Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: entry of pr0n gladiators Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 04:58:30 GMT "talysman" (talysman@globalsurrealism.com) wrote: > > ... so I'm checking out today's news at ananova.com when I spot this: > > -> ROME'S GLADIATORS TO BE LICENSED > -> > -> The small legion of sword-swishing actors who pose as gladiators at > -> Rome's Colosseum for tourists will now have to be licensed. > > it's about time! I think the entire international community has been > outraged over unlicensed roman gladiators having complete access to > ALL gladiator privileges! some of them are even getting into secret > gladiator clubs! Is there a grandfather clause for those of us who've already gotten in? Incidentally, swords are NOT for the swishing. They're for other things, as indicated by the warning printed on the cardboard rectangle my gladiator sword was strapped to: "WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD." (Thankfully, swords present no other dangers. This is why armies don't fight with them any more, swords stopped working once enemy soldiers learned to keep their mouths closed.) > -> Starting at the end of the year, aspiring gladiators will have to pass > -> an exam which includes an English proficiency test, said Leslie > -> Capone, a city official. > -> > -> If they pass, they will be given an official centurion license badge. > > they will also be issued their regulation seltzer squirt bottles and > rubber chickens. however, they will be forced to commute to work in > a tiny car in groups of 20 ... exactly like other italians. Wait, wait... a "centurion" is NOT a "gladiator"! Just because the Ottawa Senators have a soldier on their alternate jersey and everyone calls him a gladiator even though he's supposed to be a senator but he's really a soldier doesn't mean that soldiers equal gladiators. And don't get me started on the difference between the words "legionnaire", "centurion", "decimate", and the other "decimate"! > I also noticed a story on ananova about how "A businessman in Singapore > has turned a Jaguar into a large fish tank." this story seemed less > interesting once I found out they were talking about a *car*. Wasn't that an episode of "3-2-1 Contact"? Where they put a window in the side of a jaguar, and a screen door in Bob Hope's butt? > in other news... > > -> Viewers of Iran's Islamic News Network were shocked to find their > -> broadcast interrupted by hardcore porn. > -> > -> Residents watching the daily news in Hamedan, a province renowned for > -> its religious fanaticism, were treated to a surprise three-minute clip > -> of graphic sexual scenes. > > SURPRISE! happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you... > > -> The distribution of porn in Iran is punishable by execution. It's too bad that watching porn isn't also punishable by execution, because then I'd be able to sell Iran my patented Death Dot(tm) which they would slip into the porn broadcasts between all the red, blue, and green non-lethal dots on the TV screen and everyone watching the porn would simultaneously drop dead. I'd make a killing! The optimal placement of the Death Dot in a porn broadcast would be about four seconds from the start, because they need three seconds to measure ratings, and the fourth second is just because three seconds of porn isn't enough. -- K. Everything I mentioned here will be seen in a photo on my Web site someday, once I get everything combined into a single photo. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Yesterday's "Greasy Delivery Tales" Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 05:17:16 GMT Schwa Love (schwa242@yahoo.com) wrote: > > Today was slow and I didn't do that many runs. Dammit, why did you have to do that while I'm out of Kontext-Away? Could you please hold your slow runs until I can get a new jar of Kontext-Away from the catchphrase store? > Instead, I got to have all sorts of fun at the store. Probably not as much fun as I'll have at the catchphrase store. There, the furniture department is named "Sit on it!" and the breakfast cereals are "Kiss my grits!" and the slot machines are "You bet your bippy!" and the stereo department is "Silence is foo!" and, of course, you can get Prozac prescriptions filled at the "What, Me Worry?" counter. Your store probably doesn't even have slot machines. Of course, the catchphrase store isn't as cool as the imaginary supermarket I own, which is so big that it contains the entire West Edmonton Mall and a parade balloon shaped like everyone who has ever been on TV, but still, my local catchphrase store is still totally "Ayyyy!" > Meat was delivered today, and it was packed in dry ice. Apparently a couple > cow-orkers have been praying for dry ice to show up at work one day, and > today their prayers were answered. So we spent a few minutes having fun > with it. Josh put cups of dry ice soaked in soda on various countertops to > make them "evil". A sink with sublimating carbon dioxide became an "evil > sink". A countertop with sublimating carbon dioxide became an "evil > countertop". > > Gasses released from dry ice can sure make pizza dough bubble up, boy > howdy. > > Then everything started to break. The ice machine atop the soda machine in > the lobby started leaking all over the counter. The drains for the triple- > sink in back overflowed. The printer jammed. The register wouldn't open. I > said the evil of the dry ice must be spreading, and Josh told me that > nothing evil comes of dry ice, only good. Just because it is evil, it > doesn't cause evil. So what you're saying is that when Dr. Jekyll put dry ice into some green Kool-Aid and turned evil, the dry ice had nothing to do with it, so Kool-Aid is inherently evil? That makes sense, although I'm still unclear on what would have happened if Dorian Gray had mixed magical color-changing Kool-Aid powder in with his tempera paints. > So later, after everything is fixed and back to normal, I'm wiping down > counters in the lobby, and I notice something sitting at the top of the > small trash-can next to the counter. It's packaging for an ''8"DONG''. The > package said that this 8"DONG (which had already been removed from the > packaging) was Blue Jelly in color. I don't know how long it had been > sitting there, but it sure explains why one customer who came in, who I > believe was babysitting a couple pre-teen girls, seemed a bit edgy. Bizarre > prank. At least, I hope it was a prank. I hope someone wasn't sitting > around thinking to themself, "You know, I could sure go for a pizza and an > eight-inch dildo this afternoon." > > But I think 8"DONG may be what brought the true evil into our little pizza > parlor today. 8"DONG probably broke the ice machine. 8"DONG is more than > likely responsible for plugging up our drains. 8"DONG jammed our printer. > 8"DONG got lodged in the register drawer. It makes perfect sense. > > So, next time I go to work, I'm keeping my eyes peeled for 8"DONG. It's > like a gremlin with its tomfoolery and mischief, only blue jelly in color > and texture. Okay, suppose Oscar Wilde had made a dildo from a mixture of Blue Jell-O and green Kool-Aid. And then suppose he enjoyed it. Would that make him gayer than a pile of Andy Dicks? And if so, what would his catchphrase be? > By the way, I made dick for tips today. HAW HAW... GEDDIT? The only thing worse than when a doctor makes puns while treating your life-threatening illness is when your moyal gets wacky. -- K. Suppose Oscar Wilde was a moyal. Would Kool-Aid still be overpriced? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: state of the state fair (short shameful review) Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 05:23:54 GMT "talysman" (talysman@globalsurrealism.com) wrote: > so I went to the california state fair. the state fair is usually > pretty wacky, but I wasn't planning on going to it this year, since it > is ALWAYS 100 DEGREES at the state fair. still, I went. > > [...] > > other highlights of the state fair included a FRIED TWINKY. Oh. Suddenly I wish I hadn't read your article right AFTER I posted the one where I wondered about the snack-food habits of a gayer version of Oscar Wilde. Can you please mail me a time machine so I can go back to five minutes ago so I can mention the existence of fried Twinkies in my article about Oscar Wilde mixing blue Jell-O with green Kool-Aid? Thank you very much. > this one food concession was selling deep-fried candy bars, including > fried twinkies, so I decided to try one. it was pretty decent and not > at all as mindshattering as I was expecting. > > I should have eaten a deep-fried snickers, however. You know what would be really good? A Jamaican meat pattie with a Choco Taco inside. But only if they'd let you special-order one with extra hot pepper and no Choco Taco. -- K. I'm just depressed that Oscar Mayer Lunchables Taco Bell Tacos are now just Oscar Mayer Lunchables Tacos. They're still just as awful, but now they only reflect badly on one processed-food conglomerate instead of two! (You know food is REALLY bad when Taco Bell refuses to put their name on it.) ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: I think I found a job! Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 05:36:18 GMT "talysman" (talysman@globalsurrealism.com) wrote: > > hey, I've been looking at the job listings in my area and I think > I've found the perfect job! here's the ad: > > NURSE Aide/Live-In/ uncert.) Asst 14 mentally ill, > 18-59 w/beh'l probs/self destruct'v, violent, > aggressive, verbly abusive, mental ailments/asst > w/shower, grooming & pernl hydgn, ambul'tg, > medctns/ wash dishes/ prep & serve meals/ may > wake up at nite for toilet neds/make beds/inspct > hlth haz'rds/Watch signs of phsucal, emotional > health/If hired spk/rd/wrt Eng/Obtain 1st Aid/Hlth > screng/ DOJ fingerprint/Legal rt to wrk/min 3 mos > exp/4 yrs HS/ER will privide on the job trng/ > Mon-Fri 8am-5pm (40hrs) some wknds/ 24hrs on call/ > live in/free rm/brd/ $1,462.92/mo/ER will pay in > accrdnce w/CA state law/Regs/Job site/intervw > Sacto/ Send ad/res to [REDACTED] > > notice that I have removed the location. don't want any of you freaks > to steal away my DREAM JOB! eight or nine bucks an hour, and I get to > live in constant fear! I was worried about the "Pernell Hydrogen" part, thinking it would be about a "Bonanza" star who was filled with explosive gas, until I realized it was supposed to be "personal hygiene" abbreviated in a clever way so as to sidestep the "is it 'ie' or 'ei'?" hygiene problem. I think that someone should make a TV show for these Pernell Hydrogen, Toilet Ned, and Screng Doj people. I'm not sure what its title would be, but I assume it wouldn't be as long as "Wednesdays 9:30 (8:30 Central)". Probably more like "Bnza", except spelled wrong. "Bnunza" comes to mind, although that might also have to have wacky nuns in it. So it would need to be one of those shows that can't be ruined by wacky nuns. Also, they should wait until at least the fourth week before bringing on special guest star Td Mkgnly. -- K. Also, it's mean of you to be making fun of that ad about violent mentally ill people. I think it's wonderful that they wrote that ad all by themselves! Abbreviating "hazards" as "haz'rds" is the most special abbreviation ever! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Revenge Food Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 05:45:15 GMT Tim Chmielewski (chuma@dcsi.net.au) wrote: > > If someone has annoyed you and you want to get back at them (and you live in > Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) tell them to go to the ONG Hawkers Market > underneath the All Seasons Welcome Hotel in Little Bourke St and order the > Thai Red Curry from the Thai stall and then laugh as they have to pay huge > dry cleaning bills for their pants. So... you're saying that other food items cause dry cleaning to not be overpriced? I'm going to look again the next time I get a Japanese noodle plate, but I don't think I've been finding dry cleaning coupons tucked into my soba, so it could be that this policy only applies to you. Also, is this why those Thai propane-delivery motorcycle guys have to wear spandex Spider-Man suits all day, because their pants are at the dry cleaners? -- K. Thai red curry is awesome. Also, lately, I've been buying cans of tom kha, which is a sort of white curry-like thing. It's a soup made mostly from coconut milk. Tom kha is the spiciest white food ever! You're supposed to add chicken to the soup (to make tom kha kai) but I can't bring myself to add anything to the soup to beige it up. I'd be willing to try miniature marshmallows, though. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: [Sort of] Gift Bunny Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 05:59:18 GMT Brian 'Jarai' Chase (bdc@world.std.com) wrote: > > For the third night in a row now, there's been a rabbit sitting out in my > front yard. It's quite obviously a pet rabbit as he's black and white and > cute and fluffy and healthy--as pet bunnies should be. I don't know where > he hides during the day, but each night he's grazing on my front lawn, > waiting to greet me as I arrive home from work. > > I've attempted to catch him numerous times. I'd like to get him inside > and away from the dangers of neighborhood cats and stray dogs, but each > time I get close, he hops away from me. So you're saying that you'd rather have a deadly rabbit indoors eating your mattress and lamp cords and card table legs and refrigerator cooling coils then outside where the rabbit could easily rip any normal pet to shreds? Rabbits can take care of themselves. If you don't believe me, listen to the way baby rabbits can cry "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" just like human babies, and then think about how human babies always grow up with the capacity to commit atrocities such as advertising "The Anna Nicole Smith Show" every thirty seconds on TV. So if you have a grown-up bunny, I'd suggest he's in no danger from the local kitties and puppies, and if I were you, I'd stay inside, I'd lock the door, and I'd cover the TV with a lead-lined beach towel before cutting the electrical plug off and flushing it down the toilet. > With the added hazard of rain this evening, I'm a bit worried for him, > and tomorrow it's supposed to storm and rain heavily. It never rains on bunnies! However, if the giant pinwheel on the horizon starts emitting clouds of yellow sparkles, you need to fall to the ground and roll around in agony while stock footage of toddlers is projected on your stomach and a giant flaming baby's head laughs at you from above. (I'd never have learned so much if it wasn't for educational TV!) > In the truest sense of the term, I guess he's not quite a gift bunny, else > he would let me catch him. This might be because he's still loyal to his > master? From the distance of a few feet (the closest distance to which I > can approach him) it's obvious that he's a well cared for bunny--well, > apart from the whole being outside and not safe thing. I have to believe > that someone is missing their bunny. Do I have to sing the "My bunny lies o'er the ocean" song from that Captain Kangaroo filmstrip I had for a fake Viewmaster-like device when I was a little kid, or would that put me dangerously close to the line that separates man from annoying ice cream trucks? Technically, it wasn't a song, more like a four-panel comic strip in which lyrics were recited in tiny print. I can't provide any photographic evidence of this toy, because everything related to "Captain Kangaroo" was long forgotten even before the producer of "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers" tried to revive it. -- K. Also, I'm disappointed that I can't find ONE photo of the Colorforms box showing Big Bird yelling "NEW SEE-THROUGH COLORS!" anywhere on the whole Internet. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: [Sort of] Gift Bunny Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 07:33:19 GMT Brian 'Jarai' Chase (bdc@world.std.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Also, I'm disappointed that I can't find ONE photo of the > > Colorforms box showing Big Bird yelling "NEW SEE-THROUGH COLORS!" > > anywhere on the whole Internet. > > I don't know if you've already checked eBay, but there are some Sesame > Street colorforms for sale there [...] No, I meant REAL Colorforms. The ones that weren't shaped like things. Back when you could actually MAKE things out of them instead of just choosing which room to put which character in. The people on eBay are selling more recent/popular sets which aren't the one I had. The "character" sets are the only ones people seem to remember, or maybe they're the only ones people bought during living memory. Lots of Web pages are devoted to how much someone loved their "Disco Snoopy Colorforms" but nobody talks about the ones I liked. The ones shaped like Big Bird and Bert & Ernie are far more common than the earlier ones that just had squares and triangles and a picture of Big Bird printed on the box. I think these came with one piece shaped like Big Bird and everything else was transparent magenta, cyan, yellow, and black squares and triangles, circa 1972. That was one of the last sets of original-style Colorforms, which were eliminated in favor of the ones that were just people you could put in a dollhouse. (Thankfully, they've re-introduced a 50th-anniversary version of the original set, but that one doesn't have the funny picture of Big Bird on the box where he's peering through two eighteen-inch-wide Colorforms squares that weren't included.) These came in a really big box (perhaps 11x17 inches) with just a big white board to stick them to. The point was to learn about process color printing technology, since you could make any CMYK color. Except for beige, unless the board got dirty. But now both "Sesame Street" and Colorforms have been ruined forever. When I was a kid, all my "Sesame Street" books had the orange Oscar, there was no Elmo, and Colorforms could be assembled instead of just arranged. And the really lazy kids now just get Colorforms on VHS tape. (Titles include "Colorforms: Blast Off To A Hidden Planet" and "Colorforms: Rescue At Glitter Palace.") I guess those are like "Winky Dink And You" would be if it had been multiple-choice: "Hey, kids, I need to cross this ravine -- find the one of the three stickers shaped like a picture of a bridge! Now stick it to the identically-shaped picture of the sticker on the screen! Good job!" "Winky Dink And You" is now available on DVD, which will probably lead to a lot of stupid kids trying to shove a sheet of clear plastic into the slot of their DVD player. KIDS DON'T KNOW HOW GOOD PEOPLE HAD IT BEFORE STUFF WAS INVENTED!!! -- K. Fun fact #1: Colorforms were made by the same people who made Shrinky Dinks. Colorforms were made out of the same stuff as Shrinky Dinks. Shrinky Dinks were created as a way to sell industrial waste. Fun fact #2: The graphic design for the original Colorforms was done by Paul Rand, who died a couple days after he designed Enron's logo. It was THE CURSE OF THE CROOKED "E"! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: What's Kevin Cooking? Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 07:52:25 GMT Kevin S. Wilson (rescyou@spro.net) wrote: > > I've decided to launch a series of irregular (MAY CONTAIN MINOR COSMETIC > FLAWS) posts briefly describing what I have recently been cooking. It's okay, you can cover the flaws with 200 tons of cosmetic lava and you'll still be eligible to win the Nobel Prize in every category. Also, the Moon must be blown up because it causes herpes. > YESTERDAY > Apple French Toast Strata WORLD'S GAYEST COMPUTER!!! Sorry, I had to blurt that out, because callbacks work best when blurted. > with link sausage, served with pure maple syrup. Ever noticed that in the United States, every brand of maple syrup is "pure maple syrup" and the ingredients are always "water, sugar, natural and artificial maple flavor"? In the U.S., you can call pretty much anything maple syrup -- unless it's on fire -- and you can also call almost anything "100% juice", which suggests that a company with only one product could sell it as both fruit juice and maple syrup by printing two versions of the label. (It also bugs me that in the United States, they don't have to list the actual ingredients on food -- "flavoring", "spices", and "color" can be anything. Like, if you made earwax-flavored gum, you wouldn't have to say it contained earwax, because it would just be "flavoring". You'd only have to say you added earwax if earwax had no flavor.) > 5-lb beef brisket dusted with Santa Maria rub (garlic powder, salt, > pepper, onion powder, parsley), slow-cooked over oak for 7.5 hours. > > Whole free-range chicken, dusted with a Carribean jerk rub. > > Salsa made with smoked peppers, shallots, tomatoes, cilantro, and > lemon juice. > > Baked beans (pintos, black beans, and kidney beans, incorporating some > of the aforementioned salsa and various condiments occupying the > shelves on my refrigerator door) > > Cucumber and onion salad, which I threw out because some bonehead who > posted the recipe to the Web doesn't know the difference between a cup > and a tablespoon, I guess. WAY too salty! That's what happens when get your recipes from topologists. > TODAY (so far) > Peach Bran Muffins, made with yogurt and fresh peaches. Also, maple > syrup because I didn't have any honey and wheat germ because I didn't > have any wheat bran. > > Oatmeal Bread, in progress now. > > Potato Salad, to go with the leftover brisket and chicken. PAGING TOM BOSLEY! PAGING MARION ROSS! PLEASE REPORT TO THIS PARAGRAPH FOR DELIVERY OF URGENTLY-NEEDED ONE-ACT CATCHPHRASE-ORIENTED PLAYLET! STAND BY TO SIT ON IT! (A 1950s-style jukebox starts playing the "Stingray" theme music while Tom Bosley and Marion Ross run up to a giant suspension microphone, almost out of breath.) "Marion, what am I going to do with a bathtub full of potato salad?" "Howard... SIT IN IT!" (THE ENTIRE SET EXPLODES AS THEY BEGIN GO-GO DANCING TO DISCO MUSIC. CUT TO TROY TEMPEST LOOKING PUZZLED. THE MAYOR OF THE EARTH GIVES KIBO THE KEY TO THE PLANET FOR REMINDING US OF THE WONDERS OF OLD TV. THERE ARE OFFSCREEN SQUELCHING NOISES FROM THE DIRECTION OF THE BATHTUB.) > FURTHER INSTALLMENTS AS FOLLOWUPS WARRANT. REMEMBER, THE LURKERS > SUPPORT ME IN E-MAIL! WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING? -- K. AT LEAST I HAVE A VALID REASON! I'M SHOUTING TO SUMMON TOM BOSLEY! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Rites of passage for Internet kids Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 08:57:53 GMT Sean (linwood@mailandnews.com) wrote: > > It's a proud moment for a modern-day parent when your kids decide to > conduct their very first urban legend investigation. The next milestone will be when your kids get a new urban legend started. I suggest one about DVDs and pornography, because there aren't enough legends about DVDs and you can make anything believable by putting porn into a legend about it. For instance: "If you peel the label off a DVD disc, there's usually used porn under it because DVDs can't be recycled, so they just re-record on the blank side and put a new sticker on it." Then see how long it takes people to peel the imaginary label off a plastic disc. The third milestone: When they go out of their way to make an urban legend come true... with horrific consequences. Don't let them get beehive hairdos, no matter how much they beg! > My kids had heard something about a connection between Pink Floyd and > "The Wizard of Oz," and got so curious that the other day they finally > had to check it out. > So I arranged to borrow the "Wizard of Oz" soundtrack and a VHS copy of > "Pink Floyd: The Wall" just so they could see for themselves. > > Predictably, they found the anticipation rather more satisfying than the > result. But they certainly got a kick out of watching a dissipated, > burnt-out Bob Geldof appearing to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in a > dumpy hotel room, and they thought it was pretty funny to watch the > skinheads move around to the tune of "Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead." Short shameful confession: I keep confusing Bob Geldof with Joe Garagiola. I'm serious! -- K. To figure it out, I just remember which one Pat Sajak implied was ugly. (He was on a talk show describing how tacky the prizes on "Wheel Of Fortune" were back before they eliminated the "shopping" segment, and the example item he mentioned was "the ceramic pendant shaped like Joe Garagiola.") I still think Bob Geldof's some sort of sportscaster, though. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: IT'S A BOX! HOLY CREOLE! Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 12:14:35 GMT Shiro Akaishi (akaishi@skizzzzers.org) wrote: > > So here I was, looking for 3d model texturing tutorials, when I run across > "SILENCEâS Guide To Advanced Mapping". It is quite literally, a 25 paragraph > guide on HOW TO MAKE A BOX. > > In an advanced 3D modelling program. > > And it was badly spelled. That's nothing. I just ran across this set of instructions on how to make a cool Halloween costume: -> SKATER -> -> This is easy, but you have to own or be able to borrow a skating outfit. -> It looks better than any store bought costume too. Put on the skateing -> outfit as you would usually do. Do not wear shates if you are going out -> trick-or-treating. Apply makeup around both eyes and a touch of lipstick. -> If you are going to a party and not trick-or-treating you could carry -> around your ice skates or roller skates for effect.Also if you want to -> add some glitter makeup that adds to the costume. A tiara would look -> nice with this. What I like about this misspelled-yet-pointless writeup is that you can also follow the instructions in the first two lines to make a Darth Vader costume, if you change "skating" to "Darth Vader". Matter of fact, most of the rest of the instructions apply to him too (Do not wear shates if you are Darth Vader.) While looking at Halloween costume instructions for kids the best one I saw today was one for making a Lego -- large cardboard box to cover your body, small cardboard box for a hat, glue eight margarine tubs to the big box and one to the small box, spray-paint everything gloss red, wear it with long red underwear. That one was clever, and didn't just say "GO BUY THIS COSTUME FROM A STORE, NOW YOU HAVE A COSTUME THAT LOOKS BETTER THAN ANY AVAILABLE IN ANY STORE, AND REMEMBER NOT TO WEAR SHATES." Another winner from the people who brought us the skater costume: -> Britney Spears -> -> There were more requests for this costume in 1999 than any other. -> -> But be aware that everyone wants to do this costume so you may be -> competing with a lot of friends. It is easy, you can really wear anything -> you like. Britney doesn't seem to wear the same thing twice, so what ever -> you wear will be like Britney. [...] Wow! I could follow the instructions for the skating/Darth costume and be Darth Vader and Britney Spears at the same time! Question: What do I have to do if I want to NOT look like Britney? More excitingly easy instructions for a costume you can make out of common household clothes: -> M I M E -> -> This is so easy. It looks better than any store bought costume too. All -> you need are a dark shirt or stripped shirt and dark slacks, or you can -> use a long sleeve exersize outfit. Apply white makeup over your entire -> face using the makeup recipe on my costume page. Use red lipstick or red -> makeup on your lips. Now if you have a derby hat or even a barret, that -> would make a nice touch. If you have some white gloves wear them. You can -> mimick a mime when people are watching. Is that eay or what? It sure is eay. Unless the kids follow the instructions and get a barrette instead of a beret, and then everyone keeps calling them "Barbara Feldon". However, the important thing is to mimic a mime when people are watching. Too many people dress up as mimes and then hide inside a 55-gallon drum in a darkened fallout shelter. Most mime performers forget the basic rule: You must seek out people and bother them. (Even if you have a spare Mummenschanz costume lying around, it's pretty pointless to just wear it in your spare room.) And don't forget, the important thing about a mime costume is to wear a black shirt and black pants and no reflective safety tape, because real mimes don't want to make it easy for the cars to steer towards them. And if the kid has a black turtleneck shirt and black pants in the closet, I bet he can already think of three or four cooler things to make with them ("ninja", "catburglar", and "ninja burglar" come to mind.) Those ideas are cool because they're antisocial, unlike mimes. This one's just plain bad: -> Bag of Grapes -> -> What you'll need. -> -> A clear plastic trash bag. -> Bag of red green or purple balloons. -> -> You will need a package of red, blue, purple or green colored balloon's. -> The balloons should all be the same color. Blow up the balloons. Put on -> dark slacks or tights. Cut 2 slits in the bottom of the trash bag about -> 8 inches long and make the slits with a 4-inch space between them, this is -> where your legs will go in. Now slip into the bag as if putting on slacks -> and have someone help you fill the clear trash bag with the already -> inflated balloons and fasten the trash bag under your arms or around your -> neck. Whichever you feel most comfortable with. If you fasten the bag -> around your neck you will need to cut to more slits for the arms. The reason this one's good for kids is that it would be unsafe for them to go as a regular bunch of grapes, because that would involve gluing balloons to their clothes, which could result in skin suffocation if they used too much glue and forgot to wear clothes under the balloons. So, for safety, they make the kid wear a plastic bag which can be tied off tightly around or over the neck. Now, if you were to wear this other costume, -> Bag of Gumballs -> -> What you'll need. -> -> A clear plastic trash bag. -> Bag of different colored balloons. ...then people would keep mistaking you for a bag of rotting grapes, or possibly a bag of balloons. I suppose it depends on where you tie off the bag. Me, I want to be "Bag O' Irwin Mainway Products", which would be a big plastic bag filled with little plastic bags marked "Bag O' Glass", "Bag O' Acid", "Bag O' Blasting Caps", and so on. The problem is I'd have to dress up like Dan Aykroyd, and because I'm a method actor I'd never be able to make it down the block because I'd keep trying to explain to everyone that all the ghosts we see are completely real and factually accurate. Plus if I had to be Dan Aykroyd for a day I'd rather be him as the "Decibet" guy. There are also a lot of good costume ideas on the site in question, they're not all "bag of round things" or "costumes you must already own" projects. Needless to say, any outfit requiring makeup can be completed with a mixture of cornstarch and Crisco, and if you need red hair, you're supposed to put red Kool-Aid in your hair. No, really. I buy the idea of making greasepaint from Crisco, but having dried Kool-Aid in your hair seems like a recipe for disaster, especially now that the killer bees are here. Some other Web sites have a makeup recipe (usually copied from the "MasterCook" program) which just uses cornstarch, flour, and corn syrup, and I can't imagine that could look good -- it'd just look like you were a messy eater who never bathes. The Crisco would at least have better creaminess and opacity. The water-based one probably wouldn't go on evenly, and would dry up and flake off, and only the greasy one would save the kid's life if he got his head stuck between the posts in the stairway bannister. -- K. Why am I even reading this stuff? Why am I even writing this stuff? And why won't any of these Web sites tell me how to make a "terrorist" costume for kids, like the one in the original version of "E.T."? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: IT'S A BOX! HOLY CREOLE! Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 04:17:17 GMT James Vandenberg (james@vandenberg.dropbear.id.au) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Those ideas are cool because they're antisocial, unlike mimes. > > You blew my sarcasmometer. Maybe for Halloween I'll dress up as a sarcasmometer, if I can find rubber tubing of the right sort. In place of the bulb to pump it up I could just use a plastic trash bag with some balloons in it. > > [...on "Bag Of Grapes" vs "Bag Of Gumballs":] > > I suppose it depends on where you tie off the bag. > > A useful diagnostic table: > > Bag tied off around arms, multi-coloured balloons > round and firm: > Child is a bag of gumballs. > > Bag tied off around arms, balloons all saggy like: > Child is a bag of rotten grapes. > > Bag tied off around neck, head green or purple: > Child is a bag of grapes. > > Bag tied over head: > Child poses a choking hazard and should not be used as a flotation > device. > > Bag tied up and placed in garbage skip: > Child was wearing shates. Garbage SHIP, son, garbage SHIP. And now I'm going to end this wacky SKIT. -- K. Halloween costume idea #2935: BatLego. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Fun with hockey for people who don't like hockey [part 1.] Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 04:29:41 GMT [This article is being posted in two parts.] Because lately I've been discovering how much fun it is to try to describe bad graphic design in words, and because I recently came into possession of a catalog of hockey jerseys, I thought I'd write a critique of the entire NHL from a purely graphic-design-oriented viewpoint. Basically, I'm going to pretend these team logos are corporate logos. (Sure, sports fans call them "insignia", but we know that "insignia" is just another way to use more keystrokes to say "logos".) Of course, a lot of hockey fans have already rated all the jerseys and logos on their Web sites, but my list is different because I don't care about hockey. (If I were a sports fan, I'd probably be a hockey fan, because baseball has too many people standing around by themselves not doing anything for long periods, football involves grotesquely steroided people who look like Macy's Underdog parade balloon, and basketball is just plain silly. Hockey moves fast, it has lots of real fights and not just shoving, and people don't play it in boxer shorts.) Every hockey team, like most other sports teams, has "home" and "road" versions of their jersey (the home jerseys are always white, for the people with black and white TVs) and now most also have a third "alternate" jersey, usually with a fancier design or different logo. This is because one company (CCM) has the contract to supply all the home jerseys, and another (Koho) supplies all the road jerseys, so Koho figured they could have 2/3 of the market instead of 1/3 if they bribed the NHL into playing two games a season in different jerseys. Plus the alternate jerseys give the teams a chance to experiment with improving their logos, because if they simply changed the logo on their regular jerseys fans who were attached to the lame old logo would get upset. So they first work it into the alternate jersey (which has to look flashy so that people will bother buying it instead of the two real ones) and if the fans seem to like it it migrates onto the road jersey and then the home jersey. As a result, most teams have three jersey designs and two logos. So, with the River City Sports catalog flattened out in front of me, here's what I think of the logos and jersey designs of every NHL team. (This is for the 2001-2002 season, I'll probably have to redo it if the jerseys get more garish next year.) Teams are listed in the order they're shown in the catalog because I didn't feel like sorting them by coolness or anything hard like that. Anaheim Mighty Ducks: Lousy color combination of jade green and grape (the purple kind.) Also, the jerseys have a diagonal stripe across the stomach, and because the logo is also dominated by diagonals -- which are not at the same angle -- and the logo is right next to the stripe, the whole jersey is a mess of mismatched diagonals. The logo is a Donald Duck-style goalie mask, which is for some reason superimposed on a pizza slice. The proper way to save the Ducks jersey would be to either eliminate the diagonal stripe in favor of a symmetrical design, or move the logo to the left side of the chest to balance the asymmetry (you know, like Patrick Stewart's communicator badge.) I'd have to say their design scheme was hideous even without taking into account that the whole team was just a Disney movie tie-in. Frankly, if I had to wear a movie tie-in jersey, I'd rather be seen wearing a Charlestown Chiefs jersey, even if it was the version from "Slap Shot 2" with the icky Baldwin brother instead of cool Paul Newman. Atlanta Thrashers: The Thrashers have a very cool logo for their home jersey. It's a swirly, heavily-shaded eagle thrashing a hockey stick, drawn in curls of red, orange, and yellow so it looks like it's made of fire. Now that's a properly boss logo for a sports team. The Thrashers' road jersey, however, has a completely different logo, which seems to be some sort of blue bird with a white "Y" on it. I think it's supposed to be both a soaring eagle and a "T" at the same time. In the design business, this is called a visual pun -- making a logo which could be two or more different things at the same time, like that vase that could also be two faces. This is not the same meaning of "visual pun" as in the comedy business, where a visual pun is to say a pun and then show a picture of the literal interpretation of the pun (such as when Leslie Nielsen sends for a tow truck and then a giant pink toe drives past.) Sometimes visual puns make very good logos, but usually they make really horrible ones, especially in cases where two things that don't look anything like the combination thing are mashed together into an unrecognizable blob. (Note to CEOs: If you MUST design your logo yourself, do NOT try to turn the name of your company into the shape of something that's not normally made of letters.) The Thrasher's road logo is abstract, puzzling, and downright lame compared to the flaming eagle on their home jersey. The jerseys also have a row of highway markings across the bottom edge -- two thin stripes with a row of arrowheads between them -- for no particular reason. Good logos suggest matching (or contrasting) design elements, not just random debris. If you think a logo needs to have unrelated design elements next to it to liven it up, either it's a bad logo or you're not a good designer. Boston Bruins: Only after seeing it for twenty years did I finally find out why the Boston hockey team's logo is a picture of a basketball. Someone explained that it's supposed to be a spoked wheel (Boston calls itself "The Hub Of The Universe") and I said, "Oh, so that's why it's a circle with some lines on it." It's a really boring logo, but you have to admit, it's distinctive, because nobody ever sees the other two teams that use exactly the same logo (the Providence Bruins and the Oshawa Generals. I still want someone to explain the connection between the Bruins and the Oshawa Generals to me.) Boston also has a good color combination (black and goldenrod) which makes them stand out from the other NHL teams, most of which use lots of red. (The Pittsburgh Penguins also use black and goldenrod, but not as well.) The Bruins' alternate jersey has, instead of the "B"-in-a-basketball, a realistic drawing of the head of bear. And the bear looks either bored or bemused, depending on whether bears can smirk. Guy, if you're going to have a deadly wild animal as your totem, you need to show it trying to kill the people looking at it, rather then just being pensive. This is sports! Sports logos are supposed to look evil, not mellowed-out! The alternate jersey has one other distinctive feature: An odd symmetrical sawtooth pattern at the bottom and on the sleeves. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be bear teeth, or claw marks, or a lightning bolt, but to me it looks exactly like the thing you have to tear off the top of a Kleenex box to open it. "Let's put a placid-looking bear on our jersey, and then have some fangs sitting next to it! But I like stripes better than fangs. Can you make the fangs look like a bumpy stripe?" Buffalo Sabres: The Sabres are the first of many teams we'll see with designs that are black and white and red all over. However, the Sabres mostly just use the red as an accent color (along with the gray stripe) which makes for some pretty nice designs. (If your color scheme includes neutral colors and bright colors, you want to use the bright colors sparingly as emphasis, and not flood the whole thing with red so that you de-emphasize all the black and white details.) The Sabres' logo is a nicely-drawn evil-looking buffalo head (which looks like it could rip the Bruins' lazy bear to bits if these were real animals) and it's drawn with thick lines which work well with the bold color scheme on the jerseys. The alternate jersey has a different logo, a pair of crossed sabres in front of a black circle. It's well-drawn (and it's in the same style as the main logo) but it's just not as exciting as the evil animal logo. And besides, the alternate jersey also features a strange scoop-neck (I guess the Sabres only like to show their chest hair two games a year) and the name of the team is printed in futuristic letters across the gut. Either put your name on your jerseys or don't, but why put it where it gets tucked into the pants, and only on one of the three jerseys? Calgary Flames: Another red/black/white color scheme. The standard Calgary logo is a Helvetica-ish "C" with some red squiggles outlined in yellow coming out of the left side. I think they're meant to be flames. But they're among the worst-drawn flames I've ever seen because they just look like opaque red sawteeth with a yellow outline around them (the yellow goes in the MIDDLE of the flame, guys.) A sure sign of the amateurishness of these flames is that two of the tongues of flame touch at their tips, resulting in a little ring with what appears to be an eye in the middle, but the eye is just an accident because the black outline around the logo and the white of the jersey are trapped inside this hole in the logo. The Flames' road jersey has a much better logo, of a horse's head with fire billowing backwards from its nostrils. It's a heck of a lot better than the Helvetica "C" with squiggles and an eye coming out of its butt. And it has the added advantage of appealing to anyone who loves the film "Krull", guaranteeing that every Calgary away game will have an attendance of at least three people. Carolina Hurricanes: The third red/black/white scheme in a row. But the Hurricanes' look is distinctive because it doesn't look like anything. The logo is a swirly toilet flush, or possibly a bloodshot eye. I think it's supposed to be what a hurricane would look like if it were made of red and black goo and seen from above and two-dimensional and shaped like a Twinkie instead of a circle. Across the bottom of the jersey there's a row of little squares, which I think means "HURRICANE HURRICANE HURRICANE HURRICANE HURRICANE" in the nautical flag alphabet, but I could be wrong. Personally, I would have used Beaufort symbols instead. Chicago Blackhawks: Quick, guess the color scheme. I've give you a hint: r*d, bl*ck, and wh*te. There's nothing special about the jerseys, they're plain old solid- color designs with the normal stripes on the sleeves, making the Blackhawks one of the few NHL teams that hasn't yet made their jerseys fiestas of asymmetrical swooshes and darts and "Star Trek" insignia. The logo in the middle of the jersey is just a drawing of an Indian, with four different colors of feathers in his hair. I suppose they had to pay extra for the green ink just to make that one feather, unless they split a print run with NBC. Colorado Avalanche: Instead of red and black, at last we get a jersey that's maroon and navy blue. In other words, off-red and off-black. The standard Avalanche logo is an "A" which is also a mountain (this is a visual pun that doesn't require straining) and it's in front of an ellipse which is also the trail left by a puck which whirls around it and then swoops in front of it in a graceful "S" curve. Now, hockey pucks do not swish around like Superman doing ballet. The puck should hit something, or something should hit the puck, causing it to go BANG! and rocket straight into your eyeball at a million miles an hour. It shouldn't be doing the slalom. The alternate jersey is a retro-styled one with the old-time lace-up neck, and instead of a logo, it just says "COLORADO" diagonally. Why would anyone pay for that one instead of one of the ones that actually has stuff on it? I could just buy a t-shirt and write "COLORADO" on it with a marker. It would even match their style of lettering. Columbus Blue Jackets: This logo is a "Wuh?" logo. I think it's meant to be a visual pun, but I can't quite figure out what was combined with what to make this mess that doesn't look like anything. Clearly one of the elements is supposed to be the letters "CJB" (when you have to put your initials into the wrong order to make a logo, it's a BAD LOGO) and another is that the "J" is also a hockey stick. But why does the stick have a crystal star on the end like a fairy princess's wand? Why are the "C" and "B" made out of folded ribbon with little stars that make the whole logo look like an accident with a Bedazzler? Why are the holes inside "C" and "B" filled in? What the hell is this mess? And more importantly, why isn't there a picture of a blue wasp, or at least a picture of a jacket, in the logo? Dallas Stars: Eww! They have bad jerseys. Color scheme: Green/black/white, with gold trim. The jerseys are covered with giant stars that extend all the way across, with the shoulders being two points of the star, and the player's head is one of the other points. I'm not sure if all their players have pointy heads, but obviously their jersey designer thought so. To make matters worse, this is one of those designs where the badness is obvious because two not-really-matched-and-yet-not-wholly- different things are pushed up right against each other (like on the Mighty Ducks jerseys) because the Stars' logo is a differently- shaped star contained within this giant other star. And worst of all, the jerseys have the team name printed in Helvetica (the font to use when you just don't care what font to use.) Detroit Red Wings: They're red and white, but with absolutely no black or gold or other trim, so they have the plainest jerseys in the NHL, and I think these are some of the best designs in the league. Using only two colors makes them very stark, and their red-and-white logo doesn't have any extra outlines around it in black the way most of the others do. Besides, it's a great logo -- a nicely-drawn Art Deco wheel (which looks NOTHING like a cartoon basketball) plus an elegant wing. None of the other teams have logos drawn in such a contrasty manner, the Red Wings have been right to stick with this logo for so long. And with everyone else getting more elaborate, it just becomes more obvious that the Red Wings got their design right the first time. [continues in the second half] ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Fun with hockey for people who don't like hockey [part 2.] Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 04:32:44 GMT [continued.] Edmonton Oilers: Even for a team that practices in a shopping mall, they have lousy logos. Their regular logo (in navy, white, and what appears to be petroleum brown in the catalog) is deliberately designed to look like it's dripping with grease stains. It's a circle with a brown drop of oil at the top, and then there's a thick navy blue outline around the drop for no reason, and below that there are thick goopy letters bleeding downwards, filling up the bottom half of the circle with their slimy runoff. But that's nothing compared to the logo on the alternate jersey. Remember how I said visual puns were bad if you couldn't tell what had been mashed together to make the blob? Well, in this case, we can add a second rule: No logo should try to be more than two things at once. (It's hard enough for a visual pun with only two items to be good!) The Oilers alternate logo seems to be a drop of oil which is also a comet which is also a crescent wrench which is also a gear flying through space leaving a trail of whichever one of those four things would make three pointy white triangles behind it. I have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to primarily look like, it's just clear that it's a bunch of uninteresting, irrelevant things stirred together into some sort of unrecognizable deformity. This is one of the very worst logos I've ever seen. Good sports logos look lightly scary because they're meant to be fierce and threatening. This one scares me because it seems to be a wad of protoplasm from another dimension. It's so unrecognizable that it's past "bland" to "scary in the wrong way." Florida Panthers: The Panthers' logo is a panther leaping right at you, about to rip your face to shreds. That's fine, even though their color scheme (red/navy/gold) makes him look a little diseased (he seems to have stigmata, as his paws are red in the middle.) But I have serious problems with their alternate jersey, which is exactly the same jersey with the same logo, except that the same panther is now leaping while holding the two halves of a broken hockey stick in his, uh, paws. I guess he's supposed to be jumping over you while either breaking a stick or putting it back together, I don't know. It's clear that they put as little effort into this as possible -- "We already have a perfectly good logo, so we can just add more stuff to it!" Los Angeles Kings: The Kings (black/white/royal blue) have curious design which suggests both "medieval" and "futuristic techno-cyber dystopia with robot death machines crushing humanity." Their logo is a heraldic shield, but the lettering on the logo (and the words "LOS ANGELES" on the jersey's stomach) are in futuristic square chrome letters because someone thought "Terminator 2" was the coolest movie ever. The alternate jersey has a different logo, instead of a shield there's a stylized crown. But it's not a well-drawn crown, it's a crown with random two-dimensional flanges all over it, as if one of Space Ghost's enemies wandered into the Land Of No Perspective. And, it's oddly posed -- the empty crown is seen from below, so inside is visible. Again, why is the name of the team on the stomach? Is this just so that they can keep Wayne Gretzky from ever tucking in his jersey if the futuristic techno-cyber hockey kings ever populate their squad entirely with clones of a younger version of him? Minnesota Wild: Bad color scheme (dark green, red, and gold.) Creepy logo (transparent bear head with trees inside his mouth and the Sun setting directly into the top of his brain.) Oh, and also, his mouth is meant to be a lake, and his fur is lightning bolts. I could never support a hockey team whose logo is this schizophrenic. Montreal Canadiens: One of the two NHL teams to have a wide "C" as their logo (the other's the Canucks), the Canadiens have plain old jerseys that look like they haven't changed in decades. However, I think they should do something about this, because a "C" that looks like a horseshoe with a little "H" jammed into it just doesn't thrill me. Why an "H"? Did they used to be the Harvard Canadiens before they moved to Quebec? Or is it just for "Hockey" because Quebecers can't remember which sport they're watching? Nashville Predators: The Predators' standard logo is the disembodied head of a sabre-tooth tiger, seen from the side, against a triangle. The head's been cut off pretty cleanly, as is evidence by the black outline around the severed neck and then the yellow outline around the black outline, all in front of the triangle. Why did they work so hard to make it clear that the cat's head had been chopped off? The logo on the alternate jersey is an improved version of the same thing, in which the tiger (now three-dimensional) is sticking his head through the triangle, and does not appear to be dead. But in both cases he's a white tiger, suggesting a Siegfried & Roy connection. And if this hockey team gets known as "The Fighting Siegfried & Roy" I doubt their opponents will quake in fear. The alternate jersey has the ugliest color scheme in the entire NHL -- the base color is one of those colors where you never can quite tell what it is (it's somewhere between brown mustard and chartreuse) and it combines rather poorly with the other parts of the jersey, which are black and some silver satin tape. Worst of all, most of the jersey is yellowish-greenish-brownish except that the black was used to make two large circles in the armpits. This jersey has giant sweat stains printed on it! I'd love to see the board meeting where this was approved: "We're going to make the jersey booger-colored, and so that we'll never need to wash it we'll print the darkest pit stains you could imagine. And the best thing about the booger-colored jerseys is that when they're printed or photographed, they'll look like a different gross color every time. Will they come out green, yellow, or brown? We don't know because it's magic! Hey, did anyone else see the Siegfried & Roy show last night?" In addition, all three of the Predators' jerseys have neck openings where the front edge is flat, suggesting that none of the players has an Adam's apple. To further wuss up the team, the alternate jersey has a curved bottom edge, like the pajamas everyone wore in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". New Jersey Devils: Red/black/white again. Visual pun again. This time it's an "N" which is also a "J" which is also a devil (or at least one and a half letters with devil horns and a tail.) I'm surprised they didn't also try to make the "J" be a hockey stick. It's a rather clean and recognizable logo, bearing in mind that in this sentence "recognizable" means "you can tell it from the other ones" and not "you can tell what it's supposed to be." New York Islanders: Here's a visual pun which is not that bad of an idea, but it's really badly executed. The logo looks like an "M" next to a hockey stick. It's supposed to say "NY", with part of the "Y" being a hockey stick. They had to make that part of the "Y" really skinny because nobody likes deformed hockey sticks in their logos (they just deform everything else) but for no reason the thick part of the "Y" is joined to the "N" at least as well as it is to the rest of the "Y", and all three strokes of the "N" are super-thick, so the "N" is pretty much claiming the part of the "Y" that's not in the hockey stick. This is the only NHL logo to have a map in it (the hockey stick reaches across Long Island to hit what must be the biggest puck ever.) However, the Dallas Stars