Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Lorentz's Circle Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 03:05:01 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com "Dag Right-square-bracket-gren" (d@c3.cx) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Znlor jura Trbetr fnvq ur jnf svyvat na "va CREFBA" pbzcynvag uvf svatre > > fyvccrq naq uvg "C" vafgrnq bs "F", "R" vafgrnq bs "N", "E" vafgrnq bs "A", > > naq "FBA" vafgrnq bs "R". > > I just noticed "Cubey" is "Phorl" in ROT-13, which sounds way kewl. You may be the only person in human history to have ever said that Cubey sounds cool in any way, shape, or form. Especially the hexahedral form. I THINK THAT GUY MIGHT BE A BOZO! > Also, ROT-13d text reminds me of "Tlšn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". Please stop making fun of William Shatner's middle name. Also do not hack up this thread with high school cafeteria style tater tots. Thank you. -- K. SOYLENT TATER TOTS ARE MADE FROM TODDLERS!!! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: yay, riots! Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 06:07:58 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com In Los Angeles, there's a lovely sport-fueled riot (apparently the Lakers won a game) going on right now, and the East Coast stations and networks aren't showing the cars getting overturned. Stupid stations! This confirms my theory that although they know live violence is always a ratings-grabber, that if it happens after midnight Eastern time they won't bother showing it because by that point they've started a twelve-hour tape of the night's reruns playing and are out drinking. Come on, TV networks! If there are things getting smashed, I want to see them! Unless they're my things. In which case I want you to stop people from smashing them! Why can't the TV networks do this? What for did we give the press all those super powers in the Constitution if they're just going to show sitcom reruns? I say we should go trash CNN's offices because they don't show enough rioting! -- K. Why are they the "Lakers" and not the "Oceaners"? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Short Shameful Milestone. Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 06:40:21 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com A few years ago, I reached the point where I had enough Web sites bookmarked that my copy of Netscape crashed, burned, and tried to eat all the other files on my computer. The limit was apparently 1000 items in that version, ones after #1000 would disappear and garble the bookmark file. So I switched to using Microsoft Internet Explorer to manage my bookmarks. Since then, I've been very happy with MSIE, and have been gradually inching towards 5,000 bookmarks. Today I hit 4,769. And apparently something about the number 4,769, or the way the bookmarks are arranged, breaks my MSIE. I can pick the bookmarks off the menu (which MSIE calls "Favorites" even though I really hate some of the sites) and I can add new ones to the end of it. But trying to move any of them around within my Byzantine hierarchy of nested sub-folders causes a nice Red Screen Of Death. (Hey, what can I say -- I colorized my computer's crash screen to make it scarier. You seldom see bright red screens on computers any more.) So, as of today, I've switched to having no bookmarks in any of my Web browsers. I'm managing all the bookmarks with one of those external, third-party shareware tools which is just a big window where you can put your bookmarks without breaking your Web browser if you bookmark all the por^H^H^Huseful sites you find. (I have to register the shareware thing for $30 if I want to be able to alphabetize them. That's a cute touch -- "You can use the program all you want for free, but stuff will be in a silly order if you don't pay for it!") I regret having to take this step, but it was necessary, as I haven't finished writing my own bookmark database tool yet. -- K. Or my Usenet program. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Short Shameful Milestone. [long rant about Mac Internet Explorer weirdnesses] Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 21:56:33 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Chuck Stewart (zapkitty@hotmail.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > ..... So I switched to using > > Microsoft Internet Explorer to manage my bookmarks. > > Of course you've downloaded and installed all 18 security patches > released for IE.... (Cue Marcia Wallace looking at Jan Brady and saying "HA!") (Cue Marcia Wallace looking at Bob Newhart and saying "HA!") (Cue Marcia Wallace looking at Bart Simpson and saying "HA!") The most recent version of Internet Explorer available on my platform is 5.0.0.0.0.0.0. And it doesn't do Visual Basic scripting and it doesn't come with its own Java (it uses Apple-brand real Java) so there aren't too many security holes for them to fix, because it's missing the two evil parts and it's running on an operating system that says "Duhhh, what's a server?" when you try to let it accept connections from the outside world. ("Hey, he's trying to start a telnet daemon. I'll start multitasking with one-second time-slices.") Besides, any Mac owner can tell you that whenever a product is released for Mac OS and Windows simultaneously, afterwards they only ever fix the bugs in the Windows versions. The only Mac products that get a series of updates are the ones that have a big flashing "MAC ONLY, SCREW WINDOWS!" sticker on their Web site and a little picture of Steve Jobs that's been retouched to make him look not insane. But the problem with those is that their products all break whenever Apple makes any slight change to Mac OS (which they do every three months, exactly three months behind schedule) and if you ask them to add any normal useful features they say "Oh, no, we can't do that, because that feature could also work under any other operating system, and if we added a lot of those we might accidentally port the whole program to Windows! And then we'd cry because we'd have to use TWO kinds of computers! No human being could possibly stand learning to use TWO operating systems! Unless one of them is Linux! And I mean the good kinds of Linux, not the sucky kinds! They're all completely different! There's a frame missing from the version of 'Alien' they show on TBS!" I wish, however, they'd fix the bug that makes Mac MSIE say Error: The attempt to load 'Accessing URL: http://www.sitename.com/' failed. That just bothers me because it's a really obvious big of error-manglement where it introduces a grammatical error while attempting to complain in two separate ways about the same problem. They must have grafted an old error message on top of the new one or something. Still, it's better than the Windows 2000 beta installer error I saw a few months ago which gave a hex code and then said "There is no help for this error." I did modify my MSIE myself because I wasn't happy with the choices of interface colors -- the very simple, solid-color icons are great, but the choices of colors are either way too loud (blueberry, tangerine, durian, yadda yadda) or too subtle ("bronze" aka brownish black, "black" aka gray.) I would have used brown or black but it turns out that in order to make all the colors on the page match, they chose to draw and Web page "Submit" buttons with the text in a light shade of that accent color, so if I use the "bronze" color, all the "Submit" buttons are displayed with grayish text and look like they don't want me to click on them. So, I took the thing apart with RedEdit and SuperHex and tracked down the RGB triplets that defined the colors, and lo and behold, each color was in there twice -- one copy of the color was used more most of the colorized interface elements, the other was used only for the revolving globe, the Web page buttons (aha), and the scroll bars. So I left the first one brown and I bumped the second one up to a nice when-raspberry-met-dried-blood wine-flavored maroon, and now I'm happy because I don't have fluorescent teal or magenta icons looking at me, just brown ones that are as easy to ignore as the other coffee stains I'd have on my computer if I ever drank coffee. If you've never seen the Mac version of MSIE 5, it's really weird-looking because it mimics the bizarro "user experience" of an operating system which hasn't been released yet. It's entirely made of moist candy. MMM, GUMMI ALTAVISTA! GUMMI YAHOO! GUMMI PORNOGRAPHY! It's one of those you-must-love-it-or-hate-it-because-it's-really-bad- but-normal-people-like-bad-things things. I can tolerate it because you can change the colors (and I could change 'em even more with my hex editor) and because it's a far better browser, in my opinion, than the Mac version of Netscape. (It crashes just as often, but at least it doesn't scribble all over my disk buffers when it goes down. Someday we need to strap Microsoft and Netscape executives to a computer and say "Okay, feature freeze! You can't add anything new until you hunt down all the memory leaks in your existing code! There are programs that help you do this automatically, you pinheads!) I don't know why Microsoft doesn't realize they could combine the features of the Mac and Windows versions of MSIE (except for the parts that can't be ported easily, such as Visual Basic, ColorSync support, Sherlock support, the ability to browse the Windows filesystem, etc.) because each of the two versions of MSIE has some really nifty features that the other one doesn't have. Obviously Microsoft told their Mac MSIE team to go lock themselves in a room and forbade them to have contact with any of the 99% of Microsoft employees who develop and support Windows products. For instance, look at the Preferences screens of the two MSIEs and notice that they have completely different sets of items you can customize, in different arrangements, with different interfaces. The Windows one allows you to switch more individual features on and off, while the Mac one has fewer but more useful preferences (such as site-specific cookie-handling behavior.) Even the weird little interface elements are different: The Windows one supports fetching favico.ico files (like the little "K" on www.kibo.com) when you bookmark a site, while the Mac one doesn't -- but the Mac one lets you collapse the toolbars to a vertical bar so that the page can be taller (I think they had to put that in because they didn't want to figure out how to display the phrase "Page Holder" not sideways. Also, "Page Holder" is another one of those exotic features they could add to the other version.) Now, Netscape Navigator/Communicator is just as broken on both Macs and Windows in exactly the same way (with the aforementioned difference that they won't fix any of the bugs in the Mac version, ever.) At a certain point in their history they decided to _remove_ certain minor features to make it work the same on both platforms. And they still refuse to support certain Mac features used by _all_ other Internet applications (I'm talking about the system-wide Internet preferences-handling system which evolved from the freeware Internet Config and then became part of the OS). That's like writing a Windows program and saying "I refuse to allow my program to read from or write to the Registry, because then it would do something that the other versions don't do." You get the feeling that a lot of programs are developed with the design goals of avoiding writing any part of the program they can find an excuse for avoiding, or with the magical fantasy goal of making all the versions of their program so identical that they don't have to train their tech-support people to ask, "Are you using the Macintosh, Windows, SGI, or HP/UX version?" I wonder if they ever fixed the bug in the SGI 64-bit Netscape Navigator that allowed you to open a "View Page Info" window which had no way of closing it, ever. Anyhow, computers are weird, and life would be so much less fun with only one operating system, but programmers would love it. Of course, it would have to be neither Windows (hard to program on) or Mac OS (hard to program on), but an operating system that's easy to program on, like UNIX or Lite Brite. I like how Lite Brite now advertises "2 WAYS TO CREATE PICTURES: HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL!" Why can't computer programmers come up with innovations like that? MAYBE I WANT TO LOOK AT WEB PAGES SIDEWAYS! -- K. There's a building in Minneapolis shaped exactly like a Radius Pivot monitor. I tried to tip it over to watch all the windows redraw but it was too heavy. Get a counterweight, bulgy building! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Short Shameful Milestone. [long rant about Mac Internet Explorer weirdnesses] Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 06:24:23 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Joe Manfre (manfre@flash.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > So, I took the thing apart with RedEdit and SuperHex and tracked down > > the RGB triplets that defined the colors, and lo and behold, each color > > was in there twice -- one copy of the color was used more most of the > > colorized interface elements, the other was used only for the revolving > > globe, the Web page buttons (aha), and the scroll bars. > > Oh, Kibo -- oh, dear Leader Kibo -- how did you, a > liberal college liberal arts liberal arts college > graduate, become such a Computer Smartypants? I watched Sandra Bullock editing the "Wolfenstein 3D" icon with ResEdit on a Power Mac 8100 in the first scene of "The Net", that's how I learned to do that. I think she was supposed to be super-hacking her way into a super-elite super-secure super-super-computer, but she was clearly using ResEdit, and the name of the file she had opened was clearly "Wolfenstein 3D". It's one of the few cases where, in a movie, the computer screens aren't just these goofball mockups (these giant, spare interfaces with enormous flashing red "computery" letters) but are actually really using a computer. Unfortunately, it's clear to anyone who has ever programmed a Mac that she's just fiddling with ResEdit! Not even REGEDIT.EXE, but ResEdit! > Okay, okay, what you did doesn't sound extremely > complicated, but I feel like whining. It's like, > compared to most of the boneheads where I work, > I seem to come off like an eleet s00per hakk0r > sometimes, since I am often able to get my software > to do what I want it to do no matter how hard the > software developers tried to break it. Meanwhile, > a lot of people there barely know how to turn their > computers on and have never seen an MS-DOS prompt, > let alone something much more eleet. At Loser Designs we used to get customers who had never seen _Windows_, they would come in because they needed to use the DOS version of WordPerfect and we were the only place in town that still had Windows 3.1 and DOS available when everyone else had gone to Windows 95. So the staff would have to show them how to exit Windows to get to DOS just about as often as we'd have to show people how to type "WIN" to get from DOS to Win3.1. We also got the people who didn't know there was a difference between Mac OS and Windows and didn't know which of the two they needed to use and had only one copy of their entire life's work which was stored on a single floppy that they'd been carrying around and rubbing on magnets for ten years and would invariably die in our shop. And the people who thought that Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe PageMaker, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint were named "Adobe", "Adobe", "Adobe", "Microsoft", "Microsoft", and "Microsoft". A lot of people don't seem to realize that Word isn't built into Windows, a fact I am willing to testify to under oath if they need my expert testimony at the super-elite Government-Versus-Evil-Super-Haxor-Bill-Gates trial. > Then I come on a.r.k and immediately start feeling > like, as I have called myself before, The Dumbest > Guy On This Newsgroup. Damn you people! Can't > you create a happy medium for me? Okay... "CandyVision". Just stick your tongue into the hole in the side of this humming box and enjoy a joyride through the candy dimension! -- K. I'm watching a TV commercial where a guy in a muscle shirt has installed a series of angled mirrors throughout his house to see the left front wheel of his tire because he just gave his tires "the shine you can't stop looking at", which they tell me makes tires look wet even when they're not, and sure, I guess I would stare at a wet tire all day. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.fan.beable From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Short Shameful Milestone. [reminiscences about the days when computers weren't this much fun] Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 08:34:40 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Beable van Polasm (beable@my-deja.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > At Loser Designs we used to get customers who had never seen _Windows_, > > they would come in because they needed to use the DOS version of WordPerfect > > and we were the only place in town that still had Windows 3.1 and DOS > > available when everyone else had gone to Windows 95. So the staff would > > have to show them how to exit Windows to get to DOS just about as often > > as we'd have to show people how to type "WIN" to get from DOS to Win3.1. > > What about how to get out of Wordperfect for DOS? I had a > job interview where that was part of the test. Another part > was "Fix this machine" (the video card was mysteriously > falling out), and "install this memory". Now I have forgotten > how to exit from Wordperfect for DOS, it could be F7, Alt-F7 > or Ctrl-Alt-Del. Not "Alt-F7"! "Red Dot-F7", please! For the uninitiated, WordPerfect for DOS (up through version 5, before they decided to add convenient character-based drop menus) used the F1 through F12 keys for all its commands, and each one did something different depending on whether you pressed it by itself, or with Shift, or with Alt, or with Control. So there was this strip with tiny printing on it you were supposed to tape to the keyboard above the F1 to F12 keys (an alternate version was supplied for those oldkeyboards that had those keys all at the right edge) but because you were really really stupid and didn't know how to find the "Shift" key, they printed the four rows of commands in black, red, green, and blue, and gave you red, green, and blue dots to put on the Alt, Shift, and Control keys (I forget how the colors corresponded.) So the point of WordPerfect tech support was usually something like: CLUEFUL PERSON: To retrieve your document, just press shift-F9. CLUELESS PERSON: Wha? CLUEFUL PERSON: I mean green-dot-F9. CLUELESS PERSON: How many are 9? At Loser Designs we had early Gateway computers (back when they were named "Gateway 2000", circa the early 90s) with the horrible, evil, rotten, atrocious "Gateway AnyKey(R)" keyboards, which had extra cursor keys in a nonstandard arrangement (EVERYONE needs to be able to backspace diagonally!) with a mysterious blank key in the middle of the eight. But the really rotten feature was that there was a "Macro Define" key in the upper right, next to "Macro Suspend" and "Macro End". It was supposed to work like this: YOU THINK: I want to type "cat" twice, but I'm too lazy to press all six keys. I'll define a macro. YOU TYPE: Macro Define, X, C, A, T, End Macro, X, X. IT MAKES: CAT! CAT! YOU THINK: Now I just need to remember to type "Suspend Macro, X" if I ever need to use the "X" key again. In practice, what would happen was that idiots would flail away at the entire keyboard at once (I don't mean they'd deliberately hit different keys in hopes they'd do different things, I mean they'd rest their hand by pressing it down on the entire right half of the keyboard) and because it was trivially easy to hit "Macro Define", the first letter of their resume would be redefined as a macro which typed all but the first letter of their resume whenever they pressed the first letter again. I remember Xeroxing the page of the manual that told how to reset the keyboard to normal, then Xeroxing it again when they lost the first three copies I'd made. Eventually we just pried the three Macro keys off the keyboard with a screwdriver. Then the manager tried to install Windows 95 on the computer and Windows 95 stopped booting so they turned the computer off forever. Ah, those were the days. It was nice to have a job where I could feel comfortable in knowing that no matter how many customers and managers were in the room, I was more SUP3R-3L33T than them. (Most of my co-workers were well-clued, just not the management.) Joe Manfre (manfre@flash.net) wrote: > > > > > > Then I come on a.r.k and immediately start feeling > > > like, as I have called myself before, The Dumbest > > > Guy On This Newsgroup. Damn you people! Can't > > > you create a happy medium for me? > > Don't worry Joe. Somebody has to be the dumbest. No they don't, Beable. Let's say that I'm smarter than you. And you're smarter than Joe. And Joe is way, way smarter than Archimedes Plutonium. But, due to some bizarre quirk of fate, Archie is much smarter than me, because he's a "super-genius" and I'm just a regular genius. Thus, none of us is the smartest or the stupidest, and we're all smarter than half the people and dumber than half the people. And we're all exactly average even though no two of us have the same IQ! Any FOUR of us might have the same IQ, but not any TWO of us. It's like the Borromean Rings only involving math. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go make sure Martin Gardner isn't sneaking intransitive dice into casinos again. -- K. How he ever got that "Monopoly" space named after him, I'll never know. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: followup to research results Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 06:45:07 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Mark Hill (mhill@epicentre.net) wrote: > > Spiders can hang onto my windshield at speeds of 75 mph. Yes, but, can they hang onto your car's windshield at 75 mph? > Whereas, silverfish slide right off the windshield, even when the car > is not moving. AND THEY'RE NOT MADE OF SILVER AND THEY'RE NOT FISH! WHAT'S UP WITH THAT? A SANDWICH ISN'T SAND AND ISN'T A WITCH! AND CARPET ISN'T A CAR AND USUALLY ISN'T A PET! AND WHY ARE ALL THE PEOPLE IN 7-ELEVEN SO STUPID WHENEVER I'M IN THERE TEN TIMES A DAY? NOW I'D LIKE TO DO SOME IMPRESSIONS! HERE'S MY IMPRESSION OF... ME! > (Yes, the fact that silverfish were falling out of the sky in Palo Alto > was, um, disturbing. But at least they weren't durians or my car would > have been damaged.) Somewhere just around the next turn Charles Fort is loading his catapult with durians while giggling. -- K. At least the durians aren't giggling. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Heads up! Time to adjust your scorefiles! Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 06:53:34 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Andrew J. Zimolzak (zimolzak@msu.edu) wrote: > > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > > > "...AND REMEMBER, AOLTV IS AN ANAGRAM OF VOLTA!" > > > IJLTSTIWPTA "AOLTV IS A GRAM OF VIAGRA!" I don't "get" all this "acronym" stuff! \ \ By the way what does "BTW" stand for? > World's first impression / of a typical AOLTV owner And what does "AOLTV" stand for? / -- K. I UNDERSTAND WHAT "AOL" STANDS FOR, BUT WHAT'S "TV"? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: STAY OUT of Austria!!!11! Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 08:27:08 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Beable van Polasm (beable@my-deja.com) wrote: > > The Austrian Government is doing EVEN MORE to stop the > influx of illegal aliens!!! > > [Sydney Morning Herald article] > > > > http://www.smh.com.au/news/0006/16/text/pageone4.html > > > > Mr Ruddock also launched a foreign advertising campaign > > yesterday designed to warn off illegal immigrants. It > > features crocodiles, sharks and snakes - highlighted as > > the type of hazards facing boat people landing in Australia. > > OH NO! DON'T TRY TO FLEE YOUR OPPRESSIVE CAPITALIST PIG > DOG REGIMES FOR THE COMMUNIST WORKERS PARADISE OF AUSTRIA > BECAUSE A CROCODILE MIGHT EAT YOU!!!!1!! > > Personally, I think it's a breach of United Nations > Regulations for the Immigration Department to be > releasing sharks, snakes and crocodiles into the > detention camps! Complain to the United Nations TODAY! If I were going to Australia, I'd be more worried about those darn koalas. Sure, they trick you into thinking their cute and lovable, and their airline has never crashed, but I'm told they're covered with a quarter-inch-deep layer of fleas (some of which have herpes), they go right for your eyes with their claws, they smell like they've been peeing all over themselves even though they only pee on tourists, and they all have some Aussie infection called "runny bottom disease" which I can only imagine. (At least I hope I can only imagine it.) And then there are those kangaroos who wear boxing gloves and beat up people all day. (Here in the USA, we just have chimps riding tricycles.) And lots of bad movies. Not counting "Mad Max", which only became bad after Mel Gibson was dubbed by a real American. (Technically, Mel was born in the USA -- Peekskill, New York -- but Pee-wee Herman was also born in Peekskill, so that cancels him out. Also, I don't know if it's Peek-skill or Peeks-kill, most likely the latter because "kill" means "brook" in upstate New York. And having only one blinking red LED on your two sneakers means "kill" in downstate New York.) -- K. And, Mr. Polasm, thanks for pointing out this article so that I could steal it for that other place I've started writing for that nobody here has discovered yet because I haven't posted a link to it on www.kibo.com because spending fifteen seconds updating www.kibo.com is the last thing I feel like doing after I've spent all day slapping together the other site whose name I didn't mention on www.kibo.com. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: science journalism Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 08:36:27 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Matt McIrvin (mmcirvin@world.std.com) wrote: > > [commenting on an article about the RHIC particle-physics experiment] > > I forgot to mention one mistake: in discussing the notion of creating a > mini-black hole, he said that "the whole world would be sucked into Long > Island." That wouldn't happen, at least not as a consequence of the > creation of the black hole alone. Lots of catastrophic things could > result from the creation of a tiny black hole, but at large distances > (compared to the size of its event horizon) a black hole is no better at > sucking things in than any equivalent object of the same mass. It's not as good as sucking all the FUN out of something as a Harvard-trained particle physicist, though. Why couldn't you just let us go on hoping that the world could get sucked into Long Island for a little while? We so rarely get to enjoy visions of A Complete Breakfast Plus All The Candy In The World Plus Bob Hope being packed into a place named after its aspect ratio. -- K. Wouldn't they have to rename it Hefty Island? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Bomb Alert List Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 08:46:45 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Chris Dual Lansdell (melginskeep@angelfire.com) wrote: > > In order to protect its employees from possible explodiation, > the mall at which I used to work has a list of what to do before > calling the police in the event of finding a bomb on site. > Amongst these is a list of questions which you should ask > yourself... "Why am I reading this list while this thing is ticking?" > What shape is the bomb? > What will cause the bomb to go off? > Is the bomb making any noises? > Where is the bomb now? > Did you plant the bomb? > Why? > > No, really. Then they have a list of stuff to ask yourself if a > bomb threat is called in: > > Did the person have an accent? > Was the person's voice slurred? > Was there noise in the background? In Boston's subway (the MBTA, aka "the (T)", not to be confused with the cheap imitation transit system in Minneapolis which has the exact same logo but better service) they have a bunch of one-digit codes so that people in the booths can report events such as bomb scares in a quarter of a second. There used to be a list posted where I could see it through the glass of the Copley token booth. I don't recall the exact wording, but it went something like this: 1 -- Derailed train 2 -- Person under train 3 -- Obstruction on tracks 4 -- Fire or smoke 5 -- Civil disturbance 6 -- Unusual occurrence I've always wanted to call in An Otherwise Unspecified Number Six. "Oh no! An unusual occurrence has occurrenced! We better evacuate Copley!" "Hey, the radio says they're evacuating Copley for no reason! That's highly unusual! Now we have to evacuate too!" "Look! All the other stations are evacuating! That's SO unusual that we'll have to proceed to Phase Two -- arm the nuclear self-destruct!" There was also the time, at Park Street, I heard the louspeakers yelling "ONE ONE THREE ON THE ESCALATOR! ONE ONE THREE ON THE ESCALATOR!" and I don't know what it meant, but I think it mean that two people did Number One and one person did Number Three on the escalator. -- K. Homeless people can't go to the bathroom on surfaces without steps. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math,alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: EL and FRANK R criminal abuse Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 09:35:39 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Followup-To: alt.duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh In sci.math and sci.physics, George Hammond (ghammond@mediaone.net) wrote: > > BECAUSE, IT'S THE MATHEMATICS OF SPECIAL RELATIVITY YOU DUMB FUCKIN > ASSHOLE..... OR ARE YOU TO LAZY TO READ WHAT YOUR'RE TALKING ABOUT > BEFORE YOU SHOOT OFF YOUR DUMB FUCKIN BIG MOUTH > APPARENTLY CHRIS HILLMAN IS, BECAUSE HE CAME ON HERE AND SHOT OFF > HIS DUMB FUCKIN BIG MOUTH ABOUT THE "INVARIENT HYPERBOLA" WHEN HE'S > OBVIOUSLY TOTALLY IGNORANT OF THE SPECIAL RELATIVITY MATHEMATICS > OF THE LEMNISCATE OF BERNOULLI WHICH IS WHAT WE WERE DISCUSSING.... > AND HE POSTS HIS 3 OR 4 AD HOMINEM, ERRONEOUS, IRRELEVANT, INSULTS > ALONG WITH HIS DUMB FUCKIN MATHEMATICAL MISTAKE. > I WANT DUMB FUCKIN IRRELEVANT POSTS TO STAY OFF MY DISCUSSION THREADS. > AND I'VE GOT A RIGHT TO REQUEST IT. Wow. It's as if Einstein had Tourette's instead of all that science stuff. -- K. Originally I wasn't going to subscribe to Cubey's science theory (whatever it is) but he said that in all capitals, which made it brainier. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Computers are so demanding. Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 22:16:10 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Why is it that whenever a computer telecommunications program contains the setting "Dial On Demand", they never explain that this means "Dial At All Sorts Of Random Times When You Don't Want It To, But If You Turn Off 'Dial On Demand' Then You Can Dial When You Actually Demand It?" People who cook up computer jargon need a serious beating. Then a silly beating. Also, in one of the gadgets I have, if I tell it to dial out when not using "Dial On Demand", it says "Click OK for sure" which makes me wonder (a) Do Valley Girls come from Silicon Valley? (b) I were a bozo on TV I would have said "Silicone Valley". Unless I was actually talking about breast implants in which case I would have said "silicon breast implants". and (c) Maybe they mean I didn't click on the picture of the button hard enough last time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go offend nerds by using the terms "URI" and "URL" interchangeably. -- K. THEY'RE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BECAUSE URIs INCLUDE URNs AND URLs DON'T! AND MAYBE SOMEDAY URNs MIGHT BE REAL! AND THEY'LL DISPENSE CANDY! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Computers are so demanding. Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 02:01:10 GMT Organization: welcome datacomp Dan Bateman (batemand@buck.com) wrote: > > Beable van Polasm (beable@my-deja.com) wrote: > > > > Gee Kibo, you offended that nerd pretty quick. Let's offend > > some other nerds! LEEE SHELTON BUMGARNER!! > > Let's try this: "I was surfing the information superhighway the other > day on my IMac running Windows 97 with 4.3 GB of memory, when a box thingy > popped up saying I had done something illegal. I panicked because I don't > want to go to jail, so I hit Control-Alt-Desq-Fruit-@ and got booted back > to \usr\bin\system32." Hey! You didn't say whether you meant the Open Fruit Key or the Closed Fruit key! All Macs have one of each! (They would have made them red and green for WordPerfect, the best wordprocessor ever, but Apple's computers stopped being able to do color when they introduced the first Mac, the Classic. I can't believe they make the computers in different colors of plastic just to hide the fact that they have black and white displays!) Also, Nick, your Atari 800 IS JUST A GAME MACHINE!!! -- K. ...hoping I don't accidentally turn this group into comp.kibology.advocacy by treading the fine line between meta-trolling (in which "meta-" modifies the REAL meaning of "trolling") and what bozos think of as the meaning of "trolling". PEOPLE WHO POST FLAMEBAIT ARE ALL MORONS!!! AND FAT!!! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Computers are so demanding. Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 06:42:29 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Beable van Polasm (beable@my-deja.com) wrote: > > Chris Costello (chris@FreeBSD.org) wrote: > > > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > > > Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go offend nerds by using the terms > > > "URI" and "URL" interchangeably. > > > > Silly Kibo, URI means Universal Resource _Indicator_. That > > means a resource _might_ be there. URL means you _know_ it's > > there. It's your sign for quality. > > Gee Kibo, you offended that nerd pretty quick. Let's offend > some other nerds! LEEE SHELTON BUMGARNER!! I hear that Lewis Stiller made a movie of Lee's life but it's not worth watching because the best frame is missing. Also, "Unix" shouldn't be written in all-capitals because it's not an acronym. But otherwise writing a whole sentence in caps is easier to read than lowercase, which is why you should only use all-caps for things that are REALLY IMPORTANT. Also space the capitals tighter than normal because the standard spacing used in typefaces is always too loose. And use "fi" ligatures with the capitals. But whatever you do, don't point out the biggest internal contradiction ever on "Star Trek", the time there were six tribbles on Kirk's chair in one shot and seven in the next shot. There's no conceivable explanation for that! Unless Gene Roddenberry didn't write that part of the episode himself! It's also too bad the original Enterprise never went faster than Warp 6 and I would have liked it if we had found out what Kirk's middle initial was before the final episode, the one with the robot. AND WOW, DID "BABYLON 5" COMPLETELY SUCK!!! NO WONDER THE FOX NETWORK CANCELLED IT!!! -- K. Also I wish Al Gore would stop saying he invented the Internet in 1989! Everyone knows it wasn't invented until 1993! And the only people allowed to use it were nonprofit groups, who have to be in .org and are forbidden to be in .com! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Why I Sometimes Miss Clerking Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 02:20:30 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Ted Frank (moe@Radix.Net) wrote: > > http://laws.findlaw.com/7th/993250.html For those of you without Internet access, I'll go out on the Web and get that document so you can see me quote the juicy bits of this Seventh Circuit Court Of Appeals ruling: > Posner, Chief Judge. The plaintiff, Lee, filed > two insane complaints charging the United States > and China with a conspiracy to "bio-chemically > and bio-technologically infect and invade" > various people including Lee with a mind reading > and mental torture device that Lee calls "Mind > Accessing and Torturing via Remote Energy > Transferring (MATRET)." To elude MATRET, Lee > claims to have developed a variety of space > technologies, oddly including an email system and > nanny services, that will enable the victims of > MATRET to relocate to MATRET-free planets. The > district judge dismissed the suits as frivolous, > but granted Lee leave to appeal in forma > pauperis. This is the court's way of saying "I'm sorry the mean judge was sensible enough to throw out the lawsuit because YOU SUCK, so I'm going to allow your lawsuit BECAUSE YOU SUCK. Plus it will have wacky novelty value." Also, who is this "Lee" plaintiff? Lee Plutoniumgarner? There followed a few pages of discussion of why lower courts should allow frivolous lawsuits from anyone except prisoners, with no mention whatsoever of the deadly influence of MATRET on non-Chinese people's genitals. I would like to know more about this MATRET-proof nanny service. I would also like to know how many other court documents contain the phrase "insane complaints". -- K. And how many of _those_ contain the phrases "searchenginebombing" or "cube". ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Sil Sighting Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 06:50:12 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com The Avocado Avenger (stacia123@my-deja.com) wrote: > > Kibo tells the world he has invented sil. "Please to consider me a > funny funny netgod," Kibo sez, "because I have invented many fine words, > one of which is 'sil'." > Kibo then is a true lord and master because he must be older than B*b > H*pe [1]. "Sil" was recently seen at a screening of the silent movie > classic "The Show People", starring a lovely and talented Marian Davies, > posilutely related to Barbara Bain-Shatner-Landau-Parry. Allow me to > quote from the dialogue box of the lovely Davies in this movie from > 1926: > > "Don't be sil. We'll find work, you'll see!" > > Kibo never told us he wrote for silents at MGM in the 1920s! What > else is he hiding from us? > > [1] ANDY ROONEY. I didn't claim to have invented "sil"! I invented the Internet. "Sil" was swiped from Mark Hill, who stole it from some stupid operating system which sucked because it had sil in it. -- K. Also his name is Mark Sil east of the Rockies. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Sil Sighting Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 09:44:46 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Mark Hill (mhill@epicentre.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I didn't claim to have invented "sil"! I invented the Internet. > > > > "Sil" was swiped from Mark Hill, who stole it from some stupid operating > > system which sucked because it had sil in it. > > Ah, thank you. And thank you for inventing the Internet for us to transmit > Sil on. It's better than the old days when we had to use Uucp. I swear that when I read those two lines what my brain received was "And thank you for inventing the internet for us TO POOP ON!" Really. I think it got "POOP" from "UUCP", and the Conan O'Brien reference presumably got in there because the stupid ripoff of his poopy puppet -- namely, "Sock", the Pets.Com suck puppet which sued Conan's show because they had the nerve to have a dog puppet BEFORE Pets.Com thought of it -- was on the TV news again today. I forget what they were press-releasing, but one of the two perky newscasters referred to him as the most prominent sock puppet, and the other one said, "Are there any others? He's the only sock puppet!" and somewhere, Shari Lewis's soul felt great anger, and then flew off to destroy the only library in the galaxy where the only copy of the every "Star Trek" episode is stored. > So, first person who names the operating system gets a dollar. (I have > a pocket full of susan b anthony dollars I'm trying to get rid of.) RSTS. Where's my dollar? -- K. RSTS was an acronym for "Richard Stallman's Terrible Secret". ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Deja takes down old servers Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 06:59:51 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com "red" (moldau@earthlink.net) wrote: > > Good news! Everything prior to May '99 is history. Deja wasn't making > enough money from it. Now we can all run for office again. > > However, this means that I'll never get to read Classic Nick Bensema. > *Sob* Hypothetically speaking... Remember some months ago when I was asking questions about how people felt newsreaders should operate? Now, let's say that the the author of the hypothetical newsreader has a complete archive of nearly all alt.religion.kibology articles going back to the bgeinning of time (1991). Should the hypothetical newsreader be able to browse the hypothetical archive, or should the archive not be made available to the general public? (This is a "yes or no" question, you can't say "Yes, except for *my* articles.") -- K. My feeling is "no" because about 95% of the articles aren't worth reading, and I wrote the other 5%, and you know that I'm going to at least make an archive of all my own articles available someday, so why do we need to see all those others by Louis Bensema and Ted DeLaney and David "Longshot" Potter? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Deja takes down old servers Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 07:22:41 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com [ WARNING: RANT-LIKE TYPING DETECTED. ] Jorn Barger (jorn@mcs.com) wrote: > > "red" (moldau@earthlink.net) wrote: > > > > Good news! Everything prior to May '99 is history. Deja wasn't making > > enough money from it. Now we can all run for office again. > > As recently as yesterday's Salon.com, they're saying publicly that the > old archives will be back up by the end of the year. Yeah, and Kevin Costner might direct the funniest "Monty Python" movie ever, starring the entire original cast of "Star Trek". > They relocated their whole operation to NYC, but plugging the > Usenet-archive servers back in is low priority (compared to their > ratings-scheme stuff). So, when they destroyed the first years' worth of the archive a few years ago, that was just a temporary change in order so that they might move to New York City someday? When they started, they also kept promising that the archive would contain _older_ messages ever year, eventually going all the way back to the beginning of Usenet. I never believed they would actually hire people to do the necessary labor to reconstruct the '70s and '80s (which I assume would entail buying rights to suck data of bit-rotted old backup tapes of the few ISPs that had good Usenet feeds AND made daily backup tapes AND never reused or discarded the tapes, and then spending hundreds of thousands of man-hours reconciling the different newsfeeds which would contain oodles of mangled Message-ID: headers from sites that didn't pass them through unchanged.) So, basically, Deja always promised to have more and more history, but they never added any more, and already they have a history of deleting old articles. So while it's possible that they could bring back their most recent archives, I highly suspect that the "Our server will be down for a month while we drive to New York City very, very, very, very, very slowly, and we can't possibly afford a second computer to serve the same data from two places" attitude they've evinced is just their way of trying to mentally prepare us for, "Kids, someday our archive is going bye-bye, get comfortable with that." In much the same way that my local transit authority wants to temporarily close the "E" branch (past brigham Circle) of the Green Line for a couple of _years_ to re-asphalt the road the trolleys go down, in the same way that they temporarily closed the "A" branch in the late sixties. They ripped the tracks out of the road altogether a few years ago. I don't think the "A" branch is ever coming back. They also temporarily closed the outer end of the "E" branch (past Heath Street) about nine years ago to do a summer's worth of maintenance, which consisted of taking it off all the maps forever. So you'll forgive me if I'm suspicious when DejaNews tells us in big letters that they're turning off their computer for a ridiculously long temporary shutdown, given that Deja obviously doesn't _want_ to give us old news articles. They never had any more than a couple of years old, and they've been whittling away at the archive anyways. Now you see why I maintain private archives of certain things I may wish to refer to in the future rather that trusting that Deja (or anyone else) will do it. And I strongly enjoin others to do the same. It really doesn't take up that much disk space to save all articles from one high-volume, text-only newsgroup. Nine years of alt.religion.kibology fits on a CD-ROM that's more than half-empty. If we assume that there have always been 20,000 groups worth archiving and they have all had the same volume as alt.religion.kibology and they have all started at the same time, multiplying a.r.k by 20,000 is about a six-terabyte archive. That's pretty big. And if the porn newsgroups aren't screened out, they inflate that number hugely. (A picture is worth a thousand words.) But I feel that archiving Usenet is an important task (there are newsgroups much more worthy of permanence than a.r.k, and a.r.k is worthy of permanence) and there _should_ be a major, trustworthy, complete archive _somewhere_ (even if it's not readily accessible to the public, _someone_ should keep a historical record of the development of Internet culture!) And, certainly, the most "important" newsgroups have their own archives already (things like comp.risks.) But I'd like to see more completeness, from someone with similar goals as DejaNews (the archiving of all news articles in all "major" groups, and the eventual reconstruction of a historical record) but with different _motives_ (a non-profit venture, not someone trying to make money selling banner ads crammed into other people's articles which have the headers rewritten to fool bozos into thinking this content is unique to DejaNews. The fact that they change the "Newsgroups:" header to "Forums:" is a sign that they want to scam people into thinking DejaNews owns Usenet.) -- K. I don't keep a diary. But I do keep somewhere on the order of 20,000 Usenet articles I've written over the years. I assume the rest of you would also like your work to survive, not necessarily for others to want to look at later, but at least so you'll be able to revisit your own past. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Time-travelling photons Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 07:32:03 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com In sci.physics, sci.astro, sci.philosophy.meta, and alt.religion.urantia-book, "kati" (asiakas@lib.hel.fi) wrote: > > > > > > Truth 1 > > > > > > Photons knows the Eternity > > > > > > Along the sc Science: > > > No matter what time You are living; the photons can come > > > from the beginning to Your eyes. Even if You were living > > > in the End time, still there You could see the photons, who > > > came from the sc BB! > > > > > > [...] Paul Lutus (of no E-mail address) wrote: > > > > Truth 1 is you have no clue about how to pose a scientific argument. "kati" (asiakas@lib.hel.fi) wrote: > > I am not a scientists; i am human being; I can think itself. I hereby nominate "I AM NOT A SCIENTISTS!" as the rallying cry for those who aspire to become famous kooks. Er, I mean, to become a kooks. I ARE NOT A KOOKS!!! -- K. I thought it was against the law in Finland to not know English grammar better than the average American. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: 'Blondie' Comic Strip Honored Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 07:50:18 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com For the Associated Press, Carl Hartman wrote: > > WASHINGTON (AP) -- Not far from the display case of the revered > 500-year-old Gutenberg Bible, (the only one he ever printed. And he did it in the year 1500.) > the Library of Congress is opening a show Thursday devoted to one > of the oldest surviving American comic strips -- Chic Young's ``Blondie.'' She's currently dating Bob Hope. CARBON DATING, THAT IS!!! > Blondie Boopadoop, the dizzy flapper of the 1930s, remains as > slim and pretty as ever 70 years later, though she's been the > mother of two teen-agers for decades and now is the proprietor of a > prosperous catering business. > The exhibit, called ``Blondie Gets Married!'' features one of > Young's earlier and favorite strips. It shows bridegroom Dagwood > Bumstead dragging her off to Niagara Falls. I swear that the first time I read that, my brain wacky-parsed it as "Dagwood Bumstead throwing her off of Niagara Falls." That would be much better. Especially if Margot Kidder played her. > ``You'll help me with the dishes, won't you darling?'' she asks > demurely. > ``Yeh, but we'll worry about the dishes after we get back from > our honeymoon,'' replies the panting Dagwood. > That's about as daring as the strip gets. And I also wacky-parsed that as "about as darling as the strip gets." > Its innocent-looking teens, Alexander -- ex-Baby Dumpling -- > and Cookie, rarely get into any trouble. So, they've had the same teenage kids since the 1930s, but they didn't get married until later? I'm puzzled! This comic strip doesn't depict the passage of time perfectly accurately like "Gasoline Alley" or "Peanuts"! > Dagwood, originally a playboy disinherited by his millionaire > father, has evolved into a wimpish office worker who can never get > a raise from his cantankerous boss, Mr. Dithers. This week he was > slam-dunking bits of paper into a wastebasket while his colleagues > were closing big contracts. HAHAHAHAHA! The strip never loses its edge! I forgot, did I already compare it to Bob Hope? > Murat Bernard ``Chic'' Young died in 1973 after drawing Blondie > seven days a week for 43 years, producing more than 15,000 strips. So tell us which one killed him! DAGWOOD: Mr. Dithers, here's the contract you asked for -- DITHERS: You numbskull, I didn't ask for any contract! DAGWOOD: But (suddenly gets all wiggly) HELP I AM HAVING A HEART ATTACK-__-_... DITHERS: (looks like he's turning invisible because his pencil outlines haven't been inked in) > His daughter Jeanne Young O'Neil, has given 150 originals to the > library. > ``My father would emerge from his studio each afternoon with the > penciled proofstrips in hand and run them by my mother Athel > Lindorf ... to get her expert opinion and, if necessary, spelling > corrections,'' she wrote in a brochure to go with the show. > Of the library's collection, 27 will be displayed in its ground > floor Swann Gallery, devoted to cartoon and illustration. The show > also includes Paul Revere's depiction of the Boston Massacre of > 1770 -- a piece of propaganda that helped bring on the American > Revolution. And I bet it was funnier than "Blondie", too. > Sara W. Duke, a curator of the show, said the strip -- now > continued by the originator's son, Dean Young -- appears in 2,000 > newspapers in 55 countries and 35 languages. > ``International readers were often surprised when they found out > that the comic strip did not originate in their own country,'' or century or dimension > she wrote -- perhaps an indication of how the American middle-class way > of life has become familiar to the world. Yeah, we've all been disinherited by our millionaire fathers and then gotten stuck in the Great Depression with our flapper wives for seventy years. > The towering ``Dagwood sandwich'' of apparently incompatible > foods has found its way into at least one dictionary. Which squirts mayonnaise when closed. > And Blondie appeared on a U.S. postage stamp in 1995. I bet Beethoven was never on a postage stamp! How great could Beethoven be if he was never on a postage stamp? Especially if that loser Blondie was! > ``Blondie Gets Married!'' will be in the Thomas Jefferson > Building of the Library of Congress through Sept. 16. Admission is > free. Whew. I thought that last line was going to say "mandatory". In other news, Little Orphan Annie was given a modern makeover for the nineties this week. She now dresses like a boy, has less sponge-like hair, and wears sneakers. But Reddy Kilowatt is way ahead of her -- he now has Velcro on his sneakers! (I wonder if it's Archie Plutonium's patented Electric Velcro.) The only remaining comic strip which hasn't changed since World War II is "Archie". Sure, occasionally there's an early-eighties computer in the background of the scenes where Mr. Witherbee is complaining about that darn Beatles music, and Archie now refers to his jalopy as a "sport utility jalopy", but it hasn't changed at all since it started, plaid grooves on Archie's head and all. (Fun fact: In the first comic, the narration box in the corner of the first page explains that Archie's friends call him "Chick". I didn't read past that page because I've already read too many Chick comics.) -- K. I wish Beetle Bailey would go back to the original formula, before he joined the Army, back when he didn't do ANYTHING! Sort of like Fred Basset without the basset. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Hatchets, baby phones recalled Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 08:03:52 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com United Press International reported: > > WASHINGTON, June 22 (UPI) -- The Consumer Product Safety Commission > Thursday announced the recall of 22,000 Ace-brand shingling hatchets and > 3,400 toy baby phones. "I guess the shrinkwrapped packages of a baby toy and a hatchet weren't a good idea," said Vonker Shlork, spokesperson for EvilCo. "They sold pretty well, although we didn't get much repeat business. We just didn't expect that babies would misuse our products after we put a warning label on the hatchet clearly showing a picture of a baby holding the hatchet correctly." > The CPSC said the hatchet heads can detach during use, striking the > user or a bystander. Ace Hardware Corp. reported receiving two such reports. > The victim in one of the incidents needed 32 stitches. Which he never received. He died because he dialed 911 on the convenienent phone supplied with the hatchet, and Cookie Monster's fire truck never came to rescue him! > The shingling hatchet is about 13 inches long and has a > hickory handle with leather strap and forged steel head. Well, that narrows it down. I'm going to go check whether my hatchet has a wooden handle with a metal head. > The tool has a label on the handle reading "Item No. 2014710" and > sold for $18 between March 1994 and April 2000. Also sold as item #18 for $2014710, to the Pentagon. > Consumers are advised to return the hatchets to Ace Hardware stores > for refund or call 877 223-4391 for more information. Fun fact: The tiny little Ace Hardware store around the corner from me (in the first floor of a house) folded. The owner apparently salvaged what he could and opened in the basement of a house three doors down as "AC HARDWARE", with a lot of signs featuring 2/3 of the Ace logo cut up with scissors. Way to get around paying a franchise fee AND advertise your hardware store's professional sign-making services! (Hardware stores and especially sign-making shops always have the crummiest signage.) Also, the old Ace is becoming a Subway. DAVID DeLANEY, YOU GET OUT OF MY NEIGHBORHOOD! (It's for your own good. Besides, all the apartments in the area will double in rent once something as upscale as Subway moves in.) > The toy phones -- the Little Smart Soft Songs Baby Phone -- > were produced by Vtech Industries, which said it received nine reports > of the plastic ball antenna detaching, posing a choking hazard for > young children. > The phone has a mirror, four colorful talking musical buttons, > a ringing light-up phone button and a red on/off button. The phone is > yellow with a blue padded border and yellow ball-shaped antenna. Do you mean one of those geodesic domes with a revolving radar dish inside watching the Dew Line for Russkie birds? Or by "ball-shaped" do you mean "stick-shaped plus a ball that looks exactly like candy and has a sign on it saying 'PLEASE TRY TO EAT ME'"? > The phones were sold at Walmart between January and May. > Consumers are advised to take the phones away from children and call > Vtech at 800 521-2010 for more information. Once again, that number is Bert Cookie Cookie Grover Elmo Kermit Elmo Cookie Kermit Cookie -- K. (Press Oscar to redial.) ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Today's exciting tale of waiting in line! Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 08:39:22 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com So I'm at the K-Mart because I've been travelling around all day writing something on my laptop and now I'm where the only place to eat is a K-Mart. (Fortunately, I really like their meatballs.) But first I want to buy something to read while I eat, so I don't have to just read the grease stains on the table in the weird little K-Cafe. I pick out a _Time_ and a _National Examiner_ (with juicy details about Pat Sajak's kinky sex life) and then choose what appears to be the fastest-moving checkout line, hoping that it will terminate in under twelve hours. Of course, at K-Mart, that's never possible. There are always eighteen closed checkout lanes, and four open ones, all of which are at a dead standstill. Not even a living standstill. A complete, absolute, total standstill, just like the middle two hours of "The Postman". I get in line behind three women -- let's call them A, B, and C. (B and C are together, for brevity I will refer to them as an entity named BC.) A wants to pay by check, and she was smart enough to have taken a check out of her purse already. But then the cashier asks to see ID, and apparently A hadn't though of that. So she spends several minutes rummaging through her giant purse (it was about half as big as she was) trying to find the most important item in it. (I assume she didn't have any money or credit cards in it, if she was paying with a check.) Eventually she finds it, and then the cashier has to take it over to the customer service counter to have a more qualified K-Mart ID-card-looker-atter look at it to approve the check. After a little while, the cashier comes back and completes the transaction and closes the register. But of course, A isn't done yet. A stands there in the middle of the checkout lane checking over her receipt line-by-line. I can understand why people want to double-check things if they think that all the employees at their favorite store are evil swindlers, but why can't they take two paces forward first? Can they not get their money back if they've moved four feet from where the transaction took place? Are they unaware that the Earth is moving through space? So, next are BC, two women speaking Mandarin Chinese to each other. Their shopping cart contains three (3) two-gallon bottles of liquid detergent, four (4) three-pound miniature exercise dumbbells, and two (2) pieces of revolting candy in the form of little paintbrushes that make your tongue, lips, and jaw turn toilet-cleaner blue for a week. But of course when they entered the store they chose the one bright orange Home Depot shopping cart that's been mixed in with the tan K-Mart shopping carts for months. Home Depot's shopping carts are just slightly larger than K-Mart's. The checkout lanes at K-Mart narrow to exactly the width of a K-Mart cart. And every time I go there, I get stuck in line behind the person who has the cart that won't fit through the store. (I need to start checking the color of the carts ahead of me before I choose a queue.) The cashier explains to BC that they have to lift up the cart to get it past the register (it's the plastic trim on the bottom six inches of the aisle which are the problem.) After successfully communicating this to them, BC lift up the cart and shove it over the plastic Pillars Of Hercules, and they push it well past the register. The cashier scans the four little dumbbells and two edible paintbrushes, and BC start complaining that they're not ringing up at the "Buy One Get One Half" price (this is the official K-Mart terminology, dumb as it may be) but the cashier explains that it is. Nonetheless, BC doubt the evidence of the numbers on the register's display and a heated debate with the cashier ensues. Eventually they get the matter of the dumbbells settled (and apparently the price of the mouth stainers was kosher) and BC pull money out of their wallet, but the cashier observes that she still has to ring up the six gallons of P&G detergent which they left in their cart. The cart which they pushed way past the cashier. The cart which can't fit through the lane. So, BC lift one of the bottles out and carry it to the cashier. The cashier punches "3" on her register and swipes it across the scanner, but BC are carrying the other two bottles over and demand that she void that and ring up the three of them one at a time. Apparently they don't trust that the computerized register can multiply by 3, or perhaps they think that "1x3=3" only works in certain regions of space-time (the Earth having moved into another while A was checking her receipt), or maybe they just think that the three identical bottles are different prices and the evil cashier chose to triple-scan the most expensive one. Shopping is one of those experiences where you encounter people whose mental processes are a mystery to you because you're not stupid enough to understand them. "It's going to be an interesting evening," sighs the cashier. After some more negotiation, the cashier scans each of the three bottles once as was demanded, and then tells them the total charge. The argument about the "Buy One Get One Half" discount begins again, with BC insisting they did not receive the sale price. The cashier pulls the receipt on the register and shows it to them. Again they don't believe her. She points at the particular line on the receipt that shows the price reduction and says, "JESUS!" really loud. At this point, BC are finally dismissed. I step up to the register and set down my purchase (_Time_, _The Examiner_, and a pair of tweezers I picked up while waiting in line). I don't have a cart (I don't have a car either, so I never intend to buy more than I can carry.) I'm paying in cash. I know which pocket my money is in, and I have an adequate amount of it. This fails to cheer up the cashier, but at least I don't aggravate her to blaspheme at me. While she's ringing me up I notice there's a second orange Home Depot cart sitting around in the front of the store. (I figure that within a few months, K-Mart will have all of Home Depot's carts, and the store will jam up completely.) I pay and take my stuff over to the K-Cafe to get my spaghetti and meatballs, assuming they're not out of it, which they weren't (quite a pleasant surprise.) They also had one hot dog left, but it wasn't brown enough for me to consider it completely sterilized. (I figure if anyone has suspicious hot dogs, K-Mart will have some special Grade K all-eyeball dogs.) After I get my food, I try to make my way to the back of the little seating area, because the front is full and the back is empty. But wedged into the space between four of the little tables is a third Home Depot shopping cart. I was able to push it out of the way (which entailed moving the furniture a little) so that I could sit, unmolested, in the half of the ten-foot-wide seating area which wasn't full of people. I set my laptop computer on the chair next to me, since the table was printed with that special Formica pattern which is the international symbol for "This table is covered with grease, but because of these little pink boomerangs and amoebae you can't tell. Try to guess where the last guy set his slice of pizza face down!" I didn't get much reading done, in fact I gave up when it became clear that the harder I tried to read, the louder the table with six (6) small children behind me would shriek. (One of the little kids was shouting "Staw Waws! Staw Waws! Staw Waws!" although I suspect she wasn't old enough to actually follow the plot of "Star Wars".) I did read the headlines of some of the articles, and I ripped out the luxuriously compact Free Mousepad which was rubber-cemented to one of the advertisements in _Time_. (Yes, they're putting foam rubber in magazines to make them thicker now.) I ate all of my spaghetti and both of the 1.5 meatballs they gave me. (Sometimes they give me six or seven halves, this time I got three.) I put my magazines back into the K-Mart bag and left. Thirty seconds later, I felt like I was carrying an inadequate amount of weight, so I went back and got my computer. (I need to either start setting my laptop on the greasy tables, or to always keep it on my lap.) I figured that since I was carrying around this big flat laptop case, I might as well lose the K-Mart bag and put the two magazines into the case. I left the disposable mousepad in the bag as I wadded it up and threw it away. I thought it felt lumpy as I crumpled it up. Only later did I realize that now I know what it feels like to crumple tweezers. -- K. I think there was a Monty Python sketch about Crumpletweezer. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.fan.beable From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Today's exciting tale of waiting in line! Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 07:38:52 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Beable van Polasm (beable@my-deja.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > [about accidentally throwing away tweezers minutes after I bought > > them at K-Mart] > > > > I thought it felt lumpy as I crumpled it up. Only later did I realize > > that now I know what it feels like to crumple tweezers. > > Man you must have HANDS OF STEEL to beable to crush tweezers > with your bare hands! But... _K-Mart_ tweezers. DUH!!! > I mean OH POOR WIDDEL KIBO WOST HIS WIDDLE TWEEZIES! What were you > going to use tweezers for anyway? Did you also have pepper and a > magnifying glass? No, I leave my full Encyclopedia Brown detective supply kit at home on days that I'm carrying around my laptop computer, which is 1/3 cooler. I was trying to buy new tweezers because I've worn out my old ones. -- K. ANY MORE MOCKERY OF MY TWEEZERS AND THOU SHALT BE TWEEZED TO DEATH! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Today's exciting tale of waiting in line! Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 08:49:19 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Andrew J. Zimolzak (zimolzak@msu.edu) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > [...] wedged into the space between four of the little tables is a > > third Home Depot shopping cart. > > Waaah! The sessile orange cones have evolved wheels! But they can still > block your way! Diabolical! Ooh, I love the word "sessile". I work it into conversations wherever I can: ME: Look! That barnacle has reached puberty and become sessile! PERSON: Uh-huh. ME: It's so sessile! That barnacle is completely sessy! PERSON: Uh-huh. ME: Total sessification! What a load of sessitude! Sesstastic! PERSON: Uh-huh. ME: So, what are you doing this weekend? PERSON: Uh-huh. I think the solution is to render the carts sessile again. The Shaw's market in Maverick has done that with theirs. They use one of these magical radio-controlled systems, trade name "The Wheel", which causes one wheel of the shopping cart to lock up when you push the cart out of the parking lot. ...an idea which might work if they locked ALL the wheels, given that the average shopping cart already survives quite well with one stuck wheel. They shoulda consulted Erma Bombeck when designing The Wheel! Also, the signs explaining the purpose of The Wheel are screwy. (They presumably need these propaganda signs to keep you from _trying_ to take the carts out of the lot because the system doesn't actually work.) The signs refer to the system as "THE WHEEL" in capitals, underlined, except they stupidly made the underline twice as long as the phrase, and then they had to push the other type to the right to make room for the priapic underscore: THE_WHEEL_________ cart control system is activated. I keep wanting to write something in the blank with a magic marker, while humming the "Match Game '77" "think" music. (Game-show filler music is always called "think" music, even in the case of shows which actively destroyed your few remaining brain cells.) I've been trying to figure out whether the wheels lock when they receive a radio signal, or when they're out of range of the radio signal, and whether the transmitters are in the store or around the edge of the lot. Currently I'm pretty sure that the wheels operate until the signal is received, because all the exits of the lot have these four-inch-thick red plastic "THE_WHEEL____" signs, and the only reason they could be so thick is that they contain lantern batteries or something. The question is, will the wheel unlock again when the cart is towed further and the signal is again out of range? Or, do the wheels lock until a special secret button is pushed with a paper clip? I think a great prank would be to take a portable radio transmitter into the supermarket and freeze everyone's cart at the same time. -- K. That market also has a sign saying "TORTILLA DISCHARGE". I go there once in a while because only they have the good flavor of Hamburger Helper. I've never tried the tortillas that come down the tortilla discharge flume of the Wonkamatic tortilla-twirler. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Creepy, disturbing thing Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 08:55:32 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com "red" (moldau@earthlink.net) wrote: > > My boss reads my website EVERY SINGLE DAY. I don't think I like this. So I take it you're not posting archives of your Usenet articles there? -- K. Why don't you put in a few directives which subtly alter the content just for your boss? (www.kibo.com has a few of those on the front page, to make search engines see a more descriptive and less wacky front page than natural persons see.) ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Creepy, disturbing thing Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 01:51:58 GMT Organization: welcome datacomp Mark Hill (mhill@epicentre.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > (www.kibo.com has a few of those on the front page, > > to make search engines see a more descriptive and > > less wacky front page than natural persons see.) > > Now all of the paranoid people on a.r.k. will wonder if you have > special directives on your site JUST FOR THEM, so that > they don't get to see the REAL kibology content the rest of us see. The whole site's in a special variant of ROT13 where it's encrypted to LOOK like a wacky vanity site but if you decrypt it correctly it turns into a recipe for making a nuclear bomb from red playing cards. Also the part that says "FREE BEER" really does have free beer inside it. -- K. I get so many hits from people typing "FREE BEER" into search engines. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.fan.beable From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Creepy, disturbing thing Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 05:28:57 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Nick Bensema (nickb@io.com) wrote: > > The biggest threads I've started have been about how I was thinking about > getting inflatable chairs because they're easier to move, and easier for the rest of us to mock. They're full of HOT AIR! HOT AIR THAT SMELLS LIKE A NEW CAR THREW UP! > or about how I suspected my computer chair's design may be causing > my pants to wear out quicker. I think Archie Plutonium started that thread, you just tried to co-opt his meme. Stop meme-co-option-bombing Archimedes Plutonium! > And occasionally I post the Oral Fixation Post in which I just rant > about food. [insert cute segue here] A local video store has a movie titled "Waterworld V", which is all about enemas. I didn't know they made that many sequels. I figured it went something like this: Waterworld: Kevin Costner wastes a lot of money and blows up the Exxon Valdez and nobody but him thinks of looking for dirt under the water and dirt is the primary form of currency in the world, because, hey, everyone loves dirt. Also he bores everyone in the world for two and a half hours except for the few seconds near the beginning where the bad guys almost succeed in drowning him when they immerse him in sewage. Waterworld II: The same, only with an enema. Waterworld III: The same, only with several enemas. Waterworld IV: The same, only with several enemas, and Kevin Costner plays all the parts. Waterworld V: The same, only with thousands of enemas. Waterworld VI: The same, only with Matthew Broderick instead of Kevin Costner, and it was released theatrically as "The Road To Wellville". There was a day last week when I woke up with "The Chewing Song" from "The Road To Wellville" stuck in my head, and it wouldn't leave! AUGH! MY BRAIN WAS ANNOYING ME WITH INCESSANT FLETCHERIZING! I highly recommend "The Road To Wellville" to anyone who likes Alan Parker's other masterpiece, "Bugsy Malone", and is a complete idiot. The only difference between the two movies is that "Bugsy Malone" can only be enjoyed by pedophiles who like show tunes and whipped cream, while "The Road To Wellville" appeals to a much broader audience: People who think repeated enemas are funnier than either a single enema or no enemas. Would someone please murder Alan Parker's career already? It's bad enough that he made a film that made someone shoot President Reagan, he shouldn't have been allowed to also make the one where Matthew Broderick gets a five-gallon yogurt-and-hot-wax enema while Dana Carvey throws turds at people for no reason. Short shameful confession: At one point, the crazy Dr. Kellogg (inventor of corn flakes, and enemaniac) straps Matthew Broderick into a vibrating chair. And I have actually sat in the actual real vibrating Dr. Kellogg chair! It's at the Museum Of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis, where Bob McCoy will let you play with some of the dangerous electrical gadgets that Matthew Broderick was pretending to endure. (I had my head run through an automated phrenology machine that said I was low on "sexamity", and touched a linoleum tile that was supposed to regrow my lost limbs.) However, they don't let you try out the machine where you stick tubes up your nose to breathe chlorine, the radium suppositories, or the Erectorotor. (And I'm glad.) I was kind of disappointed that I couldn't sit in the orgone box to see if it really worked. Expect a full report on my encounter with the phrenology machine (the Psychograph) someday. (I haven't discussed it in detail yet because I haven't added up the numbers on the card which will determine which occupations I am qualified for, from "Genius" to "Zeppelin Attendant".) [now aren't you glad you inserted that segue?] > But we can generally agree that a post receives responses when it leaves > room for comment, and there are tricks that solicit these comments. There are? What are they? > The real trick, of course, is soliciting INTERESTING comments. Sure, > people respond to your posts if you troll like Ted or bait like Red, > but would you want to read most of those responses? Are they relating > to something you've written, or are they just focusing on parts of it > and pointing out what you've said? > > I find all one needs to do is make enough interesting posts that people > can relate to. And if people don't respond to that, it means they're all > boring; it reflects nothing on me. I originally wasn't going to respond to this. But then I realized that I didn't know if "they're all boring" means that your articles are boring or we are all boring if we don't follow up to your posts. So I am typing this pointless followup to prove I am not boring. -- K. The store that had "Waterworld V" also had a poster on the wall explaining "COMMON TERMS USED IN THE ADULT VIDEO INDUSTRY", which included "Film", "Video", "Gonzo", "Wall-To-Wall", "Gay & Bi", and "Amateur". It explained that gay & bi videos are "intended for gay and bisexual audiences." I guess there are too many homophobes who are too dumb to realize they're not gay. The magazine racks also had signs which said "DO NOT OPEN, READ, OR LOOK AT THE MAGAZINES" so I didn't. Besides, I didn't want to accidentally look at the front of any of the gay ones! Gay stuff is icky even though I don't know what "gay" means! P.S. Matt McIrvin needs to post his idea for his enema movie. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Regret. Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 09:22:02 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Joseph Michael Bay (jmbay@Stanford.EDU) wrote: > > "red" (moldau@earthlink.net) wrote: > > > > Writing is a great catharsis. > > Matter is evil because it is slime and God cursed matter. I think > that bad people do not believe my theory of an angelic Christ who > never underwent birth or death because they are bad people. That was the most special episode of "What A Catharsis!" ever! I'm going to tune in again tomorrow to see if God mashes up the bodies of dead planets between his teeth and if girls will date me so I can refuse to kiss them for mashing up the bodies of dead vegetables between their teeth. I only eat live vegetables, and live candy. Some times I think may be God has put a curse on my spa cing. Curses are fun. I try to make my own curses but I burn my fingers on the Mattel Vac-U-Form. Some people have a Vac-U-Form fetish. May be God has a fetish for my theories. The Devil sent fetishes to Earth to punish bad people by giving them girl friends who do not like their fetishes. I wish I had a girl friend who did not like my fetishes. May be God sent me my theories because he is a pervert. A catharsis would be good right now unless it is bad. -- K. This article about catharsises will be found by many AOL customers using DejaNews to find "fetish and catheter". ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Durians and Economics. Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 09:49:56 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Ben Wolfson (rumjuggler@cryptarchy.org) wrote: > > Yesterday was my last day of high school. Yippee. Yay! > My econ teacher, therefore, entertained the class with slides from > his adventures in the peace corps. He was somewhere in malaysia or > that general region. Talked Iban, he did. > > BUT! > > Apparently at one point some villager guy, in an attempt to be "funny", > threw a durian at him! And it hit him in the forehead! And gashed him > but good! Durian injuries are never "good". The doctors have to sew you up with a twenty-foot-long needle because they can't stand the smell! > Also, he mistakenly wore a woman's sarong for the first month of his > residence there, because he didn't know the difference, and all of the > people laughed at him. And he made hit himself out of clear plastic because he thought it was called "Sarong Wrap". And this Italian guy pointed at him and yelled, "THATSA WRONG!" PLEASE DO NOT THROW DURIANS AT MAKER OF LAME PUNS. -- K. And don't throw them at me either! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Three random observations Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 10:08:26 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com John Burrage (jburrage@cyllene.uwa.edu.au) wrote: > > 3. Yesterday made up for an incident which happened a few days earlier. > I was getting on a bus and a lady was trying to get on ahead of me with > a toddler, a slightly older kiddie, and a stroller. Being CHIVALROUS, I > offered to carry the stroller, which was accepted. Unfortunately in the > other hand I was carrying a lot of books and a file, which meant I had a > lot of trouble getting the change out of my pocket. In all the mucking > around, I ended up with my arm wrapped around a pole, still holding the > stroller. I couldn't let go, because the stroller would FALL. And I > couldn't use the other hand because it was holding the BOOKS. And I > couldn't put the books down, because I would have had to let go the > STROLLER. The older child was standing, watching; apparently not going > anywhere without the stroller. And the bus driver wouldn't go until we were > sitting down. But I couldn't sit down etc etc. > > Anyway, I decided to let go of the stroller, and try to get my arm back > around the pole in time to catch the stroller. However, I was too slow, > and the stroller hit the oldest child on the head. He was very brave and > didn't cry, but his Mum appeared slightly angry, and everyone on the bus > went "Oooh" and "tsk" and it was very EMBARRASSING. It was almost as embarassing as the fact that you were _seen_ riding a public bus! Thankfully, nobody ever sees me riding the #66 bus all the time. Can you guys please keep that a secret? -- K. By "stroller" you mean a pushy-baby-thingie and not a rolled-up pita sandwich, right? Because it would be terrible if you held up the bus by being unable to put down a stupid sandwich. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Deja killfiles the past Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 02:17:53 GMT Organization: welcome datacomp "Crgre Jvyyneq" (petew@drizzle.com) wrote: > > In the new NTK: > > So the new look, new stupid, Deja decided to killfile > five years of Usenet archiving to concentrate on its > comparison-shopping core incompentency ("only 10% of > our traffic is to postings older than a year", says > the company, neatly decimating their user base in one > swoop). > > More at www.ntk.net C'est Need To Know! I understand that there's not much market for old Usenet articles in random newsgroups, but surely 10% of Deja's traffic is an awfully big number of people. (Probably less than 10% of their user base is generating that 10% of traffic, but still, they must get a number of hits in the hundreds of thousands to millions per day.) I wonder how much money they were losing with those big servers. (It's not like they could just plug a huge hard disk into a PC -- with zillions of people hitting the thing at once, they'd need to have the database distributed across lots of disks and CPUs, and then there would be all the extra processing needed to index everything so that it wouldn't have to read through the entire database every time you did a search... just the size of the index files must be enormous.) I wonder what sort of equipment they have/had. I can't say as I blame 'em for cutting out their useful free services if they're not getting enough advertising revenue to support them, but I wish they'd come forward and be honest and say what everyone's figured out, "WE'RE TAKING THIS STUFF AWAY BECAUSE IT LOSES US MONEY WHENEVER ANYONE USES IT. ALSO WE CAN MAKE MORE MONEY ON TRICKING PEOPLE INTO DOING ALL THEIR COMPARISON- SHOPPING THROUGH OUR SITE SO THAT WE CAN COLLECT HIDEOUSLY DETAILED INFORMATION ON THEIR LIFESTYLE AND SELL THAT AND THEN USE THAT REVENUE TO FINANCE RESEARCH INTO NEW WAYS TO MAKE USENET HARD TO READ." I've also always wondered why some newsgroups had older archived articles available than other ones. Was Deja giving more attention to the newsgroups that generated the most click-throughs for the ad banners? Or to the ones that had the most advertising-worthy demographics for the people in question? Or did they just have more articles in some newsgroups because they thought the group was more important, or because it had less traffic and easier to archive? I never liked the way they wouldn't just put up a sign on each newsgroup saying exactly which months and years were available. I think that's a primary requisite of any historical archive... Anyway, expect to see some sort of announcement sometime soon about an exciting new way to access alt.religion.kibology if you're (for some reason) unable to run a real newsreader program on your PC and want a way to access a.r.k which is considerably less evil (and completely ad-free!) compared to DejaNews and Remarq. -- K. X-Face support, too. Public beta testing opens pretty darn soon. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: HOW EARTHQUAKES ARE TRIGGERED - The Race Has Begun, June 23, 2000 Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 09:54:34 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com Followup-To: alt.sci.physics.plutonium In sci.physics, "E.D.G." (edgrsprj@ix.netcom.com) wrote: > > TO: WORLD GOVERNMENTS > TO: INTERNATIONAL DISASTER RESPONSE GROUP PERSONNEL > TO: GEOPHYSICISTS, GEOLOGISTS, OTHER INTERESTED PARTIES > > From: E.D.G. Scientific Consultant edgrsprj@ix.netcom.com > Web Site: http://home.netcom.com/~edgrsprj/index.html > Date: June 23, 2000 > Posted to: sci.geo.earthquakes, Other Newsgroups > Also circulated by e-mail > > TABLE OF CONTENTS > > (1) A PROPOSED EARTHQUAKE TRIGGERING PROCESS COMPUTER PROGRAM Cool! I can't wait to buy my copy of that! Do I have to attach a subwoofer to my computer to use it? > [...much blather elided...] > > (3) A RECOMMENDATION FOR NEWSGROUP READERS > > If you and your loved ones live near an active earthquake > fault zone then I recommend that you make copies of this report > and send them to your local government officials, scientific > groups, and news services for review. If you do not, and you > someday discover yourself sitting in a small, dark air pocket > waiting for Search and Rescue team personnel to dig through tons > of earthquake related collapsed building rubble to find you, who > should you blame? But... sci.physics _is_ a small, dark air pocket. The difference is that I'm waiting for the Search And Destroy personnel to come and find _you_. > The information presented in this report represents expressions > of personal opinion. Its contents are protected by applicable > U.S. and foreign copyright laws. What about _alien_ copyright laws, huh? YOU FORGOT TO COPYRIGHT YOUR RANTINGS ON MARS, YOU BOZO! I'm gonna set up a Napster server on Mars just to deprive you of all the royalties you would otherwise get when other people read your screed! Also I'm gonna let Kevin Costner have the movie rights. And it'll feature Corey Haim as Terl! Plus a special cameo by Ronald McDonald as himself... breakdancing! And a surprise appearance by Naked Bob Hope! Every ten seconds! > It would be appreciated if Newsgroup responses to this notice > were posted to only the sci.geo.earthquakes Newsgroup. Thanks. It would be appreciated if you gave me all the candy in the world, in the form of a giant orbital Pez dispenser. Please put the licorice near the bottom end so I don't have to eat it to get to the Twizzlers. > (4) THE EARTHQUAKE TRIGGERING EQUATION > > S(t) = aA + bB + cC + dD + eE + ... GENIUS! You've finally discovered an equation which is printed on a cardboard strip above the top of the chalkboard in every kindergarten in the world! > S(t) is the accumulated strain needed to trigger an earthquake in > a particular fault zone. > > A B C D E ... are forces, or phenomena which cause strain to > accumulate in fault zones. > > a b c d e ... are factors which indicate how important a > particular strain generating force or phenomenon is for a given > earthquake. So, there are 26 factors which trigger earthquakes in the United States, but more in Japan? > The first and most important term "aA" would of course represent the last word spoken by a guy stepping off the edge of a tectonic plate into the magma. > the movement of tectonic plates relative to one another etc. > Those processes contribute most of the strain to a fault zone. > > bB cC dD eE ... would represent forces or phenomena such as the > gravitational pulls of the sun and the moon, ocean tides, and the > solid earth tide which might temporarily or permanently add > enough additional strain to a fault zone to trigger an > earthquake. Oh, yes. The solid earth tide. Cause by the Earth pulling on itself. FROM ITS HIDING POINT ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON WHERE WE CAN'T SEE IT! THE EARTH GOES THERE WHILE WE SLEEP! STUPID SNEAKY EARTH! > [...much more bozo blather about how the Moon drags tectonic plates > back and forth snipped away...] I apologize for deleting most of this brilliant theory, but I had to because the article was so massive that it was about to cause an earthquake. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go Moon-proof my windows so that the lunar gravity won't rearrange my furniture. -- K. It's like "Space: 1999" only BACKWARDS. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Ted Turner Recycles His Money Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 10:18:01 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com The Associated press posted: > > BUTTE, Mont. (AP) -- It's easy being green, media mogul Ted Turner says. Oh no! He colorized himself! I wondered why this can of peas showed the Jolly Green Giant with a mustache. > ``When I pass away, 90 percent of my money will go in the > (Turner) Foundation. I'm recycling my money,'' Just like Howard Hughes did. No, wait, that was urine. Never mind. Unless Ted Turner keeps his money in jars of urine. (Hmm, it might be a good idea to let Andre Serrano take over TBS for a week. Instead of sixteen hours of "The Beastmaster II", we'd see the master negative of "The Beastmaster II" soaking in a jar of urine for sixteen hours. That's a cable channel I'd pay for! Plus it would give me a chance to play with the tint on my TV set. "Look! I turned urine into Gatorade!" > the 61-year-old multibillionaire told the Butte Press Club on Thursday. ...when they elected the butt-head Head Butte of The Butte Club. > The foundation provides grants for research on ecology and > population issues. > The planet is in bad shape, but ``it's not over till it's > over,'' said Turner, whose holdings include the Atlanta Braves. ``A > lot of games turn around in the eighth and ninth inning.'' > The Atlanta businessman, who has donated $6.5 million to Montana > causes, called himself ``a halfway Montanan.'' > ``Montana's the last great place, and people are flooding in > here because they can't take it (elsewhere) anymore,'' he said. Then he complained about having to ride his private subway from Atlanta to Montana sitting next to a gay black Jewish Puerto Rican with purple hair and no green skin. -- K. Does anyone else think an exciting new "reality show" for TBS would be to lock John Rocker in a windowless, doorless, airtight house containing NO video cameras? P.S. I hope I'm not the only one here who remembers Andre Serrano. Anyway, don't fret if I've just reactivated your long-dormant Andre Serrano brain cell. It'll feel much worse when, in ten years, I'll say "John Rocker" and hibernating parts of your brain will light up faster than Carl Sagan finding one last doobie in his beanbag chair. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: King and Kween of the Kibologists Kaption Kompetition (Cone Alert) Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 05:43:32 GMT X-Complaints-To: Bob Hope Organization: http://www.kibo.com cyberscream@my-deja.com wrote: > > Look at this image > > http://hazard.co.uk/products/images/clot3.jpeg > > Its kibological nature cannot be called into kwestion and it is dying > out for a funny kaption from Kerrazy yet inKredible Kibologists. Kum up > with a kaption. If you win. you become King and or Kween. I think the photo itself is more amusing than any caption I could write. "Mom said you have to stay on your side of the limbo set." "I'm sorry, Dan, your vest's the right color, but you still can't fool me into thinking you're a talking cone." "I said, I'll pull your finger after I set up the flatulence cones!" And besides, I prefer http://www.hazard.co.uk/products/images/cone3.jpeg ...because of the following description of a product nobody asked for: --> Conetrack --> --> Keeps all the cones firmly in their place. Each 750mm high traffic cone --> locks into position at any point along the Heavy Duty Rubber Base. --> --> The cones can be positioned shoulder to shoulder at a much greater --> density than Free-Standing 750mm cones. The solid unbroken code of --> the rubber base makes the cone track system form a most solid looking --> wall of cones. Wooooo. A cone organizer caddy which makes A SOLID UNBROKEN CODE meaning "Hey! Cones can be used like Duplo blocks!" WATCH OUT! IT'S A WALL OF CONES! AND WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T FISHTAIL INTO THAT ENORMOUS STACK OF EMPTY CARDBOARD BOXES OR TIP OVER THAT FRUIT CART OR KNOCK THE SOCIETY MATRON INTO THE POOL! -- K. Not to be confused with "Conetrek", the show where the spaceship patrolled The Barricade Tape Zone to keep the Romulans from writing their names in our wet cement. And then someone pushed Harold Lloyd into the cement so they had to build a Chinese theater there! And he fell into wet cement again at every Planet Hollywood at age 130!