Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Lympyx Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 01:54:15 GMT David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote: > > Darla Vladschyk (DarlaVladschyk@hotmail.com) wrote: > > > > So what's the deal with two-man luge? > > > > Could this event *be* any gayer? > > Depends; what color are the luges? Also, why is it that straight people only have one Olympics, but gay people have three -- the Gay Games, the Jeffrey Games, and the Goodwill Games? I tried to research this topic, but my Web browser wouldn't display the Gay Games Web site correctly, and I'm not about to install a gay Web browser and gay up my whole computer just for one site. And I couldn't find the Jeffrey Games but I know they're really gay because they said so on "Mystery Science Theater 3000". Unless I'm supposed to be spelling it "Geoffrey Games" which would probably be just as gay but also involving a talking giraffe. Also, I'm not sure if Jeux de la Francophonie are also a gay Olympics, but they sound like it. I mean, they end with two vowels, just like the word "gay". -> Jeux de la Francophonie -> -> Francophone Games / Juegos de la Comunidad Franco ParlanteÊ -> -> The Francophone Games bring together the nations and regions of the World -> that have French as a common language. Cultural Events are as important as -> the sports events. In 1997, there were seven art competitions (Sculpture, -> Photography, Painting, Story Telling, Traditional Dance, Literature and -> Song) while only four sports for men (Boxing, Judo, Football, Athletics) -> and four sports for women, (Judo, Basketball, Athletics, Tennis).Ê Well, they only have "Traditional Dance", not any sort of avant-garde "Interpretive Dance", so maybe they're not as gay as they could be. I found that on a site listing all the different Olympics-like competitions around the world. The fake Olympics that Jay Leno would think is funniest is: -> Muslim Women's Games -> -> The Muslim Women's games were created to give athletes from the strict -> Islamic countries an opportunity for international competition, while not -> breaking Islamic law by competing in front of men in inappropriate attire. -> The Opening ceremonies are open to male spectators, the athletes wearing -> full traditional Islamic dress. The events however are closed to male -> spectators, coaches, officials, media or men in any capacity. ...although I think Jay Leno would also be in stitches over this one: -> World Dwarf Games -> -> The first international multisport games for dwarf athletes were held -> in Chicago in 1993. Athletes must be shorter than 4 feet 10 inches tall -> to be able to participate according to the rules of the Dwarf Athletic -> Association of America. Ha, ha, ha, they're so short. And they'd jump over LITTLE hurdles! Tall people jumping over hurdles isn't silly, but short people jumping over hurdles is instant funny! I tried to find a fake Olympics that was sillier than the real one, but I couldn't. I mean, the real one has doubles luge, the biathlon, curling, and let's face it, no fake Olympics could out-cheez the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Salt Lake City games. It was just like "Disney On Ice", except the costumes were more disturbing. What WAS with all those people dressed as giant gray eyeless starfish chasing the kid around, or did I just hallucinate that when I saw two seconds of it on the news? -- K. Here's my suggestion for improving the singles luge: No sleds. No shiny spandex suits. The contestants have to slide down the ice in their underwear, and the only way to stop is that there's a hook that grabs the back of their waistband at the end of the track for an Olympic Wedgie. To improve the doubles luge, just split it up into two singles luges, but give them synchronized wedgies. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Odds and Ends Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 11:06:49 GMT The Associated Press (via ClariNet) wrote: > > GEORGETOWN, Colo. (AP) -- When the Rev. Harry Heilmanz faced > 50 men and 50 women about to exchange wedding vows, many had cold > feet. > His words of comfort? > "The Bible says, `Let the two come together so they may be > warmer than one,'" he told the marrying couples, gathering atop the > Loveland Basin ski area, 12,500 feet above sea level. > Twenty couples tied the knot on Valentine's Day, and 30 > reaffirmed their vows. > "We're here at the Continental Divide, at the closest to God > you can get," said Carol Tijm of Golden, Colo. Well, yeah, you're probably not going to get to go to Heaven if you think God is prejudiced against people in Tibet or airplanes. Apparently God is in geostationary orbit over Colorado, which is His favorite state because He created it in the shape of a perfect rectangle (Wyoming doesn't count because it's only mentioned in the Apocrypha, not the regular Bible.) However, there are rumors that several new states will be included in the extras of the DVD version of the Bible, and if any of them is a perfect square God will leave Colorado forever. And don't tell me that Colorado actually has curved sides, because everyone knows the Earth is flat because the Earth is described in the Bible and you couldn't fit the Earth into the Bible if the Earth was round unless the Bible was all bulgy and stuff! The Bible is flat, and I challenge you to disprove it without soaking the Bible in the bathtub for a while! -- K. I think my Bible has been abridged because it doesn't have the part about how leprosy makes you turn into a giant cube. I know that's true because the U.S. Government says so. If you don't believe me, go to the U.S. Capitol and look for the statue of Father Damien. He's the guy next to the seven-foot 98-pound weakling who invented TV and didn't even have leprosy. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Now I could be wrong... Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 07:22:18 GMT Tamara (tamaraharris@sprint.ca) wrote: > > But I think that the obscene phone caller who just called LICKED his phone > repeatedly while he was breathing on me. I heard a bunch of slurping > noises. He wasn't licking the phone. He was eating a Jar Jar Binks Monster Mouth Candy Tongue pop very close to the phone. And it was DELICIOUS. Also, Jar Jar was the one who asked to kiss your legs. > It takes all kinds. How many kinds of licks does it take to get to the center of a Jar Jar pop? -- K. I'm amazed obscene phone calls still exist, what with the Internet and all. If people aren't using the Internet for that, why do we need all those cybercafes? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Now I could be wrong... Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 00:19:53 -0800 [warning: this rant was written during a long and particularly unpleasant day of air travel.] Theresa Willis (tdwillis@earthlink.