do have a little map of Texas on the shoulders of their jerseys. I don't know if that counts as a logo, maybe the little things on the shoulders are just considered filler. New York Rangers: The Rangers have jerseys which are so old-fashioned that they should be playing on penny-farthing bicycles instead of ice skates. Like the Colorado Avalanche's alternate jersey, the Rangers' jerseys are solid-color with the team's name diagonally across the chest in blocky lettering. Ho. Hum. Their alternate jersey (which is another red/black/white combination) has a large picture of the State Of Liberty's head, with the spikes enlarged to twice their normal length. Also, the team's name is spelled "NYR" instead of "RANGERS", to try to be cool in this very sterile corporate way, like how "KFC" thinks it's cooler than it was when it was "Kentucky Fried Chicken". Ottawa Senators: Here we go with the red/black/white yet again, although the Senators at least added some gold for their logo. Their home jersey is normal-looking (white chest, red and black stripes on the sleeves and bottom edge) but their road jersey is... well... remember I mentioned Patrick Stewart's "Star Trek: The Next Generation" spandex bodysuit? This is exactly the same. It's red with an asymmetrical black swoosh across the belly. All it needs to be a complete "Star Trek" uniform is that it needs to beep whenever someone thumps their chest. The Senators' normal logo is a two-dimensional, geometric Roman soldier (who is often called a "gladiator" even though he's clearly a soldier and besides the team is the Senators, not the Centurions or Gladiators.) He's just a head, seen from the side, in front of a gold circular shield with laurel leaf rick-rack around the edge. The crest on his helmet has been enlarged into a big red semicircle to cover up half of the circle behind him, which just helps to prove that people who draw people should not try to make them super-geometric. The soldier also has some sort of big black wing coming out of the back of his head, with the result being that the logo is asymmetrical enough that it can never be centered on the jersey -- if you center the circular part of the logo, the wing sticks off to the left. If you center the logo as a whole, then the big round part is obviously off-center. Fortunately, the Senators seem to have realized what was good and bad about their existing insignia, and on their road and alternate jerseys they have a different rendering of the same warrior. But now he's three-dimensional, shaded, and has an actual facial expression. The two-dimensional guy was leaning back and just looking austere. The three-dee soldier is glowering at you. In addition, the giant red half-a-dinner-plate on his helmet has become a realistically-styled brush plume (you can tell they had a good designer who worried about every detail, such as where to put the one off-center notch in the brush to keep it from looking like a slab of plastic) and the black wings behind the helmet have become a much better looking deep red cape. However, in this alternate logo, while they kept the laurel-wreath rick-rack pattern, they also preserved the half-a-circle shield behind him. Because he no longer has the giant helmet crest to cover up the left side of the shield, now he's just in front of half a shield, and apparently the reason they used to cover the left side of it up is that it never had a left side. The alternate jersey is just the mean-looking soldier on a field of solid black, but the arms are red and there is a really thick strip of the gold rick-rack around the sleeves and across the bottom -- and it's actual embroidered gold thread, not some mustard-colored printing like the Predators would use. In my opinion, the Senators' alternate jersey is the best-looking one in the NHL, although their home and road jerseys (and their main logo) have major shortcomings. (The Senators also some spare logos, such as the same shield with an "S" inside it instead of the soldier's head. All three of the jerseys have different combinations of logos on the front and shoulders.) Philadelphia Flyers: The orange/black/white Flyers logo is the most '70s-esque design in the NHL, now that the Quebec Nordiques don't count. It wouldn't be too bad as a logo for a computer company or something, but it's a little dull for a sports team, and it shows signs of having come from another era. It's just a rounded "P" with thick speed lines coming out of it. It looks like something that would be printed on the back of the box an Atari 2600 cartridge came in. (The Quebec Nordiques logo, on the other hand, looks like something that would be living inside the Atari 2600 cartridge. In fact, in the old Macintosh game "System's Twilight", the main character WAS the Quebec Nordiques logo. The only difference is that the French- Canadian hockey players didn't say "BZEEM!" and "ZURP!" whenever they moved.) Phoenix Coyotes: The look of the Coyotes is weird, but not in a bad way. They've blended inspiration from Native American designs with a angular look and an unusual color scheme to do something creative. The team's colors are dark green, rust brown, orange, and white. The logo on the home and road jerseys is a jagged-edged coyote playing hockey, while wearing half of a Navajo-influenced goalie mask. I'm not sure why it's just the right side of a mask, but it's interesting. The jersey has some complicated rick-rack around the edges to suggest beadwork, without actually being tacky enough to just have a picture of beadwork. The alternate jersey is even more unusual. There is a desert scene (orange mountains, green cacti, purple moon) running across the bottom half. Above that is the same logo, except that now the coyote has been reduced to just his head (I like him better with the rest of his body, but he's okay this way too.) The Coyotes definitely have the most creative design in the NHL, even if it's not as mean-looking as most of the other good ones. (I prefer ones like the Thrashers home jersey and the Senators alternate jersey because hockey imagery should be tough-looking, not artistic. But the Coyotes get brownie points for doing something unusual and doing it well.) Pittsburgh Penguins: The same color scheme as the Boston Bruins, except without as much of the goldenrod. The main Penguins logo is a stylized penguin, sticking his head through yet another downward-pointing triangle, emitting thick black speed lines just like the ones in the Flyers' logo. I guess everyone in Pennsylvania likes opaque speed lines. The road jersey isn't just the same jersey with the white changed to black, because they added some extra stripes that pick up where the penguin's speed lines end and then continue them all the way around the chest to meet up with the front edge of the logo. They did this in muted colors so the effect works well (it would have been horribly garish if they had used brights.) Their alternate jersey has a different logo, with a cartoon penguin playing hockey. It looks like something a high school would use, it's just pedestrian, possibly even insipid. Also, this jersey has a strange shiny "V" effect made out of diagonal stripes of gold satin ribbon, which when combined with the triangle in the logo means that the whole jersey is a big arrow pointing downwards. San Jose Sharks: The Sharks' logo is a shark sticking his head through -- surprise! -- another downward-pointing triangle, like the Penguins and Predators and the Mighty Ducks (if you count their pizza slice as a triangle.) But the Sharks logo is really well-drawn, and the shark is a nice solid black with no racing stripes or weird colors, and he's biting a hockey stick in half (perhaps the same one the Florida Panthers cat is putting back together.) The main problem with the Sharks' look is that the color scheme is lame -- the team's colors are a dark turquoise, a medium gray, and black. These are great colors if you're making a wetsuit, and that seems to be what they tried to do when they designed the road jersey, with its three different colors tapering towards the neck. It really looks like it should say "Body Glove" or "seaQuest". The alternate jersey is the same color scheme and same logo as their home and road jerseys, except that it's all black with very little of the dark turquoise. They may be the only team to have an alternate jersey less garish than their regular jerseys (unless you count the teams with the antique-style alternate jerseys.) St. Louis Blues: Their home jersey is a white jersey with a musical note on it. Their road jersey is a blue jersey with a musical note on it. Not since the days of the "THUG ONE" and "THUG TWO" costumes on "Batman" have people been seen fighting in such bland outfits. Tampa Bay Lightning: I admire that they went with just black and white as their color scheme. Great high-contrast designs can be achieved if you stick to just those two colors and no grays or anything else. However, they don't seem to know how to do that. The Lightning's logo is a circle -- well, most of a circle, let's just call it a defective circle -- with a badly-drawn cartoon lightning bolt in front of it. And there's a black shadow behind the lightning, because the lightning bolt is made of solid plastic and has a spotlight shining on it. In addition, the words "TAMPA BAY" and "LIGHTNING" are jammed into the logo in letters which are both too small and too weird-looking to be legible at all in my printed catalog. Oh, and the top part of the circle is missing for no reason ("TAMPA BAY" blots it out -- even the part that should be behind the space in "TAMPA BAY" -- while "LIGHTNING" doesn't interrupt the circle at all.) Dear Tampa Bay Lightning, please try again. Have you considered ditching the circle and script lettering and just doing something really dramatic, like a huge lightning bolt going all the way across? If you need help, you could call the Superfriends and ask for Black Vulcan. But don't go pantsless just because he did. Toronto Maple Leafs: Aside from the fact that they don't know how to spell "leaves", the Leafs jerseys have an okay design, I guess. They're somewhat plain and traditional, and they limited themselves to two colors (white and blue), but their logo needs a touch-up. It's a stylized maple leaf (a random mixture of some acute angles, some blunt angles, and a few little rounded corners) with the words "TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS" jammed inside. Still, that's much better than the old-time logo on their alternate jersey, which is a really awful drawing of a maple leaf (it looks more like a marijuana leaf, and it has an outline around it, and it has another outline around it) and the word "TORONTO" isn't even centered on it -- the final "O" is hanging off the edge of the pot leaf. If they updated their logo to its present form because the original one was so amateurish-looking, why bring it back? Why not try to design a further improvement? Vancouver Canucks: Like the Canadiens, the Canucks' logo is a wide "C". But instead of just jamming an "H" into it, the Canucks' turned it into an ice-fishing hole with a killer whale jumping out of it, drawn in Pacific Northwest Indian style. It's pretty nice. The alternate Canucks jersey is like the home and road ones, except with the same rounded shirt-tail as the Predators alternate jersey, and the background is a gradient. It's black at the top and red at the bottom, which is a nice effect -- it adds automatic motion-blur to the players, and the sharp-edged logo really pops out against this hazy background. It's probably a tough thing to print, which is why they're the only NHL team to use this effect, but it works great. Washington Capitals: The Capitals' main logo is half an eagle, with one leg and one wing, but for some reason he has five Hollywood Walk Of Fame-style stars glued to his wing. Why are there five giant stars inside the bird? I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with how many team members Hugh Hefner slept with this month. Also, the jersey has the logo posed over a big check mark which doesn't seem to serve any purpose except that they must have been thinking, "Everyone else is either doing straight stripes or slanty stripes or 'V's, let's just go middle-of-the-road and do a slanty 'V'.") That's all the real hockey teams. Don't get me started on the minor-league teams like the Syracuse Crunch (killer Muppet), Portland Pirates ("Avast, mateys! I'm spherical!"), or the Albany River Rats ("I'm a skanky, pin-headed rat!") Oh, and the "authentic" Charlestown Chiefs jerseys the catalog is selling don't match the ones Paul Newman and Skippy Baldwin are wearing on the boxes of the movies they're selling on the same page. In "Slap Shot" and "Slap Shot 2", the "E" in "Chiefs" joins to the "F" at both the top and bottom, but not the middle, but they're trying to sell jerseys where it joins only in the middle. If I were to pay good money for a jersey from an imaginary hockey team, I'd at least want them to get the logo right! -- K. And then there's the HŠmeenlinna HPK (Hockey Playing Knights). Excuse me, Finland, but Boba Fett wants his helmet back. Also, are you aware that "Hockey Playing Knights" is in English? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Puttin' on the foil for a correction. Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 05:48:57 GMT Yesterday, I wrote: > > [concerning a catalog of hockey jerseys.] > > Oh, and the "authentic" Charlestown Chiefs jerseys the catalog is > selling don't match the ones Paul Newman and Skippy Baldwin are > wearing on the boxes of the movies they're selling on the same page. > In "Slap Shot" and "Slap Shot 2", the "E" in "Chiefs" joins to the > "F" at both the top and bottom, but not the middle, but they're > trying to sell jerseys where it joins only in the middle. If I were > to pay good money for a jersey from an imaginary hockey team, I'd > at least want them to get the logo right! By an amazing coincidence, "Slap Shot" was on cable TV tonight when nothing else was on, so I have a technical-movie-nerd-factoid-thing correction that must be posted here in the name of being correct and uninteresting. The white jerseys in the movie DO look like the ones the catalog sells, but the blue jerseys in the movie DON'T look like the ones in the catalog. When I wrote the previous article I only had the pictures of the DVD boxes in the catalog for reference, and they only showed the blue jerseys on Paul Newman and Stinky Baldwin. The logo as seen in the catalog shows up in the movie on posters and T-shirts and a banner in the victory parade, so it was clearly meant to be the real logo, it's just that the people who made the movie didn't quite get the blue jerseys right. We now return you to our regularly-scheduled discussion of non-hockey-related movies, such as Jonathan Frakes's live-action "Thunderbirds" movie, now scheduled to be filmed in South Africa, and I hope the actors don't get any permanent scars from having those little wires glued to their faces every day. -- K. Also, the Hanson Brothers say to never buy anything from Todd McFarlane, but it's not just because he changed the Oilers logo to a psychotic glob of scrap metal. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: The final word on nightmarish, deformed hockey logos. Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 06:50:35 GMT The Erie Panthers were a minor-league team. But during the 1994-1995 season they had a major league deformity. See the eeriest Erie Panthers logo ever: http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/logos/echl/eripan95.gif Scientists have theorized that this kittyduck was an early experiment by Taco Bell. They eventually created Animal 57 when the kittyduck was cross-bred with a spamfungus. I'm not sure why, but the killer half-a-cat gives me the willies. I suppose if anyone ever finds the other half of the cat, that half will be just as scary. Other gems from the East Coast Hockey League (as seen at http://www.logoserver.com/ECHL.html ) include: The Birmingham Bulls -- a bull's head emerging from a toilet. The Huntsville Blast -- I think one of their logos was intended to be a visual pun where the word "BLAST" was sort of deformed into the shape of a NASA rocket sled, although because rocket sleds don't really look like anything and words shouldn't look like things that aren't words the results were a total mess. The Knoxville Cherokees -- represented by a "K" with five arms. It's from Dr. Seuss's "On Beyond Cyrillic"! The Macon Whoopee -- their team was founded by people who were rejected from "Match Game". The biggest fight they ever had was during a match against a team named the Generals, when the Macon Whoopee kept asking the referees whether they could "match a General to a specific". The Trenton Titans -- won't that guy get cold unless he wears some clothing somewhere between his helmet and his skates? The Virginia Ancers -- that Web page captioned the logo "Virginia Lancers" but it must be a typo because the logo clearly says "ANCERS" in extra-bold lettering well-separated from that skinny little slash that's meant to be a hockey stick. Don't ask me why the skeletal hockey stick is hitting a giant sausage. http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/logos/echl/virginia_lancers_1989.gif Maybe we could put "ANCERS" together with the severed cat to make a whole logo. -- K. The Lancers are the only hockey team to have had a product placement in a Woody Allen / Regis Philbin movie. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Puttin' on the foil for a correction. Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 07:03:37 GMT Darla Vladschyk (DarlaVladschyk@hotmail.com) wrote: > > The only problem with the Buffalio Sabres' team uniforms is that the > pants make them look fat. It doesn't bother you that they're all pretentious and use phony British accents when they drive all those kilometres past the theatre to the hockey centre and keep warm with a space heatre as long as it doesn't melt the rink into a puddle of watre? Now if you'll excuse me, I have to put on my velvet tricorner hat and white porcelain mask and sneak into a completely motionless orgy, now that you've leaked the password. Buffalio! -- K. PLINK........................ PLINK! PLINK........................ PLINK! PLINK........................ PLINK! PLINK........................ PLINK! PLINK........................ PLINK! Every day I am thankful Kubrick never got the chance to make a movie about my local ice cream truck. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Fun with hockey for people who don't like hockey [part 2.] Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 03:04:38 GMT Gregory King (greg@flyingpawn.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Montreal Canadiens: > > > > [...] a "C" that looks like a horseshoe with a little "H" jammed > > into it just doesn't thrill me. Why an "H"? > > From the Canadiens history page: > > -> November 26, 1917 > > -> Founding of the National Hockey League (NHL) at the Windsor Hotel in > -> Montreal. Ottawa, Canadiens, Wanderers and Toronto receive a franchise > -> in the new league, succeeding the NHA. At this time, the Club > -> AthlŽtique Canadien changes its name to officially become Club de > -> Hockey Canadien and begins displaying the celebrated CH logo. > > So the H stands for "Hockey" and the C actually stands for "Club". I > don't know why every other team in the NHL didn't have the same logo, > though. Anyway, the logo is celebrated so they can't change it back. > And you made fun of it, so you're not invited to the celebration. Who the heck were the Wanderers? Can I at least be invited to their special celebration? I think I should be allowed to go to their celebration because it would be impossible for them to keep me out if they don't even exist. Also, what random letter did the Wanderers cram into the middle of their "W"? Joe Manfre (manfre@world.std.com) wrote: > > Also, since 1924 people have been incorrectly believing that it stands > for "habitants", which appears to me to be some joke that somebody > made. It did provide the team with a lasting nickname though, as > demonstrated here: http://www.gohabs.com/history.htm Well, I suppose that it's better to call the Canadiens "The Habs" instead of "The Cans". -- K. I just wish they'd fix the spelling of "Canadiens". There's no room for misspelled words in hockey, except in Toronto! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Fun with hockey for people who don't like hockey [part 2.] Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 02:45:44 GMT Sean (linwood@mailandnews.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Montreal Canadiens: > > > > [...] a "C" that looks like a horseshoe with a little "H" jammed > > into it just doesn't thrill me. Why an "H"? > > I'm sure someone will have chimed in long before me, but the "H" > stands for "Les Habitants" (sp), which is NOT the name of a Canadian > radio star of the 1930s. Ah. I figured that one of the Quebecois teams would have a product-placement for canned yellow-peas-in-lard-broth soup somewhere. When the Quebec Nordiques existed, what food product did the little red ball in their logo represent? Was it an overcooked sugar pie, or just a PFK bucket seen from a great distance? Or did the Nordiques just play girlie-style hockey with red rubber balls? > > New York Islanders: > > > > Here's a visual pun which is not that bad of an idea, but it's > > really badly executed. The logo looks like an "M" next to a > > hockey stick. It's supposed to say "NY" [...] > > A few years ago, the Islanders (or "da Eyelinners," in the native > patois) decided to change the logo and slightly modify the color > scheme -- as I recall, the blue and orange were "softened." The new > logo was a grizzled looking fisherman in yellow slicker and rain hat, > which made one think that Gorton's had bought the team (in which case > we would be cheering for van de Kaamp's to buy the Rangers, so that > the companies could settle on the ice, once and for all, which one was > the King of All Frozen Fish Products). But the fans complained loudly > and often enough so the team decided to go "retro" and brought back > the old logo. You're forgetting one thing: Mrs. Paul could kick the butt of both the Gorton's Fisherman and van de Kamp. Because all frozen fish sticks are named after imaginary people, if cannibalism became legal, would people sticks be named after imaginary fish? "Housewives prefer new Swordflounder Brand Soylent Green three to one over Octogrouper brand Flesh Loaf!" > > Philadelphia Flyers: > > [...] > > The Flyers deserve a Kibological footnote because for a brief time in > the 1970s (the era in which more bad decisions in professional sports > design were made than in any other) they switched from wearing the > traditional hockey shorts to full-length PANTS. It looked as if the > team had suddenly and impulsively given their real players the night > off and recruited people right out of the crowd to take their places. So, if Wayne Gretzky had played for the Flyers, would he tuck one pant leg into his sock just so that people would think he was wearing asymmetrical pants if they were too drunk to understand the concept of tucking? Also, what the heck is a fight strap, and why is the difference between a "replica" jersey with no fight strap and an "authentic" jersey with a fight strap a hundred dollars if you can make your own fight strap from a skate lace and a quarter? If you have a cheap jersey without a fight strap, are you not allowed to get into fights? And if you really like fight straps, blood, and general filth, I found a used jersey for you: [from gamewornjerseys.com:] => => Sergio Momesso - Montreal Canadiens 1986-1987. CCM - no tags in neck. =>Ê Approximate size 52. Front has light stick marks and blood stains on => the hem, crest and right side + 9 team repairs. Back has light stick => marks + 2 team repairs. There is light snagging and general filth => on the jersey. Left arm has a couple of blood stains + 6 team repairs. => Right arm has evidence of post paint + 3 team repairs. Fight strap => well worn and salted. Very good internal pilling. ...this jersey was mentioned in one of Shakespeare's plays, when Titus Andronicus told Saturninus, "Thou art a well worn and salty fight-strap!" -- K. I still think that Disney's hockey team shouldn't have been the Mighty Ducks, it should have been the Trons. They could all play wearing hockey helmets with some colored stripes drawn on them to make them look computer-generated, just like the hockey helmets everyone wore inside the computer in the perfectly realistic movie. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: A minor correction. Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2002 04:23:04 GMT Yesterday, I wrote: > > When the Quebec Nordiques existed, what food product did the little red ball > in their logo represent? Was it an overcooked sugar pie, or just a PFK > bucket seen from a great distance? Or did the Nordiques just play > girlie-style hockey with red rubber balls? A second and final correction: The Nordiques logo says they played girlie-style hockey with blue rubber balls, not red rubber balls. (I was looking at the logo with my 3-D glasses on backwards.) Perhaps the Nordiques would still be in business if they had used the correct color of rubber ball. Blue ones are for handball, not hockey! -- K. P.S. I found out today that "Slap Shot 2" is indeed more awful than Hitler holding a copy of "Tomb Raider: The Movie" in each hand. The only amusement it contains is that it's kind of funny watching the Hanson brothers (who are played by real hockey players, not actors) being so much more talented than Stephen Baldwin at acting. Of course, they only appear in about four scenes, in close-up, with no other actors in them, and whenever any of the other actors speak, the Hansons must return to their special invisible dimension until the next splice. Also, fake hockey games can't even be made as interesting as real ones, not even if they show the film in jerky double-speed, which they did, although it still wasn't as realistic as the similar scenes in "The Munsters". ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.fan.mike-jittlov From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Fun with hockey for people who don't like hockey [part 1.] Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 03:17:31 GMT [re the Anaheim Mighty Ducks logo, which has a pizza slice behind a duck] Gregory King (greg@flyingpawn.com) wrote: > > James Anatidae (parshall@citcom.net) wrote: > > > > The design always seemed a bit too busy to me as well. As it looks as > > though Disney will sell the team, maybe the new owner will redesign it > > (or drop it entirely for a new team name). > > Well, they'd better. The current logo was clearly drawn by a Disney > artist drone, so whoever buys the team had better change the logo in 30 > minutes or less or Disney will get their logo-pizza for free and then sue > for $1,000,000. Then the lawsuit will get called the Million Dollar Duck > lawsuit and Disney will have to sue themselves for plagiarizing their > movie title. I like the movie "Million Dollar Duck" simply because Roger Ebert hates it more than any other movie ever made for no apparent reason. I mean, it's not a good movie in any way, but I'm sure he's seen at least a thousand movies that are worse because he sees every movie and I've seen at least a thousand worse movies and I only see the ones they're allowed to show on TV. Any movie that a critic keeps complaining about seeing the first half of thirty years ago is very special in some very special way that us mere humans cannot comprehend. It wasn't any worse than, say, "Howard The Duck" or "Lame Ducks" (title changed to "Brain Donors") or even as unpleasant to watch as Fox's "Dynamo Duck" shorts, but it permanently scarred the psyche of young Roger Ebert, shortly before he wrote that porn movie. COINCIDENCE? -- K. Now please apologize for calling Mike Jittlov a drone. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: My favorite riddle right now... Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 04:44:55 GMT Schwa Love (schwa242@yahoo.com) wrote: > > Q: What has eight legs and says "Ayyyyyyy!"? > > A: The Octo-Fonz! I think you misspelled Q: What has eight legs and says "Ayyyyyyy!"? Ayyyyyyy!: The Octo-Fonz! There, I just improved your joke, and you're welcome. I think it could further be improved if you worked John DeLancie into it somehow, unless that's too obvious for an Octo-Fonz joke. -- K. There needs to be a "Superfriends" episode where the Riddler ruins the League Of Doom's master plan by telling that riddle to Batman. Why the hell didn't Lex Luthor kill the Riddler? The Riddler should have been called The Tattler! He and Cindy Brady should have been kicked out of the League Of Doom for tattling. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Questions about candy bars Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 04:52:31 GMT Rich Holmes (rsholmes+usenet@mailbox.syr.edu) wrote: > > Why can't I subscribe to a candy bar? You know, instead of every > day going over to the next building and discovering I don't have > change to buy my sixth favorite candy bar from the machine that > doesn't stock my first five favorites half the time, just have > someone come by around this time and slide one of my favorites > under the door and send a quarterly bill? Even with delivery it'd > probably still be cheaper than that fucking machine. Two words for you, Rich: HALLOWEEN IS COMING UP. Oops, that's almost four words. But you see what I mean. It's time to build every possible cheap costume now -- "Bag Of Grapes" and "Bag Of Gumballs" and "Bag Of White Grapes" and "Bag Of Grapes Mixed With Gumballs" and then find out who on your block gives out candy you like and go to that one house in 365 different costumes and your yearly candy needs will be fulfilled for free and with no work involved! The other thing you could do is to write your Congressperson and ask him or her to allow them to have supermarkets where you live. You can mail-order candy over the Internet, too. For instance, you can get Necco hearts with your name printed on them, although they only sell them in lots of one day's factory production, so they'd arrive in a couple of eighteen-wheelers. But I guarantee you that would be enough Necco hearts to last you a lifetime, especially because they start tasting awful after the first five thousand. -- K. __ __ / \/ \ \ NECO / \SUKS/ \__/ ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Questions about candy bars Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 02:10:39 GMT Rich Holmes (rsholmes+usenet@mailbox.syr.edu) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) writes: > > > > [...] find out who on your block gives out candy you like and go to > > that one house in 365 different costumes and your yearly candy needs > > will be fulfilled for free and with no work involved! > > Two problems with this one: > > (1) I live in a quasirural area; "my block" has a perimeter of > approximately 5 miles, and last year we got, I think, 6 trick or > treaters. Halloween just isn't the lucrative scam it is in > suburbia. Well, then, your problem's still solved -- don't you have fifty pounds of leftover candy you bought just in case there were 5,000,000 kids pounding on your door last Halloween? If not, you should have bought some cheap around November 15 (you have to get it before they take off the wrappers from the chocolate ghosts and re-wrap them to look like Santa so the prices can go back up.) > (2) The more intractible problem: my *daily* candy needs are equal to > whatever quantity of candy I own, plus one Milky Way Dark. I'd > have to go trick or treating EVERY DAY to make your idea work. > That's 1825 miles of hiking around in balloon-filled garbage bags > per year, which makes trekking over to the next building and > feeding the machine seem almost attractive. Or, indeed, hiking up > to Canada and snagging their oh-so-clever Mars Dark Energy Bars > (MADE WITH 100% GENUINE DARK ENERGY!) and paying for them with > that fakety fake Canadian money. It's like getting CANDY FOR FREE. Yeah, but Canadian candy hasn't been the same since they reformulated Maynard's Wine Gums to taste like candy instead of pure vinegar. I realize those come from England, but so does all other Canadian candy. If the Canadians made it themselves, Canadian candy would mainly consist of those congealed logs of maple sap that make the skin inside your throat dry up and crack, and on special occasions they'd let the guy who draws "Spawn" redesign it so that it looks like a blob of maple sap which might also be a comet which might also be a gear which might also be a wrench flying through space while playing hockey while exploding in a shopping mall. Note that this does not apply to Quebec, which would have different local candy, such as "cretons de chocolat et veau" and "Maynard's Wine And Cheese Gums". Also, all sundaes would be topped not with chopped peanuts, but with yellow split peas. Don't even think about the gooey, stretchy poutinougat. -- K. I wish Quebec would export spruce beer to the rest of Canada so that it could then migrate down into the United States. Why won't Quebec let anyone else have spruce beer? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Cone news, without comment. Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 05:10:11 GMT Mark Allread (mallread@flatsurface.com) found this Edinburgh News item: -> -> Police charge man over sex with traffic cone -> -> A MAN caught performing an indecent act on a traffic cone has been -> charged by police. -> -> The 33-year-old has been charged with breach of the peace after -> police received reports that the man was engaging in a sexual act -> with the cone at the bottom of Calton Hill on Tuesday night. -> Alarmed passers-by called police and said they had seen a man trying -> to have sex with a traffic cone. -> -> Officers from Gayfield police station attended and found the 33-year-old -> committing the offence. -> -> A police spokesman confirmed police had been called to an incident at -> Calton Road on Tuesday evening and said a report has been submitted -> to the procurator fiscal. I was thinking "You know, this article really isn't that perverted" until I saw the phrase "submitted to the procurator fiscal", which suggests a Romulan dominatrix making people do aerobics or something, and now I think this article is WEIRD! But still very nice. -> The area around Calton Hill has caused controversy in recent years -> after becoming notorious as a venue for open air sex. -> -> Residents' groups, councillors and health activists have joined calls -> for people to have more respect for the area. Newspaper articles are supposed to answer certain questions: "Who?" "What?" "When?" "Where?" "Why?" and the most important one which this article forgot, "HOW?" Big end or little end of the cone? Organ or orifice? What does it mean, "trying to have sex"? Why did it take so long that he was still there when the police responded to this utterly non-urgent call? And most importantly, what color cone? -- K. I hate reporters who don't tell me what I need to know about cone sex. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Hooray! I beat the laundry room! Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 07:56:14 GMT Today I achieved great success -- at last I opened a door I was always supposed to be able to open! Months ago, I began recounting my experiences with the evil laundry room in the evil basement of my evil apartment building. I would keep getting locked out, because the passcard reader on the laundry room door would not only refuse to open for my card, but would actually fry my card somehow. Today someone told me the secret: I have to hold the card in the slot until several seconds after the light stops blinking. Then it works! Apparently if I pull it out while it's still trying to reprogram the card (I think the card wants to remember how many times I've tried to open the door, or something) the door will not only not open, but will block my card's access until someone else uses a valid card. And, for unknown reasons, when I would get locked out and try the card repeatedly, the card would be permanently destroyed. Anyway, today I learned how to open the door to the laundry room, and now I can come and go as I please! Hooray for me! -- K. Next time, I'll tell you about my experiences at the Registry Of Motor Vehicles, or as I like to call it... the Registry Of DIE DIE DIE YOU SUCK I HATE YOU!!!! ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: I can't think of anything I hate more than the RMV. Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 08:52:54 GMT (The Sun passes directly behind the Moon but in front of the other Moon, and then explodes, or something, as Theremin music plays. It is all very eerie... and evil.) Phase I. Tuesday. 2 pm. I need a Massachusetts ID card (non-driver) because my primary identification (passport) has expired and I want another ID so that I can mail the passport back to the Federal government to be renewed, which will take four to six weeks, just like they say whenever you order anything from the back of a cereal box and it never comes. So I went to the Registry Of Motor Vehicles (in the heart of the downtown porno district known as "the Combat Zone") and waited in line for the reception desk. The woman asked what I was there for and then gave me a form to fill out and a "take-a-number" tag that said "B205, wait time 20 minutes" and told me to go upstairs. I went upstairs and would have sat on one of the hard, uncomfortable benches if they hadn't all been full. I sat on the windowsill and filled out the form. Much time elapsed as I stared at the animated advertising screens telling me that I should buy advertising on the animated screens to take advantage of the captive audience (their wording, not mine.) The bingo-style number display would occasionally flash a number: C574... C575... B197... C575... C576... B198... C577... B199... and then they just called C's for the next half hour. I did some graphic design work with my laptop for a while, and was about to go home, assuming a computer error had deleted me from the Universe, when they resumed at B200. They eventually got to B205 and I went up to the counter. I gave the woman my application, and she made me spell my address again because apparently writing block letters in the individual letter boxes just isn't good enough unless they also get to hear the tone of voice. I spread out my existing ID on the counter, including my passport, my expired New York ID, and my fragile, disintegrating birth certificate. I was told this wasn't good enough because I hadn't included a phone bill to prove I really lived in Massachusetts and wasn't just trying to harass some poor Masachusetts resident by sending them an ID card in the mail. No, the passport, birth certificate, and New York ID weren't good enough, but they needed to see something important, like a phone bill or AOL bill. She rubber-stamped a bunch of bad things onto my form and gave it back to me and assured me that I could come back the next day, and she stated that I wouldn't have to wait in any lines at all and could just go directly to any teller (her word) that was open. Now, I hate doing things that make roomfuls of hundreds of people hate me, such as barging in front of an hour-long line, and I hate it even more when the government tells me to do something that I know will make people hate me. But I took my form and left to plan a second visit. Elapsed time this visit: 50 minutes. Phase II. Friday. 