Newsgroups: chi.media,alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: There's one in every group X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 04:25:08 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com Followup-To: alt.religion.kibology In chi.media, Sherman Kaplan (shermank@enteract.com) wrote or quoted, I don't know which: > > > BBB Enterprises is proud to unveil its' latest game, "Find the Usenet > > *Loon!" > > > > Tired of the same old crap on television night after night? Play "Find > > the Usenet *Loon!" tonight! It's #fun! It's exciting! And best of all it's > > virtually *FREE! > > > > Here's how you play; > > > > Go to the news group section of your ISP and choose one of the many > > many news groups available to download. It can be something you have > > a passing interest in, something you are an expert in, even something you > > know absolutely nothing about. > > > > Download the group. Read the current postings keeping track of how > > many posts you read before spotting the resident Loon. Person who > > correctly identifies the resident Loon on the group in the fewest postings > > wins! OOH OOH OHH MISTER KOTTER I'M RAISING MY HAND MISTER KOTTER OOH OOH OOH PICK ME PICK ME PICK MEEEEE!!!! > > This game can be played solo or in a group. And the name of that group is... alt.religion.kibology. > > Challenge your friends! > > > > No knowledge of the topic being discussed is necessary. Remember, the > > Loon you're seeking doesn't know anything about it either! > > > > Helpful tips for beginners: > > > > 1. Reading and comprehension above the third grade level. This will put > > you head and shoulders above the average Usenet Loon. > > > > 2. Beginners should be prepared to find astonishing leaps of logic, > > irrational statements, ad homien attacks, strawman arguments, racial, > > sexual, religious and political slurs coupled with complete paranoia. And "ad homien" attack consists of any reference to the "In Living Color" character, Homien The Clown. > > 3. After spotting the Loon, advanced players usually give the Loon a > > whack with their Loon *mallets. Really advanced players have a Loon > > *Klaxon to warn of transient Loons flocking to their group. Loon Klaxons > > emit a loud "Whoop!Whoop! Whoop!" upon Loon detection. This is the worst chapter of Kurt Vonnegut's "Galapagos" ever! Also, "Loon *mallet" is just a misspelling of "L*A*R*T". > > 4. All news groups have at least one resident Loon. Many news groups > > have an entire flock, especially in the alt. listings. > > > > 5. The Loon will always be right. > > > > 6. No self respecting Loon will ever admit to being wrong under any > > circumstances. > > > > 7. Loons become quite testy when confronted with measly annoyances > > like logic, scientific facts or actual test results. > > > > * Loon mallet and Loon Klaxon sold separately. Batteries not included. > > > > #Find the Usenet Loon can provide many hours of safe, harmless fun. It > > should be noted that in extreme instances Loon hunting can be addictive > > and BBB Enterprises assumes no liability for lost productivity at work, > > late nights giggling at the computer and/or other side effects. What if your loon spends all night giggling at the computer? In a public library? While eating candy? -- K. Not eating candy. I have a frozen fish made from tofu that the package said was a chicken in the oven. And the fish had a BIG RED SWASTIKA on the package! It's the attack of the Vegenazis who substitute fish-shaped tofu for the chicken-shaped tofu described on the label! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: There's one in every group X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 08:35:11 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com David Pacheco (david_pacheco@lineone.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I have a frozen fish made from tofu that the package said was > > a chicken in the oven. > > > > And the fish had a BIG RED SWASTIKA on the package! > > It's the attack of the Vegenazis who substitute fish-shaped tofu for > > the chicken-shaped tofu described on the label! > > Which reminds me, at the restaurant in the Boston Aquarium and Casa de > Ugly Fish at the end of the tour after the the World's Most Pointless > Pilgrimage to Brigham Circle the day after the "The Moon... She Explode" > and first fake end of the cone contest ARKPLE... > > ...you were given a chicken burger whose wrapping claimed that it was > "FISH". Or vice versa, I can't remember. It said "CHICKEN" when I bought it. It was one of those wrappers that said "HAMBURGER", "CHEESEBURGER", "CHICKEN", and "FISH" on the four edges so that it could be wrapped starting at any particular side to make the sandwich contain whatever item wasn't on that side or the two adjacent to it. I recall being disappointed because I went into the cafeteria to take my photo of the "WHY IT'S GOOD FOR FISH IF YOU EAT THEM" propaganda sign (after taking a photo of the "PEPSI" sign on the giant tank that had fish swimming in it) and the closest I could come to finding any fish anywhere in the cafeteria was the packet of "oyster crackers" they gave me with my cup of bad chili. I really wanted to eat a fishburger in the aquarium like you're supposed to be able to. I really wanted to stroll out of the cafeteria and eat it where the fish could see me. Then I wanted to start flying around where the penguins could see me, > I had the pizza and milk, That was just really greasy cheese, if you mean the stuff on the pizza. > and I think the three pieces of pepperoni -- > all conveniently placed along the slice lines so that my tiny brane > would be fooled into thinking there were *six* pieces -- were placed to > imply a swastika. Then you went home and broke all your crayons because your big sister said if you did that you'd have twice as many. Then you decided you wanted twice as many big sisters. -- K. Was Caspar Weinberger on Pepsi's board before, during, or after Joan Crawford was on it, and was Cap there before, during, or after Nixon was their lawyer? I need to know for some libel I'm writing. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Kibological Obituaries X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 05:44:58 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com David Pacheco (david_pacheco@lineone.net) wrote: > > David C. Pacheco, aged 30, died yesterday of a natural gas explosion in > his transverse colon. BEFORE --> .. DURING --> . *BOOM* . AFTER ---> . . > He is survived by thousands of beautiful women with whom he had meaningful, > deeply spiritual relationships and mind-blowing Tantric sex that sometimes > lasted days at a time. Hold it right there, Mr. Trantric Pants. "SOMETIMES"? Sounds like YOU have a problem maintaining an erection more than a week! And that's just sad. > He is also survived by a short Albanian man named Ivo Andri, who sometimes > sent fawning postcards but who otherwise had no contact with him. > > Pacheco, a martyr in the Kibological religion, first achieved notoriety > in the last years of the previous millennium, exposing the hypocrisy and > greed inherent in the upper reaches of Kibology. In a turning point of > the Kibological Reformation movement, he nailed 95 copies of his one > single thesis to the door of the Boston Public Library. This thesis > espoused the use of giant robots and zeppelins with loudspeakers to > confuse the masses and cause chaos, and condemned both Kibo and Matt > McIrvin for continuing to perform the Kibological liturgies in Latin: ...while accompanied by performing elephants in my pajamas! > Pacheco felt that this alienated common, stupid people, separating them > from the Church so that there was no one left to make fun of. > > Pacheco was immediately excommunicated by Pope Kibo, causing a schism in > the church which was exacerbated when Pacheco elected a Pope of his own > in Avignon. Pope Placibo I, elected and named by Pacheco himself, was a > white tube sock worn on Pacheco's left hand, which he would animate > while pronouncing on religious matters in a squeaky voice. Pope Placibo > I was defeated in hand-to-hand tag-team combat by Bishop Joe M. Bay and > Cardinal Rouette, and his severed cotton head was placed on display as a > warning to other wayward footwear apparel with illusions of apostasy. > > Pacheco's body can be viewed at the Schadenfreude Chapel in Upper > Poking, Dorset. And your letters are kept at the Boston Public Library sandwiched between the pages of Jack Benny's. > In accordance with his last wishes, his coffin will be > shot 1500 feet through the air from a circus cannon, landing in a pile > of dirty mattresses soaked in gasoline, which will then be set on fire. > The whole burnt pile will then be encased in concrete, and surrounded > with barbed wire and warnings in seventeen languages. Don't forget there has to be a big red triangle around it, visible from space, because all space aliens know that the red triangle means either "DANGER: RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL ENTOMBED HERE" or "WIDE LOAD". > -dp. > If I fake my enjoyment of > someone else's misfortunes, > is that schadenfraud? No, but if you find your exploded colon and become pals with your colon, it would be your Sigmoid Freund. -- K. I apologize if that pun exploded in your colon. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: I know some of you people have cats X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 06:09:17 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com David Pacheco (david_pacheco@lineone.net) wrote: > > http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/index.html > > "PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from > cats. It detects and blocks most cat typing, and also trains your cat to > stay off the computer keyboard." > > I just REALLY like saying "WARNING! CAT-LIKE TYPING DETECTED!" Not only do they claim it displays that in a big scary gray rectangle on the screen, they claim it also makes a special sound that scares cats. They let you download it to hear it. IT'S JUST SOMEONE ALTERNATELY SUCKING AND BLOWING ON A HARMONICA! ^ point where Kontext-Away will doubt make an appearance. In any case, I think that all they're saying is that "Cats are annoyed by exactly the same thing you are. Here, listen to me sucking on a harmonica for a while." > NOEVMBER 20, 19999 > > > DEER MR. GROSE%RY STOR ONER: > > HELLO!1! THIS IS DAVID PACH CO RITING THIS LETER. MY CAT SEEM > S TOO HAV RUN OUT OF THOS DEL$ISHUS TUNA-FL AVORD TREETS. (PLEES SNED 4 > CRATES TO > > MY ]HOUS IMMM EDETLY ASA7P BY UPS. MAKE THAT 6 CRATES+. 12 JUST TO BEE > SHUR. HA! HA! HA1! JUTS LEEV ' THE B*OX BY THE D6OR. > +-------------------------------------------+ > PLEES BIL L ME > LAT ER. WARNING! CAT-LIKE TYPING DETECTED! > > To protect your credit rating, > PawSense is diverting keyboard input > > > Enter password to return to application > > > Password: __FUK U DAVE!1!____ > > > +-------------------------------------------+ Weren't you also supposed to make a joke about your cat eating your computer's mouse? > -dp. > But I still have NetWatch > installed so that he doesn't > visit all the kitty porn > sites. Okay, I'm not going to try to top that awesome pun. But I will go to their site and look for fun sentences to quote: -> Q: My cat is so mellow that no sound ever annoys him/her. Will your -> software work? -> -> A: Make sure that your speakers are aimed directly at your keyboard, Oh, yeah, because most computer speakers emit tightly collimated beams of sound that cannot ever bounce of any objects and is impossible to hear unless it is pointed at your feet while you are walking on the keyboard. Also, if your cat is sufficiently mellow, try reciting the entire Monty Python "Confuse-A-Cat" routine over and over until the cat gets disgusted and leaves to live with someone who's not unbearable. -> Q: My cat is deaf. Can you help me? -> -> A: PawSense detects the paws of even deaf cats. REALLY? -> Even if a cat is deaf, PawSense blocks cat typing once detected. REALLY? -> This makes it harder for the cat to mess up your programs, data files, -> and operating system. However, PawSense does not include a miracle cure -> for deafness. In fact, it causes deafness. Have you tried listening to that harmonica sound yet? Go to the "Sounds That Annoy Cats" page: http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/example-of-sounds-that-annoy-cats.html (Warning: It's very loud.) Then download the .WAV file, set your sound player program to "LOOP FOREVER AND EVER" mode, crank up the speakers, and leave it on all day while you're at work. Then you'll have a deaf cat and PawSense will be guaranteed to work perfectly! -> PawSense also includes a screensaver mode, which features -> extra-sensitive cat detection, Sorry, PawSense only works on deaf cats, not gay cats. -- K. Hey, here's an idea: Why not just check the box in your computer's control panel that says "LOCK SCREEN AFTER ___ MINUTES OF INACTIVITY"? OOPS, I JUST ACCIDENTALLY PUT PAWSENSE OUT OF BUSINESS FOREVER! SORRY! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: HERE COMES A MEME! X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 06:29:33 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com In sci.geo.geology, Manley Hubbell (Manley.Hubbell@hubert.rain.com) wrote: > > Thursday The Ion's Path & Erge2erg 24 ? 0 Cr ? erg > Well? continuing along with the 59,60 Solar Flare (November 12-13) > ================================================================== > Lookie? i've no idea about actual numbers? I JUST GUESS?/? > My guess now {99-11-17 9:12 A.M. PST} will be the ?"EVENT"? > in question will not even register on the GEOS 8-9 > numbers i've posted? ok lemme TRY to find those ?????/? > ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: > 1] their velocities in excess of 500? probably > 2] above 2000 microVolts/meter > 3] 31 meters short wave to VHF TV. > 4] GOES-8 Proton Fluence GOES-8 Electron Fluence > ] --- Protons/cm2-day-sr --- -- Electrons/cm2-day-sr -- > ] Date >1 MeV >10 MeV >100 MeV >0.6 MeV >2 MeV > ] 10 25 8.3e+05 1.2e+04 2.8e+03 2.6e+10 3.5e+08 > 5] 844,800 per cm^2 29,500,000,000 electrons /cm^2 > 6] so my 1st guess was more than 4 coulomb's > 7] 8759 N10E45 288 0920, 8760 N14E09 324 0310 > 8] E_r=V/(r*ln{r2/r1}) Where V>oltage r1 central wire r2 cylinder > 9] In Germany, a man named Chris Peate has > his [20]GSOC Satellite Visibility Page WARNING: CAT-LIKE TYPING DETECTED -- K. You can buy me for only $19.99. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Unhappy dream #16 X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 07:33:10 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com > Shiro Akaishi (akaishi@nospam.unity.unity.edu) wrote: > > > > Here I was, in Wally-mart in a town near where I live, looking at the > > electronics section, when suddenly I start to feel chest pains. I check my > > pulse and all other symptoms seem to indicate the onset of a heart attack. > > So here I am, gasping for breath and slowly dropping to the floor, > > wondering why I was being ignored - when I see, across the aisle, a very > > nice looking young female wally mart employee has cut her finger, and has > > 15 people attempting to help her. By giving her mouth-to-mouth. The solution's obvious: Get a sex change. (Assuming "Shiro Akaishi" is a boy's name, which is safe to assume because it's obviously a Spanish name.) Nick Bensema (nickb@fnord.io.com) wrote: > > You made that up. > > Dreams never have metaphors that obvious. > > Unless it's just me, with the cryptic dreams, and everyone else dreams > of Jack Webb sitting behind a desk, saying "You're not in love with your > girlfriend anymore" or "You don't like being a plumber. Go to school > and become a bartender" or "Be suspicious about that guy at work with > that weird ear thing going on." I've had that exact same dream, except it was Salvador Dali sitting behind a perfectly rectangular desk giving ordinary advice. Then my home town turned Communist, and a firing squad was about to shoot me, and I was in my pajamas, and they fired their rifles, and Salvador Dali stepped out of the cloud of smoke to say, "Don't worry, Joe, that bullet will never hit you." Then he told me about mutual funds and why I should become a notary public. And then the town got taken over by the Nota Republic, and Salvador Dali shot Jack Webb. Then I woke up, and Ronald Reagan was still President! -- K. And Bob Dole had THREE good arms! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,sci.physics,soc.history.science,alt.usenet.kooks From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: AP's SCIENCE-RELIGION-ODYSSEY; Turkish Prison X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 07:50:44 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com Followup-To: alt.religion.kibology In alt.religion.kibology, sci.physics, soc.history.science, and alt.usenet.kooks, "arch_plutonium@my-deja.com" wrote: > > Dear World, I am on my European leg of my tour to visit the site of the > world's famous science and I find myself in Istanbul to catch a > connecting flight to Athens when men in Turkish Army uniform detain me > outside the rest room. The commanding officer of the squad asks me > what the equations on my cape stand for and I explain that I am the > King of Science and the equations prove the Atom Totality Theorum. > After a long amount of time discussing the matter in Turkish with an > airport security officer, I am forced to drop the soiled toilet paper > I am holding and retrieve my pants from the rest room. I am then > forced into a car and taken to an old fortified building that I can > only guess is a prison or secret police headquearters. This army > officer, Serdar Argic is his name, asks me many questions about my > Atom Totality Theorum, but all of his questions are about weapons! No, no, no. Archie would never stoop to explaining his crackpot theory to a lowly squad leader. He'd first demand to see the King of Turkey. Here's what a PERFECT forgery "from" Archie would look like: Most of us only know of Turkey from turkey the food and Turkish taffy. Of course I know much more about Turkey so I felt I did not need to spent much time there because no science could have ever come out of Turkey because it is not a non-landlocked superpower. So I got off the bus at the bus station and walked away from the bus for a while to buy some turkish taffy, I figured it would be better in Turkey than elsewhere. Much as I used to eat taffy in the kitchen before I fired Dartmouth, I more preferred eating taffy on the roof of my house in Nova Scotia on Dartmouth's best campus, and I also ate red Twizzlers on the bus when I left Vienna. I left Vienna this morning. Coming to Turkey I was in the mood for taffy, which made it good that I was in Turkey. Compare that to Andrew Wiles who is a Turkey ha-ha-ha. But I laugh and I also pity for I am the King of Science and our maker ATOM has super- determined me to be kind and compassionate even towards idiots like Andrew Wiles. I could not find any taffy and then they threw me in jail where I am being harassed for liking taffy, which is perfectly normal. It is a shame I am in jail for I will be unable to access the Internet properly because they only have Windows in jail but it is also good because having myself thrown in jail was part of my ingenious plan, begun in 1993, to trick Kibo into ordering the president of NASA to have me fired from Dartmouth so that I could then catch Kibo in my trap by being thrown into Turkish jail, except that I did not get my taffy that day. To our Maker, Pu, I pray: Pu, make them give me taffy. ATOM -- K. Of course, I don't think forging a post in someone else's name is appropriate even if that person is as evil as Archie, but in the above case it had to be done because otherwise we wouldn't see any posts from Archie while he's in prison. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: AP's SCIENCE-RELIGION-ODYSSEY; Turkish Prison Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 09:37:21 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com Richard E. Nickle (rick@trystero.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > [openly mocking Archimedes Plutonium's special literary style] > > > > Most of us only know of Turkey from turkey the food and Turkish taffy. > > If Turkish Taffy comes from Turkey, where does Laffy Taffy > come from? Also, when they make Salt-Water Taffy do they > strain out the plankton? Why would they? Then it wouldn't have any flavor. Laffy Taffy comes from that weird universe where Laugh-In took place. It was made by our evil overlord, Morgo, The Friendly Drelb, who fought Space Ghost. Then Richard Nixon said "Sock it to ME?" and someone slowly dripped water on him until he died from Chinese water torture. And then Ruth Buzzi beat up Arte Johnson because she has super powers like all other Klingons with those crunched-up foreheads. Then, Peter Sellers peered out from behind the bushes and said, "Interestink... but ve cannot allow a mine chaft gap! Choosink a cranberry juice is complicated!" and he got so confused he couldn't tell Richard Burton from Peter O'Tool and couldn't tell a good idea from "Casino Royale" and then he went back to playing Edward Teller in that stage show where he was partnered with Victor Kiam. DING! The bell means I got to Victor Kiam from Laffy Taffy in only nineteen discreet steps. Can you connect the dots to help li'l Billy get from Laffy Taffy to Victor Kiam? HINT: VICTOR KIAM IS A JERK! -- K. Little-known fact: "Casino Royale" caused blindness in hundreds of hippies because the soundtrack was too "bright". ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: This wouldn't be worth reading if it weren't about Kibo. Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 08:39:26 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com I just ate as much spinach as I can stand... ...during my whole life! I wish I'd eaten more spinach when I was a kid 'cause then I could have stopped eating it sooner. -- K. I only ate the part that was covered with bacon bits that expired in 1997. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Taiwan quake shakes "Pokemon" families in Japan Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 08:58:56 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com "AFP / Sachiko Kinoshita" (C-afp@clari.net) wrote: > > TOKYO, Nov 21 (AFP) - A killer quake in Taiwan has struck at the > heart of Japanese family life by slashing supplies of the high-tech > parts needed for a new "Pokemon" electronic game. Oh no. It is the end of the world as we know it. Now all life is pointless. WAIT! I JUST REALIZED I WAS BEING SARCASTIC! THAT CHEERED ME RIGHT UP! > Nintendo Co. Ltd. is releasing the Gold and Silver series of > Pocket Monster or Pokemon cartridges for its Game Boy console on > Sunday as the successor to the hugely popular Red, Green, Blue and > Pikachu versions. Don't forget Tangerine, Blueberry, and Mocha. > The rotund, pixie-like Pokemon characters You misspelled "pixel-like". Hope this helps. Here, squash 13 Pokemon at once with your thumb: .::.:.:: > appear in everything from a television series to collectors' cards > and electronic games. NOBODY WHO HAS BEEN ON TV HAS EVER BEEN ON TRADING CARDS BEFORE!!! > They are one of the biggest children's hits yet. > But millions of parents who have vowed to get the latest > software for their children could be in trouble. OH NO! NOW SPOILED BRATS MIGHT LEARN A VALUABLE LESSON! THIS IS TERRIBLE! > "We originally planned to release a combined three million > cartridges," said Nintendo spokesman Ken Toyoda. > But the firm has only 1.8 million games ready, because the > September 21 quake in Taiwan damaged microchip and other parts > suppliers. > "We could not procure enough parts due to the Taiwan earthquake > even though we looked everywhere," Toyoda said. "We hope (customers) > will limit their purchases to one each." YEAH IT WOULD BE A SHAME IF WE SOLD ALL OUR INVENTORY!!! > Sales of the previous series totalled a staggering 12.34 million > cartridges in Japan over three years to last March, with overseas > sales reaching another 2.78 million. > Nintendo sold 2.3 million units of the Pokemon Stadium software > for its 64-bit game machines by July. > The Pokemon market, including character goods, (which means alphabet soup and letter blocks) > is estimated at 400 billion yen (3.8 billion dollars) in Japan alone. 400 billion yen sounds like A LOT until you convert it down to dollars! > "At home, I see Pokemon in the living room, Pokemon in the > toilet, Pokemon in the bathroom ... AND HERE COME THE DANCING BEARS OF QUOTABILITY!!! "At home, I see... Pokemon in the toilet..." -- Haruhisa Tachii > not a single day passes without seeing Pokemon," said Haruhisa Tachii, > father of a 10-year-old Pokemon-manic son. > The son, Haruki, told AFP ominously: "Dad promised to get me > both the Gold and Silver as my sister also likes Pokemon. I am > looking forward to seeing what they are like." "I have no idea what my sister is like because I have been playing Pokemon constantly for five years." > His father gravely confided later: "I'm scared to think what > will happen if I cannot buy them ..." Sell the sister to get money to buy the brat his two Pokemon games. > Yoshiharu Satake, spokesman at major electronics store Yodobashi > Camera, said the company's management had secured supply for sales > by subscription. "But we predict any further supplies will be sold > out quickly." > One Tokyo shop selling only Pokemon goods has become a tourist > attraction, with dark-suited global business investors wandering > around with baskets full of monster souvenirs. > Crowds swell during weekends at the Pokemon Center Tokyo. Some > 200 kids and adults queue up every Saturday and Sunday morning > before the store opens, forcing it to limit the number of customers > on the floor. All other customers are required to stand upright as they step over the ones crawling on their bellies. > Tachii said his life was "dominated by Pokemon," and Pokemon was wearing a leather corset with stiletto heels and a whip. > noting his family had even gone to his hometown on a Pokemon jet. > Riding on Pokemon popularity, Japan's All Nippon Airways Co. > Ltd. (ANA) launched domestic and Tokyo-New York flights of Boeing > aircraft plastered with pictures of such characters as Pikachu and > Meowth. > The Pokemon jet boosted the number of passengers by 21 percent > from a year earlier in the nine months to last March in Japan. The > number of child passengers jumped 165 percent. However, the number of airline passengers who vomited increased 548 percent. > Pokemon now boasts a cinema blockbuster in the United States. > "Pokemon, the First Movie" took in 31 million dollars over the > last weekend -- the highest three-day non-Disney animated opening > gross in US movie history. Also the most badly-animated film not drawn by Hanna-Barbera. > The movie earned some 50.8 million dollars in its first five > days in US theaters and also scored the fourth-highest Wednesday > opening of all time (10.1 million). > Pokemon has also drawn popularity in Hong Kong, Taiwan and > China. Good thing it's not popular outside the US, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. LET'S ALL MOVE TO CANADA! -- K. We got Pokemon, they got poutine. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Poetry to try and offload emotional garbage Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 09:04:27 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com Nick Bensema (nickb@fnord.io.com) wrote: > KA-ZORCH! DOUBLE-STICK KONTEXT-AWAY SCRUBS AWAY CONTENT WITH TINY HUMAN ARMS! > [...] > > I purposely never learned to draw, specifically so that I would never > be able to draw my own pornography. > > [...] WHIP-SNAP-CRACK-POP-TART! KONTEXT-AWAY TEARS ITSELF UP INTO FLUSHABLE PIECES! Hey, Nick, did you ever get that inflatable chair? -- K. "I'd like to return this inflatable chair... these cigarette burns were on it when I bought it." ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Poetry to try and offload emotional garbage Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 09:28:18 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com Nick Bensema (nickb@fnord.io.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Nick Bensema (nickb@fnord.io.com) wrote: > > > > > > > KA-ZORCH! DOUBLE-STICK KONTEXT-AWAY SCRUBS AWAY CONTENT WITH TINY > > HUMAN ARMS! > > > > > I purposely never learned to draw, specifically so that I would never > > > be able to draw my own pornography. > > > I fail to see what you have done. You have removed everything but the > topic sentence of my paragraph. And that's how GOOD comedy becomes GREAT comedy. Please thank me again for removing everything but the topic sentence of your life. > > Hey, Nick, did you ever get that inflatable chair? > > HEY! THANKS FOR REMINDING ME! Don't forget to buy some air to go with it. I think they have an Air Hut at the mall now between Pizza Hut, Sunglass Hut, and Fingerhut Hut. -- K. At the moment on my TV, Dick Van Dyke is freaking out the censors by actually touching Greg Morris! It must have been easy to be a social activist in the '60s. You'd just have to touch a guy. Or wear pants, depending on your gender. Of course, years later they still banned "Sesame Street" in the South because it showed a black kid and a white kid brushing their teeth WHILE LOOKING IN THE SAME MIRROR! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Knock, knock. Niiiiiick? Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 09:08:47 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com > Nick Bensema (nickb@fnord.io.com) wrote: > > > > And I'm on St. John's Wort. This is weird, but suddenly I'm not bitter > > anymore, no matter how hard I try. It might be placebo effect, but this > > is some pretty potent placebo. St. John's Wort. It Tastes So Worty Because It's Bitter FOR You. David Pacheco (david_pacheco@lineone.net) wrote: > > St. John's Wort is a gateway placebo, Nick. Right now you're using St. > John's Wort (or SJW, in the 'lingo' of the 'street') to act as a > substitute for some selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor like Paxil or > Prozac or Sphinctrax. And that's fine, you can handle this, you'll say > to yourself. But pretty soon you'll be taking the SJW to placebo for > something just a bit stronger, maybe an antimanic like Eskalith or a > carboxylic acid like Depaken. Because the Paxil just isn't strong > enough any more. > > Slippery slope, Nick. Pretty soon you're gobbling down the St. John's > Wort by the handful while telling yourself it's really an antipsychotic > Benzisoxazole derivative like Risperdal. > > I'm telling you this from experience, Nick. PLEASE listen to me, > because I'm telling you this as _your_friend_. STAY OFF THE PLACEBOS. Now I want to cover my lawn with placebos so I can put up a funny funny sign. -- K. This is why David Pacheco's articles are always blue. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Have you no shame Mr. Pacheco? Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 09:12:57 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com Dean Lenort (dean.lenort@att.net) wrote: > > From today's paper (11/19): > > Hope springs eternal > > He may be slowing down, but Bob > Hope can still light up Christmas. > The 96-year-old entertainer and his > wife, Dolores, will be guests of honor > at Disneyland on Monday to turn on > all of the park lights for the Christ- > mas season. "We figured if we could > kick off Christmas with somebody of > that stature, why not?" Disneyland > spokesman Tom Brocato said. "We figured nobody would notice one other guy with a huge head wandering around and not talking." > I'm just glad that the large "company" with which I'm associated never > does anything that silly. They've privatized NASA? Cool! Maybe now they can do an IPO and get listed on the stock market! Then if an astronaut dies on a Mars mission and all the reporters ask, "Is it worth it to go to Mars? How much is a human life worth?" you can just look at how much the stock price went down, multiply by the number of shares, and that's how much the astronaut's life is worth. Unless he was Bob Hope, in which case you'd have to factor in those thousands of slum apartment buildings he owns. -- K. And they're all used solely as obstacles on golf courses. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Kill my meme! Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 09:19:48 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com "Leeb" (nurd@mindspring.com) wrote: > > If I could zap all the message I've ever posted to Usenet, I would, > but I can't. Dear Lee Bumgarner, I've deleted all your articles from the permanent alt.religion.kibology archive. This was the first one you ever posted, and thus the first to be eradicated: From: Lee S. Bumgarner (LSBUMGAR@vax1.acs.jmu.edu) Subject: Did Kibo get a Church of Euthanasia spam email? Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Organization: The Second Foundation Date: Mon, 12 Sep 1994 18:24:35 GMT ...back when your .signature said your address was "Wompler 106". Aren't you glad nobody will ever see that article again? > So I'd rather NO ONE MAKE ANY MORE MENTION OF ME PERIOD. Okay, Lee EXCLAMATION POINT > > > > > > > > > > > Oh > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > by the way > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > that was a joke YOU WASTED FORTY LINES OF MY SCREEN AND I WANT THEM BACK!!! -- K. I SMELL BACON BACON BACON! AND IT'S BURNING!!! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: One day in K-Mart Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 09:29:49 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com "Lots42" (lots42@aol.com) wrote: > > One day in K-Mart there was a big fire. Everyone inside moved towards the > exits but in the panic and the flames, several displays were knocked over, > trapping people behind acres of ribbons, boxes and Lego toys. Twenty four > people burned to death amidst the holiday goodness. This was the story that got you kicked out of third grade, right? Also, you misspelled "Spot" as "twenty-four people". -- K. And you forgot to hyphenate Spot. POOR SPOT! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: That commercial still bugs me. Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 09:43:20 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com That commercial is still running. The one with the incredibly inane song, that I described in December 1998: > My least favorite commercial at the moment, though, is the one where > Dow tells us that their toxic chemicals make women twirl their babies > around over their heads in the middle of fields of flowers with the > following irritating song: > > "Just a thought, > that's what Einstein said. > Just a view of the future > two steps ahead..." > > EINSTEIN ADMITS HIS THEORY IS JUST A THOUGHT!!! ALSO HE DESERVES A SECOND > NOBEL PRIZE NOW THAT SCIENTISTS ARE REALIZING HE WAS *TWO* STEPS AHEAD! Well, that one came on my TV tonight, and then a short while later, there was another which opened with film of Albert Einstein speaking into a microphone in a Ludwig von Drake voice, "CHOOSING A CRANBERRY JUICE IS CONFUSING!" Yeah, that dumb ol' Einstein had trouble finding a good cranberry juice. BECAUSE THEY ALL TASTE BAD! NOBODY LIKES CRANBERRIES! Didja know the way they sort them is that they bounce them off a piece of metal and reject the ones that don't bounce far enough? I don't know if they reject the ones that bounce too far. Why does everyone always seem to believe that Einstein had this deep Sergeant Schultz voice? Truth is, he had this squeaky little voice that was much funnier. He sounded just like Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Only less sexy. -- K. Hot tip: If you find some canned bacon that expired two years ago, and then you bake it until it turns black, it'll still be soft and chewy. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Jobs, Disney in Plot to Rig Conetest X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 17:17:54 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com Jim Vandewalker (jimvan@gate.net) wrote: > > http://disney.go.com/worldsofdisney/toystory2/movie/index.html > > Steve Jobs, in his role as CEO of Pixar Corporation, and executives at Walt > Disney Corporation were condemned today for their part in an two-year > attempt to rig the outcome of James "Kibo" Parry's ARKPLE "Conetest." > > Jobs, also known as the "iCEO" of Apple Computer, was charged by > Kibologists with using computer generated images of orange traffic cones > surrounded by the lovable characters from "Toy Story 1.5" to enter Kibo's > famous Internet "Conetest." Disney executives were said to have assisted > in distribution of the images which had taken nearly two years to complete > on Pixar's powerful Atari 2600 computers. > > A spokesbeing for Kibo said that the Usenet deity was "deeply saddened by > this blatant attempt to inject commercialism into what was intended to be a > completely pointless exercise in finding, rather than manufacturing, > idiotic but real images of quotidian artifacts." > > There was no immediate agreement on what "quotidian" means. Experts were > unable to find the word in a dictionary of everyday terms. Which is ironic because it is an everyday term for some of us precisely because we DON'T know what it means. Saying "quotidian" is a very quotidian thing to do. Unfortunately, www.toystory2.com seems to be down right now (Bill Gates at work?) so I can't verify the undoubtedly accurate quotes above. I will say that when Dreamworks rushed "Antz", their knockoff of Pixar/Disney's "A Bug's Life", into production to beat "A Bug's Life" into theaters, there was speculation that this was done largely to keep Steve Jobs too busy to be Apple's CEO. (Whereas Jobs has found a clever loophole of his own; Everyone at Apple will do whatever he wants because they respect him as a god-like being, but he can never actually be fired by stockholders because he's not a real CEO!) What Jim Vandewalker is referring to about the Orange Conetest is the following story about the interim winner (iWINNER?) that nobody objected to at the party (shortly after the partgoers all beamed thought rays at me which suggested they didn't want to look at any more orange cone photos.) Sean Smith had brought in a clipping from the most recent Sunday _Boston Globe_, showing Bil Keane's lovable li'l Billy from "The Family Circus" weaving a curvy dotted line across an expanse of white as he ignored two orange cones and was taking his final step into an open manhole. I am not making this up. Needless to say, even though this was a direct violation of the Conetest rules (which said you had to actually take a photo rather than violating Bil Keane's copyright) I chose to declare it the winner because I really liked the sight of Li'l Billy about to lose his life due to him ignoring two perfectly good stunted cartoon cones. And because I thought that Bil Keane may have been doing an autobiographical cartoon about something stupid he did back when he was li'l Bily. Or maybe just the previous day. Anyway, two days after the party, some of us Boston people (and some out-of-towners like Dean Lenort, who is from NASA, which is not in Boston) were meeting in Park Street Station to go get harassed by the Toys R Us security people (because I didn't want to check my laptop computer at the door, and because I took a photo of "California Nails Barbie", and because we were enjoying ourselves too much in a toy store and toy shopping is not supposed to be fun but a grueling ordeal, and beacuse Bill Gates -- not the real evil one, the Kibologically evil one -- was obviously one of those skinheads from England) and to have a delicious dinner at the K Cafe, the very restaurant whose name screams both "K!ibology!" and "K!rap!". And Sean Smith brought along that day's _Globe_. (One of those sentences was longer than the other.) On the front page of the _Globe_'s "Arts" (and I use the term loosely) section, there was a photo (and I use the term loosely) of some computer-generated toys holding short, stubby, computer-generated orange cones (r = n-y & y > 0 & n-y > 0 | x < n & y < n & z = 0) over their heads during that scene in the movie where they teach kids that eighteen-wheel trucks always brake for orange cones. So Sean Smith now has a habit of stealing stubby orange cones from the _Globe_ every week just to please Kibo. And Ed Catmull must have written a Renderman Shading Language routine to make pixels learn what it's like to be on the surface of an orange cone. That cheater Sean Smith is the interim winner of the Conetest until I pick a real winner to award the Orange Medal to, sometime after Christmas (I'm obviously busy with more important matters. Hey, I could have typed an extra "o" somewhere in that sentence to make a Freudian pun that nobody would have noticed.) Anyhow, I will be very disappointed when I see "Toy Story 2" and the subtitle isn't "California Nails Barbie." -- K. I also took a photo of "Trend Forecaster Barbie", who predicted that Barbie fans would be too wussy to rise up and overthrow complain that there were too many fifty-dollar Barbie dolls these days. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Pointless ramblings X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 17:24:42 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com "Noah A Christis" (haon4707@my-dejanews.com) wrote: > Hey, Noah A, your name has too much white space. And an oily "t" zone. > "Lots42" (lots42@aol.com) wrote: > > > > Isn't the point of vacations to relax and don't do shit and relax and > > drink beer? > > For those people whom occasionally work boring jobs like "grocery > repairman" or "television system administration" or "video rental > clerk" a little "excitement" and "adventure" is sometimes called for. This is why you can't go on vacation until someone smashes your groceries, cancels your favorite category of television shows, or makes you wonder what's going on by being the fourth guy to ask for some nonsensical movie title you've never heard of before like "Yellow Submarine". These are the people make your vacation possible -- the smashers, the cancellers, the people who have heard of the sixties. By the way, I've always wondered about the eymological lineage of the word "grocery". "-ery" is "-this is a store where you buy the thing that shows up in the first half of this word", right? So how does "food" turn into "groc"? I don't grok that. <-- SEE? I'VE HEARD OF THE SIXTIES, AND I GROK SPOCK! -- K. Working hard to line up pairs of dashes so I can win at .signature poker ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Quick Question X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 18:16:07 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com WARNING! LONG RANT ANSWERING "QUICK QUESTION"! For those of you joining in in the year 2009 after "spamblockers" have gone the way of .signatures containing phone numbers, we're talking about the technique some people use of posting to Usenet with random garbage words stuffed into the middle of your E-mail address in the hopes it will eliminate advertisements from your mailbox. Stacia and Darla are complaining that I like them so much that I keep trying to send them mail even after they made it hard for me. > "Darla" (darla4695@sprint.ca) wrote: > > > > PeeEss: PLUS, I got yelled at by KIBO HIMSELF this week about my munged > > address. I am batting 1000. The Avocado Avenger (stacia@io.com) wrote: > > Join the club. Only really uncool, un-hepcat compu-peons like you and I > ever munge addresses. Everyone else went to MIT and took 127 courses in > procmail and they never get spam, so if you can't take a few minutes of > your day to make the same sacrifice they did then you're lower than low, > worse than something scraped off the bottom of Archie's hemp sandals, and > how fukken *dare* you take a good two seconds of their precious time to > make them delete a couple of words and type a couple more? You selfish > bitch! I can't believe you would cause such chaos in such an otherwise > placid locale. What I hate is that I will often type a nice long interesting reply to someone and then the next day it'll come back to me because they'll have an address that they've made intentionally not workable, and they have not put big red Coast Guard cruisers around it saying "THIS IS THE PART YOU NEED TO REMOVE", so I won't know that such-and-such a SpryNet address should be substituted for such-and-such a valid-looking SprintNet address or the "fnord" should be removed or the "fnord" should be left in or I have to follow the instructions in the .signature that gets automatically deleted when I reply or whatever. And then I'll have wasted a bunch of time writing a letter to someone who wasn't polite enough to just put up a big sign saying "FUCK YOU, I DON'T WANT YOU TO HAVE AN EASY TIME TRYING TO SEND ME MAIL." I'm sorry I get pissed about this, but I hate expending effort writing replies to people and wasting all that time because they make *me* do their spam filtering for them because they're TOO LAZY to spend two seconds figuring out that they need to hit the "delete" key when they see a message that says "Subject: 100's Of Phone Sex Pals". Basically, if YOU don't want to get spam, it's YOUR job to get the spam out of your mailbox (and there are many means to do so that do not make other people do your job for you.) And I don't see why people make such a big deal out of getting mail they don't want. How much time does it take you to throw away "Subject: 100's Of Phone Sex Pals" versus the time it takes me to write a reply that you're never going to see? When it bounces back to me I'm not going to travel back in time to find the message it was in reply to and scour the .signature for clues as to what I should have done and then re-send the message. I just conclude "They don't want to get mail from me, then fine, they won't." And the "spamblocker" addresses don't work anyway. Trust me on this. Any "spamblocker" in your E-mail address that allows people to figure out how they can send you mail is going to be removed by certain spammers anyway. And there are plenty of other places they can (and do) get your E-mail address from. (Listed on Web pages. Your ISP might sell them. "finger". Whenever you type your address into a Web form. Whenever you register a domain.) Given how small a percentage of the Internet population has heard of Usenet, it's weird that people put "spamblockers" in their address on Usenet and I don't see this technique used on the Web or in InterNIC domain records. And what REALLY gets my goat is when people use spamblockers that cause innocent bystanders to get spammed. This happens most often because they stick something silly in before the .com because OBVIOUSLY there are only about five dot-com addresses in the world so if they just throw in "bozo.com" or "potsie.com" or "doidy.com" it's not even worth bothering to check who will get spammed at that address. I've also seen boneheads who post as "bozo@site.com" (where the .signature says "change bozo to myname to reply) and then another user at the same site gets spammed. PEOPLE, DON'T SCREW AROUND WITH YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS UNLESS YOU KNOW HOW THE INTERNET WORKS. ESPECIALLY THE PART ABOUT HOW THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE ON IT WHO ARE ALSO TRYING TO USE E-MAIL. AND THAT MAYBE A FEW PEOPLE MIGHT SOMEDAY WANT TO SEND YOU SOME, TOO, AND YOU MIGHT WANT THEM TO BE ABLE TO. If you're really wedded to that technique, you could use a system that lets you have multiple E-mail addresses. For instance, I have several domains where everything sent to any address at that domain goes to my mailbox (you think YOU get a lot of mail?) So, when I'm filling out a form at the Web site of Grape Computers Inc., I will sign up as "kibo-grape@kibo.com" and that way I can later block that address if they spam me, or I can tell if they start selling my address (which Grape tends to do). You could put "address-usenet@site.com" in your Usenet posts and then when replies come in you'll know they're either spammers or people on Usenet trying to reply to you, as opposed to being random mail. Whatever you do, don't have your filters or script trash the spam automatically. Move it into some other mailbox or file that you are inattentive to and clean out once in a while. It takes almost no time to throw away 100 spams at once, and it gives you a chance to realize "Oh, crap, I'm accidentally despamming Kibo." Because a couple times a month I get these long auto-replies which say "I HAVE AUTOMATICALLY GUESSED THAT YOU ARE A SPAMMER, THEREFORE I HAVE THROWN YOUR MESSAGE AWAY, AND TO BE POLITE I AM SENDING YOU THIS NOTE TELLING YOU THAT I HAVE THROWN YOUR MAIL AWAY. THANK YOU FOR BEING SO KIND AS TO SEND ME A PERSONAL NOTE THAT I THREW AWAY. THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT THIS. JUST TRY INFORMING ME THAT MY FILTERS ARE MALFUNCTIONING, PERSON WHO CANNOT SEND ME MAIL." (And sending auto-replies out is the WORST thing you can do if you want to DECREASE the number of people trying to spam you! Sure, block it with filters all you want, but if you just bounce it all back, there will be at least twice as much traffic going to and from your site because of the bounces, and the spammers will of course be looking for replies so they can say, "Hey, this address seems to go somewhere! Let's keep it on The Big List!") I mean, geez, I don't know what you people are doing that makes you so paranoid about ever SEEING spam on your screen. I doubt more than a couple percent of you get as much spam as I do (try being "webmaster@largeISP.com" for a while, and see how much you get; try having several E-mail addresses which forward to you posted on prominent Web sites; try owning a domain that is one letter different than a hard-to-spell site and having all the mail at that domain forwarded to you) and I deal with it by using a magical technique I call LOOKING AT IT. It takes maybe two seconds to determine that something is spam and NOT REPLY TO IT. I have a very simple set of filters that do certain basic things ("If it says 'Apparently-To:', it's probably spam; If it's not addressed to me, it's probably spam; If it's in Chinese, it's probably spam) and moves things into a different window. Then once a week or so I go to that window, flip through the messages real fast looking for funny lines to quote, and the one or two legitimate messages that got miscategorized (people who use "Bcc:" on all their mail for reasons I can never quote figure out) then I hit the key that makes a week's worth of spam all go away. If you spend your time getting agitated over the fact that people are sending you junk mail, you need to work on that at your end, not make those of us who are trying to communicate with you jump through hoops just because you're frustrated that OTHER people are spamming you. I'm aware of the irony of spending all this time composing a message about how I hate being required to solve a little puzzle for each person I want to mail. But I've wanted to say this for a while and now it's all coming out at once: I HATE SPAMBLOCKERS! I HATE SPAMBLOCKERS! I put my actual address (along with my legal name) in Usenet posts because I feel that when I'm communicating with people, they will understand that I am making an honest effort to communicate with them if I put my own name and a working return address on my mail. (I don't like anonymous posts, and I see spamblockers as only slightly above that: "I am talking to you and you are not allowed to reply" vs. "I am talking to you and you need to do extra work to reply to me because I am special.") Well, folks, I'm the one here who's so much more freakin' special than you, and I do not and will not use invalid "From:" addresses on Usenet posts. This article is not a flame. It's just an observation that I am better than everyone else. -- K. <-- SPECIALLER THAN YOUUUU!!! P.S. THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT THIS. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Quick Question Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 07:36:09 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com [WARNING: FOURTH BORING RANT ABOUT THE SAME SUBJECT] Matt McIrvin (mmcirvin@world.std.com) wrote: > > One problem is that since the people who talk about this the most tend to > use procmail server-side, folks who are just using a PC or Mac mail client > tend to think that spam filtering is a Unix guru thing, so they don't try > to do it. Well, procmail is DAMN HARD to learn. Not only is it a programming language in its own right, but it has a weird syntax (":0:" has two colons that mean different things, and let's face it, using a colon to represent even ONE thing would be cryptic), it requires learning "regular expressions" (here's one I have for my news program: "Highlight if 'Subject:' matches /index($|\.$|\.[^h]|[^.])/" which looks for things that say "index" but not "index.html") and it requires at least a passing understanding of some really esoteric issues (do you want to use a lockfile? What if you use a pipe, do you lock the pipe? How do you lock a pipe?) As I like to say to people, "procmail is a power tool. procmail is a Swiss Army chain saw. procmail is an infinitely powerful filtering tool... which will also let you accidentally push the big red button that destroys all your mail if you're not careful." There are a number of other ways to filter mail server-side so that it arrives in your mailbox pre-filtered, such as the nice little program named "filter" that comes with the "elm" mailer. (You can use "filter" without having to use "elm".) Most of the other server-side filters are power tools limited to system administrators (i.e. you can monkey around with "procmail" or "qmail" if you're running the whole machine) but I suggest reading up on "filter" if you're looking for an elementary server-side solution. As Matt has pointed out, much of the time it's just as convenient to filter the mail after it's been downloaded into your PC or Mac. Sure, you won't have the infinite flexibility of procmail. But you'll have a program that has a nice user interface that doesn't require you to learn a new programming language. For instance, I use Eudora Lite 3.1.1 (so what if it's old and "Lite"? It's _free_!) which has what they consider the minimum necessary filter capabilities (because they want me to pay money to get the "Pro" version with more features) and I am quite happy to use the free version. I manage about thirty mailboxes with one copy of Eudora Lite and about a dozen anti-spam rules catch over 90% of the spam that comes in (and very few "false positives"), and I don't even have regular expressions in that program (just simple string and header matching.) As Matt has said, most spammers are stupid. Checking for the obvious ("Apparently-To:" or a "To:" that doesn't include you, "Posted-With: SpamHaus Eleet", etc.) gets a lot of it, plus a few content-specific things (looking for non-English characters to grab the Chinese and Korean spam I keep getting) deal with the stupidest stuff. The relatively cleverly crafted spams -- those that are mailed out one at a time with your actual address in the "To:" field -- you can't catch with the simple filter but you wouldn't be able to catch them with a fancy filter either unless you did so much work on your artificially-intelligent spam sensor that you were letting the spam tie up more of your time than just deleting it by hand would take. And some Internet service providers (I think most) do some filtering at all times anyway (mine certainly does) so you have three places where things can be filtered: 1.) as it comes in to your ISP, 2.) as your ISP puts it into your mailbox, and 