without one day missed or
> tardy, I am the lowest paid employee on the entire Dartmouth
> history after having worked 10 years.
Hmm, _someone_ has to be the lowest-paid, unless you're a Commie, which
I know you aren't 'cause you keep telling us you own hundreds of thousands
of dollars of stock. Have you considered just buying Dartmouth? Then you
could pay yourself the full eight bucks an hour.
> [...]
>
> The most recent persecution of AP by the Hanover Inn is to
> have the potsink piled a mountain high on Tuesdays.
Maybe you should request that they replace you with an electric dishwasher.
> To have no worker over at that station at the busiest hours of 3pm
> to 4:30pm. So that when I arrive on the job at 4:30pm it
> requires a superman to unbury oneself.
That was the worst Roger Corman movie of a novel written by Brian Aldiss
as A. N. Roquelare, "Superman Unburied". Especially the part with the
talking car.
> [...]
>
> Other workers answer this mountain of pots
> left-over by a previous shift by not really cleaning
> the pots satisfactorily. Just wetting them and
> calling them clean.
EWW!!!!
> [...]
>
> Persecution of AP by Computer services of Dartmouth
>
> Kiewit is the computer services of Dartmouth.
>
> Back in 1995 or thereabouts, a Boston TV film crew
> wanted to have me in a segment of their TV program
> and some of the sequences were to take place in
> Kiewit. However, the manager of Kiewit, Mr. Larry
> Levine decided that Archimedes Plutonium was not
> suitable for any TV and especially in Kiewit.
Hmm, I didn't know about that incident.
I owe Mike Barnicle an apology for when I claimed
that he wasn't taking my story ideas seriously.
-- K.
But I still refuse to pay up on
the bet, 'cause he didn't actually
broadcast any pictures of you
singing an Atomic Hymn.
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Crazy video games
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 14:45:57 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Caton (caton@netwin.co.nz) wrote:
>
> Lots42 (lots42@aol.com) wrote:
> >
> > I want to start a new thread by asking people a question.
> > This is the question.
No it isn't. It's a preamble, you preambulatory preambiguator.
> > 1) Out of all the video games you have played, what is the craziest thing
> > you've encountered?
>
> [...]
>
> 2) There's this game with a yellow circle that has a wedge cut out of
> it. You have to make the yellow circle-thing run over some little white
> rectangles. And chase these little colored blobs with eyes. The blobs
> with eyes kill you unless you've run over a big white circle. Then the
> blobs turn blue. There some fruit, too. Maaaaaan...
What's weird about that? It's just like being on the #66 bus, only
without the insane bus driver.
> [...]
>
> 5) Sim-BobHope. Maxis didn't really advertise this, although you can
> still get it from some vending machines in Osaka (if you're the right
> color. Rust-Turquoise is good)
The only problem with Sim-BobHope is that I don't understand why I have
to have a 450MHz Pentium /// processor (or better) just to simulate a
guy who sits there drooling. I mean, I just don't get the scoring system:
"1 point every time a piece of skin flakes off by itself, plus 1 point
at the end of the round for every piece of skin that didn't flake off."
> [...]
>
> 7) RANARAMA. Free inflatable llama painted to look like Bob Dole's 747
> if you're old enough to remeber this. You played a magic frog. M'kay?
Ranarama was written after Arthur C. Clarke was old enough to become
the Indian subcontinent's regional Bob Hope. It went like this:
vol. 1: text text text text text REMEMBER RANARAMA ALWAYS COMES IN THREES!!!
vol. 2: suck suck suck suck suck REMEMBER RANARAMA ALWAYS COMES IN THREES!!!
vol. 3: suck suck suck suck suck REMEMBER RANARAMA ALWAYS COMES IN THREES!!!
vol. 4: suck suck suck suck suck REMEMBER RANARAMA ALWAYS COMES IN THREES!!!
vol. 5: suck suck suck suck suck THE END!!!!!!
Of course, some of the bad ones were ghost-written by William Shatner, which
is why all the dialogue consists of people yelling "AY CHIHUAHUA!!!"
As far as bad video games go, I think there are arcade video games far
weirder than any home games have ever been. Especially from Japan.
I'm thinking of things like "I'm Sorry" and that game where the object is
to pass notes to the girls without getting beat up by the high school teacher.
And "Burger Time", where the object is to walk all over giant hamburger
buns, but putting pepper on a fried egg hurts it. (That's the WEIRD part.
How could you NOT think that eggs should be covered with pepper at all times?)
And "Time Tunnel", about which the name says it all, except for the fact
that it's about a toy train that travels through time and has a fireball
chasing it along the tracks and it doesn't even have James Darren in it.
For home video games, my choice of the most pre-verted one I've encountered
would have to be "Busy Baby", which was exactly like "Moon Patrol" only
instead of fighting space aliens and jumping over craters, the object was
to keep an infant from wetting himself or falling off the carpet. I am not
making this up. It was a really, really, really hard and frustrating game
unsuitable for anyone without a high threshold of pain, and yet it had this
baby theme and it played obnoxious baby music and it was the only disk/cassette
based game on the Atari 800 that would NOT STOP IF YOU PUSHED THE SYSTEM RESET
KEY! "Ha! Ha! You're never allowed to stop playing this awesome game!