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > He wasn't licking the phone. He was eating a Jar Jar Binks Monster Mouth > > Candy Tongue pop very close to the phone. And it was DELICIOUS. > > Oooh, Hive-mindy. Today, during a discussion of okra over on the dog > behavior group, I mentioned that you had the ability to eat all sorts > of scary things without ill effect. Except Jar Jar candy. I aM EAtING AIRLiNE PRETzELS RIgHT nOW ANd I FeEeEL fINE. Remember how, last month, I mentioned that Argenbright Security (the inept, incompetent, and generally ineffectual "security" people at Logan Airport) had been fired and replaced by people dressed like Cub Scout den leaders who pretended to be a much more serious security force but still turned off the metal detector because they got sick of it beeping? Well, I had another encounter with these folks today. I get the feeling that the purpose of airport security is not to actually stop any sort of evil people -- evil people could get past these guys so easily by just trying repeatedly if they don't get a slacker guard the first time -- but that the security people are actually INTENDED mainly to bother the "normal" people so that we will think there is good security and be happy. Security at airports is still pretty much useless, but now they hassle you enough that you're supposed to say "Gee, they have LOTS of SECURITY here, and everything is GREAT," when the truth is they're basically just putting on a show to impress you. Today when checking in at the Delta counter the clerk pointed out that I had three carry-on items (shoulder bag, computer tote bag, and camera case) and that I was only allowed one Item and one Exemption (the tote bag counted as one, because totes are special, because they have to allow purses for the ladies, so they have to allow something of equal usefulness for men) and I told her I would just stuff the camera inside the tote, and she patiently explained to me that that was WRONG, because apparently I'm only allowed to have carry-on items that aren't packed to capacity because the plane needs to carry some extra pockets of air to stay aloft, or something. She then told me I could put my camera inside my tote bag only if I did it before getting to the security people, which I knew would be a bad idea because they'd X-ray it and say "Aha! A BAG inside ANOTHER BAG! He must be a PSYCHO!" But those are the rules and I always follow all the rules, even the ones that are clearly idiotic, because I am a good citizen. So I get in line for the X-ray machines, and I jam my little bag into the medium-size bag, after first emptying my pockets into the little bag. I am keeping my jacket on the whole time (because a worn jacket is free but a jacket draped over your arm is an Exemption, and I wanted the tote bag to be my Exemption because the jacket wouldn't fit inside my Item.) So, from the airline's point of view, I have one Item (shoulder bag) and one Exemption (tote) because I have hidden the camera inside the latter and I have cleverly hidden my jacket by wearing it. When I get to the X-ray machine, I have to take my portable computer out of its tote bag to X-ray it separately (because X-rays go through laptop computers but not through leather, I guess, or maybe they're just worried I'd hide a bomb between two of Apple's solid lead laptops) and they also make me take my jacket off, because the guy dressed like a sitcom version of Saddam Hussein claims that zippers will set off the metal detector. I do not volunteer to take my pants off. (Probably they just wanted to not have to frisk me to see what was in the jacket.) The laptop and its tote bag come through the X-ray machine, and they wanted to swab them both for explosive residue. Given that it's obvious the laptop and the bag normally travel as a unit, it seemed like a waste of time for them to test more than one, but I guess they were worried that my computer could be full of Semtex and the leather bag might have been hosed down with new Semtex-resistant ScotchGuard. They didn't turn on the computer to check that it wasn't just a metal case filled with heroin or anything, they just swabbed the case to check for explosives. Then one of the guys in the silly uniforms wanted to inspect the tote bag (which still had the camera bag inside it, so I'm sure it looked mighty suspicious on the X-ray -- I mean, it contained batteries, and an excess number of leather straps!) He took my digital camera out of its bag, turned it on without asking me (do they handle film cameras this cavalierly?) and panned it around the room. He pointed it at the floor and looked at the picture for several seconds, then pointed it at the ceiling for several seconds. I guess the guy had the idea that it might be one of those eight-ounce cameras which was filled with Semtex except that Semtex leaves just enough room for electronics that can only take pictures of carpet but not ceiling tiles. He fished the lens cap out of the bottom of the bag and inspected both sides of it. (I could be smuggling microfilm on it! Nobody would ever think of taking a photo of the outside of a lens cap!) Next, he went through each compartment in the little bag. He found the little wallet full of Nikon lenses (about two by four inches, thin but lumpy, with the word "NIKON" on it in giant letters), and pulled one out (being careful to handle it by the glass part, not the edges) and asked me what these were. I said "lenses" and he asked... ..."Are these for this camera?" WELL DUH OF COURSE THEY'RE FOR THE CAMERA, YOU BOZO! I'm amazed he inspected them so closely, as not even I can imagine a half-inch circle of glass being a security hazard of any sort. He folded up the little wallet, and jammed it halfway back into its little pouch, backwards. (Yes, there are "forwards" and "backwards" orientations for the wallet to go into the bag, because the wallet is curved.) He looked through the rest of the camera bag, taking out the camera strap and putting it on the counter, and fishing out my pen and inspecting it. He pulled the cap off the pen and inspected the tip closely, I guess to make sure it wasn't an X-Acto knife that had been ground down to fit into a disposable pen. And... the best part... this was a transparent pen. He set the pen aside with the camera strap, then zipped up the bag they came out of, and started inspecting the tote bag. Now, being something of a graphic artist, I travel with a pad of paper and a whole bunch of pens, which live in a little pocket of the tote bag. Guess what he did with all dozen of them. I'd think that after the first five or six he would have gotten the idea that maybe I owned a set of art supplies, or at least realized that HEY! YOU CAN SEE THROUGH THE CLEAR STUFF! but he did a thorough job of inspecting the tips of my pens for pen-tip-shaped bombs. Nope, no deadly laser pens on me. None of those exploding ballpoint pens from "Salvage One". I had put my jacket back on after it came through the X-ray machine, and by now I had been standing here watching my bag being inspected for about fifteen minutes (plus I had been picking up and putting down my bags every thirty seconds for fifteen minutes while waiting in line) so I was starting to sweat. One of the rifle-armed National Guardsmen (wearing camouflage, to blend in with any jungles that might exist inside Logan Airport) started quizzing me about why I'm sweating, because obviously anyone with sweat on their skin is a security risk. (I resisted the idea of suggesting that they should swab my armpits.) I did my best to explain that I was hot because IT WAS HOT IN THERE AND I WAS WEARING MY JACKET TOO, but I don't think he bought it, and asked me why I was hot three times until he figured out that I wasn't going to change my story just to be nice to this guy who was hoping to shoot his first terrorist. The other guy finally finished up inspecting all my pens (and, yes, he found the little pocket with a stack of business cards in it, and, yes, he did indeed riffle through all the business cards to make sure that one that said "TERRORIST" wasn't mixed in with all the others) and put my camera bag back inside the tote and zipped everything up, except for the stuff that didn't have zippers, such as the camera strap and pen which were sitting on the table outside the zippered bag inside the other zippered bag. When I got onto the plane and started using the laptop, I noticed some sticky gunk on it. I figured it had just bumped up against an old candy wrapper or something in the tote bag, or possibly this was a leftover from the swabbing thing, but then when I unzipped