Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Milkshakes and Accents Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 06:51:45 GMT Zixia (zixia@clu.org.uk) wrote: > > For my first full day in Boston I found myself at the start of the > Freedom Trail in the morning, so I thought, hey, why not walk it? So I > did. For those who don't know, the Freedom Trail is a touristy thing > where a red line, probably painted using the blood from the Boston > Massacre, leads around some ares of historic interest. It seems that a > lot of areas of historic interest in Boston involve the Americans > kicking English arse, which was nice for me. > > [Side note: it would be more correct to write that they involve the > revolutionaries kicking Red Coat arse, what with everyone being British > at that point, but I just figure that would confuse stupid people and a > writer has to consider his audience.] I always wonder how many tourists get run over by subway trains when tourist guidebooks tell them to "walk along the red line". Best-case scenario: They'd walk all the way to Alewife and be confused by the twelve-foot-diameter aluminum subway token that they couldn't get in the door, much less in the turnstile slot, and be trapped in Alewife forever. Unless they were lucky enough to get run over by the Red Line trains somewhere around Harvard. > I made a few stops at old burying grounds, churches, political > buildings and such-like, which was all quite interesting, but when I > got into the North End of Boston I found myself outside Paul Revere's > house. Wow, how cool is that? I couldn't pass this opportunity up, so > I paid my entrance fee and went inside--first stop, Paul Revere's front > room! > > Ooh, everything was authentically old, or just old. The next room was > the dining room, or something like that. To think, Paul Revere took > his meals in that room! My goodness. Heading upstairs, I was > presented with his bedroom. I was still somewhat taken aback by being > in the great Paul Revere's house, so I was just stumbling along when a > young woman welcomed most people into that room with a far too perky, > 'If you have any questions, please do ask'. It was far too perky, > because she must repeat it something like a hundred times in a day, yet > IT WAS STILL PERKY. I don't know how she did it. > > While I was reeling with awe, more people filtered into and out of the > room, with perky-girl repeating her mating call. My mind searched for > a question appropriate to the situation, something that could offer an > insight into the mighty Paul Revere, something that couldn't be gleaned > except by an expert into his life and times. Coming to my senses, and > being surrounded by what appeared mostly to be American tourists, I > wondered if I should ask, 'Who -is- Paul Revere?' He's one of the only two people who ever figured out all the lyrics to "Louie, Louie". The other was King Smen. I know because I saw a real historical museum exhibit about this in a real historical museum in Seattle which must have been a good museum because people wouldn't pay twenty dollars to wear super-heavy computers attached to strings around their necks all day while looking at some guitars behind glass if it was a lame fake museum that was just an ad for Microsoft. > Yeah, I hadn't heard of him, but I didn't know if I would be beaten > with some Paul Revere silverware if I asked that question. Luckily, > one of the little cards further into the room answered the question for > me, so I learnt what I needed to without being thrown out of the > country. They wouldn't beat you with silverware. They'd just pour molten silver all over your hand and then put a bandage on your hand and not change the bandage for six months so that then your girlfriend could be all surprised when she unwraps it, exclaiming, "Why, Zixia! Your fingers! They've all... grown together!" and then you'd look at the pink rubber bag with sideways stretch marks pulled over your real hand and be horrified but still help Paul Revere win the war anyway. Also, the war would be A Walt Disney Production. Anyway, give my regards to Whit Bissell. (It's sort of sad that I haven't seen that movie in about 27 years but I still worry about the crappy deformity makeup on a daily basis. For some reason they showed it to us in elementary school, presumably to teach us that deformities are good because they cause us to give up our pipedreams of becoming famous silversmiths and give us the willpower to kill the British, or something.) > After Paul Revere's house, I continued on the Freedom Trail, which led > out over the Charles River to the Bunker Hill memorial. To get to the > memorial, the trial naturally went over a bridge, rather than > encouraging tourists to go for a swim. Unfortunately for my fear of > heights, the bridge had a 20Êm section or so where it was just metal > grating to walk over, and the river beneath one's feet was clearly > visible. ARGH! I didn't enjoy that. It was good to find out later > that I could catch a water-shuttle (some might call it a 'ferry') back > to Long Wharf rather than RISK MY LIFE again in such a manner, and it > also meant I could sit down. And be on water. I like being on water. > > After sweating profusely from the deadly peril of the metal grating, I > got up to the Bunker Hill memorial. I learnt a few things there, from > a Park Ranger who gave a talk about Bunker Hill. Oh my, she was happy > to have a Briton in her little audience, as it made talking about the > Revolution not awkward at all. But I bet she skipped the part about the British putting Americans in concentration camps. > Still, she seemed to get through how the Bostonians kicked the British > arse easily enough, although it turned out that the Brits actually won > the battle. Something about us losing lots of men, or something. > Still, that memorial is obviously to commemorate a British victory! Hurrah! > > I also learnt that the Bunker Hill Memorial doesn't sit on Bunker Hill, > but Breed's Hill. Actually, because the British won, it sits on Benny Hill. If you press your ear to the ground, you can still faintly hear the fife, drum, and yakety sax. After the war, to promote friendship between our countries, the Americans offered the British the chance to build a monument on top of Jerry Lewis, but the French asserted they had called dibs on that by giving us that green lady wearing the bedsheet and holding the burning waffle cone, so to placate the British we just took the "Weakest Link" woman away from them for a year. > It seems that, for whatever reason, the fight that was supposed to > happen on Bunker Hill didn't, but it was still the battle of Bunker Hill, > or something like that. Well, I kind of learnt that from the Park Ranger, > but when I tried to show of my new knowledge to all the kibologists > the next evening I got confused between various hills, and Plorkwort > put me right. However, that paid off as well, because when I went on > one of those tours in the amphibious craft I was the only person to know > about the Bunker/Breed's hill mix-up, and several Americans really seemed > astonished by my AMAZING knowledge on the subject. I didn't reveal my > source, so I just look plain smart. We think all people with elegant British accents are really smart. That's why we put Patrick Stewart in command of that spaceship even though he kept insisting he was really French. > Later on that evening, as no kibologist event was planned, I decided to > read some of my guide book during dinner, so that I could check out > more information on Paul Revere and some other chap called Sam Adams. > Oh, and, um, John Hancock as well. All quite famous, it would seem. > So I read my little book, which was quite enlightening, and then I > flipped through some of the other stuff at the back, which included > some differences in the language. > > One of those differences that intrigued me concerned frappes and > milkshakes. First, it informed me that the final e in frappe is not > pronounced, which is good to know, although now that I have written > that I have given away that I didn't know how to pronounce it in the > first place, and I look just as stupid. But the guide also pointed out > that, in Boston, there is a difference between ordering a milkshake and > a frappe, and that, if ice-cream is wanted in the drink, one orders a > frappe. > > Now, I enjoy milkshakes, so I welcomed this snippet of information, not > only because I could now order with confidence, but also because it > reminded me that I like milkshakes and that I should order one. With > confidence. So when my waitress came back I confidently asked, 'Do you > do frappes?' Wow, I sounded like a local, no? Um, no, as she replied > that they didn't do frappes, but they did do milkshakes. DAMN YOU, > ROUGH GUIDE! YOU MADE ME LOOK STUPID! However, the good thing to come > out of it was that, when asked what flavours they did, coffee was one > of the options. Sounds interesting, doesn't it? I could not resist, > so I ordered one and, damn, it was good. Did you demand real Autocrat brand syrup in your milkshake? Or did they just give you one of those cheap imitations made from a generic dictator? > I even went back to that restaurant later in the week, just to get > myself another coffee milkshake to enjoy with a burger. Feeling even > more confident, as I had been there previously, I asked for a coffee > milkshake. 'Uh, coffee? We don't do coffee milkshakes.' Mang, I ROOL > at ordering in restaurants! She was just teasing though, as she > realised she could just dump some coffee ice-cream into a glass and > keep the dumb limey happy. Hurrah! If it had been a truly authentic New England restaurant they would have had a clam milkshake, served hot, with potatoes in it. > But back to the guide book; there was a little section at the back that > identified the peculiar Bostonian accent, and I read it with interest. > And it was quite interesting. I hoped I could use this to blend into > my environment. I don't think it worked, though, as when everyone was > ordering dinner in the fake Cheers after visiting the Children's > Museum, the waiter must have thought I was American, what with everyone > else being so, and mistook my order for Fried Shrimp, bringing instead > French Dip. It took a while to work this out, as the food was brought > out in several visits, and no-one admitted to ordering the French Dip. > once everyone else had their order, I had to re-order my food. Dammit. It's just because Patrick Stewart taught us that all British people are also French, hence you got the French Dip. If you had actually been French, they would have had to pretend they were giving you British food, so instead of a French Dip you'd have gotten a British Boil with Batchelors Processed Peas. Can you please explain Batchelors Processed Peas to me? Why would anyone want canned rehydrated dehydrated peas? And why would anyone want them in a green-slime sauce made with 50% green dye and 50% saccharin? Don't they sell real canned peas in England? Or do they just keep all the good ones so they can export the junk like Batchelors Processed Peas to American supermarkets to make us think that British food is even worse than American food so that we won't come to visit and put fingerprints all over your country? I think about things like this when I'm in the special "British Foods" section of Stop & Shop. It's really small, especially compared to the Kool-Aid section, which contains less green dye than one can of Batchelors Processed Peas. -- K. And why did they reformulate Maynard's Wine Gums to taste like candy instead of vinegar? And are Rex Beans really fit for a queen? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Canuckistani Movie Warnings Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 07:12:12 GMT Darla Vladschyk (DarlaVladschyk@hotmail.com) wrote: > > For your dining and dancing pleasure: > > FRS - Frightening Scenes, EV - Extreme Violence, GSC - Graphic Sexual > Content, MSM - Mature Subject Matter, SC - Sexual Content, CL - Coarse > Language, EN - Explicit Nudity, FS - Fighting Scenes, NS - Nude > Scenes, VS - Violent Scenes, OLT - Offensive Language Throughout, CSM > - Controversial Subject Matter, LW - Language Warning, OL - Offensive > Language, BL - Blood Letting, MT - Mature Theme, GS - Gory Scenes Oh geez, I'll never be able to learn the abbreviations of all those new provinces. I'm having a hard enough time remembering that Nunavut exists. I try to use the mnemonic of remembering a nun and a vut but that requires me to remember a vut and that "m" can be directly followed by "n", neither of which seems real. Anyway, when I flee the United States, I'm moving to OLT, eh? -- K. So if I say "FUCKFUCKFUCK POOH BEAR FUCKFUCKFUCK", that's "OL", but to get "OLT" I'd have to say "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK" just once for ninety minutes? And what's the difference between "OL" and "LW"? Why is there no "LWT" in case I make a movie where I spend ninety minutes saying "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGER"? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Suburban? A post in terse sentences. Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 07:22:04 GMT Matt McIrvin (mmcirvin@world.std.com) wrote: > > [...] > > Once a series of events beyond my control resulted in my attending a > concert by Michael Franks. At one point he rhymed "magnet" and "Dragnet." It was the steel plate in Joe Friday's head that made him talk like that, and also it led to that flashback episode where he went to high school after a meteor magnetized him and his face got stuck to the lockers and all sorts of metal things stuck to him and then the ugliest girl in school, who had braces, got her braces stuck to his braces forever, and then they cut to Harry Morgan pointing and giggling. Then he took a sip from his coffee cup and said, "Thank you, Mister Coffee!" and his leg fell off but he drew a cartoon of himself which made him able to walk on his rubbery cartoon leg and then the car from NBC's "Knight Rider" explained to him that we must be thankful for the wonder of television. Oh, and a bunch of playing cards came out of a magician's hat to symbolize the awesome amazingness of parlor tricks, but if you looked really close you could see that two of the cards passed through each other, revealing that it wasn't a real illusion, just a picture of one. -- K. I would have rhymed "magnet" with "gnat", but only if I were Michael Franks. Then I would have starred in a movie titled "Magnets: Hands Of Fate" and they would have made fun of me on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and I wouldn't get it because I still don't know who Michael Franks is. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Worst logo this week Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:30:42 GMT At my favorite Asian-style grocery store, I encountered small (and cheap!) bottles of passionfruit juice with coconut chunks (seven ounces for just fifty-nine cents American) and it's delicious and yummy even though it's got lumps in it. (It's only about a million times better than Orbitz was. Plus it's a prettier color, sort of pinkish marigold with little white bits drifting around near the bottom.) However, this Taiwanese product is one of those where instead of drawing their own logo, they just borrowed one from an American company. I'm not sure whether the logo on the bottle cap corresponds to the people who make the yummy beverage or just the people who make Taiwanese bottle caps, but I know this: They clearly like Snapple. The Snapple logo is the word "Snapple" written in curly italic letters (with a big swash "S") inside a cartouche. This fruit juice has the same logo, except it says something different. Same cartouche. Same big "S" at the left end. Only some of the letters were changed, so that the Taiwanese folks could sleep easier at night after ripping off only the visual part of the trademark but not the verbal part. They made a "u" from a lightly modified "n", and they had no trouble making their own "t". However, they also needed an "o", and "Snapple" has no circular letters in it, and they needed a capital "F", which looks nothing like any of the "Snapple" letters. So they pasted in an "o" and an "F" from the only italic font they had handy. Times Bold Italic. The result is that the "o" and "F" are not the same as the "Snapple"- derived letters. They're lighter, and they have thin strokes unlike the "Snapple" script, and the "F" has flat pointy serifs instead of the curly swashes on the "S". They didn't even make the two pasted-in letters be the same size as the existing ones. And the name of this mutation of the "Snapple" logo, with the mismatched font? "SunFont". I like their juice, but I'd like it better if they'd draw a competent imitation of the logo they're trying to rip off, or at least rename it "SunMismatchedFonts". From now on, whenever I see something printed with random fonts mixed together, I'm going to say, "That's the SunFont!" -- K. Also, it has 96 "calorirs" per bottle. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Only Kibo and I are up right now Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 11:19:50 GMT Conmidhe (conmidhe@geek.com) wrote: > > I have checked for new posts 5 times in the last 15 minutes and Kibo > and me are the only two Kibologists awake enough to post right now. > > For shame. You post... while... AWAKE? FOOL! Embrace Kibology, and you will only post in your sleep! It's a way to save time while wasting time at the same time! If you don't believe me when I say I'm posting in my sleep... then what am I doing in bed right now? * Kibology is better than Eckankar (which lets you project your astral body around corners, but only while driving) and Rosicrucianism (which lets you make cartoon beams of light come out of your forehead, but only in the back of "Popular Mechanics") combined, although it doesn't have a silly name. > All good Kibologists are expected to stay up into the wee hours > posting nonsense to usenet without checking their facts first. I fixed your spelling. Facts are okay, though. Not in general, I just mean in your article. I was only still up and connected this late into the morning because I had to tone down the sass factor of some inanimate objects, and write a letter to the lawyers at company A seeing if I could make them sue company B just so I could get some free fruit juice I wouldn't buy. -- K. * Don't even bother with the Kontext-Away, I already know which clause is the good one. This is because I wrote it, and I am fully aware of how incredibly brilliant my own writing is, even in my sleep. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Shit that is going on in Perth. Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 12:17:57 GMT Gregory King (greg@flyingpawn.com) wrote: > > John Burrage (jburrage@cyllene.uwa.edu.au) wrote: > > > > Teck (tiki@iinet.net.au) wrote: > > > > > > A fire. Could have burned down the horrible architectural atrocity > > > that is Perth CBD, but didnt. Phoo. > > > > Does Perth have a PUDDING LANE? I don't think it does, but it should. > > =========================== > <> CARPOOL <> > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > BICYCLE > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > PUDDING > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > BACON > --------------------------- I don't think I like Archimedes Plutonium's new recipe for six-layer dip with the carpool on top. It belongs on the bottom, or preferably, in some other food product in your neighbor's refrigerator. Also, those aren't lane markers, they're trails of pudding skin. Did you ever wonder why the Guiness Book Of Records claims they stopped taking "I ate a whole bicycle all by myself" submissions because they were too common, but you can't buy canned bicycle parts in supermarkets? I say the Guiness Book should either let me eat as many bicycles as I want, or else Libby's should sell cans of Creamed Bicycle. -- K. In Boston, during rush hour, everyone drives one lane to the right of bacon. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Those Little Chunks of Quorn X-Secret-Info: reposted to fix a typo Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 22:21:34 GMT Chris Costello (chris@FreeBSD.org) wrote: > > Slime mold based meat substitute making people violently ill: > > [http://www.cspinet.org/new/200208121.html] > -> > -> The Food and Drug Administration has allowed a fake meat made from > -> fungus onto the marketplace, even though the agency knows it makes > -> some people seriously ill, according to the nonprofit Center for > -> Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). > -> > -> Quorn is the brand name for a line of foods made from "mycoprotein." > -> Quorn products take the form of faux chicken patties, nuggets, and > -> cutlets, as well as imitation ground beef. It springs from a single- > -> celled fungus grown in large fermentation vats by Marlow Foods, > -> a division of the multinational pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. > > (PSST. THE SECRET INGREDIENT IS GROUND UP OLD GYM SOCKS.) What's the statute of limitations on becoming violently ill, or at least violent, after eating a box of slime-mold based artificial chicken nugget substitute flavored nuggets several months ago? Of course, I knew they were made from fermented fungal fuzz, but still, they shouldn't have let me have them because, why should I be allowed to eat fetid fungal froth? I should only have been permitted to buy the 99.9% of things in the supermarket that are good for you! ////////// RE-RUNS FOLLOW //////////////////////////////////////////////// From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Putting the "fun" back in "slime mold". Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 03:29:31 -0500 I ated a fungus! I ated a fungus! And it weren't no regular mushroom! Yesterday CNN Headline News told me that a "mycoprotein"-based meat substitute was coming to the United States, and that it was sold under the brand name "corn". This bothered me -- trying to pass off fungus protein as a vegetable is at least as intellectually offensive as trying to simulate beef with some sort of mildew -- but today I actually saw the stuff on sale at a local market, and it turns out the brand name is spelled "Quorn". Never eat anything that starts with "Q". When in Toronto, don't buy quinces at Queen's Quay. Furthermore, you should never eat anything named by Klingons. Despite my fear of this queer Quorn, I quickly inspected a quantity of Quorn products which were quiescently frozen in my grocer's freezer. I resolved to purchase one and eat it so that you wouldn't have to. I passed over the "Beef-Style Recipe Grounds" and grabbed a box of "Chicken-Style Nuggets". First an important message about mycoprotein, from the back of the box: -> WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR? -> -> It took you only seconds to discover our wholesome, all-natural -> line of Quorn(tm) meat-free cuisine. Translation: Here, read this essay which explains why you should make a snap decision to buy this product, unlike all the good foods which don't NEED sales essays on the box. -> It took us a bit longer to find the ideal protein source for -> its key ingredient. Translation: All the ones that tasted good cost too much. -> After 15 years of searching in many parts of the world, we -> finally found what we were looking for. And it was growing -> literally in our own backyard! Translation: Duh, we're stupid. -> "Mycoprotein" comes from a small, unassuming member of the -> mushroom family, Translation: It's not a mushroom, it's a "member of the mushroom family". This means it's a weird kind of fungus, such as mildew, slime mold, puffball, or ringworm. Also, it's very unassuming, compared to those snooty mushrooms. We use only unpretentious slime mold. -> which we ferment like yogurt. Translation: We add live bacteria to the moldy fungus to create the perfect blend of rotting and infectious. -> Ounce for ounce, this unique ingredient contains: -> -> * Almost as much protein as an egg Translation: Even less protein than an egg. -> * Twice the fiber of fresh broccoli Translation: Cardboard. -> * About half the calories and a third less fat than -> skinless chicken breast Translation: About half the calories and a third less fat than skinless chicken breast, with none of that annoying chicken flavor! -> * Zero cholesterol Translation: It's just as good for you as eating nothing at all. -> That's all very healthy, but we know you're also looking -> for great taste. Translation: Who needs flavor when you can read this exciting essay? -> Happily, Quorn products not only contain mycoprotein, Translation: We were originally in the cracker business, but the fire sprinklers went off and the crackers got all soggy and then a week later they were green and fuzzy, so we decided to call them Quorn. -> but also have the great taste you're looking for. Translation: These taste the same whether you taste them with your mouth or your eyeballs. -> That's why, in Europe, where people are rather particular -> about the way things taste, Translation: The Microsoft Word spellchecker didn't know "peculiar". -> Quorn is the number-one selling meat-free brand. Translation: Quorn is the number one selling meat-free brand assuming you don't count those millions of products which don't pretend to be fake meat. Unless you're dumb enough to believe that Pringles and Bubble Yum are made from meat. -> We hope Quorn meat-free cuisine sounds like what you've been -> looking for. Translation: We desperately hope you'll buy some of this stuff before it eats our warehouse. And if we claim you taste with your eyes, and you see with your ears, then maybe we can trick you into assuming our mycoprotein comes from peyote. -> One thing's for certain: If you like what's on our package, -> you'll love what's in it. Translation: If you liked this essay, you'll eat anything. Okay, enough about the propaganda. What are the ingredients? Hmm, the ingredients are mysteriously missing. Oh, I see what happened -- the ingredients were cleverly printed on the little strip I had to tear off and throw away before I could dump the fungal nuggets into the oven. Let me just fish the fungus's vital statistics out of the trash can: -> We do not use ingredients that were produced using modern -> biotechnology. Translation: The best way to grow fungus is still slave labor and lots of horse poop. -> Ingredients: Mycoprotein*, rehydrated egg white, wheat flour, -> onion, rapeseed oil, wheat starch. Contains 2% or less of -> wheat gluten, salt, rice flour, dextrose, yeast, autolyzed -> yeast extract, whey protein concentrate, tapioca starch, -> pectin, natural flavors from non-meat sources, ascorbic acid, -> garlic powder, pepper, citric acid, onion powder, gum arabic. -> Allergic consumers: This product contains wheat, egg, and -> milk ingredients. -> * Mushroom in origin, 40% of product. Translation: Don't be afraid, less than half of it is what we claimed it was. Most of it's not even real mycoprotein. We make our products from fungus extender. So, how did the fake chicken-style-flavor-like nuggets taste? Much like all the other meatless chicken nuggets on the market. In other words, they tasted like breading. These nuggets had lots of black pepper in the breading -- the "Quorn" filling by itself has what could be a faint mushroom or egg flavor, or possibly it was my imagination as the flavor was about as strong as a wet paper towel. The texture was softer and moister than the soy-based fake chicken nuggets I've encountered. Of course, keep in mind that these nuggets are not truly vegan, as they contain plenty of egg white (second ingredient on the list) and some whey -- the brands that are ALL soy are truly awful, dry, chewy things. Quorn tastes better than the truly vegan meat substitutes, but then again, so do lots of other things I wouldn't bother eating. To cleanse my palate, I ate some Slim Jims during the mildew nugget feast. The Slim Jims had a more meat-like texture, possibly because they almost qualify as a kind of meat (Slim Jims are made from cow faces and pureed chickens.) Incidentally, I did some research, and found that the "unassuming" fungus from which mycoprotein is made is from the species Fusarium graminearum. It's a microscopic fungus which lives in dirt. One botanical Web site describes it nicely: => Fusarium is characterized by the production of slimy, hyaline, => septate, canoe-shaped conidia (known as macroconidia) that in most => species are produced in fruiting-structures called sporodochia. They look like sickle cells, only slimy. And hyaline. I don't know what hyaline is, but from the context I will assume it can't mean "not slimy". Another site warns me of the dangers of the 1500 known Fusarium species: -> Despite intensive research, efforts to control Fusarium fungal -> infections and prevent or eliminate the presence of its mycotoxins -> in foods have not met with a great deal of success. Fusaria cause -> diseases, such as ear rot in corn and head blight and scab in wheat, -> that affect growth and yield of crops and were estimated to cause a -> loss of a billion dollars to wheat farmers in the USA in 1993. -> In addition, toxins produced by these fungi can be present, particularly -> in grains and grain products, in human foods and animal feeds. EEEEEEEEEEEEK! If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check the expiration date on my bottle of Ipecac. -- K. Unless Ipecac is also made from slime molds, in which case I'll scream. On second thought, I'll just eat some more Slim Jims. Mmm, cow head in stick form. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Putting the "fun" back in "slime mold". Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 19:26:04 -0500 Paddy Smith (pjsmith40@hotmail.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Incidentally, I did some research, and found that the "unassuming" > > fungus from which mycoprotein is made is from the species > > Fusarium graminearum. It's a microscopic fungus which lives in > > dirt. One botanical Web site describes it nicely: > > Ah, but you didn't find out that slime mold is NOT A FUNGUS? For shame. See, when I typed "slime mold", it involved typing "m-o-l-d" (except for the hyphens), so I think you can assume I was not trying to be strictly taxological when I referred to the slimy fungus used in those "chicken-style nuggets" as being slime mold-ish. If you had eaten the things you'd know why I was implying that they were closer to slime mold than they are to chicken. > But apart from the grievous taxonomical errors, this post made me several > times happier than if I was eating a bowl of mycoprotein and egg white. But > then, in Europe we're picky picky picky about food, and usually only eat odd > fungus when it turns the cheese blue. I wouldn't. > > Another site warns me of the dangers of the 1500 known Fusarium species: > > > > -> Despite intensive research, efforts to control Fusarium fungal > > -> infections and prevent or eliminate the presence of its mycotoxins > > -> in foods have not met with a great deal of success. > > Apparently (teh webnet says) 'ergot alkaloids' count as a mycotoxin. When > they start making Quorn from ergot, it will presumably be marketed to kids > by Cap'n Crunch and Crayola. "New! Saint Anthony's Fire Flakes! Catch the dancing mania! Can these witches tell the difference between Quorn and ergot in this Salem Taste Trial?" So how did pornography come to be named after a corn disease? Or is it the other way around? Is pornography made from some sort of corn extract? -- K. From a Web page: => Corn smut is an extremely common disease of sweet, => pop, and dent corn in Ohio and throughout the world. => It is usually not economically important, although => in some years yield losses in sweet corn may be as => high as 20%. In Mexico, immature smut galls are => consumed as an edible delicacy known as cuitlacoche, => and sweet corn smut galls have become a high value => crop for some growers in the NE United States who => sell them to Mexican restaurants. From this we learn that not only do Mexicans prefer their corn to have diseases, but that in addition to pop corn there is such a thing as dent corn. Does it crumple up when you cook it? And from a document titled "Uses of Fungi by Native Americans": -> Corn smut -> -> Several tribes gathered smuts as they appeared -> on corn plants and boiled them as a food. -> -> The Hopis enjoyed this food too, but they held -> that smut found on a man's corn is considered a -> sign that he has defecated in his field. But was that good or bad, given that they liked the taste of smut? I'll leave you with this charming song about the dancing mania (probably caused by ergot) in 1625: => Amidst our people here is come => The madness of the dance. => In every town there now are some => Who fall upon a trance. => It drives them ever night and day, => They scarcely stop for breath, => Till some have dropped along the way => And some are met by death. They just don't write songs like that any more. At least, not since "Oh, Those Golden Grahams!" ////////// END RE-RUNS /////////////////////////////////////////////////// For those of you who want to live in a huge mass of Quorn, there's a British town named Quorn, which is short for Quorndon, in Leicestershire. It pre-dates the invention of scum-based food nuggets, but... if you check their Web site, you'll find that the town has published a cookbook calling for the use of Quorn in every recipe. Apparently because their town's name contained "Quorn" they decided they must eat this slime all day, every day. Too bad they didn't live in White-Castle-On-Pez. As the town of Quorn says: -> Quorn(TM) is a food made by continuous fermentation of the fungus, -> Fusarium gramineurum. The fungus is grown in a large fermentation tower -> to which oxygen, nitrogen, glucose, minerals, and vitamins are continually -> added. After harvesting, the fungus is heat treated to reduce its RNA -> content to World Health Organisation recommended levels before being -> filtered and drained. The resulting sheet of fungal mycelia is mixed -> with egg albumen which acts a binder. And who wouldn't take the advice of a British town which publishes a magazine full of freaky hippie vegetarian recipes which call for the use of corporate-produced artificial myco-mush in place of anything remotely normal? Not to mention that this Quorndon town's Web site is covered with scary rounded seventies biform letters... EEK! IN BIFORM CITY, THEY EAT NOTHING BUT SOYLENT SLIME!!! After the food wars, the only food will be mildew... And you will mildew... or mil-DIE! You can read the futuristic dystopian recipes for yourself here: http://www.quorndon-mag.org.uk/archive/_recipies/ (Yes, it's spelled "recipies", although I wouldn't exactly call any of their recipies pies, and slime mold pies will never displace cream pies in the faces of the clowns of the world.) To save you the trouble of looking at their font, that page is full of reCIPIeS - ue6etarIan So if you're looking for a you-ee-six-etarian rec-eye-pie, look no further than the town so desperate for friends that they decided to dedicate their entire existence to loving a slime mold while pretending they were living in the world of a Seventies preachy dystopian sci-fi film. Today's fun activities in the town of Quorn: 12:00 Watch "Rollerball" 1:45 Eat slime 2:00 Watch "Logan's Run" 3:45 Eat slime 4:00 Watch "Silent Running" 5:45 Eat slime 6:00 Watch "Soylent Green" 7:45 Eat slime 8:00 Watch "Z.P.G." 9:45 Eat slime 10:00 Watch "Zardoz" 11:45 Eat slime 12:00 Watch "Quintet" 1:45 Die of boredom If I were the manufacturer of Quorn, I'd pay the loser town to change its name. -- K. Still, at least it's not named "Batchelorsprocessedpeas". ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Giganerd Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 22:37:24 GMT Brian 'Jarai' Chase (bdc@world.std.com) wrote: > > Lleah (leahverre@attbi.com) wrote: > > > > Also, there's this guy at work who got REALLY FREAKIN ANGRY at me once > > for making fun of the muppetty goodness in Return of the Jedi. > > I had this happen to me with a coworker over a discussion of Phantom > Menace. He asked me what I thought of the film, and I gave him my honest > opinion--which was that the film had decent effects, but that the story > sucked, and overall it only came off as a mediocre sort of production. > And then I closed by stating: "And that Jar-Jar Binks character really > ruined the film for me. He was obnoxious." > > At this final point, my coworker became visibly angered. He glared at me, > and nearly yelled in reply. "No dude--you know who is obnoxious? You're > fucking obnoxious!" And he wasn't even trying to be funny; he was dead > serious. So, I was very much taken aback, as he was generally a very > amiable fellow, if not a little opinionated at times. My comments against > the film had managed to violate him deeply, and for some reason, > specifically with my criticism of Jar-Jar, he took great offense. That's only because you were insulting Jar Jar behind his back! If he was there to defend himself it would have been okay for you to hate him. I'm going to send Jar Jar over so you can abuse him in person and then everyone will be happy. I have never provoked a murderous rage by disliking Jar-Jar (and wow, do I dislike Jar Jar!) However, I do have the following story of elevator rage I forgot to post last month: I was on my way from my apartment to a party by way of the local video rental store, so I could rent "Baby Geniuses" so we could spend some quality time not watching it at Tom Kramer's party. I had gotten as far as the parking lot, then worried I might not have turned off the alarm clock I'd set as a reminder, went back, looked at the clock which had already been turned off, then got back in the elevator. When I boarded the "down" elevator, there was already a woman inside, with a cute little girl, in the three-to-five age bracket. She seemed a little excited, as kids of that age usually are, because she was bouncing up and down with a sort of happy look on her face. That changed the moment I got in. As the elevator door closed behind me, she switched to full tantrum mode. You know the one -- stomping with alternate feet while fake-crying, which involves shouting "WAAH! WAAH! WAAH!" in a manner that wouldn't fool any grownup into thinking it was actually a cry of pain or sadness and not just a poor attempt at manipulation. The girl wouldn't tell her mother what she wanted, although she did point to the elevator door when I got on. She became more and more fake-hysterical as we got to the lobby. I followed them as her mother dragged her to the parking lot. Getting up the small flight of steps leading up to the parking deck was interesting -- apparently the little girl couldn't fake-cry and climb stairs at the same time: "WAAH! (step) WAAH! (step) WAAH! (step)" I have no idea why she was throwing such a histrionic tantrum, except that it was obviously my fault. Maybe she knew I don't like Jar Jar. -- K. P.S. There is no hyphen in "Jar Jar", because it would make his name less repetitious. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: If USENET existed in the 60's... Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 23:11:51 GMT Paula (mmmtoblerone@earthlink.net) wrote: > > Chris McGonnell (smeagol@key-net.net) wrote: > > > > "Pugg" (pugg71everyzig@hotmail.com) wrote: > > > > > > [...] > > > Army schools back then were (and probably are still today) almost > > > always understaffed; to the extent that parents were sometimes asked > > > to volunteer their time to help with filing and paperwork, and to > > > maintain order in general. This led to lots of hilarious incidents > > > involving students, teachers, and the paperwork that was supposed to > > > tell one who the other was. Specifically, my first grade teacher > > > insisted -- for the first week or so of school -- that my name was > > > Philip. My mother still has the paper on which the teacher forced me > > > to write "Philip" twenty-five times just to show me who was the boss > > > of whom. Even after my parents visited the school to explain that I > > > did, in fact, know my own name, the teacher always seemed a bit > > > suspicious of me. > > > > My first day in grade school the teacher kept calling for a "Christopher" > > McGonnell, which was how I discovered I had five more letters in my first > > name. Teachers were suspicious of me for 18 years, especially my parents. > > They were right. > > My brother was one of two Chris's's's's in his first grade class. At > that point, he had to start writing his full first name since they both > had the same last initial but one was a Christian while one was a "Fill in the blank, Charles Nelson Reilly!" (bwamp bwamp bwa-da-da-da-da-dat-dat, bwamp bwamp bwa-da-da-da-da-dat-dat, doot-doot-doodle-doot!) "I said 'brat'." "Okay, audience, you may boo that answer..." "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" (A tear slowly slides down Mr. Nelson Reilly's cheek as he realizes that even the "Match Game '75" studio audience considers themselves superior to him. He takes his Bic Banana pen and goes home, goes into the closet, closes the door, and hangs himself with his ascot tie.) "Ladies and gentlemen, tonight's story did not actually happen. Join me, Truman Bradley, again next week as we bring you another exciting adventure from the worlds of fiction... and science... and game shows from the distant future world of 1975. Good evening." (Truman Bradley begins reading the August 1955 issue of "Scientific American". Cut to a revolving salad bowl accompanied by a trumpet fanfare. Fade to Bromo-Seltzer commercial. Cut to John Cameron Swayze wearing a diaper while he sits in a swimming pool.) "Hello, I'm John Cameron Swayze, here to prove something about these diapers. And if you buy whatever that is, then you'll buy anything. Now back to our Television Playhouse Of The Air dramatic production of 'Chris, The Secret Christian'." > Christopher. My mom was horribly embarrassed when she found out that he > could not spell his own name. She made fun of him for being ChristAIn > until he took the PSAT's and started getting letters from various > colleges addressed to Christia, which was even more fun to make fun of. > Apparently, they didn't have all that many boxes for letters of your > name back in the olden days. It is amazing he has grown up to be a > pretty cool guy after all he went through in formative years. However, > he refuses to go by anything other than Chris. After hearing that anguished tale of woe, I refuse to let anyone call me "Chris", "Christian", OR "Christopher". Or "Charles Nelson Reilly". -- K. Was it John Cameron Swayze who was in that commercial, or was it some other famous and dignified and respected broadcaster sitting in the pool in a diaper? (My memories of live TV from the 1950s are somewhat hazy.) ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: J-Pop brush with fame Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 04:15:25 GMT [I wrote this last month, but I forgot to post it, so please pretend we're still talking about the horrors of "Twisted Whiskers" greeting cards.] Brian 'Jarai' Chase (bdc@world.std.com) wrote: > > In other news, as I walked home this evening, I saw a woman running down > her driveway; well, it was more like she was waddling, but she was doing > it very quickly. The woman was chasing after a cat while frantically > chanting, "Gimme kisses! Gimme kisses!" Were the cat's eyes bigger than all its other body parts combined? If so, it would add whatever variety of pathos it is when stuff like that happens. You know, Special Pathos. -- K. What would be better would be if the cat turned around and said something so brilliant, so devastatingly witty, that it would be in this space if only this weren't here. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: whats with kids yelling Noooooo on tv Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 04:15:32 GMT Eli M. Balin (elibalin@panix.com) wrote: > > Conmidhe (conmidhe@geek.com) wrote: > > > > Seems like for the last week or so every other commercial on my TV > > features a kid yelling "NOOOoooooooooooOOO!" > > > > A voice says "its time to go back to school" and then a kid yells > > "NOOOooooooooOO! > > > > A voice says "now with less sugar" and a kid yells "NOOOooooooooOOO! > > Please include spoiler space before describing the first five minutes of > "Battlefield Earth." Thank You. I think you have confused "Battlefield Earth" and "Baby Geniuses". I realize that's easy, especially when you factor in the existence of "2001: A Space Travesty" and "The Master Of Disguise" (now officially computed to be the worst-reviewed movie of all time at RottenTomatoes.com) but please try to keep your bad movies straight. "Baby Geniuses" is the one where Dom DeLuise shouts "NOOOoooooooooooooOOO!" while midgets dressed as toddlers keep whacking him with a pipe wrench where his steering wheel would be if he were dressed like a pirate and not just Dom DeLuise. "Battlefield Earth" is the one that has all the fake Klingons screaming "NOOOooooooooooOOO!" when Johnnie "Good-Boy" Tyler beams a match onto their planet which has an atmosphere entirely composed of gasoline vapor. Also, do not confuse Johnnie "Good-Boy" Tyler with Tyler Durden from "Fight Club" or you'll get a movie called "Fight Club Earth" where he blows up lots of Starbucks that just happen to be filled with gasoline, which would be an improvement on "Battlefield Earth" but I liked "Fight Club" so don't mess with it or I'll pipe-wrench you right in the family jewels while yelling "I AM JACK'S STEERING WHEEL!" Okay, I may have wandered from the topic at hand, which is commercials where children express horror, revulsion, or agony. Today I saw one which reached a new level of disgustingness in its child endangerment: A basset hound is hanging its head out the car window. And it seems to be rabid, because foamy, goopy mucus is spurting from its mouth. A big glob of it breaks off and blows backwards into the rear window directly at the face of a horrified toddler, but fortunately he's holding a travel pack of Kleenex in front of his face. The messages I get from this commercial: (1) Tissues that can't stand up to a sneeze can somehow protect you against buckets of rabies. (2) You should use the whole pack of Kleenex as a unit. Buy more Kleenex. (3) For safety reasons, never let your toddler sit in the front. Always put the toddler in the back, and put the rabid dog in the front. (4) The Kleenex company thinks flying dog mucus is entertaining. While "Flying Dog Mucus" would be a great name for an alternative rock band, I still won't buy Kleenex brand tissues, unless the rock band is really good. -- K. Maybe this is a buildup to the introduction of new Kleenex For Dogs. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: whats with kids yelling Noooooo on tv Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 04:50:01 GMT Three more odd commercials (all aimed at kids) that I just saw, aired back-to-back: (1) Two boys in the back seat of a minivan are fighting. They keep punching each other and it always makes the "POW!" noise that punches in old Shaw Brothers films make. Then Mom reaches back and gives them each a piece of new extra-stringy string cheese (it's some kind of string cheese that can be peeled into smaller strings.) They stop fighting just long enough to eat the stupid cheese. Moral: Beat up your brother and Mommy will reward you with a snack! And, for all you mothers out there, if you don't want your kids to kill each other, you must feed them string cheese twenty-four hours a day! (2) A boy is in his kitchen, when his favorite heavy-metal rock band, The Dirty Mops, knocks on his door and offers to let him be their new lead singer, but he can't because he has a dish of instant macaroni and cheese in the microwave. No, this doesn't disqualify him for being a dork, it just that we're supposed to buy the idea that he would turn down his dream of being a rock & roll star for one bowl of pre-cooked macaroni in rehydrated microwaved powdered cheese. And you can tell a bunch of middle-aged executives in a boardroom came up with this commercial because the heavy-metal rock band is a lame stereotype of an imitation of parodies of imitations of twenty-year- out-of-date images of rock bands. "The Dirty Mops" (yes, really) are basically a clone of "Spinal Tap", only without the creativity or edge or freshness. And they're named "The Dirty Mops"! I guess that's because those kids these days are wearing their hair long. The people who made this commercial are stuck in 1983. (3) Two boys are in a forest talking to the camera. The kids say "It was amazing! And covered in thick, dark stuff!" The camerman yells "Look! That's it! That's it!" as Bigfoot walks past in the background. "No," say the kids, "this had chips." This is because they're describing a fudge-covered chocolate-chip cookie. Apparently these cookies are hairy and smell really bad because the commercial's message is that it's hard to tell these cookies from Bigfoot, except that one has chips, and nobody in this weird dimension knows how to say the word "cookies" when talking about cookies. Except for the way it doesn't make sense as comedy or as a sales pitch, it's a parody of those "In Search Of Bigfoot" documentaries that kids are always watching these days, if they have access to a time machine that can go to the 1970s. Even the guys who are stuck in 1983 think the people who made this commercial are behind the times. What's the point of a commercial aimed at eight-year-olds that parodies something that was popular long before they were born? Are they just hoping that the current generation will grow up thinking that all of pop culture was invented by the snack-food cartels? And why are there never any girls in commercials for junk food for kids? Do girls only like green vegetables? And even if they do, why aren't there lots of commercials where girls say "Wow, Mom! Brussels sprouts are RADICAL!"? -- K. And why do the kids just assume Bigfoot doesn't have chips? Any eight-year-old who remembers the Bigfoot era knows that Lee Majors exposed the secret that Bigfoot was bionic! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: the land of durians Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 09:06:21 GMT Jonathan Benney (jdb@student.unimelb.edu.au) wrote: > > Claudine Chionh (claudine+usenet@fastmail.fm) wrote: > > > > Yeah, I'm back again. > > > > I spent a couple of weeks in Singapore, where I lived in a previous life. > > One of my memories from early childhood was the vision of my own blood > > pouring out after being viciously attacked by a wayward durian. I've done > > my best to avoid the monsters since then but Singapore was full of them! > > In two weeks I'm moving to yet another durian-based economy (Taiwan) for > a year. I walked past a bunch of durians today, and could have even touched them if I had really wanted to, but you don't hear me complaining about them, because I had already seen a more horrifying durian product a few minutes earlier at the other end of the Super 88. Packages of Oreo-like round sandwich cookies -- pairs of chocolate wafers with bright yellow durian flavored frosting in between, and a smiley face was punched out of each cookie so you could see the yellow eyes and mouth on the brownish-black face. Except, for some reason, there was a swoosh embossed on the forehead to give the smiley a bad case of Hitler hair. HITLER DURIAN SMILEY HAIR. Anyway, if anyone ever loses an argument with you and yells, "You're worse than Hitler!" yell back "Oh yeah, well at least I don't have HITLER DURIAN SMILEY HAIR!" I actually drew a smiley with subliminal Hitler hair while revamping a Web site's logo last week, but it was entirely appropriate in that context -- and more subtle and not durian-flavored. But had I seen these cookies last week, I would have thought twice about doing that logo, because it might accidentally remind people of durians. Another oddity I saw at the Super 88 today were some very nicely-packaged noodle soup kits with perplexing instructions. These were a Taiwanese product similar to the little Japanese blocks of ramen noodles with a bouillon packet, except that these weren't neatly woven into bricks of maximum packing efficiency, each mile-long noodle was just loosely wadded up into a big clear plastic box which was 1% giant noodle tangle and 99% air. (A serving is about the size of a toaster before cooking, presumably it fits in a bowl once it goes limp.) The directions were in Chinese, except for one word of English, and a clock, above each of the steps: 12:00 12:01 BOIL MINGLE Does that mean I have to cook them for twelve minutes and stir for twelve more? Or do they mean to cook for twelve hours? Or am I supposed to cook them for one minute, but I'm only permitted to do so at lunchtime? Or does cooking the noodles cause a Time Bounce that makes Martin Landau's body explode three times? (Am I the only one who saw that TV-movie?) Also, the Super 88 still has their "GRAND OPENING" banner up in the back of the market, because they've only been open three years, as of next month. -- K. I bought more of the passionfruit juice with the fake Snapple logo. The same two letters were in the wrong font on every one of the bottle caps. I was hoping the typography would have been fixed by now, I complained about it a whole day ago! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: the land of durians Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 10:50:49 GMT Jonathan Benney (jdb@student.unimelb.edu.au) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I walked past a bunch of durians today [...] HITLER DURIAN SMILEY HAIR. > > After reading your paragraph about four times I finally worked out what > you were talking about. An accomplishment! For me, that is. I can now go to bed satisfied that even if I've only made one person confused, it was worth it. I WIN! For those who still need explanations, here is a word-by-word breakdown: Hitler was a bad man. Durians are a bad fruit. Smileys are a complex emotional state represented by two dots and an arc. Hair is what smileys don't have. > [...] > > On the other hand, the Chinese fake Pringles came in three great > flavours: > > * mutton > * black pepper > * tomato Wow! I wish the Super 88 had those. All three of them sound a zillion times better than the fake flavors of real Pringles, which include: fake cheez, faker cheez, fake cheez with dots on it, and genuine photo-developing chemicals. I think I've seen genuine Pringles in funny flavors for Chinese-speaking audiences, too. At least, I've seen pictures on the Web. The Super 88 only sells American Pringles (on the special "Domestic Foods" aisle where nobody goes.) They have Keebler Pacific's chicken-flavored saltine crackers (which I love) and other imported versions of American products, but not Pringles. Waah! Also, I can't find the Web site for the Chinese-language version of Pringles any more, because now any Web search for "Pringles" just turns up lots of pages on how to steal wireless Internet access by shooting microwaves at your neighbors from a potato-chip can. Oh, I found a page. Pringles in Asia come in normal flavors plus "Wild Consomme", "Mild Salt", "Crispy Curry" and... "Funky Soy Sauce". Would funky soy sauce be the kind that's been fermented a second time? As I said when Heinz brought out "Funky Fries" (in the United States), people should never name a food product "funky" anything without first looking up what it means. (It means the same as "stanky".) > At the Taiwanese "consulate" there was a nice magazine about Taiwanese > industrial and graphic design which had some award-winning ice-cream > cone wrappers, but the photos weren't big enough for me to read the > wacky fine print. Taiwanese products are starting to develop really slick-looking packages. While American packages are still obsessed with just printing glamour photos of meals you could build around the food inside, Japanese and Taiwanese packages tend to be abstract works of art, with many colors, gradients, translucency, and really interesting composition. (To say nothing of the Japanese soda bottles which are also super-brainy logic puzzles -- can you defuse the captive marble without getting geysered?) Mainland Chinese products, on the other hand, still look like you'd expect things designed by Communists to look. Wrinkly, cloudy cellophane bags with most of the name of the product badly printed in one color, in no particular font. Japan is clearly inspiring Taiwan to try harder, and currently some Taiwanese products still look as junky as the Red Chinese ones, but many of them now look as beautiful as the Japanese ones. The Taiwanese drink with the fake Snapple logo would be close to the lowest end of the spectrum, and the Taiwanese noodles in the toaster-size box would be right up there with the best Japanese products. But American food products are consistently mediocre-looking. Sure, the color printing is usually good -- the photos of food don't have any purple meat, unlike many Asian canned foods -- but the graphic design is always very plain, unambitious, and derivative. On the other hand, at least American products are never unintentionally frightening-looking, unlike one of the many Japanese candy products with Hello Kitty on the package -- I'm thinking of the hard candy where the silvered mylar pouch is cut in the shape of a giant Hello Kitty, who is crushing the Earth in her lap. I have no idea why Monster Kitty is supposed to make me want to buy the candy. If my home planet is about to be destroyed by a kitten, candy's the least of my worries. -- K. I know one Japanese candy that has eight pieces inside a perfectly heptagonal box. The one in the center is on a little pedestal to make it more special. The Japanese designers are brilliant. What American would even try putting something into a heptagon? Nobody, except Buckminster Fuller, and he was insane! And the Japanese have gone way beyond Bucky Fuller with their candy-design skills! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: the land of durians Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 01:27:21 GMT "Dag Right-square-bracket-gren" (d@c3.cx) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I know one Japanese candy that has eight pieces inside a > > perfectly heptagonal box. The one in the center is on a > > little pedestal to make it more special. The Japanese designers > > are brilliant. What American would even try putting something > > into a heptagon? > > Here, Earl Grey Tea had this big marketing campaign where they tried to > promot their new "pyramid" team bags - that means "vaguely tetrahedral yet > still mostly formless" to the rest of us - what they'd done, apparently, > was to cut the bottom of the tea bag open and glued it back together after > squashing the two corners together. No, I won't draw a diagram. > > ANYWAY. > > They were giving out FREE SAMPLES of the new geometrically exciting tea > bags at various public places, and the free sample bags where packaged in > REAL cardboard tetrahedrons! And you could take as many as you wanted - we > have a big icosahedron constructed from 20 of the tetrahedrons at the > physics department. > > But then, when I saw the NEW GEOMETRIC TEA BAGS at the supermarket, they > were packaged in boring old rectangular parallelepipeds. And their > brilliant new marketing scheme failed RIGHT THERE. > > Also, back in the 80s, there was a soft drink in Finland that was sold in > tetrahedral packaging. And it was the COOLEST THING EVER. But then, for > some reason, they changed their packaging to a rectangular parallelepiped > too, just like their competitors. And now, if you ask for one of the > brands, you're just as likely to get the other one, and you won't even > notice. > > Thus, tetrahedrons == good marketing. In the United States, back in the 1970s, the original Tetra Pak containers from Europe (the ones that were sort of tetrahedral, not rectangular) appeared briefly as packaging for frozen orange juice in school cafeterias ("Maybe we can serve it without thawing it first if it's shaped funny!") but tetrahedral containers did not achieve the success they had in Europe, particularly the parts of Europe that like geometry, like Holland and Finland and Sweden and Denmark (also known as "LegoLand".) Maybe it's because in the same part of the 1970s, we all saw the movie "Demon Seed", in which Julie Christie is raped by her home computer (Robert Vaughn) and gives birth to a Satanic robot baby (Robert Vaughn) but not before a floating string of cardboard tetrahedra strangles Gerrit Graham (who wrote one of the Grateful Dead's songs.) The floating tetrahedra are listed as "Tetra-Links" in the closing credits (yes, they get an on-screen credit, and they did give one of the best performances in the movie.) If this movie was widely seen in the United States but not exported to the more serious countries in Northern Europe, then this could explain why Danish people like tetrahedra and Americans were afraid to buy Tetra Pak orange juice because Jerry Garcia might die. Getting back to the topic of Americans not being insane enough to put things in regular heptagons... You may recall that, several years ago, I described how the Prudential Star Market had the worst "STOP" sign in the United States. They started with a normal octagon, but then they turned it to the wrong orientation, and they tried to make it properly flat on top by shaving off one of the corners resulting in an irregular nonagon (and furthermore, the lettering was way too small, off-center, and in a "fun & friendly" font instead of a "STOP" font, and it was magenta instead of red.) That irregular nonagon was about as close as I had ever come to finding a regular heptagon in the United States. Well, last night I did stumble across a regular heptagon. And it was also trying to be a "STOP" sign. It was on the cover of a porno video titled "STOP MY ASS IS ON FIRE 3". Stop laughing! I'm sure it's a perfectly serious motion picture drama! I was just checking to see what was new in the world of filth and depravity, solely so I could make fun of the graphic design on the boxes, and I came across a display rack with the first three chapters of the epic saga of "STOP MY ASS IS ON FIRE". The first had the word "STOP" printed on a red octagon. Okay. The second had the word "STOP" printed on a blurry red octagon. Uh... Okay, someone found the "regular polygon" tool in their drawing program, and then between the two videos they found the "blend" tool and thought the red octagon would look really cool if it was blended into a larger white octagon. The result was a "STOP" sign that looked as if it was meant to be placed in the middle of the wormhole from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". The third "STOP MY ASS IS ON FIRE" video had the word "STOP" on a yellow heptagon inside a red heptagon. Would you trust porn made by people who don't even know how many sides a "STOP" sign has or what color it is? Just to make it worse, the word "STOP" was in a plain-yet-inappropriate font (Verdana Bold) and was spaced like this: ST O P Oh, I get it! Now that I've looked at the picture some more, I see that they had to space it out like that because a naked woman's legs were in the way. I didn't notice her at first. And frankly, I'm glad I can get so much entertainment out of the typography, because getting any other kind of entertainment out of "STOP MY ASS IS ON FIRE 3" would be WEIRD. -- K. Also, durian jelly (dodol) is shaped like regular tetrahedra, packed inside a trapezoidal box. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: the land of durians Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 04:17:00 GMT Jonathan Benney (jdb@student.unimelb.edu.au) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > In the United States, back in the 1970s, the original Tetra Pak containers > > from Europe (the ones that were sort of tetrahedral, not rectangular) > > appeared briefly as packaging for frozen orange juice in school cafeterias > > ("Maybe we can serve it without thawing it first if it's shaped funny!") > > but tetrahedral containers did not achieve the success they had in Europe, > > particularly the parts of Europe that like geometry, like Holland and > > Finland and Sweden and Denmark (also known as "LegoLand".) > > Ooh! Sunny Boy! Close, but not quite the same. The ones I'm thinking of were the same shape, except they contained a major American brand of orange juice (Minute Maid or Tropicana or some such) and were actual frozen orange juice, not "water ice treats" as Sunny Boy's Web site describes their product. (Dippin' Dots would be "nitrogen ice treats".) > I'm surprised they still exist. When I started school, "Sunny Boy" was > the orange flavour, and the other flavours were given names like "Glug" > and "Pipp", which meant that they were far less popular. (Hey, > brainwave: maybe they were Danish! *ding ding ding ding ding*) After the Tetra Pak company learned to make rectangles -- the "Tetra Brik Aseptic" container -- in the United States someone started selling drink boxes named "Ssips". I've always wanted to travel back in time to the board meeting where the name "Ssip" was proposed for these watery drinks, to see the people trying not to giggle as the boss approved this name which could only have been intended to be spelled backwards as a hidden Satanic-yet-scatological warning. (This is the one time your life would be easier if you were dyslexic.) > Anyway, to me they always seemed to have various fundamental design > flaws: the shape meant that yes, if you cut off the top edge, you could > squeeze the bottom edge to push the ice upwards, but after a while the > ice block would slip all over the place and be impossible to control. > > The other thing was that the juice was specially treated (or the block > was specially frozen) so that the ice was very hard and never melted. > You could suck at the block for an hour and end up having leeched almost > all the food colouring from the top half of the ice, but with the ice > exactly as frozen as it was when you started. We didn't get that long for lunch. So we usually didn't finish our frozen tetrahedra. Nor did we want to. > I don't think these are necessarily inherent problems with tetrahedra, > but anyway Zooper Doopers were both far cheaper and actually edible. I don't know Zooper Doopers. But no food with a synonym for "good" or "yummy" with an intentional misspelling has ever been good. (Exhibit A: "Hy-Grade" generic hot dogs.) "Zooper" anything would zuck. In my childhood, the competitor to the tetra-O.J. that seemed to be somewhat more popular at school (although still vile) were cylindrical sherbet pops called "Push-Ups", usually with Fred Flintstone printed on the tube so that we could pretend we were eating a geniune caveman-era frozen treat made from a cylinder of ice inside a waxed cardboard tube with a plastic stick for a handle. They came in a fake orange sherbet flavor and I think there may also have been another, which I don't remember because it was even worse. The frozen we could buy were limited to ice cream sandwiches (two stale chocolate-colored crackers with artificial "ice milk" between), the tetrahedral frozen orange juice, and Push-Ups. They had to serve three equally tame desserts because if one was better they'd run out of it. And there had to be three because two choices would have been too few. And since kids will eat any sort of junk (see SpaghettiOs for an example, generic fake SpaghettiOs for a better one) this system works. The "choose among three equally bad things" rule also applies to college food-service entrees and meals at Disneyland, although nowhere else is the quality as bottom-of-the-barrel as for little kids. They get the worst food because their parents' tax dollars pay for it, not the kids. Thus, the citizens who need the most nutrition and the most nutritional guidance get the worst-quality food. The smart kids skipped lunch and saved their money for the bullies. I'm sure elementary schools everywhere in the world have food which is equally bad, but in different, interesting ways. For instance, what was wrong with YOUR pizza? -- K. Ours were soggy rectangular things like kitchen sponges, where the cheese layer floated on top of a grease puddle on top of the red shmear, and would fall off into your lap if you tilted it. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: the land of durians Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 22:21:30 GMT Bryce Utting (butting@ihug.co.nz) wrote: > > some LUNATIC tv-ad-cook tried touting a SUPEREASY FOOD LUVVED BY ALL > ADOLESCENTS some time back in tv-ad-land. pizza base + big fat french > fries [I'm translating for all ya'll merkins] + baked beans + grated > cheese = FUN PIZZA THAT'S ALL THE CRAZE IN EUROPE!!! What would "big fat French fries" be if you hadn't translated it into standard American English? Is there some wacky kiwi term for them like "goobly weta-stickers"? Also, "baked beans" could be practically anything, as they vary a bunch from region to region. In Boston, it means little bitty brown beans in a chocolate-colored molasses sauce (with the one cube of lard with pigskin still on the outside, if you get the canned kind) but in other parts of the country they use different sorts of beans with different sauces. None of that in Boston! They have to have their dainty little beans with their candy-like sugar sauce in their hoity-toity society soirees on Beacon Hill, while eating all the flavors of Pepperidge Farm cookies except the ones named "Beacon Hill" because they don't think those are accurate because they don't have beans or lobster in them. But in any case, pizza, fries, goopy beans, and cheese mixed together sounds like it would be horrible, even if you left the cheese out. It's sort of like "Poutine: The Next Generation", except instead of Canadian it's Kiwi. Canada is like the U.S. except with hockey players on the $3.40 bill, and New Zealand is like Australia except with the wrong color of stars on the flag, but that doesn't explain why you people are stirring your french fries into your beans into your pizza. How did this happen? Is it because we took away your part of the ozone layer and your brains got zapped by solar radiation, or is it just that your whole country is in turmoil because it was devastated by sorcery during the filming of the "Lord Of The Rings" movies? Should we start sending you guys emergency assistance in the form of crates marked "FRENCH FRIES WITHOUT BAKED BEANS" and "BAKED BEANS WITHOUT FRENCH FRIES" and "THIS CRATE IS EMPTY, BUT IT STAYS BETWEEN THE OTHER TWO TO KEEP THEM FROM TOUCHING"? -- K. What was the brand name of this product? And did the kids on TV say it was "SWELL!" with an "E" or an "I"? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: the land of durians Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 23:15:17 GMT Tom Kraemer (tkraemer+ark@world.std.