3.) after you download it from your ISP to your computer. Figuring out what works best at what level, and what's easiest at what level, and will catch the most spams without catching false positives, is left as an excercise to everyone on the Internet. At all times. Different ISPs do different amounts of filtering for you automatically -- some may subscribe to lists of known spammers' addresses (which are typically never the same across two different spam attacks, and thus they have to constantly update a hellishly long list of every address that spam has ever come from) or they may implement general rules ("if they are trying to send us 1000 messages within one hour, cut them off now"). You can tell how good a job your ISP is doing pre-filtering your mail by whether or not you get mail from those spamhaus sites that won't go away (cyberpromo, Terri Tickle, etc.) If you're getting spam from a well-known point-of-spam, then they're not filtering your mail for you and you've got to do more filtering yourself. If you get only a few spam messages a day and they're all different, you're doing pretty well. (Some ISPs provide an avenue where you can report spam to your system administrator and have it blocked for all users at your ISP, but in general once you've been spammed by Address A it makes no sense to block that specific address because within six hours they'll have moved to spamming from Address B. Also, much of this filtering done at the ISP's level must be the same for all users of the ISP so you can't make a request like "please switch all the spam filtering off for just my account so I can see how much spam I would be getting" because these things aren't specific to any one customer of the ISP.) But in general, I find that letting the ISP do most of the filtering work for me, plus doing my own filtering on my computer with Eudora Lite, works great; I also use procmail in the middle for some more exotic tasks that I want to run server-side (i.e. I have procmail scripts that forward messages to different accounts I run, but I do all my spam-filtering after the spam arrives on my personal computers.) Some people are so incensed by the idea of ever having to *download* a spam message (even if they don't have to read it) that they prefer to do the spam-filtering with procmail on the server, but I prefer to keep the filters where I can see them run. (Like I said earlier, one mistake with procmail and you can make your mailbox go BOOM.) Accidentally blocking even one message from a friend or relative is a far more important concern than blocking a hundred spam messages. -- K. I AM SO BORING TO TALK TO!!! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Quick Question X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 10:39:12 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com While we're on this rant-filled topic named "Quick Question": Peter Willard (petew@drizzle.com) wrote: > > I subscribe to a mailing list for recruiters and the spam > question has arisen there as well. I'm sure it's a coincidence > [ahem]. Anyway, tonight, the following suggestion appeared in > reply to the question, "What can I do about spam?" > > > > ``Good luck trying to figure this one out - I have aol at home > and you can send the messages to one of their 'monitoring' > e-mails, but haven't seen it help. I did turn off my cookies > on netscape and usually don't use aol's web browser - I think > it helps, but they can still invade your e-mail. Much like > telemarketers can invade your home phone.`` > > ::boggle:: I love the weird paranoia that's out there about Web browser "cookies". I keep wondering what these people think cookies actually do. Most of these people seem to believe that cookies some sort of computer virus and/or privacy invasion. I suspect the fear largely comes from the name "cookies" (Microsoft seems to agree, because they have worded their dialog boxes without that jargon -- "This Web site wishes to store information on your computer." -- in the Windows version of Internet Explorer.) The original Netscape term was "Magic Cookie" (there was only one cookie file, nowadays a "cookie" refers to each item in it) which probably didn't help either. "Hey, someone's using MAGIC to destroy my computer!" I occasionally run across people whose cookie-phobia makes them perform bizarre actions. They'll refuse to just turn cookies off with the "Cookies ON/OFF" switch in their Web browser. Instead, they'll do things like replacing the cookie file with an empty folder so that the browser gets an operating-system error whenever it tries to access the cookie file. (This breaks the Web browser in a fairly major way, as it makes it impossible to perform normal HTTP authentications without typing in the same password over and over and over.) Why aren't these people also afraid of their programs leaving files named "Preferences" or "Settings" or "High Score" on their hard drive to remember little bits of data between runs, that only the same program can access? That's all cookies do -- the Web server basically records that you were there before. It can only store information it generates (or that you've explicitly gone out of your way to tell it!) in the cookie, and then only one site can read the cookie back. (Although people do have a valid point that if someone else were to look at all of your cookie data file, they might get privileged information intended for a different site -- but if they can look at the contents of your files, they've already conquered your computer in a way that makes it unimportant if they also find out what settings you have for what Web site. I mean, any security violation involving people seeing cookies is the result of them gaining unrestricted access to your files, not the cause.) Don't get me started on what the REAL security holes and privacy violations in Web browsers are. There are things much more worrisome than cookies. Things that are actually bad, even. So, I ask my fellow Kibologists, what term could Netscape and Internet Explorer switch to that would make people MORE paranoid than the words "magic cookie"? My vote is for "fluffy bunny". "This Web site wishes to put a fluffy bunny on your computer." "HELL NO! WITH A NAME LIKE 'FLUFFY BUNNY', IT'S GOT TO BE INCREDIBLY EVIL! AND EVEN IF IT ISN'T IT'LL SMELL REALLY BAD!" -- K. I want to see a non-fluffy bunny. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Quick Question Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 06:45:22 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com [WARNING: MORE OF THE SAME RANT] Jim Vandewalker (jimvan@gate.net) wrote: > > Matt McIrvin (mmcirvin@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Regardless of your filtering mechanism, there will always be ways around > > it-- but the vast majority of spammers are stupid, lazy folk who won't > > bother, so the simplest rules will get almost all of it. > > Jeezt! I used to think there was something wrong with me because I didn't > munge my address OR set X - No Archive = Yes, like all the people at the > COOL table did. But I don't get much spam. About 2 to 4 pieces a day, which > I was shamefacedly handling by MANUALLY DELETING IT, instead of setting up > an extremely k-rad spam filter. > > But now Kibo has FREED me from shame! Free at last, free at last, Great > "Bob" Amighty, I'm free at last! Kibo says it's OKAY to manually delete > spam. Yay! "X-No-Archive:" has always struck me as being a misnomer for "X-I-Just-Wanted-To-Make-Myself-Seem-Paranoid-Because-I-Want-You-To- Read-This-But-Not-Read-It-Again-Later-And-Also-I-Don't-Realize-This- Header-Won't-Do-Anything-At-99.999%-Of-The-Sites-Out-There:" "X-No-Archive:" is peculiar to DejaNews. When you search Usenet with other Web sites, they don't care about "X-No-Archive:". (I certainly don't go through *my* private archive and delete those articles after 30 days. Hey, if you didn't want to send the article to my computer, you shouldn't have posted it.) I suspect there may be some tools other than DejaNews that honor "X-No-Archive:", but I don't know of any. (Heck, there are a lot of sites that don't honor REAL headers like "Supersedes:" and a lot of programs that don't understand REAL headers like "Followup-To:" so you can't expect some non-standard Usenet header made up by some Web site to do anything in other places.) There are a hell of a lot of places where Usenet articles are archived for a while or even permanently no matter what headers they have, ranging from several publicly-accessible Web sites, to sites that just archive specific "useful" newsgroups, all the way to your very own Internet provider -- do they make weekly tape backups of their entire filesystem, and save the old tapes for extra safety? If they really wanted to (which they generally wouldn't), they could dig up any old article they wanted (as well as all the E-mail you ever sent and received). If I *really* wanted to get a particular article you wrote three years ago (*really* wanted to as in "willing to pay large sums of money to dig up") I could simply ask several site administrators to check old backup tapes until one turns it up. (And think about this: Sure, some of them re-use tapes, and others just buy new tapes all the time because tapes are cheap and become unreliable after repeated use. But "write-once" backups are also pretty common -- anyone writing backups or Usenet archives to CD-R or DVD-R is obviously going to HAVE to keep those files forever, whether or not they had "X-No-Archive: Yes" when they were currently. In fact, there are places where you can *buy* CD-ROMs of old Usenet articles.) I just wonder why people would want to say something that they want people to read but not save. It's not as if that header could prevent the existence of all records relating to you having ever posted that message or anything. Saying "MY BOSS IS A PINHEAD, X-No-Archive: Yes" is just not a very bright thing to do compared to keeping your secret to yourself. Plus, I keep seeing people who can't figure out the difference between a message header and the message body and just tack "X-No-Archive: Yes" on _below_ the blank line instead of above, or they don't realize that it has to have hyphens and one colon, and all that. (Not in a.r.k, but more in the groups inhabited by people who aren't all that swift. You know, discussion groups about sci-fi TV shows that ran less than 20 episodes.) > > -- > Jim the Dead Guy > > Maybe I get deleted from a lot of those lists because of being dead? Nah. > That doesn't fit in with the McIrvin Rule[1]. > > -- > [1] The McIrvin Rule: the vast majority of spammers are stupid, lazy folk > who won't bother, so the simplest rules will get almost all of it. I'm not sure it's that they're lazy so much as just clueless. They don't realize that spamming will just make all their potential customers hate them, they often don't realize that many people already get lots of spam, they often don't realize they will get in trouble for spamming. (Ever notice you never get spam from the same account twice, except in the rare cases of "spam-friendly administrators"?) I think that if spammers are sitting there thinking "LA LA LA DUH LA LA LA I ARE SPAMMING THESE PEOPLE AND IT WILL MAKE ME RICH AND NOBODY WILL SHUT OFF MY INTERNET ACCESS AND I ARE CLEVERLY DISGUISING MY E-MAIL ADDRESS IN THIS ARTICLE THAT HAS MY HOME PHONE NUMBER IN IT LA LA LA BURP", it's a lead pipe cinch that they won't know how to write a program that can forge messages that are indistinguishable from real messages. (Hence things like blank "To:" lines or "Apparently-To:" headers and of course "Posted-With: Unregistered Copy Of Spam Toolkit 0.0.1x".) Of course, some of them do, and some are pretty smart about it. And they'll just keep getting smarter as the process for posting spam shifts from "anyone can do a mail-merge in their basement" to "people will have to buy a commercial program that is clever enough to get around their Internet provider's anti-spam monitoring". Basically, any rules that really work to cut down on spam will cut down on the stupidest spammers first. So you'll know the legitimate users are winning the war on spam if all the spammers have to become intelligent to stay afloat. -- K. LET'S PASS A LAW REQUIRING SPAMMERS TO BE STUPID! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Quick Question Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 06:23:35 GMT Organization: www.kibo.com [WARNING: CONTINUATION OF A PREVIOUS RANT.] Chris Franks (chris_franks@hp.