the pen pocket and took out a pen for sketching I noticed the pen was sticky too. So, I have now had the contents of my tote bag X-rayed, swabbed, and then inspected down to the molecular level by someone who would get kicked out of the public library for having candy-covered hands. And they conveniently forgot to do anything about my larger shoulder bag. I think it's pretty pointless for them to randomly inspect some of the belongings of a few of the passengers at random because while you're standing there watching, you can't help but wonder, "Gee, what COULD I have hidden inside a digital camera? Or in a pen?" You can't help but think "They turned my computer on once, but not the other eight times I was here," or "Hey, they're squeezing my feet through my boots, they never do that," and you immediately realize that they're only making token attempts to search. If I were the evil mastermind behind a group of terrorists (as opposed to alt.religion.kibology) I'd just say "You five guys, each of you will tape a stick of dynamite under your shirt, and the matches will go inside your roll of Mentos" and I'd expect that there would be a pretty low probability that ANY of these items would get discovered, let alone ALL of them. Basically, they should either try to actually enforce the security procedures (instead of just doing them when they feel like it), or else abandon the concept of putting on the big show to impress the non-terrorist passengers. I would not object to a thorough search every time I flew (complete with frisking or full-body scan or whatever) as long as it was clear that they were giving everyone the same treatment and that the people searching me had at least as much security sense as the guys at WalMart who make sure you're not walking out the door with an armful of Haggar slacks. By the way, it's not always this bad. Usually it's no worse than it was before the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center -- if you manage to get through the metal detector without it beeping, and don't have any weird carry-on items, usually it just takes a moment or two to go through security. Especially if you don't look evil (I think I do.) Fun fact: The National Guard MP who asked me whether I had any weapons in my carry-on bags asked the woman ahead of me if she had any (a) weapons (b) pepper spray or (c) Mace in her purse. Mace is apparently illegal to bring on airplanes, and it's even more illegal to think that men might know Mace exists. (Why do they let men be riot cops if we're not allowed to play with Mace?) -- K. I'm typing this at JFK, one of the airports where I can play one of my favorite airport games: "Where can I find a view which has all three different Delta logos at the same time?" It's easier at JFK than at most other airports because very few Delta logos here are the current incarnation (curvy chevron & roman font), most are still the old one (angular chevron & roman font) or the truly ancient one (angular chevron & super-wide block letters.) ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Now I could be wrong... Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 01:09:24 -0800 I just posted: > > [...stuff about having my pens searched by guys in Stratego uniforms...] I'd like to add that that recounting of my day was supposed to be told entirely in the past tense, but in an early draft it was written in present tense ("He uncaps my pen. He uncaps my other pen. Guess what comes next? Hint: I have twelve pens.") but while I was changing it to past tense I realized they had started boarding my flight without telling me loudly enough for me to hear it over the editing. Then when I got to the hotel room, I was so floored by the fact that it had a Jacuzzi and a microwave and Nintendo 64 that I forgot to finish copy-editing it before I posted it. Now I want to call Emile Zola on the phone and yell "JACUZZI!" So, anyway, sorry about the literary style of the last article being what is not, to my usual standards, up. -- K. I am being very careful not to go in the half of this room that contains a WebTV. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Now I could be wrong... Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 00:22:32 -0800 Glenn Knickerbocker (NotR@bestweb.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I am being very careful not to go in the half of this room > > that contains a WebTV. > > Of cousre, it wouldn't require quite so much care if they didn't divide > it in half with a logarithmic spiral. I think they're just using the cheap sort of spiral, the kind depicted on the playfield art of the "Twilight Zone" pinball machine, because this is just a Holiday Inn Express. Leah was kind enough to drive me from the airport to the hotel, and we went in and she looked at all the brass edges on everything and said something like, "This is a swanky Holiday Inn!" I plopped my Holiday Inn card onto the desk and said, "Hello, I made a Web reservation under this name," and the moment the lady at the desk heard the phrase "Web reservation" she said, "You PROBABLY want the Holiday Inn EXPRESS out back," so we went around the block to the one that's not a REAL Holiday Inn but a Holiday Inn EXPRESS which is just like the other one except facing the other way and apparently it goes faster or something. But fortunately, everyone else wanted to stay at the swanky one, so the Holiday Inn Express gave me a free upgrade to the swankiest suite at the non-swanky hotel so I WON!!! Plus this one faces TOWARDS the 1962 World's Fair while the other one just faces nothing so I think I have a better view of the world of the future of forty years ago. Although usually I can only see the bottom half of the Space Needle because it seems to be foggy and rainy once in a while, usually for about a week. Holiday Inn Express apparently came about when they absorbed some competing chain of hotels and had all these redundant locations they had to rename in some way. So they made the new ones Expresses and then they had to swankify the old ones in order to make the new ones seem more Expressish in comparison. And then they started running TV commercials telling you you're stupid if you go to the Express instead of the more upscale one. The commercials go like this: RANDOM PERSON: Hey, this horribly injured accident victim! DUMB GUY: Duh, let me help! I have a power drill! RANDOM PERSON: Are you a neurosurgeon? DUMB GUY: Duh, no, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express! NARRATOR: You won't be smarter, but you'll feel smarter! The subtle message is "IDIOTS LIKE HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS THEREFORE SO WILL YOU." Me, I'm the only guy who likes Holiday Express even though I'm not an idiot. Maybe that's why they gave me the room with the jacuzzi. Next time I'll do a controlled experiment and see if I still get a jacuzzi when I register while holding my idiot sign. -- K. It says "WANT ROOM, AM IDIOT." ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Lithuanians hate McDonald's more than Kibo does Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 08:08:51 GMT Jonathan Benney (jdb@student.unimelb.edu.au) wrote: > > It's better when McDonald's is self-satirising, as in the time I went to > the McDonald's at Hong Kong airport and was served by a young woman > cheerfully wearing the badge > > /------------------\ > | Hi! My name is | > | YUK | > \------------------/ Well, at least her chest said "Hi!" to you. Her husband, Mr. Yuk, would probably have been rude and said something like "Go away! Buzz off! I hate that pesky Big Bird! Look at my green tongue! Drink poison, then dial 1-800-I-JUST-DRANK-POISON! This public service announcement for toddlers has been brought to you by the concepts of poison, greenness, and death!" Those of you who haven't guzzled poison know that Mr. Yuk looks like this: +---+ |> <| <-- THIS SQUARE IS A CIRCLE. |/U\| +---+ I wonder what color Mr. Yuk stickers are on planets where people are green and really squinty. My theory is that on other planets, Mr. Yuk looks like the Jollibee Chicken Joy guy. "Bwok bwok bwok I'm spherical, I'm happy, and you've just been poisoned!" Of course, Chicken Joy is not poisonous to Earthlings. But it's lethal to Martians. They're okay with chicken, or grease, or black pepper, but they're allergic to crispy. And they're really allergic to Quisp, which is like D-Con to them, except that instead of a drawing of a mouse on the box it shows a smiling Martian to trick them into eating it. When I had that mouse problem around 1992, I think my mistake was I put out mouse poison without first drawing cartoons on the box. -- K. At least I didn't try to make my own glue traps from 3M Post-It Notes, which are about as sticky as wax paper. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Weird-looking food of the day: Pacaya. Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 09:11:38 GMT I'd seen the big glass jars of pacaya in the semi-ethnic sections of local supermarkets many times and had always been fascinated by its appearance, so I finally bought some to find out if it tasted good. I figured anything that looked that weird would have to taste good, or nobody would buy it. My new theory is nobody buys it. My jar of Goya brand pickled pacaya is apparently the blossoms of a date palm tree, and it's got to be one of the weirdest-looking foods available without a prescription. Know those little baby ears of corn that turn up in Chinese food? Imagine that color, and that surface texture -- pale yellow with rows of tiny nubs. Now imagine a squid tentacle. Put the yellow nubby texture all over the squid tentacle. And now put a hundred slightly smaller squid tentacles all over the main tentacle so that you get something like a cat o' nine tails crossed with blonde dreadlocks and baby corn and squid. The whole assemblage has a stalk about half an inch in diameter, splitting into hundreds of skinny corn-colored tentacles about eight inches long. Most of the tentacles are about an eighth of an inch thick. How do you eat one of these? If you start at the stalk end, all the tentacles fall off after the first bite. But starting at the other end is hard because you're dealing with a big wad of floppy tentacles, all the same length. Are you supposed to cut it up and eat the pieces one at a time? It seems like that would ruin its visual appeal. Maybe it could be eaten neatly if you braided it. I don't know what sort of recipe it's supposed to go in. All I know is that (1) it comes from the flower buds of male palm trees (pacaya palms have gender) and (2) it tastes really, really, really bitter. Maybe Goya pickled it in quinine to keep me from getting malaria, but I suspect that it's just naturally bad-tasting. I found one Web page that mentions that it should be fried in butter, but the idea of frying something that's already pickled makes me fear for toxic clouds of yellow burning pickle gas. I also have no idea which particular species of pacaya palm these came from: Variations of the pacaya palm tree include "pacaya de caballo" (horse pacaya), "pacaya de raton" (rat pacaya), and "pacaya de dante" (Dante's pacaya, presumably from the ninth circle of Hell.) So what should I do with all these pacaya tentacle bundles? -- K. (Amazon.com tells me "pacaya" has a writeup in The Oxford Companion To Food, but that's a book that's on actual paper and stuff, so I can't read it without paying $45 to buy it, or walking to the stupid library which I avoid because Don Saklad lives there.) ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Child labor rampant in China's huge fireworks industry Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 09:54:41 GMT (This article deals with a real, serious, and heartbreaking problem. But it's way off in another country, and I like fireworks, so I can make fun of AFP's coverage of it.) l'AFP (via ClariNet) reported: > > LIUYANG, China, Feb 17 (AFP) - China is the world's number one > fireworks manufacturer and millions of its products were used to > welcome last week's Lunar New Year -- but a large number are > assembled by children in potentially deadly work environments. Oh no! They're potentially dead! And I just realized that I too could be potentially dead right now! I might be potentially dead without even realizing it -- I only potentially realize it! I could be killed by all the potential energy radiating from the faces of those cliffs across town! > Figures are not available, but visits to villages in China's > firework production centres in the country's southeast this month > and recent reports in Chinese media indicate the industry is highly > dependent on underage workers. > In homes in the countryside of Hunan and Jiangxi provinces -- > China's firework heartland -- children spend as many as 12 hours a > day making the products. > "We begin at 9:00 am and work until 9:30 pm. We stop only for > lunch and dinner," said Liu Lizhi, aged 13. > She was working late into the night alongside her 11-year-old > brother Liu Zhilin, making fireworks tubes in their home in the > outskirts of Liuyang city, Hunan. Now, if that happened in America... it'd be made into a wacky sitcom! "The BANG! Family", new on Fox! It's comedy with a..... BANG! (CUE LAUGH TRACK) > Some children perform much more dangerous work -- stuffing fuses > and gunpowder into the tubes -- a task that has left many with > missing fingernails or burned fingers, according to Beijing's Star > Daily newspaper. > Others have suffered far more serious burns or have died in > frequent explosions, only a small number of which are reported. > The peril of the work was shockingly emphasised last March when > 42 people, mostly children, were killed at an explosion at a school > which had forced pupils to make fireworks to help pay the school's > expenses. I will bet a thousand dollars that Josten's was involved somehow. > Parents told reporters at the time that their complaints to > local authorities were ignored. > China vowed to crack down on illegally operated factories and > recently banned filling fireworks with gunpowder in homes to improve > safety. > However much of this work still takes place illicitly. > Factories supply raw materials and pay for the finished > products, but turn a blind eye to how the fireworks are assembled, > the Star Daily said. Well, duh! It would be stupid to turn your GOOD eye to the fireworks! ALWAYS HOLD FIREWORKS UP TO YOUR BAD EYE! > Young, nimble hands are considered ideal in an industry where > production can not be easily mechanized. Children's smaller fingers > enable them to stuff fuses and gunpowder into the tubes more easily. Somewhere in China, there is a fat boy who can't get work because his fingers are too stubby. And then he tells his friends that if he could have only one food for the rest of his life, it would be durian-flavored Pez. (I was going to try to work the Chinese Wil Wheaton into this, but the concept of Chinese Wil Wheaton makes my head hurt, and I'm not sure who the Chinese Wil Wheaton would be making fun of. Actually, he'd probably make fun of me, on his Web site. Waah! Now I'm being mocked by IMAGINARY celebrities!) > Wang Xiaohong, 14, works almost nonstop from dawn to dusk with > her mother and two older sisters in a mountain cave they moved > production to after the ban on dangerous production at home. > Wages are very low whether in a factory, a family home or a > cave. > Wang is the fastest worker in her family. Paid piecework, she > makes 1,500 