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Also, "baked beans" could be practically anything, as they vary a bunch > > from region to region. In Boston, it means little bitty brown beans > > in a chocolate-colored molasses sauce (with the one cube of lard with > > pigskin still on the outside, if you get the canned kind) > > That's the QUEEN bean!! I was thinking more long the lines of if Animal 57 was broken down into 57 equal-sized cubes. How else do you explain that there's always the layer a pigskin? If you cut up a real pig into cubes, it wouldn't have skin on every cube! Somewhere, the world's cheapest Dr. Frankenstein is buying a case of canned beans at Sam's Club and hoping to stitch all the little cubes together into a human bean. I'm not sure how that movie would end, though. You couldn't do the two normal endings of all bad monster movies (1) it was all a dream, except it was real or (2) the invulnerable monster dissolves in water, because nobody would dream about something that stupid, and I think the cubes of compressed pork-like fat would repel the water, making it flow uphill to get away. I'm currently trying to compile a list of all the bad movies where the aliens or monsters dissolve in some common household liquid. In the category of "salt water", there's "Day Of The Triffids" and "Alien Nation", while for Head & Shoulders brand shampoo there's "Evolution", although I think that was supposed to be a comedy of some sort. The movies in which things dissolve in regular water are too numerous to count, and I wish the people who make them would drown. Either that, or all the movies should be edited together into one big long one which would have a sticker on the box which says "WARNING: THEY DISSOLVE IN WATER" so nobody would feel disappointed by the stupid ending where Mel Gibson dumps water on Margaret Hamilton and William Shatner and several cheap knockoffs of the monster from "Alien" and that suit that George Jetson stole from Sir Alec Guinness. And don't get me started on the monsters that dissolve in flashlight beams. -- K. And in "Tommy", Ann-Margaret almost dissolved in those canned beans, proving that she is not Animal 57. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: the land of durians Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 03:56:03 GMT Dag Right-square-bracket-gren (d@c3.cx) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I'm sure elementary schools everywhere in the world have food which > > is equally bad, but in different, interesting ways. For instance, > > what was wrong with YOUR pizza? > > In elementary school, we got pizza ONCE. There are too possibilities: It turned out so bad that they were never allowed to serve it again. -- or -- It turned out so good that you were never allowed to have it again. It's also possible that you were never intended to have pizza at all, and you only got some by accident when a truck rolled over in New Jersey and the contents had to be diverted to Denmark under the assumption that anything becomes untraceable once Danish children eat it. -- K. Much the same way that nobody can tell which particular egg-shaped pig a specific canned ham was extruded from. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: the land of durians Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 03:55:29 GMT Jacob W. Haller (spog@jwgh.org) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I'm sure elementary schools everywhere in the world have food which > > is equally bad, but in different, interesting ways. For instance, > > what was wrong with YOUR pizza? > > The 'pepperoni' pizza didn't have normal pepperoni, but instead had > little diced-up pepperoni bits about the size of grains of rice. If I were the Playboy Party Jokes gal, I'd say something about that... > (I think regular pepperoni was too expensive, so they had to go with > sweepings from the Hormel factory floor.) What? You think they paid money for genuine Hormel quality, instead of just buying Imitation Artificial Fake No-Brand Generic Faux Meat-Like Solid Matter Bits from the Russian Mafia? Or worse, getting the same from a Generic Syndicate-Style Crime Organization through a barter transaction where they traded away all the textbooks you were supposed to have? > Also, one of the items that appeared on the lunch menu from time to time > was the 'multi-purpose meat patty'. I'm not sure what the different > purposes were though. Along the lines of Beverly Cleary's manifesto "Eat it or wear it!", I think that would be "Throw it or don't throw it!" -- K. Sometime when everyone here assures me that nobody is eating dinner right now I'll explain what I know about school food-service meat chubs. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Which 1 of youz called my Mom ??? Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 02:34:57 GMT Ranjit Bhatnagar (ranjit@this-is-a-spamblocker-thingy.moonmilk.com) wrote: > > Lleah (leahverre@attbi.com) wrote: > > > > He got in a fight and the Other Cat done tore up his bicep muscle. So > > four-hundred bux later, we have a kitty in a cone who we have to feed > > Clavamox to twice a day who is never going outside again. > > Yay! Clamavox! The medicine with the quietest side-effects ever! Speaking of funny trademarks that are almost portmanteau words, the news reported that there was a major power failure in Malta, according to the Maltese power company, Enemalta. "Enemalta" sounds like an Ovaltine that goes the wrong way. Enemalta's Web site (which is titled "SplashScreen" at the top and "Under Construction" at the bottom) was designed by someone who was worried that my computer might not have their favorite fonts, so they did it as a big picture with all the lettering burned right into it, and as a result it always looks just like they designed it to look... E N EMA LT A C OR PORATI ON OFFICI AL WEBS ITE It also says "BEST VIEWED 1024 x 768" although I tried reconfiguring my computer to run at 1024 x 768 and it didn't make the site non-ugly. (See http://www.enemalta.com.mt to try it yourself.) So now I've wasted hundreds of dollars buying a new graphics card and a new monitor and installing them and rebooting twice just to see that their badly-drawn picture isn't my fault like they said it was. They have a strange logo shaped like an orange "e" with a lightning bolt going through it and a faucet sticking out of the left of the "e" and open flame coming out of the tail, and the whole thing's blurry. (There's something wrong if you draw a logo on a computer and still manage to make it come out blurry. Even the poster-size version is blurry: http://www.enemalta.com.mt/pics/enelogo.jpg) Apparently it's supposed to be a picture of lightning setting your water pipes on fire because they accidentally pumped natural gas into them and you can't see clearly because of all the poisonous fumes. -- K. All I know about Malta comes from the movie "Final Justice" with Joe Don Baker, which was not quite as awful as "Amsterdamned" even though it didn't have a cool title. If I were making a lame action movie in Malta, I'd call it "Maltastic" or "Maltarzan" or at least "Malterdamned". ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: marketing strategy Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 05:32:57 GMT Claudine Chionh (claudine+usenet@fastmail.fm) wrote: > > Why were large, bearded pink fairies handing out free Fisherman's Friend > throat lozenges outside Melbourne Central train station this morning? > > (I don't know - I had to catch a tram and didn't stop to chat.) Worst! Punchline! Ever! A Web page (belonging to Kevin Beimers and Aimee Lingman) explained that this is because in Australia, the phrase "off with the fairies" means "crazy", so there are Fisherman's Friend commercials where a guy sucks on the wrong brand of throat lozenge and two burly guys in pink tutus drag him off and the voiceover explains, "Use anything but Fisherman's Friend, and you're off with the fairies." Ah, there's a sophisticated ad campaign. "ATTENTION AUSTRALIA! OUR BRAND IS NOT THE ONE THAT TURNS YOU GAY!" On a related note, Brawny paper towels (which usually have a painting of a supper-rugged Seventies manly man with a bushy mustache and rolled-up red plaid flannel sleeves and a big ax on the wrapper) is now having a contest where YOU can write them a 150-word essay on why I am a ruggedly handsome man of upstanding moral character who should be on the wrapper. "Kibo was not handing out throat lozenges outside Melbourne Central" is a good start to convince them that I am a large, bearded manly man and not a large, bearded pink fairy who gives out candy that tastes bad which is the only reason they pretend it's medicine. Oh, I just discovered (through arduous Web research) that the guy with the big mustache on the Brawny labels became racecar driver Richard Petty for a while, although I don't if this was before or after he stopped waving an ax at us. Otherwise, he's just been a series of Tom Selleck wannabes with big hair and big mustaches (one per person.) At http://www.gp.com/brawnyman you can "Create Your Own Brawny Man" Frankenstein-style, or submit my name to be the Brawny Man competition... Oh, they say they're no longer accepting nominations, dammit. Then why are they still selling towels that tell me I can be the next Brawny Man? YOU SUCK YOU LIAR TOWELS THAT USED TO HAVE A RACECAR DRIVER ON THEM! As far as "Create Your Own Brawny Man" goes, I answered the questions and was told: -> Mr. Fun -> If laughter is the best medicine, consider this guy the doctor. Your -> Brawny Man is always up for a fun time, whether it's a pick-up game, -> karaoke night, or stand-up comedy with himself as the comedian! He loves -> living it up with friends on the town, but is equally as comfortable at -> home playing charades. And as a former president of his college -> fraternity, he sure knows how to throw a great party! ...then they gave me some Fisherman's Friend lozenges. Waah! The Web is trying to make me gay just so it can marry me to this karaoke-loving ex-fraternity president they're trying to ditch. Sorry, girls, he's MY Brawny Man. The Web site said so. Other things I know about Brawny Paper towels: 1.) He used to be a giant in TV commercials where he reached down from above the top of the frame to grab mild-mannered British actor Simon Jones (Arthur Dent in "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy") and KILL HIM. There were also 20-foot-tall inflatable Brawny Men who would be tethered to supermarket roofs. 2.) The Brawny Web site says: "The Brawny man carries what many assume to be an ax. It's actually a 'peavey' - a wooden lever with a metal point and hinged hook near the end, used by lumbermen to handle logs." 3.) The movie "Short Circuit" contained a 30-second commercial for Brawny. Sure, it was a hit movie with all the essential ingredients of comedy: A wacky robot shaped like E.T., an obnoxious ethnic stereotype represented by a guy in brown makeup, and a scene where they watch a paper towel commercial. However, I think Claudine's joke was funnier. -- K. If I can't be the Brawny Man, could I at least audition for the role of Mr. Vermont in a Japanese curry commercial? HELLO CHILDREN TIME TO LIFT WEIGHTS AND MAKE DELICIOUS VERMONT CURRY! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: marketing strategy Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 03:27:32 GMT [re odd Australian ad campaigns] Tim Chmielewski (chuma@dcsi.net.au) wrote: > > Special mention must go to the outside billboard advertising that seems to > get a lot of free publicity whenever it gets put up as the regulations are > different. > > Some notable ones I have seen recently: > > "LEGZ AKIMBO" - Two six metre long legs on a billboard that are meant to be > advertising pantyhose or something. The company spent it's entire > advetising budget on the one billboard (the news stories made up for it.) I would like everyone to know that, when I become a gangster, I will be known as "Legz A. Kibo". Of course, that's subject to change if I get a scar shaped like something interesting. "That's Dickclarkscarface Kibo! You can tell because his forehead has a scar shaped like Dick Clark, right in front of the scar shaped like the set of American Bandstand. And if you don't believe me, look at Kibo's butt! He's got a scar shaped like a certificate of authenticity, proving he's the real Dickclarkscarface Kibo." -- K. "And watch out, he's got a Splurge Gun!" ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: TEST OK Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 05:48:03 GMT Adam James Fitzpatrick (ajfitzpatrick@lurking.org) wrote: > > Chris Costello (chris@FreeBSD.org) wrote: > > > > Every piece of electronics I own has some sort of "TEST OK" or > > "QA APPROVED" sticker on it. Which makes me wonder: > > > > Has anybody ever bought new electronics only to find out the > > device in the box has a "TEST NOT OK", "QA REJECTED", or just > > plain "JUNK" sticker attached to it? > > I once went computer hardware shopping with a few friends. One > bought an Ethernet card in a box which also contained a slip of paper > which said "doesn't work". > > The card was fine, but the floppy drive also bought that day wasn't. Right now, next to the Dumpster brand trash bin behind my apartment building, there's an HP DeskJet printer (like a model 580 or similar) with the phrase "IN WORKING CONDITION" written on it (in two places) in permanent marker. My assumption is that it must be broken, because otherwise why would someone have defaced it with graffiti? I considered bringing it up stairs to see if it worked, but (a) it's probably got crawly bugs living in it because it's touched the ground near the Dumpster, and (b) it's probably broken and because it says "IN WORKING CONDITION" on it in inch-high letters I'd throw it out and then someone else would take it and throw it out and then someone else would throw it out and it would keep going back and forth between the building and the Dumpster until it had been in every apartment once and in fact I have no way of knowing it hasn't already been thrown out several times, and thus it probably has crawly bugs living in it. Plus it's just a DeskJet and I already have a LaserJet, which is better, especially because it'll never have bugs living in it because it's already got leaf and vine bits from a bad-tasting bitter gourd plant in it. -- K. I was at the Dumpster because I had to throw out my trash because my apartment has been invaded by fruit flies, so I had to act fast -- Time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies like my bathroom sink. It must be my mouthwash. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Dear Kibo Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 06:29:58 GMT Warning: Rant ahead. Lots42 (lots42@aol.com) wrote: > > Please understand that the library internet terminals have rules that > apply to you, yes you. Sitting at the fifteen minute one for an hour at > a time, having to go through it rebooting every fifteen minutes is silly. > > Sincerly. > Crazy Library Volunteer Person At the Boston Public Library, I think a lot of people head right to the card-catalog computers ("NO INTERNET ON THIS COMPUTER") which are running a Web browser in "Kiosk mode" (i.e. with all the controls hidden so you can't leave the card catalog site) but usually you can just press Alt-Tab because someone left a real Internet Explorer running behind it, and if there's not already an Internet Explorer you can switch to, select "Print..." then click the "Help" button and then tell it you want the latest "Online Help" from Microsoft's Web site and bingo, Internet Explorer will ask "Where do you want to go today?" I get the feeling that everyone at the Boston Public Library has figured this out except for the librarians and the people who wait in line for hours to use the "public" computers, because if you walk down the long line of card catalog computers and press Alt-Tab on each of them, people have already spawned Internet Explorers on most of them via the "Print..." help system. And it's not like any of this is a big secret -- anyone who sets up computers for a living will know that if you put a computer in the public place, especially if it has a free high-speed Internet connection, people will try certain simple things to use it the way they use it at home, so you need to restrict access to absolutely everything people aren't supposed to have access to instead of just assuming they won't have read a Windows instruction manual. People will press Alt-Tab, they will see if they can get to the "Run..." prompt, they will try to reboot while pressing "F8", they will download and install programs, they will do all sorts of things to get around the restrictions. In the same way that a door that says "DO NOT ENTER" should actually be locked, a computer that says not to misuse it needs to be thoroughly secured so it's very, very hard to misuse. People SHOULD follow the rules when using the library's computers, but also the library should have more "public" computers because when the card catalog computers nobody uses outnumber the few "public" ones everyone wants to use, many people WON'T follow the rules. People like free high-speed Internet access, and of course jerks such as people who want a way to send out spam anonymously aren't going to care about what a sign says. The librarians might also consider asking someone how to remove Internet Explorer from the computers, how to prevent people from re-installing Internet Explorer, or how to configure the firewall not to allow the computers to connect to sites the library doesn't operate (if they have a firewall, they're bozos for not setting it up to block the sorts of access they don't want you to have, and if they don't have a firewall, they're mega-bozos.) A paper sign saying "NO INTERNET ON THIS COMPUTER" is not the same as actually flipping the switch that makes there be no Internet on this computer. Not that I would ever need to use any of their computers, of course, because I almost always have my laptop with me, and Newbury Open.Net (a wireless Internet gateway that advertises that anyone's allowed to use it) is just around the corner. (And there's no way I'd ever do anything like sending mail through a Web browser that's shared with random other people, because you never know if someone's installed a keystroke-logger or packet-sniffer that will snoop on you.) But when I was spending some time in the library lobby last month (waiting to meet friends) of course I glanced at the screens of the unoccupied computers and most of them had a Taskbar tile marked "Internet Explorer: Yahoo" or whatever people had been surfing. I have no idea if the librarians (or security personnel) stroll by every once in a while to keep people from misusing those computers -- of course, the card catalog is a Web browser window that looks more or less like a lot of other sites, and I would assume people could just type Alt-Tab whenever anyone's coming. But like I said, if the library were really concerned about this (and they should be), the easiest solution for them would be to just configure their network so that those computers COULDN'T connect to the rest of the Internet. -- K. The question is, will Don Saklad disappear when the librarians get a clue and switch this off? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Why has no one reported on this? Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 06:49:39 GMT Pugg (pugg71everyzig@hotmail.com) wrote: > > The following is from a report on food trends that appeared at "The > Supermarket Guru's" web site WAY BACK IN APRIL!!! > > -> Consumer's Choice Pork Awards > -> > -> [...] > -> > -> Genuine Pulled Pork Bar-B-Que Slathered with Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Sauce > -> (Dinosaur Bar-B-Que) Dinosaur, huh. That product answered the question, "What should we call this pork that got really old?" > -> [...] > -> > -> Pork Chop on a Stick > -> (Iowa Quality Meats, LTD) > -> This individually packaged pork chop can be grilled, cooked on a > -> stovetop or in the oven. Best of all, chops take only 10-15 minutes > -> to prepare and are easily stored in their resealable bag. One bag > -> of chops serves four to six people. > > This just takes me back to late-80's episodes of "Late Night." > > DAVE: Larry Bud Melman! What're you giving YOUR family for Christmas > this year? > > LBM: Pork Chop on a Stick! Pork Chop on a Stick! Ahh HA HA HA HA HA!! > > PAUL: He is a kooky, nutty guy! I like that they don't know how many people it serves other than "four to six". I would think this would lead to situations in which each of six people would get 83.333% of a pork chop. Or maybe they mean they give you four pork chops but there might be up to two vegetarians in your family. Your homework assignment: pork chop = $x stick = $y pork chop + stick = $x + $y + $z solve for $z > But, the thing that I'm amazed I haven't seen mentioned here yet, the > thing that made me go to the Food Guru's site in the first place was > the following: > > -> Ready-to-Serve Bacon > -> (Oscar Mayer Division, Kraft Foods North America) > -> This crisp bacon is perfect for adding flavor to sandwiches or salads. > -> It can be enjoyed straight from the package or heated in the microwave > -> or on the stovetop. No refrigeration is necessary. Each box contains > -> 14 slices. > > How did pre-cooked, individually wrapped, ready-to-serve bacon escape > the attention of teh ark? Please, PLEASE tell me that there was a > wacky review & taste test that I just somehow missed. The fact that I > saw it for the first time in Hagerstown just last night leads me to > believe that it's been available in real cities for several weeks, at > least. A few years longer than that. I've got easy access to three brands, I've been taking turns buying the different ones (I go through a box or two a week.) Why haven't I mentioned it? Because it's not gross enough to be interesting. Cold, semi-cooked bacon stuck to wax paper is a great delicacy! And it's an elegant finger food suitable for eating in the bathtub! When I travel, I always find a supermarket near the hotel where I can get pre-cooked bacon and ramen noodle cups, so that I can eat in my hotel room while watching TV and not need access to any sort of oven (hotel rooms usually give you a coffeepot which works for boiling water for the ramen noodles.) I find this a lot more relaxing, and tasty, then going to a random McDonalds by myself when I'm travelling. After a long day of walking all over the city taking photos, I hit a supermarket, fill a bag with meat snacks (bacon, pepperoni, sliced turkey, icky Slim Jims, etc.), beverages, potato chips, ramen noodles, and have a nice nutrition-free meal while fiddling with the TV remote trying to see if the signals from the hidden cameras in the hotel's smoke detectors are leaking through on any of the channels. -- K. Microwavable pork rinds are also great, but they don't show up in this part of the country too often, and they require cooking before they turn into bacon. The ready-made pork rinds in bags are okay, but not nearly as good as fresh-nuked ones. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Why has no one reported on this? Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 07:32:31 GMT Shiro Akaishi (akaishi@skizzzzers.org) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Microwavable pork rinds [...] > > GAAAAAAAH! Why have you DONE THIS TO ME!!! > > Now I have a vision of Microsoft Pork Rinds stuck in my brane!!! So what would be the equivalent of the Blue Screen Of Death? Would it be the Purple USDA Inspection Stamp Of Death or just one of the pieces that still has pig hair? And the ones at the bottom of the bag that don't get fully microwaved and remain rock-hard, would those be a fully-packed .CAB file? And why, in "Kermit Learns Windows", did the felt frog explain one of the sections of the "Start" menu as "Accessories are things that make your computer fun!" without explaining which one of the commands would microwave Miss Piggy? Apple's pork rinds would be prettier, and come in several fruity flavors, at least before they decided you were no longer allowed to have different flavors and everything would be unflavored and bleached white, and of course now they glue Mexican stop-light candy to everything, which sort of ruins the translucent white bacon. The best thing about Apple's snacks is that they'd never get stuck in your braces, because they'd be wireless. -- K. They just put those gumdrops in so they could sell books titled "Mac OS X For Gummies". ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Britain's best and brightest. Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 06:59:50 GMT Joe Manfre (manfre@world.std.com) wrote: > > Some of Her Majesty's finest subjects are profiled in this Times bit: > > -> FOUR teenage boys spent 27 hours trapped in a loft, escaping only > -> after realising that all they needed to do was pull the trapdoor > -> rather than push it. > > The whole story's something out of an '80s teen comedy -- they were > trying to use the one kid's house for a big party while his mom was > out of town, and then when all their friends came over for the party, > none of them heard the four geniuses who were "trapped" in the attic > and crying for help. The only part missing is that they didn't have > any scantily clad young maidens up there in the loft with them. '60s version: One would be in a gorilla suit because gorilla suits are automatically funny. '70s version: They'd accidentally light up a bale of marijuana and the smoke would go into the ventilation system and rich old people would get wacky. '90s or '00s version: One would be in a leather bondage hood because leather bondage hoods are automatically funny. Three Stooges version: The four kids (Moe, Larry, Curly, and Zeppo) would say "We've got to finish wallpapering this loft so we'll get paid by being allowed to attend the elegant society party downstairs where the wealthy widow is about to unveil the World's Most Expensive Cream Pie!" -- K. I call dibs on being Peter Sellers or Emil Sitka, depending on the decade. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Scientific Tarot go away stupid Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 07:44:12 GMT Followup-To: alt.sci.physics.:.). In sci.physics, "tj Frazir" (GravityPhysics@webtv.net) wrote (and I quote in full): > > eacher\ no ,,dumbfuck yes . stick the deck in yer but . : ) . Usenet is the refrigerator door of the world, and someone isn't playing with a full set of word magnets. -- K. Poor little smiley! It fell apart! And then two of its four eyes rolled away! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: News of the DUH DUH DUH! Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 01:35:47 GMT If you're tired of hearing about stupid Americans, rejoice! I have stupid news from all the other parts of the world. These are all from this week, except for the one that isn't. And now... Beware of the object! It might be a demonic fireball! Or it might be a flying toaster with burning bread inside! All we know is that this thing is an object! From the Kathmandu Post via www.nepalnews.com.np: -> Unidentified object scare continues -> -> Post Report -> -> NEPALGUNJ, Aug 10:The life in the Nepal-India border at Belaspur -> and Nepalgunj went panicky for the second consecutive day on -> Saturday when an unidentified object again attempted to kill a -> woman. -> -> The same mysterious object had killed a 40-year-old woman in the -> neighbouring Indian village a few days ago. Sahim Khan, 55, of -> Belaspur-16 was sleeping peacefully on the terrace of her house -> when the fireball-like object flew towards her ready to attack -> her, say locals. -> -> "When we rushed towards Khan's house after seeing the object, it -> disappeared instantly," they said. The locals then brought Khan -> from the terrace and kept her safely inside the house. The locals -> said they saw the same object the previous day over Nepalgunj -> Municipality and Guleria area. -> -> Even the object continues to attack villagers for the last couple -> of days and more and more people are attacked, authorities from -> both Nepal and India have failed to identify the object, which is -> said to be active at night and disappears instantly after the -> attack. -> -> The local eyewitnesses said it resembles a fire-flame and attacks -> those sleeping outside their houses on rooftops and terraces. -> Deputy Superintendent of Police, Gokarna Bahadur Pal of Banke -> admitted that he saw the red object but said he could not -> identify it. -> -> India's Lucknow-based newspapers even published reports that said -> three people have been killed and more than a dozen wounded -> across the border after the mysterious object was detected in the -> region a couple of days ago. What I would expect in a place called "Nepalgunj" would be lots of incidents of people falling into vats of custard, being hit with cream pies, and having buckets of oatmeal poured over their head. Here's an old news item (from www.koreananimals.org) that I failed to notice back in 1997: => Dog Meat Chain Restaurant #1 Opens => Joongan Daily News => April 24, 1997 => => The dog meat franchise restaurant has appeared for the first time => in the world. The China Trading Company, whose director is Noh => Moon Sung has incorporated the first dog meat specialty chain => restaurant. It is called Chunha Daejanggun, and the first branch => opened in the Hyoja-chon, Bundang area. The company is planning => to open second branch in Yongin and third in Songpa-gu, Seoul. => There are plans to open twenty more restaurants in the future. And I'm sure McDonalds is going to run crying to their mommy when they go out of business because they got their butts kicked by Chunha Daejanggun. => This dog meat restaurant differs from older existing dog => meat restaurants in that prices are lower (the price of regular => dog soup is lowered