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > PEOPLE, DON'T SCREW AROUND WITH YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS UNLESS YOU KNOW HOW THE > > INTERNET WORKS. > > Good Point. After re-booting, my spamblock will disappear. Well, you don't have to stop using your "chris_franks@hp.pants.com" spamblock. You could just change it to something that would simply not spam innocent bystanders at pants.com, and that would be obvious as a spamblock to the humans who reply (because many people who reply aren't going to go out of their way to read the "remove pants to reply" line in your .sig when replying, especially as many mail/news programs don't show the .signature by default or don't quote it when composing a reply.) If I didn't _know_ you work for HP, how would I supposed to know what to do to get mail to you at "hp.pants.com"? "pants" doesn't signal "this is a spamblocker". "chris_franks@hp.com.rem0vethis" would probably work on both counts -- you can be reasonably sure your mail won't go to some third-party, and you can also expect anyone with a quarter of a brain to know to remove the obvious part that says "rem0vethis". I still don't think this actually cuts down on spam much, though. (Especially since I do know that there are spam programs that can figure this stuff out automatically anyway. Even if you spell it funny like "rem0vethis" they can still figure out "Hey, there's a nonsense word after '.com'." Just as long as you don't mess around with the stuff to the left of the "@" (which would result in you accidentally spamming either another user of at your site, or more likely your own postmaster) or between the "@" and ".com" (because all mail for any domain named after any word you can think of has to go _somewhere_, and if it's a domain that's in use -- as essentially all English words are -- the mail will probably get funneled into some person's mailbox, because many people who have registered Web domains have all mail for the domain forwarded to a single address. In other words, if I owned "pants.com", mail to "chris_franks@hp.pants.com" would get shunted to me.) Basically, the reasons I dislike spamblocks are (a) that they tend to be a minor nuisance (intentionally) to the people who are trying to send you mail (it's not MY responsibility to help you sort the spam from the non-spam in YOUR mailbox!) and more importantly (b) they have a tendency to spam uninvolved third parties, as well as generating large numbers of "bounced" messages. And (c) they don't really help with the spam problem much anyhow. (There are plenty of ways for an evil person to collect thousands of addresses other than mining Usenet. Mining Usenet "From:" lines from addresses, although it is a common practice, can't ever be as attractive to spammers as simply fingering ISPs or buying lists of customers or capturing anonymous FTP passwords or other methods because such a small percentage of the Internet community knows Usenet exists, let alone posts to it.) The spam I get has addresses harvested from a healthy mix of sources -- some of it's from Usenet, some of it's addresses grabbed from Web pages, some of it's from companies I've had to send mail to that have then sold their mailing lists, some of it's simply sent to random addresses at every domain registered on the Internet (I get spam addressed to "fjhfejjhgtklgx@kibo.com"), some of it's spam sent to "webmaster" or "postmaster" at every domain name they see on the Web, etc. Spam from Usenet is a definite minority. > > (people who use "Bcc:" on all their mail for > > reasons I can never quote figure out) > > We were told to do that so that anybody on your list will not be able > to see who else got it, preserving somebody's privacy. But, in > California, they are way too sensitive to privacy, so no more bcc. > Thanks for the tips. Preserving privacy is the normal intent of "Bcc:". However, mail-handling consensus "standards" have changed a lot since that first mail RFC was written, and most mailers still send "Bcc:"s the old way, by just sending a message with no "To:" header. (These days the usual is to generate a filler "To:" header as in "To: recipient-list-suppressed".) The mail servers people run these days, that usually look for a "To:" header and also a "To" line (the "envelope"), insert the "Apparently-To:" header when something attempts to send a message without the full set of headers. 95% of the time this means "someone is spamming by pumping messages into an open SMTP port by following the old RFC", and the other 5% of the time it means "someone's using Bcc: from an old mailer." Unfortunately, there are still very few mailers that do "Bcc:" in a way that doesn't make the messages come out with "Apparently-To:". So a lot of people are just not using "Bcc:" any more because it makes their messages get falsely zapped by anti-spam filters. Basically, a feature that used to be useful is no longer very useful due to it looking like spam because the mail programs don't know how to handle "Bcc:" gracefully and lots of spammers don't know how to suppress that same "Apparently-To:" either. (It's explained in the sequel to the original mail RFC, but a lot of spammers who want to forge mail seem to have only learned how to do it from the old one.) I bet if all the mail programs in the world were updated to do "Bcc:" properly it would show the spammers how to spam without "Apparently-To:", though. (More of them seem to be figuring it out lately, I don't see as many "Apparently-To:" spams as I used to. But filtering on "Apparently-To:" still zaps a lot of spam from mail mailbox.) -- K. Filtering on Chinese and Korean characters zaps a lot, too. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: "Y2K: The Movie" blow-by-blow plot summary X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 09:10:36 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com I just watched NBC's "Y2K: The Movie" and took these notes while watching it. It was kind of hard to follow the plot because it was so lame (it is very hard to force yourself to listen to a TV-movie for very long) and because I was busy typing, so I think I may have missed some of the subtle nuances. Also I kept getting confused about which scenes were in New York, Washington, Virginia, or Seattle because I have an aversion to reading the little beepy computer letts that march across the bottom of the screen to tell you where you are in bad movie. Here, in highly unedited form, are the notes I took while watching NBC's highly unedited "Y2K: The Movie". -- spoiler warning: this synposis may spoil your enjoyment of the ------------ -- exciting plot this movie didn't have -------------------------------------- "What if everything that COULD go wrong... DID?" -- the movie reviews itself "The survival of millions hangs in the balance! Just tell yourself... IT'S ONLY A MOVIE!" And that's just some of the hype that immediately precedes the movie, shouted at us and displayed in big glowing letters. Followed by tiny silent letters disclaiming what they just hyped: "THIS PROGRAM IS A PURELY FICTIONAL THRILLER. THE CHARACTERS AND SITUATIONS ARE NOT BASED ON FACT. THIS PROGRAM DOES NOT SUGGEST OR IMPLY THAT ANY OF THESE EVENTS COULD ACTUALLY OCCUR." (quote marks theirs) Then the movie proper begins. (It's rated "TV-14".) In standard incredibly-plausible-thrillers-for-bozos mode, every scene begins with beep little 300 baud letters scrolling across the bottom of the screen to tell us what city we're in. Joe Morton doesn't believe Ken Olin's claims that airplanes will fall out of the sky on Y2K. But in an actual flight simulator, one does, at exactly 12:01! First all the lights on the runway go out in sequence from one end to the other. Then the plane's instruments get all wacky, like in a UFO encounter. Then the plane's engines flameout. (This is some simulator!) At the government's secret "Z2" (it stands for "Zero Zero") command post, they're waiting for Y2K, which, as Joe Morton explains, will happen first in the Marshall Islands, then again in the Solomon islands, and so they'll have 18 midnights to watch before Y2K in the USA. Morton explains how the Y2K Bug works, it's "sort of like balancing a skyscraper on top of a shack... My worst-case scenario is that we won't even know what's going wrong." (Note that Joe Morton's computer destroyed the world in "Terminator 2".) Ken Olin (playing a character named "Nick Cromwell") is their chief Y2K disaster-fixer-upper, with a supersonic jet that can go anywhere in the USA within two hours. We also meet an annoying young guy with red hair who is shown playing with toys (a hula dancer doll and a windup penguin) to let us know that he's an incredibly brainy computer genius, and an Asian-American woman who, of course, is not depicted as a computer genius (I think they just want us to _assume_ the stereotype.) Kate Vernon (as Ken Olin's wife) has to wait in line for groceries because, as the sign says, "Limits on Selected Items Strictly Enforced". "Rationing? This place is beginning to look like Russia... in winter!" Her father, Ronny Cox, gives grandfatherly advice while looking highly embarassed (like in "Captain America".) Guy putting up barbed wire: "Call me paranoid, but I been following that Y2K Bug. Tomorrow we could be living in the dark ages." Our hero's bratty teenage daughter: "Is the world going to end? What about the embedded chips? Blah, blah, blah! They're just MACHINES!" Ken Olin, in D.C.: "Simulations are guesses. So if anyone says they know what'll happen tomorrow, THEY'RE LYING!" A phone rings (it sounds just like the little beeping 300 baud letters.) Woman on phone: "Hey, how's my favorite complex systems failure guy?" Hey gets a fake Macintosh dialog box on his screen saying "Incoming message: CROMKEL364" (in inch-high letters) as his daughter opens a chat session with him while he's on the phone with her mother. (In the chat session, her username changes from "CROMKEL364" to "KELCROM". They type at each other at 300 baud, and the letters make beeping noises.) At 6am on New Year's Eve, in "Z2", Ken Olin and Joe Morton are watching the International Date Line turn from blue to red on the big screen. Morton: "Marshall Islands. Now I know what a bullfighter feels like at the moment of truth." Suddenly, the red-haired nerd's champagne bottle explodes all by itself! Twice! At the Marshall Islands, it's "11:57 P.M. local time" at a Naval Air Station. (Shouldn't they be using Greenwich, aka "Zulu", time? Oh, wait, I forgot, this was a terribly plausible docudrama, not something about Y2K written by someone who had ever asked anyone how the military tells time.) There is a very long close-up scene of a round black thing going around (what our grandfathers called "a 33-1/3 record") playing "Auld Lang Syne" because nobody in our military has access to a compact disc player. Suddenly, the controls of a jet fighter plane go haywire! We know this because the pilot tells us so as the camera shakes up and down as he is sitting in front of the solid black wall behind his seat where the rest of the plane should be. Oh no! Y2K has replaced his plane with a cheap limbo set! The plane flies low over the base, making the needle skip across the record. The plane crashes in the far distance (and the speed out sound and the speed of light are identical because it's Y2K.) At "Z2", alarms go off because the plane crashed. Commercials. Cut from commercials to fake newscast for either "UNN" or "NNN", the logo's so bad I can't tell which. A guy with even less acting ability than a real newscaster tells us that a plane crashed in the Marshall Islands. (How did they find out so fast?) Joe Morton thinks it was pilot error. Ken Olin says that because of this crash AND the simulated crash yesterday, all planes should be grounded. General: "It's a dangerous world, Cromwell. We gotta lot of planes in the air." Young tough guy "Stevie" discovers bank machines are dispensing no more than $20 due to Y2K policy. "This is ludicrous!" -- again, the movie reviews itself. The "Z2" map room: "We're putting up a red X for every Y2K problem. So far we've only had one." Stevie: "What bull!" -- the movie, etc. There is a discussion of "the cascade effect", in which the failure of one power plant will trigger the failure of all the others. Ken Olin, standing in front of a 48-star flag, calls his wife (Kate Vernon) who is working at a hospital in Seattle. (YOU KNOW, THREE TIME ZONES AWAY, AND HE HAS THAT PLANE THAT CAN GO ANYWHERE IN TWO HOURS.) Suddenly four X's start blinking across France. It's the cascade effect! "Their power grid's pretty much the same as ours -- if they crash, we crash." Morton: "You know what happens in a blackout... 10% panic." Olin: "Yeah, and 90% follow." Bratty daughter: "This sucks so bad!" -- This movie, you know. It's getting close to midnight on the East Coast. Ken Olin watches Jay Leno making jokes about Y2K which are greeted with uproarious howling canned laughter. There is a parade in Times Square with a creepy Macy*s-style "Father Time" balloon being pulled down the street. 5% of America's airplanes are flying. On a commercial airliner with an all-gray interior, nothing happens... YET!!! Ken Olin: "The monster's coming home." In Times Square and on Jay Leno's show, they count down to midnight. Midnight! Back on the all-gray "Glendham Air" passenger jet, the pilot wishes the passengers a Happy New Year. In Times Square, the lights go out, except for the bright blue light from the Moon. "We're lost power in Philadelphia!" "Scranton too!" "It's starting a cascade!" "We could lose the entire Eastern Seaboard!" Seen from space, a wave of darkness smoothly wipes across the USA from east to west. "We lost 911 in Boston!" "New York subways are offline!" "Okay, let's figure out WHY!" (Uh, Y2K, maybe?) Fortunately, the UNN or NNN (whichever it may be) news is still on the air even though there's no power. The newscaster tells us that a 72-year-old woman died on the operating table moments ago (again, how does he know? Especially if there's no electricity anywhere but in the TV studio?) Three hours before midnight in Seattle (at Kate Vernon's hospital office) the bratty daughter and her superintelligent little brother (she calls him "chip jockey") are clowning around. She opens an on-line chat with her hacker buddies. Meanwhile, Vernon worries because the medical equipment hooked up to a pregnant woman falsely shows the baby having a heart attack -- BECAUSE IT WAS MADE IN NEW YORK, THREE HOURS EAST! DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH! The "Z2" map shows a "nuclear reactor failure" in the country of "Scandinavia". Two American reactors have the same design and will also explode, so Ken Olin sets out for one in his supersonic jet. Officials at the reactor choose to do nothing. "We may have the same design as Sweden, but we're not in the same boat!" Commercials. (Including "Fry2K" for McDonalds.) At 12:31AM Eastern time, the emergency generators at the airport have stopped working (apparently gasoline won't burn after Y2K) so the lights are still off and the all-gray-interior airliner has to make an instrument landing as its fuel is about to run out. (The tower radio still works.) Meanwhile, Ken Olin prepares to hop on his offscreen supersonic plane at the airport, but first he goes up to the tower to do the pencil-and-paper calculations required to help land the plane. (I guess calculator batteries won't work after Y2K. Just radios.) In New York, Stevie and his fiancee drop in on a