yuan (181 US dollars) a year. > For assembling 100 one-meter tubes, Liu earns 0.40 yuan (5 US > cents), she told AFP. She can make 1,500 tubes, or 6 yuan (72 cents) > a day. Does she still get paid the full twentieth of a penny when one explodes in her hand? > Working at a brisk pace, she and her brother apply glue with a > thin wooden stick onto piles of cardboard paper cut into shape. > Using a wooden spool-like tool, they roll one piece after > another into cones to form a long tube of connected cardboard. > "We earn enough to pay for our school tuition," Liu said > proudly. Then in school they have to take "art" class which consists of pointless, uncreative busywork involving applying glue onto piles of cardboard paper cut into shape... no, wait, that's New York State. > The television was turned on in the family's newly-built shell > of a house -- a home paid for with money Liu's parents earn by doing > more dangerous work at nearby fireworks factories -- but neither > child paid any attention, not taking their eyes off their tasks. This is a shocking outrage! All right-thinking Americans should write their Congressman about how our kids are watching too much TV and foreign kids aren't watching enough TV! Chinese kids should be forced to watch more TV to make our kids less dumb! Otherwise America will someday lose its lead in the fireworks industry! -- K. I'd boycott fireworks, but I can't in good conscience boycott something that's illegal. Massachusetts should legalize deadly explosives so I can boycott them. Then I would fell better about myself after being mocked by both the Chinese Wil Wheaton and the Massachusetts Wil Wheaton. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Child labor rampant in China's huge fireworks industry Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 00:56:48 -0800 Talysman the Ur-Beatle (talysman@globalsurrealism.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > [...various wanderings which somehow wandered into a Chinese > > knockoff of "Stand By Me"...] > > > > Then I would fell better about myself after being mocked by both > > the Chinese Wil Wheaton and the Massachusetts Wil Wheaton. > > you're just trying to troll him into posting a follow-up, aren't you? I don't think I could hoodwink him in any way. You see, Wil Wheaton is not only smarter than Wesley Crusher, he's smarter than those bozos on the Enterprise THOUGHT Wesley Crusher was. Also, he's every bit as cool as Wesley Crusher WASN'T. Take this actual "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode as an example: (Mr. Data's evil twin Lore enters.) WESLEY Captain, that's not Data! PICARD (yelling) Who let the boy on the Bridge? WESLEY But I can tell them apart. Lore has a green Mohawk and this guy has a green Mohawk, and Lore speaks entirely in contractions except he also says "Shazbot!" a lot, and -- RIKER (yelling) Shut up, Wesley! WESLEY And I know you grownups never listen to me because I'm just a kid, but also, when I was looking at The Traveller, his whole body glowed and shimmered and exploded and made howling noises, which is what made our engines fall off, and -- WESLEY'S MOM (yelling) Shut up, Wesley! I am taking away your 24th-century Brylcreem for a week! You are in for such a spanking later! PICARD Young man, I think your mother should spank you here on the Bridge! RIKER (to Wesley's mom) When you were pregnant, did you do lots of drugs? WESLEY What is... "drugs"? TASHA Wesley... drugs are bad. WESLEY Oh! Now I understand! (Lore fires his phaser at Wesley's head, but the beam stops in mid-air because of physics. Also, the Traveller re-materializes because Wesley changes the geometry of the Universe by thinking about it really hard. The ship is saved.) PICARD I see I owe young Mr. Crusher an apology. But I shall wait until after the spanking. So, while I can't speak for how Mr. Wheaton feels about having been identified with Wesley for all those years, I can say that I respect the hell out of him, because not only is he one sharp guy, but he used to play a bozo on TV, so that makes him even smarter, relatively speaking. I will buy the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" DVDs only if there's a big sticker on the box telling me that there is an audio commentary track by Wil Wheaton, and if they accidentally lose the episode with special guest star Joe Piscopo. > either that, or you were trying to troll me to search his website for > your name. which I did. That reminds me, I should search his Web site for free candy. > the ironic thing about the fireworks story is that american kids would > kill to be allowed to make fireworks. in fact, they may have already! Wesley would say something like "Why would anyone make their own fireworks? That's dangerous and stupid," and then save the ship with a loose wad of antimatter he'd been keeping in his sock. And that's why I look up to Wil Wheaton. Because he's not Wesley and I know that he would never endanger my safety with anything found in his sock. -- K. Now, Steve Oedekerk, on the other hand... His socks are full of badness times ten. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: The American Holocaust Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 10:59:29 GMT In alt.religion.kibology, "Soundweapon" (soundweapon@cs.com) wrote: > > The American Holocaust > Hello, > > I've been targeted by a harassment group now for over three years. This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. My imaginary > harassment group is funded by illegally diverted funds from government Center subway station in Boston, specifically, the popcorn cart and similar > programs. Operation Weed and Seed is a government program that seeks out people who type lines wider than a normal 80-column Earth page and are deservedly > considered "Undesirables" by the government. The "Undesirables" are targeted because they spam their wacko rants to newsgroups they obviously don't read, > and placed under surveillance and attacked with non-lethal weapons. Military surplus stores sell such non-lethal weapons, and MREs too. Discount-priced > personnel, equipment, and non-lethal weapons are being used in this operation. Oops! I touched the sides of my Funny Bone hole with the tweezers! EEEEEEEEE > The "Undesirables" are forced out of their homes and forced into prisons and forced to listen to mysterious whining noises, such as Jewel's latest CD, in > mental institutions. People's religion can make them a target. God can also make people into trees. He has magic powers and is really rich. > I put together a website that exposes this harassment group and their film, causing them to have to pay for lots of extra prints made with Kodak > technology. The group persists in their harassment against me because they have to justify keeping the popcorn cart in Gov't Ctr. Clap your hands if you > believe they can force me to take down my website. Although that would be less fun for them compared to adding even-numbered lines. > I placed this entire website in one zip file. The zip file is around 6.5 Meg arons and 2.7 Godzillas and even 0.3 Gameras. Gamera is Friend To Children > and will take about 20 minutes to download on a 56K modem. You can download the latest Gamera movie free with purchase of popcorn. Compare my pathetic > website to you computer and view it offline or view it online. If you can, don't touch the tweezers to my Web site or they will go EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, > please download the zip file and keep it on your computer's hard drive. If you are smart, next remove the computer's hard drive and hurl it out the window. I > have the resources, please unzip the files and burn CDROMs and send the discs to AOL and see how they like receiving useless