to 4,500 won about US$6) and there will be => wider selection and variety of dog meat dishes such as pan fried => dish, bossam, barbecue, and so on. Does the pan fried dish have much dog in it, or is it just breaded ceramic? => Director Noh says, "I expect there will be a reaction from => animal welfare organizations in Korea and foreign countries but => such protests which assume dog meat to be a disgusting food are => merely based on a different, western cultural standard (from => ours). The company will be opening a branch in downtown Seoul. I => would also like to recommend that this be put in the Guinness => book because this restaurant will be the first in the world." Last, too, it would seem. (Note that most Koreans do not like to eat dogs, and I'm told it's not a long-standing tradition, the practice only became popular because of food shortages after the Korean War.) I'd have to say the idea of an all-dogmeat restaurant sounds like a rather risky business venture and would probably not stay in business very long. Still, if Beadworks (a shop that sells individual beads) can continue to thrive at its locations in Boston and Cambridge, it's possible (or it's a front.) Ananova.com reported a tale of criminal stupidity in France: -> Convict superglues broken glass to his hands for escape bid -> -> A French convict glued broken glass and sharp objects to his -> clothes in an attempt to break out of prison. -> -> The 52-year-old hoped prison guards would be unable to grab him -> and stop him walking out of the gates. -> -> He superglued glass splinters to his hands, razor blades to his -> clothing and scissors to his shoes. -> -> But his attempt to break out of Brest prison failed when six -> guards managed to hold him. -> -> They are still investigating how he managed to get hold of the -> materials. I like the part about how he had scissors on his shoes. I guess that was so that, when escaping, he could climb down some knotted bedsheets while at the same time cutting them down so none of the guards could follow. Wouldn't it have been smarter to just squirt the glue all over the guards and run? Another Ananova.com story concerns the limits of good taste in England, involving one of their favorite traditional pastimes, the bouncy castle: => Titanic bouncy castle criticised by survivor => => A survivor of the Titanic has criticised the use of a bouncy castle => which is a replica of the Titantic at a Liverpool car boot sale. => => Ninety-year-old Millvina Dean, who was a baby when she survived => the April 1912 sinking, said the plaything was "disgusting" and => "distressing". Her father, Bertram, died in the tragedy. => => The Titanic was registered to Liverpool and many of its sailors => were from the Merseyside area. And the ship sank because they jumped up and down until it popped. => The Liverpool Echo reports the US-made inflatable slide features at => a car boot sale in Northway, Lydiate. They cost 10,000 pounds each. => => The castle is advertised on the Cutting Edge Creations website as => coming with an 'optional iceberg challenge' which captures 'all => the excitement of the famed ocean liner's maiden voyage'. I had a salad once with optional iceberg lettuce. Eating it didn't recapture much excitement. It didn't even remind me of ONE grisly death! => The company claims the slide was the number one-selling amusement => ride in the US last year. => => Miss Dean said: "I suppose as long as they make money out of it => they don't care about offending the memory of people who came => through that terrible night." => => The bouncy castle has also been criticised by a Catholic seafarers => welfare organisation in Bootle. Peter Devlin, manager of the => Stella Maris Centre, said: "We must be careful to always remember => the true significance of the Titanic. Hundreds of people lost their => lives - and seafarers continue to be in danger every day." I just hope he doesn't find out about the British bouncy castle industry's other hot new product, shaped like the R-101, filled with a mixture of helium and balls. At least it's safer than the Germans' hydrogen-filled Hindenbounce. => Cutting Edge Creation's International sales director, Robert => Field, said: "When it first came out a few people were critical, => but you're never going to make everyone happy." => => He added: "We're talking history here - the people on the Titanic => are long dead. There's no-one left." But it's still in bad taste if they were killed by kids bouncing up and down on them. This uplifting tale of a successful advertising venture turned up in a Thai newspaper (www.nationmultimedia.com): -> STREET WISE: Spiderman fuels sales -> -> Published on Aug 13, 2002 -> -> A Bangkok couple has spun an unlikely web of success by -> enlisting Hollywood superhero Spiderman - not to catch the city's -> evil-doers, but to deliver cylinder gas around the city. "Hey, honey, look who's here! It's a man in a skintight rubber suit, and he's got gas!" -> Shop owner Saowanee Suthiviriyakul, her husband Narongwit, and -> their deliverymen have all dressed up in slick red-and-blue -> Spiderman outfits in the hope of boosting sluggish cooking-gas -> sales. -> -> And it worked, Saowanee told Agence France-Presse yesterday. -> -> "The number of gas orders is increasing and many people stop in -> front of our shop to see Spiderman," she said, adding that orders -> had jumped from 30 a day to more than 50. -> -> "We got very good feedback," she said. -> -> The couple appears to be cashing in on husband Narongwit's childhood -> obsession with the comic strip favourite, whose blockbuster movie -> has scored big with Bangkok audiences in recent months. -> -> Saowanee admitted she was looking for a gimmick to give a jolt to her -> gas business, which was showing meagre profits due to hefty competition. And her competitors exploit that with this clever commercial showing side-by-side comparisons: "HEFTY, HEFTY, HEFTY! Spidey, Spidey, Spidey! HEFTY, HEFTY, HEFTY!" -> After watching this year's movie, she and her husband sprung -> into action, hiring a local costume shop to make four skin-tight -> Spiderman suits at Bt3,000 each for her motorbike-driving -> deliverymen. Spider-Man is not supposed to ride a motorcycle! He's just supposed to travel through the air feet-first by shooting gluey goop at skyscrapers from his wrists! Putting Spidey on a cycle is RIDICULOUS! And in one of the photos, Spider-Man is on a motorcycle wearing sunglasses but no helmet. Don't you just love superheroes who tote big cans of explosives around while disregarding safety? -> There was no word on whether Marvel Comics, the owner of the -> Spiderman copyright, would hire the Incredible Hulk for -> intellectual property-rights protection. Yeah, but Daredevil could out-lawyer the Hulk any day. Plus, he's blind, so he'd never be grossed out by the Hulk being all green and greasy and wearing the same little pants for years at a time. So I say we should take up a collection to have The Silly Bangkok Gas Company hire Daredevil to fight The Hulk to the death in a court of law on TV. Although they'll probably be gone before you go look at them, these are the photos of Gas Delivery Spider-Man With Action Cycle: http://asia.news.yahoo.com/020812/reuters/i-asia-120003.html http://uk.news.yahoo.com/020812/80/d773h.html And finally, as a light chaser, Reuters Oddly Enough news on news.excite.com had this headline concerning a tragic accident in Sweden: => Man Dies in Freak Pea Drop But he wasn't killed by freak peas, just by thirteen tons of regular lightweight peas. Yet another news story that doesn't live up to its exciting headline... => Aug 14, 8:49 am ET => STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) - A Swedish man died Tuesday when he => was buried alive under a 13-ton pile of peas in a storage silo, => local media reported. => => The man, who was around 30 years old, was working on an => electrical installation on a farm near the town of Mjolby in => southeastern Sweden when the peas were dumped on him. Shouldn't this situation have set off a few alarms in people's heads before it happened? "Yes, we want you to install an electrical outlet at the bottom of this pea silo, so that the peas will have a place to plug in their hair dryers." "Oh, okay! I'll go start working directly under that giant flimsy net holding thirteen tons of green death, right next to that sign that says 'PULL ROPE TO DROP PEAS'." => Rescue workers pulled the man from the silo but were unable to => revive him, a radio station reported. Sadly, Spider-Man was busy giving people gas in Thailand. -- K. Sorry, I couldn't find any stupid news from Antarctica. The closest I could find was this one from Australia, August 16th: -> The South Australian government -> has just declared an official -> end to the Second World War. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: News of the DUH DUH DUH! Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 03:16:35 GMT Lots42 (lots42@aol.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Spider-Man is not supposed to ride a motorcycle! He's just supposed > > to travel through the air feet-first by shooting gluey goop at skyscrapers > > from his wrists! Putting Spidey on a cycle is RIDICULOUS! > > You mean you never saw the Spider-Mobile? > > It had sticky tires so it could drive up the side of buildings. > I swear to god. I wasn't implying I never saw it. I was implying that it shouldn't be. Mike Jittlov told me that Superman also used to have an action-figure motorcycle (in addition to his flying car, the Supermobile.) I guess this is because all the 12" action figures were just G.I. Joe with different heads, and they only ever manufactured this one vehicle to go with the doll, and so they all had different versions of the same motorcycle shaped to fit their identical butts. I know because I have the Evel Knievel and Six Million Dollar Man action figures and they were fully interchangeable, although of Evel's two motorcycles one did have "chopper" styling and I think the Six Million Dollar Man just had the one. Unless I'm confused. Which I might be, because I also remember considering Evel Knievel interesting to watch on TV, which I now know was never true. I probably also liked SpaghettiOs back then. Blecch! Anyhow, the moment you become a superhero or supervillain you need a customized car to match your outfit, and a motorcycle to match (with detachable sidecar if you have a sidekick, it has to detach to remind him that he can be killed at any time because he's not the star of the comic book.) If your main super-ability is that you're really rich, like Batman, you also need a matching boat and helicopter and spaceship that can travel through time. One of my favorite moments on "Doctor Who" is when Jon Pertwee apologizes that his time machine isn't as cool as Batman's: "What did you expect, some sort of flashy space rocket with Batman at the controls?" And as we all know from "Superfriends", the Bat-Spaceship can travel in time at the push of one of the only three buttons on the dashboard. As SeanBaby (of seanbaby.com, of course) pointed out, if he pushed the wrong one, he could teleport himself into deep space twenty years in the past without a space helmet, "which may or may not kill him depending on who's drawing the episode." So I believe you when you say Spider-Man used to drive his sticky bike up the wall. I just fail to see the need for it, especially because why do you need Spider-Man when Superman and Batman exist? Superman has limitless god-like powers, is completely invulnerable, has infinite strength, and can travel at ultimate speeds. Batman can buy anything. Spider-Man, well, he can shoot goo and sells propane and propane accessories. That's only two super-abilities, and even Aquaman has three: He can hold his breath forever, he can talk to fish by making glowing onion rings come out of his forehead, and his hairstyle remains perfectly-styled even after he's been swimming in salt water. And then there's the question of why Spider-Man wears pantyhose over his head. Of course he has to conceal his identity so that people won't kidnap his doddering Aunt May quite so often. But given that he has to wear something over his head, why can't it be a helmet? It would give him greater protection from all sorts of stuff, especially when he's riding on a motorcycle loaded down with giant canisters of propane, and it would make him look a lot fiercer, especially if he hired Alex Toth to glued some horns and assorted flanges to it. Alex Toth is the master of manly flanges! -- K. Stan Lee, on the other hand, likes to put pantyhose over people's heads. This is why I hide from him. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Rinnnnnn! Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 05:52:56 GMT Jeremy Impson (jdimpson@acm.org) wrote: > > Lleah (leahverre@attbi.com) wrote: > > > > It's really apparent that I've been playing too many driving games. > > Every time I see one of those trucks with a ramp on it .. the kind > > that are always parked in the medians of busy streets ... I swear > > I consider, for a nanosecond, gunning the engine and zooming forward > > for a huge jump so that I can catch the invisible bonus item that > > is no doubt floating over the top of it somewhere. > > Last Spring, after playing "Dark Forces II: Jedi Knights" for a week, I > was walking across a parking lot at work, from one building to the next. > The approaching entrance is slightly below street level. Were one to > approach the entrance directly (as one ought), one would go down a shallow > decline, passing through three yellow-painted steel rods (about waist > hight) sunk in the concrete. These rods are collision barriers. > > Rather than approaching the entrance directly, however, I decided to aim > for a wall to the right of the entrance. At street level, one could get > up on the ledge of the wall with merely a step up. By the time you get to > the entrance (like, 4 seconds later), the wall is about 3 feet (37 > Canadian Meters) high. > > Rather than jumping down, my thought was to jump ONTO the closest steel > rod. (These rods aren't very big around. One could barely get both feet > on one, and one would be very precariously balanced.) From there I could > (so I thought) hop from one rod to the next, then jump from the last one > to the entrance doorway. > > It was at that moment that I realized that I had played far too much of my > game. I had selected the wall-and-ro