biker bar lit entirely by candles and several neon beer signs that are still working (after Y2K, neon will keep glowing for hours after the power fails.) On the plane, the passengers are beginning to wonder if something's wrong, and the stewardess refuses to admit anything is. Ken Olin sends emergency trucks out to light the runway with their headlights. The plane almost misses the runway, then screeches to a stop and nobody is hurt. (We're now exactly halfway through the movie, and the long disclaimer appears again, this time scrolling across the bottom of the screen.) Joe Morton shows the nuclear power plant crew a live video feed of the Swedish nuclear plant workers that died. The plant manager admits we're not in the same boat any more. Commercials. In Texas, all the door in a prison swung open because apparently when they lose power the doors open themselves. Geez, this prison's design is stupid, even by TV-movie standards. The TV news again reports that nobody has any power. People watch their TVs and are told that nobody has any power. DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH. In Virginia, Ken Olin runs into the nuclear reactor control room and watches the clock hit midnight. Everything's fine except Ken Olin points put the control board COULD think it's 1900, so they reboot. This makes alarms and red lights go off everywhere. "We're at 140% capacity and climbing!" "We've lost our brakes!" "My speed pump's activated!" "The reactor's kicking into overdrive!" The reactor will blow up when it reaches 4500 degrees (the computer display specifies this is Fahrenheit.) WHY DON'T THEY JUST TURN IT OFF? Seattle's nuclear reactor is also going to explode, three hours later! "A nuclear accident... anywhere... is a nuclear accident... EVERYWHERE!" Commercials. ("More terrifying than New Year's and Y2K... is Thanksgiving and Lilith. Lilith is back on 'Frasier'!" "Y2K... how will it REALLY affect your life and your world? Log on to MSNBC and BE READY!") In Virginia, they think of opening the valves to the water tanks that should cool the core. But the valves won't open. "Your GRX-46 mainframe told your reactor to make more electricity than it was supposed to." (All computers know we needed extra nuclear power back in 1900.) "I'm betting the water tank won't open because the computer thinks it's 1900. It thinks it hasn't been filled in 100 years so it thinks it's empty." Uh... don't systems usually measure water with a water sensor, not a diary? They set the computer to 1972, because 1972 has the same calendar as 2000. "The core temperature is rising exponentially." Back in Seattle, the Army is evacuating people before the nuclear reactor explodes, and the guy with the barbed-wire fence shoots his rifle in the air over a soldier's head, so they gun him down. Grandpa Ronny Cox jumps in his car and drives off through the Army cordon. Bratty daughter steps outside the nightclub where she's been dancing to techno-rave music, and hears the nuclear evacuation siren, so she goes back in to lead the ravers to safety. They run away, climbing over the cars parked in the lot. Ronny Cox enters the control room of the Seattle nuclear plant to help. Ken Olin volunteers to open the water tanks manually, which means putting on a radiation suit and going into the core building. (I thought he was in Virginia, but I can't follow this sophisticated movie.) Commercials. ("Y2K: Will it be doom and gloom?" -- local news. Also, like all the other commercial breaks before it, this break ends with "Rollerjam! The hot new sport that's got heads spinning! Tonight after 'Y2K' on 7 News!") Ken Olin: "I don't know what's going on, but I'm seeing a lot of steam!" (And it's green!) He goes in without a radiation suit and opens the valves. The indicators all say the tanks are open. But he knows there's still no water flowing through the pipes. (Maybe water won't flow through an open valve after Y2K!) He uses security code "4275" to gain access to the core building, where he gets to look at the pool of water that's supposed to be an operating reactor (and not, say, a storage pool for spent fuel.) It's run dry. There is an explosion. Has Nick been killed? HAS NICK BEEN KILLED? TV news producer to anchorwoman: "This is a nuclear power plant we're talking about, we're not going on the air with an unconfirmed report of an explosion!" Oh, Nick survived the little nuclear explosion. There's ten minutes to the real explosion. The water pumps have failed. "We have to open up this end of the straw!" Nick reminds his father of the time he helped bring Apollo 13 home by "hitting it with a hammer" (I am not making this up.) Everyone exchanges meaningful looks for a while because it's time to evacuate the plant. Kate Vernon looks for the bratty daughter at the abandoned nightclub. The TV news tells everyone (sitting in the candle-lit bar) that there was an explosion at the nuclear plant. Commercials. Army guys run into the plant and Ken Olin has them prepare to blow up part of the reactor (using acetylene and oxygen tanks, plus a tail-light assembly from a truck as a detonator) to flood it. "Ninety seconds to meltdown." (Hey, how come the core temperature sensors still work if nothing else does?) Olin throws a shovel to make sparks which ignite a trail of gasoline, and he runs through huge clouds of sparks waiting for Ronny Cox to detonate the bomb, and there is a big explosion a couple degrees before the nuclear reactor is supposed to explode. Water pours in, and everyone is okay. They all run back into the core building to stare directly at the exposed nuclear core. People watching on TV cheer. Except for those of us watching them watching TV. Well, okay, I am happy -- this awful movie's over. Bratty daughter and estranged mom hug. Ken Olin, who survived two explosions in a nuclear reactor's exposed core, hugs them too. Ronny Cox hugs them as well. "So, what happened out there?" "Not much, a couple computers crashed, that's about it." Fortunately, Ken Olin personally saved the United States from Y2K! But... as he's doing an interview for a TV news program in Los Angeles... THE LIGHTS GO OUT! YAAAAAAGH! I AM SCARED OF THE DARK AND Y2K TOO!!!! THE END...? -- K. Y2K. The day our lives will depend on Ken Olin. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: "Y2K: The Movie" blow-by-blow plot summary X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 04:52:38 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com "Wolf Beast" (hungrywolf49@hotmail.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > In Virginia, they think of opening the valves to the water tanks > > that should cool the core. But the valves won't open. "Your > > GRX-46 mainframe told your reactor to make more electricity than > > it was supposed to." (All computers know we needed extra nuclear > > power back in 1900.) "I'm betting the water tank won't open > > because the computer thinks it's 1900. It thinks it hasn't been > > filled in 100 years so it thinks it's empty." Uh... don't systems > > usually measure water with a water sensor, not a diary? > > > > They set the computer to 1972, because 1972 has the same calendar > > as 2000. "The core temperature is rising exponentially." > > If the computer thinks it`s 1900 and that thus the tank hasn`t been filled > in 100 years, won`t setting the year to 1972 make it think it hasn`t been > filled in 72 years? Yeah! They should have set the year to 1872! > And since when does a computer operated system decide on its own to refuse > opening because it THINKS it hasn`t been filled? We have a coffee machine at > work that will ALWAYS try and fill your cup DESPITE not having the ground > coffee container filled in almost a week and having run empty since. I'm sure your coffee machine isn't as smart as a nuclear reactor, though. That's why your coffee machine won't know that it's supposed to break in 2000. -- K. Actual new slogan here: "...the DOT COMMONWEALTH of Massachusetts!" ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: OPEN LETTER TO ALL PHYSICS NOBEL LAUREATES AND SCIENTISTS X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 11:01:58 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com In sci.physics, "cotham" (cotham@netgates.co.uk) wrote: > > Dear friend of science, > > My name is Conrado Salas Cano, I graduated in Physics with honors from > the California Institute of Technology, and I would like to address you > today as the finest and most distinguished example of a human science > which, in my view, needs to quickly assert its nature as a free and open > endeavor. > > I am not here to request support for any particular cause; > > [...blah blah blah...] > > [...blah blah blah BLAH blah blah...] > > A real scientist never grows up. That`s The Biggest Secret. > Let it be no more. I knew Batman is a scientist, but I didn't know Pee-wee Herman is a scientist too. I hope they took away his Nobel Prize when he was revealed to be A PERVERTED SCIENTIST! > We are capable of such wonderful things, and of such horrible > nightmares. Let us then celebrate with joy everything we can do. Let us > begin to live and let live, to speak and let speak. I look forward to > hearing your lies about me. I look forward to hearing you insult me in > public. I look forward to hearing that you hate me. You need a hug with asterisks around it. *HUG* > Thanks to all this, the Cosmos is voicing so much to my ears, > and making me learn so much about myself, if I have what it takes to > listen to this wise speaking fugue and not run away from it. HEY EVERYONE GATHER AROUND AND LISTEN TO THIS WISE SPEAKING FUDGE!!! > Being intelligent is no guarantee against being dead wrong, as the very > Carl Sagan said. > > So I could be wrong. And that would prove you are intelligent, right? Also, I'm not sure Carl Sagan is dead wrong: I think he's dead the normal way. > I could be wrong when, for example, based on the hypothetical > evolutionary trends that Paleontologist Dale Russell was apparently > commissioned by NASA to model, on the recent speculations of scientists > like Jonathan Losos of Washington University in St. Louis and Thomas > Schoener of the University of California at Davis who seem to have found > out that biological evolution can occasionally undergo rapid > breakthroughs occasioned by a species` need to quickly adapt to a > suddenly metamorphosed environment and who have apparently shown that > lizards can quickly develop new bodily features if the ambient > conditions urgently require it, as well as on recent articles (Nature > November 20th 1997, Nature July 24th 1997) that question the real extent > of the Cretaceous/Tertiary impactor`s damage and hence the > increasingly-more-dogmatically-enforced popular conception that all > dinosaurs were wiped out of the Earth by this meteoric Deep Impact 65 > million years ago.. .. ..; I politely and tentatively, but decidedly, > speak up.. .. ..; and I suggest that a few winged predatory reptilian > creatures did indeed survive and crawl their way up to tool-making, > intelligence.. .. .. R-complex ritual domineering.. .. .. and perhaps > Royal genetic abilities to shape-shift into humans.. .. .. as currently > attested by countless and increasingly more credible witnesses > world-wide. I could be wrong. There is little I could wish more than The > Dragons of Eden`s definitively gone from The Demon Haunted World. > > [...blah blah blah...] Are you the same dinosaurs-disguised-as-humans-including-Bob-Hope-are-among-us guy who was on "The Daily Show"? Or are you a different guy with the same completely original crackpot theory? -- K. If Bob Hope is a killer dinosaur disguised as a human, why isn't he funnier? And why can't he simulate a human nose? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: INCREDIBLY QUICK LITTLE QUESTION!!! X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 10:51:04 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com I'm just posting this because I want to read rants by someone other than me for once. And make 'em REALLY long because this is the INCREDIBLY quick question thread. So I want to see some incredibly long rants here or I'll conclude that you guys have gone soft now that you have that nice cushy Internet to do your telecommunications for you. Kibology was so much better back when we had to do it by telegraph! When you were paying ten cents a word, you really had to make every word in those thousand-word rants count! Sometimes you had to make them count ALOUD! Anyway, here's my really really incredibly super-quick question that deserves several long rants in answer: "Why bees?" -- K. I expect at least one of the rants to contain the widescreen version of Fermat's Last Theorem. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: INCREDIBLY QUICK LITTLE QUESTION!!! X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 04:48:36 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com [WARNING: NERDY COMPUTER SCIENCE JOKES] Chris Costello (chris@FreeBSD.org) wrote: > > [WARNING: AD-LIBBED RANT] All rants are. If it were well-thought-out it would be a Theorem, not a Rant. This is why evolution is false, because it's Just A Rant! Same with Einstein's Rant of Relativity! > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Internet to do your telecommunications for you. Kibology was so much > > better back when we had to do it by telegraph! > > I remember back when the Internet wasn't full of _Windows_ people. I remember when the Internet was full of college students and the first few commercial Internet service providers came on and the college students decided they hated the people paying for access via Portal, etc., and then a few years later the people paying for access outnumbered the college students using the Internet for free (plus cost of tuition and board and student activity fee) and the .com people started looking down their noses at .edu people. I remember when the super-k00l eleet people would brag that they read ALL the Usenet messages in every newsgroup. I'm not old enough to remember when the "readnews" program was only three lines of code, though. The one I used was probably more like 20. > And if it's not full of _Windows_ people it's full of Linux people. And it's full of people who say "Linn-ux" as if Mark-Linn Baker of "Perfect Strangers" invented it and not Lee-nus Torbalds. I say we should start calling Lee Bumgarner "Linn Bumgarner" to make this distinction clear for no reason. > And it REALLY REALLY BUGS ME when people do not > think it's necessary to spell out the WHOLE WORD. The words > "you", "to", "two", "too", "are" and a WHOLE BUNCH OF OTHERS are > not spelled with just one letter. But U can get net XS 4 less if U save valuable bandwidth, D8D! <-- See? I cleverly spelled "D00D" as "D8D" by stacking up the two zeroes you would normally use! On a tangential note, sometimes I feel weird because I avoid using acronyms like "IANMTU" for "I Am Not Making This Up" and "AFAIK" for "As Far As I Know" on alt.religion.kibology because I know that eventually my articles are going to get bound into a coffee-table book sometime after I'm dead and I want them to be comprehensible to Kibologists in the year 2050 who will have a different set of acronyms in their vocabulary. (English will be exactly the same except for the acronyms.) > I think it's really really annoying that people like GNU want to add > really weird options that work only on the popular versions of Linux. I think it's really annoying that we're starting to see programs like the game Quake sold in stores with "FOR LINUX" on the box and they don't come right out and say "JUST FOR THOSE VERSIONS OF LINUX WHICH RUN ON A COMPUTER THAT WAS DESIGNED TO RUN MICROSOFT WINDOWS. THIS GAME RUNS ON A PENTIUM PROCESSOR AND SCRIBBLES DIRECTLY TO YOUR SCREEN, WHICH IS NO DIFFERENT THAN HOW IT WOULD WORK UNDER WINDOWS, SO WHY DO YOU EXPECT THIS TO BE ANY BETTER? WE'RE SORRY IF YOU HAVE A RISC COMPUTER. THEY GO TOO FAST TO RUN THE REAL PENTIUM VERSION OF LINUX!" > Who would think --compression-program is a standard option to tar(1)? > It saddens me that people have just gone on to GNU's tar and ignored pax, > and now that's suffering from bit rot. I don't know what pax is, except for the secret government agency that uses the global "subshuttle" system to reunify the world after it blew up and Majel Barrett's tribe of Amazons took it over and tried to make Ted Cassidy their slave by making him drink The Dink Extract. > I don't understand why the XFree86 people can't come up with a > decent configuration program. Xi Graphics has an excellent and > easy-to-use program called 'Xsetup'. Speaking of X, why do all > the toolkits except Qt really smell bad? You think your toolkits smell bad? Pop open the battery door of an iBook and look at the inside. It's deliberately designed to look like it's rotting away from the inside because that makes it cool. Macs are better than PCs because they look like they're rotting away and because you can see into the translucent cases to verify that Apple didn't forget to put a computer inside. (Other than that all computers are about the same. Except that you can only run Quake For Linux on some of them.) > Motif is just slow and hard to program with, GTK is too. Qt uses C++ > and allows you to create your own widgets. And why do people think that > if an operating system is harder to use and install it will get only > smart people? It's still Unix and it requires brains for it to > be useful for whatever it is you're up to. Trust me, there will be PLENTY of bozos using UNIX real soon. Apple's going to FORCE Mac users to use UNIX. With a pretty graphical shell on top of it so that you won't have to type "tar --compression-program" for the first five minutes that you're using your computer, before you need to install some piece of shareware that comes with a Makefile. > That leads me to another rant. What's the deal with Linux's > directory structure? /usr/lib has PROGRAMS in it? Third-party > utilities write to /etc? Why isn't everything just in ONE DIRECTORY where you can't lose it, dammit? I partitioned up my big hard drives into 22 partitions recently and one of them never mounts at startup and it turns out that my desktop mounts the startup volume and then the system event queue fills up at 20 "mount this drive now" signals so the last volume never automounts. I'm sure they will correct this in future releases by just not allowing me to have so many partitions that I confuse the computer. > Why aren't more systems like FreeBSD, or at least HP-UX? Why did Atari ST TOS have filenames that were not case-sensitive except that it had a "C:" drive and a "c:" drive that nobody ever used? > Speaking of HP-UX, it has a really good compiler (if you buy the real > compiler). And the other good thing about HP-UX Don Rickles keeps talking about it. Oh, and Apple's earthquake-proof eWorld servers (eWorld will be up FOREVER AND EVER!!!) were HP-UX machines. This is because obviously Apple execs thought the idea of an Apple-branded UNIX was silly. > I wonder why people just stick to using GCC instead of porting things > like DEC's compiler, or Hewlett Packard's compiler. Maybe they won't compile under GCC. > Anyway, we're still trying to find the real killer. OJ/UX did it in the C library with the SYN attack. -- K. I thought it would turn out to be Data General Mustard or Big Blue. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Rampaging Morons! User-Agent: MacSOUP/2.4 (unregistered) X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 04:02:51 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com Okay, here's the crime against humanity -- I mean, against Kibo (I'm more important than humanity) -- for today -- I was just crossing the street (in a hurry to catch the trolley) and I was almost run over. By a BICYCLE. The nitwit yelled "HEYHEYHEY!!!" at me to get out of his way, because as we all know, bicycles have the right-of-way at all times because they're so much less maneuverable than everything else. (And because firemen ride them.) This guy who did not want to swerve to go around me was not only riding his bike in the left lane (very bright) but he was running a red light. After he sailed through the red light in as straight a line as possible after yelling at me for ruining his perfectly straight line through the red light, I saw that he was continuing down the street in the left lane while glowering back at me looking over his shoulder (trying to telepathically send me a "HEYHEYHEY!!! TRAVEL BACK IN TIME SO YOU WON'T HAVE BEEN IN MY WAY!!!" signal.) That's right, he was cruising down the street with his head oriented diametrically opposite to the direction of travel. So, I don't know why some people don't believe in Charles Darwin. It's such a comforting theory to know that idiots like this will be eliminated by natural selection. Probably within minutes. -- K. Hopefully Patrick McGoohan will come around the corner riding his penny-farthing bicycle with its giant wheel with the solid steel tire and crush the puny bike with his much more manly old-tymer. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Rampaging Morons -- with point-of-sale terminals! X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 07:57:46 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com I had another wonderful encounter with a bozo in their native habitat (a low-paying job) today. Now, not all people who work cash registers at Best Buy are morons. In fact, most of them are normal humans. But some are there solely because they're morons. Fortunately, they can get jobs handling money because their managers trust them -- they're too stupid to think of stealing money. I was at a local Best Buy purchasing a new TV set for my mother. I put it on my gold (that means only) credit (that means debit) card. Or rather, I tried to. She ran the thing through the slot and it asked her to enter her password for the register. Which... she didn't know. So she had to call Jeff over from the next register and have him type the password in for her, because she didn't know the password because they change them every month (and today is only the 23rd day of the month!) So, Jeff punched in the four-digit password and went back to his register. But the automatic card validation wouldn't work, so she called another employee in the back of the store somewhere to ask what to do. "It said something about 'the host'," she explained helpfully. The helpful other moron told her to ignore it and just continue. But she couldn't because the register wanted her to process my credit card before I could leave. So she had to call Jeff over and have him type in her four-digit password again to start over. And, of course, it didn't work again once Jeff had a free moment to type in her password for her. All this time, she was chatting on the phone with her friend. Did you know her cat vomits a lot? I sure do! Anyway, it was clear that she needed to validate my card the old-fashioned way (by picking up the phone and punching in my credit card number) but her stupid pal wasn't telling her to do that, presumably because she knew that using the telephone was beyond the capabilities of my clerk who was still chatting on THE PHONE about how her cat retched a lot. So, she calls Jeff over a third time to ask what to do. Jeff tells her that she has to process my credit card by dialing it in. She says her dumb friend told her not to. Jeff assured her that her friend was dumb and that she would have to dial my card number in. She spent some time explaining to her friend that she had to hang up the phone because she needed to use it to do my credit card, and then she meticulously pecked out my credit card number to validate it. Of course, after all this time, her register had locked itself again, so she had to call Jeff over for a fourth time to have him type in her four-digit password a third time. I note that she never even attempted to learn what this incredibly complicated password was that Jeff was entering for her. I sure saw Jeff typing it a few times. If you ever run into this dimwitted young lady working a register at Best Buy and she can't remember the password for this month, this month's password is... ...ready? "1-2-3-4". You know, like the numbers on "Sesame Street"! They start at one and go up FOUR HIGH! -- K. Best Buy normally has very sharp, well-trained sales clerks, but I think this gal was addlebrained just to ensure that Best Buy can't be accused of discriminating against the obviously incompetent. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: soc.libraries.talk,alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Chicago Forbidden Libraries! X-My-Headers-No-Longer-Mention: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 05:07:54 GMT Organization: http://www.kibo.com In alt.censorship, soc.libraries.talk, and alt.conspiracy, some nameless person posting from "arealnews@my-deja.com" wrote: > > For those library people who are > non-agency(i.e.,humans) and who feel > that libraries (and the internet) are > for learning and advancement__then > you might be inteterested in this > article. > > I've been investigating the "Chicago > Public Library System" for about a > year and the only conclusion that > I have reached is that this library > system is "Agency"___from the allusion > of internet access at all branches, > bizare books on the shelves, to the > librarians who do nothing but harass > and target the patrons___this is > "Agency"___and the staff CESS > (Cultural Elite Secret Service). > > If you are an insider(agency) > you probably are saying that > "we" have a huge leak in our > security. Too Bad! Any human > American can easily figure out > what is going on here! My God! Don Saklad is getting narrower and narrower! Soon he'll be too narrow to read without eye stra in . > If you are an American(human- > non agency) then you are > probably saying___hey, I've > been to the Chicago Public > Libraries and yes something > very strange is going on there. > > What tips off the average > tourist(what tourists) that > the Howard Washington(main > library) is Agency? The > architecture? How did they > ever accept the bid for > this ugly library? It > screams AGENCY when you look > at the facade! > > The real problem is what is > going on within the walls. > > There is no internet access > yet there are about 60 internet > terminals. How could this be? > All net activity is being > censored? How? Access to Yahoo, > Geocities, Altavista, and some > other popular sites takes any > where from 30 to 60 seconds__ > on a good day! That constitutes > net censorship! Why? Because this > city is "AGENCY" and it is closed. > > What exactly does the phrase "AGENCY" > mean. Well it refers to "ALIEN" > existence(a presence) in the city and > burbs__some say this place resembles > "The Island of Dr. Moreau"! Still > not convinced? > > Try accessing my investigative news website(s): > http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/5811/index.htlm > and > http://www.mansue.com > > all sites and postings are being censored because > my news stuff exposes the "AGENCY" and the > CESS. Or maybe it's because your Web browser doesn't understand that you have a very special way of spelling ".html" as ".htlm"? > If you access this news posting please post to > a real news sever___DEJA.com is___well, you know! IT IS COMPLETELY SURROUNDED BY UNDERLINES! > Thank you, > > Wayne Manzo, > Plaintiff in America's only slavery case, > Engineeer, Journalist, Freedom Fighter, > WebDeveloper: Mansue.com > > > Posted from the forbidden city of Chicago, > > > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ > Before you buy. "LAST WEEEK I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO SPELLL 'ENGINEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER', NOW I RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR ONE!" -- Jack Palance as Wayne Manzo as Don Saklad in "Aliens Ate My HTLM" -- K. P.S. Have you considered moving in with Don Saklad and becoming a sitcom?