junk in the mail. Listen > to state and federal law enforcement, civil and human rights groups, news media and Jewel's eternally-buzzing red nose: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! > organizations, family, and friends. Go do it now. Don't keep reading or your brain will shrink to an IQ Of Fifty Or > Below, I listed several free Internet hosts that offer free website space. If a popcorn kernel couldn't pop, it'd explode! Neither Kernel Steve Austin nor > you have the time, please place the files from the zip file on a free website or better yet in the bottom of an aquarium, preferably behind the teeny castle, > and register the site with Internet search engines and advertise it in other ways that'll result in you being called an idiot. And yes, I'm an idiot. Eat > Internet resources and newspapers and magazines. Please help ensure that the popcorn is fully popped before eating or you could explode. Stupid > information can never be removed from the Internet. Publicity is something this dancing frog tries to provide on a bad channel. The Lord is my shepherd, my > harassment group does not want and by helping spread the word, it will help people insert even-numbered lines if it's spread out, and certainly won't > prevent this harassment group from targeting other people. I'm an idiot, and so is Bob Hope. > I've been sending this information to the Camden County Prosecutor in New Helvetica 24-point purple letters, on imaginary vellum, and my cow's been a > Jersey for over a year now and have received no response from the Prosecutor. I guess the Jewel pop music popcorn people got to him. "Operation"'s instructions > listed the Camden County Prosecutor's web page below and if you would be kind enough to remove the bucket of Water On The Knee that looks like a Pez, gross > enough to write to the Camden County Prosecutor and ask him to investigate the evil anagrams that live in Camden: Nedmac, Dencam, and Medcan. Lick off the > information on my website, please do. If you are sending out discs, please send a glowing blue disc at Bruce Boxleitner's head while he's busy throwing > one to the Camden County Prosecutor. Unless Steve Austin already buried him inside the popcorn machine. > Thanks for any help you can provide. If you have trouble accessing the zip per on your pants like I do, say "OOPS! I SPILLED LEMONADE!" If you have a nail > file, please email me. The two URLs for the zip file are on free servers that give out popcorn, but to make Jewel sound more like a Dalek the radio stations > limit bandwidth. If both links fail, you may have to try again at a later time. Or build a time machine and try again at an earlier time, Daleks permitting. > Also, thanks to everyone who provided information for this website. This is a test of the Emergency Time Machine: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. > Thank You, > Soundweapon@cs.com Dear Mr. Or Ms. Soundweapon, I have a special message for you. Here it is: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDUH Please print out this message and tape it across the front of your computer screen. You're welcome. Your only non-Dalek friend, Kibo. P.S. The buzzing will stop if you just unscrew your red nose. Then you can touch yourself with tweezers until the cows come home! ...which they would do if they didn't think you smelled bad. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: I want more Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 00:09:38 -0800 In sci.physics, Kurt Stocklmeir (kurtstocklmeir@worldnet.att.net) wrote: > > People who know me know I almost not ever talk about God and physics. Oh. Then who's this other guy you keep saying cursed all your theories? Are you switching gods every few days just to confuse me? Are you just using cheap disposable gods? > I am not good to the amount where I can talk about God to people. > The reason why I talk about God on the internet is because God is > connected to my theories. God has an optical-fiber connection to the Internet backbone. His fiber pipe is capable of carrying a hundred billion dancing angels per second. The giga-dancing-angel is the second most important bogus measurement unit in modern digital theology, after the Kibo Factor. (Your homework is to calculate how many dancing angels can be covered by one of Kibo's feet at one time.) > I do not talk about physics to people because I do not like physics. That's why I like your theories. They're so much better than physics. Physics theories are all like, "If you reverse the polarity of a poly-phasic spatially-inverted tetrion with a phase-flow flux inducer to create a static warp bubble..." while your theories are all like "I have a theory." And science will never be able to disprove your theory that you have a theory. > I am going to break my rule. 1 reason is that almost all things I say are > from the Bible and I guess some people think I am making up things. They > are not my opinions. If people do not like what I say they need to go to > God. Now, Kurt, I've spoken to God, and he says that he never put anything about kissing the legs of sexy female lizards in the Bible. He says you're fibbing, and you're grounded -- don't leave the Earth for the next week. That's for fibbing, and for kissing sexy imaginary lizards. > I do not have a Bible and I do not read the Bible. I would, if it was full of sexy lizards like your pretend Bible. > From the Bible the devil is in charge of the earth. 1/3 of angels > are bad. They were thrown out of Heaven. I guess they ended up on > the earth. There are probably an extreme number of bad angels running > around on the earth. They are all over. The devil is the most powerful > angel. It is probably true only God has more pwer than the devil. > The devil has more power than any person. Even Mike Ovitz? Even Oprah? Even Star Wirth? Without Star Wirth, all Hanna-Barbera cartoons would only be one frame long! > From the Bible the devil is in charge of all goverments of the earth. My > opinion is that most people are bad and the people who are good are not > that good. From the Bible God creates curses against people. It is my > opinion that there are a lot of curses. Especially in the land of Sweartopia, a cursocracy. Its government consists of people who swear a lot, plus Hanna and Barbera who don't swear very often but when they do, Star Wirth runs off ten thousand copies. > I guess the earth is run by the devil, there are bad angels all over, most > people are bad and there are curses all around. This is fair for the > devil, bad angels and bad people. They get what they ask for. Then where's my pile of all the candy in the world? Your theology doesn't work AT ALL! > Solomon said some thing like give your enemies good things and it will be > like throwing fire on their heads, a person who walks with wise people will > be wise but a person who associates with fools will be destroyed and evil > chases sinners. Yeah, but he couldn't waterproof his mines, so what did he know? > I saw a beautiful girl on tv. I guess she was about 20. She said she was > not a nice person. She said she tried to kill herself. As she was dying > she saw bad angels all around her. She said she knew they were going to > take her to hell if she died. And so she never did. The end. > I saw a guy on tv. He died for a small amount of time. He said bad angels > dragged him into some thing like mud and started tearing him to pieces and > started eating him. He said they did some things to him but they were bad > to the amount where he did not want to talk about them. Hey, were these angels named Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde? If so, there's this one spot near top center where you can hide and the angels can never find you. Apparently