No go back to wetting your diaper!"
Besides, so far nobody's mentioned Exidy's "Chiller", an arrcade "light-gun"
game where you had a machine gun and all these people in their underwear
were strapped down and being tortured in a dungeon and you got points for
shooting them while they were tied down and/or shooting the torture instruments
to make 'em "go". Despite the primitive technology of the era ('80s)
it's a considerably more evil game than the attempts at being self-consciously
"evil" in a hip way (e.g. "South Park: The Game") we're getting now, because
the designers of "Chiller" weren't trying to be hip, and probably weren't
even aware they were exhibiting symptoms of being evil.
Aren't you glad the Nazis didn't make video games?
-- K.
Except for Wolfenstein 3D.
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.fan.jeremy-reimer
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Crazy video games
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 08:42:53 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
"Jeremy Reimer" (jreimeris@home.com) wrote:
>
> James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote in message
> >
> > Ranarama was written after Arthur C. Clarke was old enough to become
> > the Indian subcontinent's regional Bob Hope. It went like this:
> >
> > vol. 1: text text text text REMEMBER RANARAMA ALWAYS COMES IN THREES!!!
> > vol. 2: suck suck suck suck REMEMBER RANARAMA ALWAYS COMES IN THREES!!!
> > vol. 3: suck suck suck suck REMEMBER RANARAMA ALWAYS COMES IN THREES!!!
> > vol. 4: suck suck suck suck REMEMBER RANARAMA ALWAYS COMES IN THREES!!!
> > vol. 5: suck suck suck suck THE END!!!!!!
>
> Does Arthur C Clarke and his army of Sri Lankan lawyers know that you have
> illegally posted the entire text of the Rendezvous at Rama series on the
> Internet WITHOUT HIS PERMISSION??
No, *you* did. You quoted my article and so you touched it last so you
get sued and I can quote your quote of my quote all I want because my
imaginary lawyer called "NO GIVEBACKS!" and "WHOEVER SUED IT DOOD IT!"
and it's not the same text any more anyway because I deleted one of
the sucks from each book to make room for the leading indentogons.
-- K.
Someday the teacher will ask Little Billy,
"what does '4 > 3' mean?"
and he'll say "Four is more quotable than three!"
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Re: Crazy video games
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 04:15:23 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
"THE PEOPLE" (right@home.gov) wrote:
>
> [...context was here...]
>
> Unfortunately, and, sadly, somewhat predictably, there is nothing very
> much to do in the fourth dimension.
That's why, whenever I go to the fourth dimension, I always bring a
comic book to read.
In the fourth dimension, you can amuse yourself for hours with a single
comic book, because, remember, in the fourth dimension they would have
non-zero thickness. They would ACTUALLY be worthy of being called books.
Of course, real books would be these enormous hypercubes of paper, and
the Encyclopedia Britannica would have 65,536 volumes arranged in the
shape of a Rubik's Cube filled with Pac-Man dots and a Mayan calendar.
Speaking of which, I think we should all convert our computers to use
Mayan dates so that they won't run out of dates on 1/1/2000.
-- K.
Somewhere in the fourth
dimension a bunch of dead
Mayans are laughing their
hyperspherical butts off
at us and our puny
base ten arithmetic.
Sure, they never discovered
the wheel. But we never
discovered you can count
on your toes!
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.culture.internet,alt.www.webmaster,comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html
From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject: Important Proclamation & Manifesto: HappyWeb '99!
Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 3051 centons, 52 microns, 0.04 abians
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 14:57:16 GMT
Url-Of-Www.dot.kibo.dot.com: http://www.kibo.com
Organization: Stately Kibo Manor
Followup-To: alt.religion.kibology
I got tired of posting the HappyNet Manifesto every year so this time I wrote
a new one. I didn't have time to proofread it because I'm busy yanking all
sorts of thick cables out of the Web to implement the glory of HappyWeb!
The lightly illustrated version is at: http://www.kibo.com/kibopost/happyweb/
Please return comments via HappyWeb, as Usenet and E-mail are boring
because they don't have enough blinking things on them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT PROCLAMATION & MANIFESTO
HAPPYWEB '99: THE NEW FUTURE OF THE NET (AGAIN)
Copyright (C) 1999 James "Kibo" Parry
Whereas,
The HappyNet projectÊ-- first presciently proposed in 1992 and
completed in 1998Ê-- has successfully saved Usenet from itself,
And Whereas,
The Web is now getting kind of popular,
And Most Importantly,
It's kind of messy, not to mention too big and complicated and
ugly and full of stuff,
Therefore,
Somebody has to clean it up.
And with the help of HappyWeb, that someone will be you!
"Oh, sure," you say, "as if I had the time to do that." Well,
HappyWeb is here to helpÊ-- we'll make you make time! Thanks to
the benevolent dictatorship of Leader Kibo's HappyWeb regime,
you'll not only help make the Web a better place, you'll learn to
like it!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
New HappyWeb features to shame the ordinary Web into humiliation
More font sizes!