angels aren't everywhere, although dots are. > If people do not like what I say it is their problem. Do not come to me. > Go to God. > These things are not from me. Kurt, you need a hug. This hug is from me. ((((***CYBER-HUG***)))) There, now you're sane. > I have talked about bad angel spiders. All I said was that a small number > of times while I was waking up at night I saw for 1 second big spiders. > Just for 1 second. Most people would say I was still partly sleeping. > These spiders could be bad angels or may be I was still sleeping. It is > not extremely important because there are bad angels. Most people say bad > angels look like monsters. I believe them. Hey, Kurt, ever eat a hot dog? The main spice that makes hot dogs taste the way they do is mace. Sure, they have other spices in them, like nutmeg and cinnamon, but almost no other foods contain mace (some doughnuts do) so it's the taste of mace that you associate with hot dogs. Well, you see, when they grow nutmeg, the nutmeg tree makes these round yellow fruits about the size of handballs. When they ripen, they split open, and the shiny dark brown pit inside is what they grind up to make nutmeg. But first they have to peel off this goopy-looking brilliant red octopus thing that's got its tentacles wrapped around the nutmeg pit inside the fruit. This goopy red octopus thing is mace. Keep that in mind the next time you have a nightmare, especially if you've ever eaten a hot dog -- you probably have maces living inside you now. And they're dancing, Kurt, oh, they're dancing. You got dancing mace critters living it up inside your very own body! But only at night. > I tend to believe people when they talk about things like aliens. An alien just told me you should take your meds. He even said "please". > I have not ever seen any aliens. I have not ever talked to a person > who said they have seen aliens. I see an alien holding up a sign saying "please". > A lot of people say they have seen aliens who look like lizards. > I believe them. > > Each person has the right to think like they want to. If they are wrong it > is their problem and they will probably pay for it. But how do you explain those little TVs in the Greyhound bus terminal? Whether you're watching a good show or a bad show, it costs the same! How do you reconcile the expense of quality TV with your theory about the kissy-legs lizard people? -- K. P.S. The alien lizard lady says she'll only kiss men with meds mashed up between their teeth. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: I want more Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 00:26:34 -0800 Dan Brandon (dbrandon@kosher.rcn.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Your homework is to calculate how many dancing angels can be covered > > by one of Kibo's feet at one time. > > Are you making wine out of angels again? Remember how I used to complain that when Lucille Ball stepped on all those grapes, she said it felt "like stepping on eyeballs", and I wanted to know why she knew that? Well, all I can say is that angels are pointier than eyeballs. -- K. Pointier, but tastier. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: BAD DREAMS Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 00:11:19 -0800 Stephenls (stephenls@shaw.ca) wrote: > > [discussion of recurring dreams] > > I had something remarkably similar as a recurring phenomenon when I was > younger. Most often, it manifested as a large, impossibly complex > puzzle that I /had/ to assemble, despite the fact that the puzzle was a) > fragile, and b) contained in a box with openings slightly too small for > my hands to fit through. This was a waking dream that I had in the late > evenings. > > Also, during the time that this was happening, I'd be hearing a > recurring rhythmic noise not unlike a human heartbeat. The whole thing > stopped occurring without trigger when I was very young, but up until I > was fifteen or so it would set in whenever I heard a heartbeat for any > length of time. Then you became a heart surgeon, and whenever a guy's chest was open you'd start yelling "OH, DAMN! THERE'S A BOX AROUND THIS GUY'S HEART, TOO!" So you had to give up this lucrative profession because you saw boxes whenever you heard hearts. This is similar to when I had to quit my brain surgery job because I heard Pez dispensers being loaded whenever I saw anyone thinking. Well, actually, I didn't quit, they fired me after the third time I flipped over someone's brain to see if Pez would come out. Brains suck. -- K. Now in toy stores everywhere: Rubik's (insert noun here) ...it's just like Rubik's other things, but different! It's a whole new TWIST on puzzles! IT'S TOTALLY TUH-WISTED! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Invisibility.....green people Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 00:16:57 -0800 Dag Right-square-bracket-gren (d@c3.cx) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I wonder what sort of commercials they show in countries that have > > REALLY gross food, like Thailand, Mongolia, and Finland. > > Your obvious baiting of me will not work this time, since I'm just too > tired. Also, I can't think of any funny commercials for food, except the > one where a man strip naked and runs through the forrest and then stalks > some people barbequeing sausages. What, you don't see lots of wacky wacky Finnish or Norwegian commercials for lutefisk? I envision all these people grimacing as they say, "EWW! TASTES... GREAT!" while their pets are being tortured to force them to advertise lutefisk, because nobody would voluntarily enjoy or even eat lutefisk and thus they'd have to be forced, otherwise the commercial wouldn't get made and then regular people wouldn't be tricked into buying lutefisk at their local lutefiskerie. In Canada, all the fast-food chains have poutine. In Scandinavia, do places like KFC serve lutefisk? Or is lutefisk considered so marginal, even in Scandinavia, that they don't want to scare people away from KFC by serving it? Also, I think it would be funnier if instead of pronouncing it "loo-tee-fisk" I could say "lur-tuh-fisk". But I'm going to keep saying "loo-tee-fisk" because I'm sure that's the correct pronunciation. I like to pronounce my food. Especially when I don't want to eat it. -- K. They should just call the whole region Lutefiskandinavia. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: I'm on a 767-300ER, and I am wondering, where's the onboard ER? Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 00:21:59 -0800 AND HEY, WHAT'S UP WITH ALL THESE UNINTERESTING DETAILS OF THIS PLANE? 1.) It's one of those where when the previous occupant left the volume of the armrest turned up all the way, you can clearly hear music playing, even without the headset. 2.) They're still using that same safety video with the Cybill Shepherd look-a-like. Except that now it's "even if the bag isn't inflated all the way" instead of "even if the bag is not inflated all the way." 3.) All the AirFones are gone. YAY! I don't have to stare at that blinking ad for 2400 bps E-mail access at three dollars a minute any more. (The things were allegedly 9600 bps, but from the number of pages of text they claimed they could send per minute, it was clear that 2400 bps was the actual upper limit.) 