The regular Web has seven sizes of font, all of which are
somewhat medium. HappyWeb, by contrast, has 65536 sizes of font,
ranging from 0 points to 65535 points tall! This way, you can
ensure that your pages are easy to read by displaying everything
in the largest possible type size, like this:
[picture you can't see here]
There, now isn't that easier to read? And that was only 372
points tall. Imagine how much better it would look if your Web
browser could do 65535 points.
The 0 point size is also expected to be useful for insurance
contracts, where it will make the fine print easier to read by
reducing it to nothing.
More colors!
The regular Web uses a confusing color nomenclature where colors
are usually something like "#F03J7Z". Although some Web browsers
support a few names for colorsÊ-- such as "black" for a color
which is darker than grayÊ-- HappyWeb will support names for all
16,777,216 colors through the use of the Internet Color Registry.
Thus, instead of having to remember 16,777,216 colors from
"#000000" through "#FFFFFF", Web designers will only have to
remember 16,777,216 logical color names, such as:
#974B7D --> "puce number one thousand and four"
#974B7E --> "puce number one thousand and five"
#974B7F --> "puce number one thousand and six"
#000000 --> "black"
#000001 --> "very very very very very very very very dark gray"
#000002 --> "very very very very very very very dark gray"
#000003 --> "very very very very very very dark gray"
#000004 --> "very very very very very dark gray"
#000005 --> "very very very very dark gray"
#000006 --> "very very very dark gray"
#000007 --> "very very dark gray"
#000008 --> "very dark gray"
#000009 --> "dark gray"
#00000A --> "gray"
#00000B --> "light gray"
#00000C --> "lighter gray"
#00000D --> "still lighter gray"
#00000E --> "much lighter gray"
#00000F --> "extremely light gray"
#000010 --> "gray so light it hurts"
#000011 --> "gray so light you can't believe it's not white"
#000012 --> "oh my god, that gray is so light it made my computer
explode"
#000013 --> "nothing could possibly be lighter than this gray"
...
#FFFFFE --> "not white"
#FFFFFF --> "white"
But wait, that's not all! More colors than you could shake a
stick at!
We realize that a mere 16,777,216 colors is far too few for
professional-quality design. After all, every kid these days has
a box with over 20 million Crayolas (and that number only goes up
when they break 'em.) Therefore, HappyWeb will grossly extend the
Web's color range.
Colors to be added include:
metallic colors, such as silver, gold, iridium, and robot
underwear;
fluorescent colors, such as shocking pink, electric blue, and
neon red;
ultraviolet colors, which are good for pages designed for bees;
infrared and microwave colors, which are great for pages of
recipes (surfers can hold their food to the screen to cook it)
radioactive colors, such as radium, strontium, and plutonium;
transparent colors, which allow you to see the inside of your
computer's picture tube.
And you'll have more control over colors, too!
In order to properly empower Web designers to make intelligent
choices about what colors surfers are allowed to use, in addition
to changing the colors of the text and the background, Web
designers will now be able to change the colors of the scroll
bars, the drop menus, the surfer's hard drive, and his or her
clothes.
(Note: An earlier draft of this standard allowed CLOTHES="NONE",
which is no longer supported as it did not specify the order,
leading to bizarre strangulation deaths when some Web browsers
removed surfers' underwear before their outerwear. From now on,
you must specify which clothes to remove in order, such as
CLOTHES="NOSHOES,NOSOCKS,NOPANTS,NOUNDERWEAR".)
The Y2K Problem has been solved on HappyWeb!
It is well-known that if you look at any Web pages that say "'99"
on them after January 1, 2000, your house will explode, just as
if you tried to use your Walkman after January 1. HappyWeb has
the perfect solution to the Y2K problem!
The year after '99 will be referred to as "2K". Two digits, no
fuss, no muss!
Subsequent years will also have unique two-digit names:
1999 -- 99
2000 -- 2K
2001 -- 2L
2002 -- 2M
...
2015 -- 2Z
2016 -- 30
2017 -- 31
2018 -- 32
...
With this intelligent use of letters and numbers we'll never
run out of dates in a million billion trillion years!
Better alphabetized bookmarks
Studies have shown that the titles of Web pages break down this
way:
50% "Welcome to the home page of..."
40% "Our Home Page"
10% "Untitled ClarisWorks Document, type title here"
Because of this, when you sort your list of bookmarks, all the
pages go under "W", "O", or "U". HappyWeb will fix thisÊ-- the
HappyWeb search-and-replace spider will visit all existing Web
pages and silently add the word "Welcome" to the start of every
Web page so that they will all alphabetize together.
It is noted that most Web browsers chop off long titles at 43 to
64 characters, to prevent you from accidentally putting too much
useful information in a page title. Because adding "Welcome" to
millions of pages would make some titles too longÊ-- not to
mention wasting millions off bytes of valuable network
bandwidthÊ-- on HappyWeb, "Welcome to" will be abbreviated ":-)->".
HappyWeb saves time, too!
On HappyWeb,