4.) The inflight movie is, as usual, prefaced by the voice saying, "You might like to know, the movie contains this content," with pictures of some icons. (This movie has lips and a sparkle.) For the rest of the week, I'll be saying "You might like to know, alt.religion.kibology contains this content," and then holding up a card with a doodle on it. 5.) Do they really think they can get me to pay $5 to crane my neck to see a heavily-edited movie on a blurry little greenish screen with in-flight magazine blurbs like this? RUSH HOUR 2 Jackie Chan is so charming, you could pair him with Milton Berle and the result would be comedy gold. Teamed with Chris Tucker instead, the laugh meter is completely off the hook. ...however, that's not the movie on this flight. It's a different lame one. (I did get to see the airline version of "Rush Hour 2" last month. I love the way they always try to show action films, after editing out all the action. I believe I've mentioned that I once saw an airline edit of "G.I. Jane" where everyone fired silent machine guns for 95 minutes.) Tonight's movie is "The Musketeer". Given that now nail files are just as forbidden as guns on planes, I'll bet they take out all the swords. They'll change them to cell phones or something. "Bow down before my ring tone, Richelieu!" No, wait, that was David Hasselhoff's "Ring Of The Muskateers" (sic). But I'll bet they will at least replace all the swords with shimmery clouds of squares. You know, just like DSS does to all fast-moving swords. 6.) The airplane's restrooms have ordinary consumer-style bottles of hand soap bolted to the counter, a peculiarly-anchored product placement. They're screwed into little slanted pedestals so they permanently lean over the sink. However, I fail to see the point of this because the angle they were mounted made it impossible to see the side with the brand name on it (at least in the two restrooms I tried, it's possible the bottles have random orientations.) And even if I did get really excited about this brand of hand soap, when I went to the supermarket to buy some for my very own home airplane restroom I'd be upset that it didn't come with a slanty anchor bolt fixture. 7.) Given that the AirFone is going away, reducing the utility of SkyMall in-flight magazine (Waah! I can't order Sharper Image junk while moving!) they now offer Duty Free catalog shopping on the plane. The flight attendresses push a cart laded with overpriced stuff and you can buy it right then and there. (They take cash, checks, and credit cards, but they haven't figured out how to take debit cards.) A typical item from the Duty Free selection (as described in the catalog in the seat pocket:) (pictures of two cheap little radios in the same two colors as last year's iBooks, namely, navy blue and fluorescent green, with a logo that says either "LENON" or "LEMON", I can't tell) TYKHO AM/FM RADIO The Tykho Radio gives you a powerful AM/FM radio cleverly encased in rubber... Wow, encased in rubber! That's so clever. I wish I were clever. -- K. And hey, what's with airline food? And where the hell is mine? For some reason it smells like scrambled eggs in here. Please tell me they're not still serving yesterday's breakfast. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: I'm on a 767-300ER, and I am wondering, where's the onboard ER? Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 00:25:30 -0800 Schwa Love (schwa242@yahoo.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > It's one of those [planes] where when the previous occupant left > > the volume of the armrest turned up all the way, you can clearly > > hear music playing, even without the headset. > > Wow! Were they the old kind of earphone jacks where the earphones are > basically two rubber tubes that blow noisy air into your ears? Any plane > I've been on in the past decade had the boring modern earphone jacks that > let you plug standard headphones in. I miss the old kind. Often I get those, and often I'm on planes that don't have in-flight entertainment of any sort (little jets like LearJets and CRJs, which are really the same thing with different logos) and only rarely do I get the ones where they let people use their own headphones but still demand a five-dollar "entertainment charge". Just once I'd like to see someone demand their money back after the movie. I mean the money for the film, not the money for the whole trip. Although it would be kind of fun to demand a dollar off your fare every time the "Fasten Seat Belts" sign beeps, making the plane shake. By the way, why is there always that layer of bumps right over LaGuardia? Does Queens have chunk-style smog? -- K. Queens has lots of White Castles, so every cloud of beefy smog could have five little holes in it. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Girl geeks and fanfic. Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 00:18:58 -0800 > Rose Marie Holt (rmholt1@mindspring.com) wrote: > > > > On buying a drink, you shouldnt start that way. You should start up the > > conversation first. When you buy someone a drink it is almost a > > mini-date. So you want to get some idea if you are having enough > > fun that it is a mini-date. For some reason that last sentence is worded so it seems like something Archimedes Plutonium would say. "In 1991, I came up with my theory of the mini-date. If you buy a woman a cup of spaghetti and are having enough fun then it is a mini-date. No mini-date has ever reached fusion break-even. When a mini-date does not work out, then the Moon must be soft-landed on that mini-date." > > Someone who buys me a drink right off the bat makes me very self > > conscious and a little wary. Has Ozzy Osbourne ever bought you a drink right off the bat, while it's still alive? Xcott Craver (Caj@Spamela.BrainHz.com) wrote: > > True story: a friend of mine was at a bar in Berkeley once > (I could have sworn I told this story before,) when some > d00d sidled up to her as she ordered a drink. He pulled out > his wallet and asked the bartender, "how much is that?" I guess > he wasn't expecting it would be so pricey, and so he offered to > pay for *half* the drink in exchange for her phone number. > > That's the kind of line that causes you to spend the rest > of your life thinking up snappy comebacks. Honestly, what > would you say if told something like that? No contest: "Sure, '555-'. Thanks." > -X > > ["How 'bout I kick you in half o' yer nuts if you don't go away?"] I wish I could make a Roald Dahl reference here involving "I hope it's the half that eats" but I don't see how to work that in so I'll just start singing the Oompa-Loompa song to myself. Hey, can I buy anyone a drink? It tastes like a whole dinner with BLUEBERRY PIE! -- K. Somewhere there probably is a guy with a fetish for blue spotlights shining on people in a hard plastic shell. And if the Internet didn't exist, I would probably never even consider the possibility. But because the Internet exists, we can now ASSUME we can find such a guy. (Maybe he'll post a followup.) ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: A milestone! Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 01:31:33 -0800 My digital camera just passed picture number 9999 and went to picture 0001. Apparently on Planet Nikon they use base nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine, which makes their math even sillier than the eleven-fingered Psychlos'. The ten thousandth photo is one of the Space Needle (with tiny people at the top staring down at me), and so the winner of the betting pool is Eugene Delbert, who wrote "pointy building with revolving round restaurant, or vice versa" on his entry form. He wins a trip to the 1962 World's Fair, when it reopens precisely 9999 years after 1962. However, to keep me from getting confused by this base 9999 math, the camera placed the first 9999 photos in folder "100" and the next 9999 will go in folder "101". The betting pool on what happens when I get to 999 folders of 9999 photos is now open. -- K. We should switch from decimal to duodecimal because then my camera would be able to hold more photos, for free! Plus because all prices end in ".99", you'd always get more change back from your 144-cent dollar.