2:30 pm. I didn't go on Wednesday, because I had to work, and I didn't go on Thursday, because that's the day that the RMV is open late and is extra- crowded. But I woke up early on Friday through no fault of my own, and figured I'd go to the RMV and get this taken care of quickly before going to the office. Big mistake. I went in and waited in line for the "take-a-number" lady, and was given secret code name "B374" (with no estimated wait time printed), then went upstairs. It was more crowded than the last time. And it was really hot and everyone was surly and grumbling. No way was I going to elbow my way past the next person whose number was called and say "They TOLD me I could SCREW YOU OVER!" So I started strolling around inspecting the premises, looking for loopholes, or at least weird things to photograph. I noticed a partition with a well-hidden teller behind it, and a small hand-written sign saying "EXPRESS LINE". Because there were only four people in line (and not hundreds of people sitting on benches clutching numbers with bogus wait times printed below them) I started standing in that line. After half an hour, I got to the front. I handed the teller my form and a big stack of a phone bill, an electric bill, a cable TV bill, a cancelled rent check, a paycheck, a tax form, and everything else I owned that said I owned some paper. He looked everything over and pulled up my record on the computer and it was clear that he thought everything was in order. Until he asked "They didn't take your picture last time, did they?" I said that they didn't (which is why I don't have an ID card, DUH!) and so he explained, "Oh, you have to go wait for your number to be called. I can't take photographs here." He leaned over as he said that so that I could see him around the giant photo camera and photo printer and photo floodlight attached to his desk. So I found a seat (on a bench that wobbled up and down of its own accord) and started making more graphics on my laptop computer. (I got a lot of work done this week, mostly at the RMV.) The guy next to me was keeping his girlfriend company as she waited for her turn, and was doing his best to make her nervous by telling her "funny" lies about how hard it was to get a license in Massachusetts. I never found anything weird to photograph, but at one point the guy next to me did point out the second-floor window and say to his girlfriend, "HEY, LOOK AT THAT CONE!" (Exact quote!) I maintained enough composure not to whip around and follow his finger, because then I'd probably get punched in the face for eavesdropping on someone who was talking loudly eighteen inches away. Besides, the guy probably had a lower threshold for traffic-cone interestingness than I do. I waited over an hour as they kept calling numbers, gradually inching closer to my "B374". Eventually there was a ten-minute period where they didn't call any numbers. The guy next to me tried to scare his girlfriend by telling her, "Maybe it's broken!" Then a woman came in and told us that the computers were broken ("state-wide") and that we should all go home. It was 4:30 pm on a Friday before a three-day weekend, so of course they weren't going to consider restarting the computers just for the hundreds of us who were waiting, and in fact I assume someone turned off all the computers just so they could leave early. As I left, I noticed that the downstairs half of the RMV was still packed with people because nobody had told them about the alleged state-wide computer failure. Elapsed time this visit: 1 hour, 35 minutes. Elapsed time so far: 2 hours, 25 minutes. Phase III. Saturday. 2:30 pm. I decided to try the Registry branch at the Cambridgeside Galleria mall because I was going to the mall anyway, and I wanted nothing further to do with the downtown zoo. (Circa 1991 or 1992, someone else told alt.religion.kibology that this RMV branch had a list of phone numbers for help in different languages, including a special phone number just for Esperanto. Sadly, the Esperanto sign was removed long before I bought my first digital camera.) There were only about three people there. I went up to the reception window and the guy asked me what I was there for. I said an ID card by saying the words "an ID card", which meant I was there for an ID card. He then asked me a few more questions, then he told me that they don't do ID cards there once his brain had finished processing the first question. Apparently they only do driver's licenses, and not ID cards, because they don't know how to give out the exact same card without a road test. Morons. Elapsed time this visit: 5 minutes (not counting travel time.) Elapsed time so far: 2 hours, 30 minutes. Phase IV. The distant and unimaginable future. The Earth was destroyed by superintelligent ants before I ever got my ID card so that I could mail my passport back to the other, less incompetent government. The ants are now our masters and life under the ants is harsh and brutal but at least the ants do not make us take numbers that they decide not to call. I toil in the ants' fungus farms as my hopes of ever seeing an ID card fade from my memory. -- K. (If that doesn't happen and I unexpectedly obtain an ID somehow, I'll let you know. Otherwise the part about the ants will stand. At the moment, my only hope is Watertown, or moving back to New York.) ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Cajuiv Wiivgs Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 07:15:29 GMT Stacia (stacia@world.std.com) wrote: > > The local KFC ran out of Ns for their bulletin board, so their > advertisement, which should have read: > > CAJUN WINGS > > instead, now reads: > > CAJUIV WIIVGS > > The I and V together do not form anything resembling an N. Well, they could have cut a leg off an "M", or turned a "Z" sideways, or used two "I"s with a strip of tape between them, or drawn an "N" on with a marker, or bought some spare plastic letters, or bought a packet of sticky vinyl letters, or just printed the sign on their laser printer, but I'm sure none of those ideas came into their heads because when you work a deep-fryer all day the essence of frying goes up your nose and into your brain and you start having delusions such as "N IS IV! N IS IV!" Next they'll lose their only remaining "U" and change the sign to "CAJIJIV WIIVGS", and when the "G" gets stolen as part of a scavenger hunt they'll rebuild the sign as "CAJIJIV WIIVCIS", and then George Lucas will see it and change "Jar Jar" to "Cajijiv Wiivcis" in his next movie, causing the entire movie industry to go out of business forever, all because of that one KFC and their stupid little wings. -- K. I wish I had access to a KFC. Why am I in the middle of a ten-mile-wide dead zone in KFC's master plan? Is the reason they don't have any restaurants here because they ran out of ALL the letters? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: INSTANT REVIEW: Dark Chocolate Kit-Kat Date: Sun, 8 Sep 2002 07:37:54 GMT "Kev In, Boyz Out" (kboyce@toad.net) wrote: > > Oh lordy. There's a chyx0r at work who is obsessed with babies, to > the point of sort of attaching herself to other people at work who > have or ar about to have new babies. She also enjoys giving > "appropriately"-shaped food items to friends who are expecting. Since > recent babies have been male, this has taken the form of penis-shaped > pasta and penis-shaped chocolates. > > But wait, there's more. > > She can occasionally be found just sort of daydreaming, then suddenly > blurting out, in a high voice, "baby!" > > But that's not all. > > Sometimes it's "wee-wee!" > > Now we know where Gene Rayburn's spirit went. I didn't think he had a spirit, because the Bible says that cavemen weren't real, just like those fake dinosaurs Jesus kept burying to perplex scientists and increase the revenues at all those science museums He created. And if he had had a soul, he could only have been reincarnated as another Cro-Magnon because a soul can't be upgraded from Cro-Magnon to Modern Man without paying a pretty hefty processing fee, and I understand he spent his entire life savings on Microphone Lengthening Cream. -- K. Also, Gene Rayburn didn't say "WEE-WEE!", he said "BLANK!" It was Charles Nelson Reilly and Brett Somers and some really minor celebrities who said "WEE-WEE!", so maybe your friend is Brett Somers. You could find out by putting on a Jack Klugman mask and kissing her. If she acts all confused and stupid, she's Brett Somers. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Kibo Alert! Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2002 05:10:57 GMT Darla Vladschyk (DarlaVladschyk@hotmail.com) wrote: > > I need someone to get Kibo up here pronto. They're out with a new > product called "Pud 'N' Fun!" [...] > This is a box containing a package of vanilla instant pudding and a > paper package of--- wait for it--- Pop Rocks. They show up in everything from time to time. One year there was Kool-Aid with Pop Rocks dissolved in it. It wasn't fizzy or anything, except for the first tenth of a second. After that, it was just regular Kool-Aid with the homeopathic memory of Pop Rocks completely dissolved in it. They called this flavor "Cracker Cherry", although I was always disappointed that it didn't come with oyster crackers. > One is to prepare the pudding, top it with the Pop Rocks, and then > fill your mouth with the result and wait for the fun to begin. One would assume that it would pop better if one omitted the first step and just mixed the two powders directly on the tongue. > The commercial features a pair of kids at a school talent show. One > kid fills his already-crowded-by-metal-braces mouth with this noxious > substance and hovers over a microphone with his mouth open while his > little friend soft-shoes to the nasty crackling sound. > > OoOOo! Vomitty!! Any food product with "fun" in its name is probably neither fun nor delicious, whether or not its name also contains "delicious", and if you don't believe me, go taste Oral Roberts's Fundamentally Fundelicious Pops. And speaking of "fun" products... The commercials that baffle me lately are various ones for some local chain named Plaster Fun Time, which has six locations where children can pay to touch wet plaster any time they want. They emphasize "open every day" quite strongly. I'm wondering how many kids say, "Waah! I don't wanna celebrate Christmas! I want to go downtown to pay to work with grout while wearing a rented smock!" I'm guessing some kids do get addicted, because their Web site quotes a kid saying "I could paint here every day if my Mom let me!" Oh, wait, according to the Web site (www.plasterfuntime.com) the kids don't even get to work with wet plaster, they just pick a pre-made piece off "one of seven colored shelves" and then pay eight bucks an hour to paint it. So it's a lot like working in one of those Chinese sweatshops where they paint the eyes on G.I.Joes all day, except that instead of earning eight cents an hour, you have to pay eight dollars an hour. And when you're done you wind up with a toy made out of solid plaster. This month's featured piece: A teddy bear holding a baseball bat. And you can even have your birthday there ("Parents need only bring food, beverages, and paper goods.") No more than two grown-ups are allowed to attend the party, so as not to stifle the kids' creativity. It boggles my mind that there are six locations where kids can pay to do one specific type of craft. They seem to do plenty of business. I'm going to open a competing chain where kids can pay to color in a page from any of the fifty coloring books on display, for only twice the cost of buying a whole coloring book. And my chain will be better because it will be open 24 hours, because you never know when you'll get a craving for coloring! Also, my store will have a machine where the kids can put a quarter in to make a ball (or five for a dollar) so that they can play in the ball pit once they fill it up. -- K. Every night all the balls will be taken out and recycled into gas masks for postal workers. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: New Washing Machine Arrives! Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 22:04:17 GMT Dag Right-square-bracket-gren (d@c3.cx) wrote: > > In other washer news, our washer magically started working again. When I > took my clothes out of it, I also found a small plastic letter B, from the > neighbour's door. > > B in a washing machine! I would like to know the backstory with regards to the reasons you were attempting to wash your neighbor's house in your washing machine. Even if your neighbor's house were covered with a mixture of grass stains, chocolate sauce, dried blood, and the other kinds of filth they show in detergent commercials, wouldn't the chimney get broken off during the tumble-dry? Also, is bleach good for ivy? -- K. Here's an idea I just had that would be really cool if geneticists could do it just for me: Cross-breed bees with Legos, so you'd get little yellow and black bricks that would swarm around and assemble themselves and sting anyone who likes Lincoln Logs better. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: New Washing Machine Arrives! Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 20:02:03 GMT Dag Right-square-bracket-gren (d@c3.cx) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Dag Right-square-bracket-gren (d@c3.cx) wrote: > > > > > > When I took my clothes out of it, I also found a small plastic > > > letter B, from the neighbour's door. > > > > I would like to know the backstory with regards to the reasons you were > > attempting to wash your neighbor's house in your washing machine. > > No, see, the letters on the neighbour's appartment door had been falling > off one by one. It used to say "Kevin" - in Swedish-speaking Finland, > this is actually a last name, and is pronounced something like "cheveen", > but the letters fell off one by one, and then they put them back but now > it said "Isbom" and then THOSE letters started falling off, and after they > were all gone, we hoped there'd be a third wacky name there, but they just > put "Isbom" up there again. Yes, but... how did the letters fall into your washing machine? And where did the others go? Did they dissolve in new Swedish Finnish Tide With Extra Whitening Action And A Side Of Lefse? Do you get Tide there? Here in the U.S., all detergent is made by one and a half companies -- their names are "Procter" and "Gamble" -- and they make all the lettering on the boxes so big that they can't fit more than one syllable -- Tide, All, Fab, Biz, Duz, Cheer, Bold, Wisk, and so on. Some of those may have changed their name to other one-syllable names, I don't know. There used to be one named Dreft, which is not only a nonsense word, but also a rather ugly-sounding one to me (it's like "dreck" plus "bereft") but it was probably renamed as one of the ones with a trendy, ultra-modern name like Fab. -- K. I suspect that Swedish Finland gets a mixture of Bold and Wisk named Bork. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: food that tastes as good as it looks Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 23:02:37 GMT "talysman" (talysman@globalsurrealism.com) wrote: > > it's all paid for by your tax dollars (except for you). > > http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/taco-patty.jpg > > what, pray tell, is a taco patty? Looks like half of a hamburger puck, probably with some paprika sprinkled on it to make it as flavorfully exotic as school cafeteria food ever gets. Note that it does not include lettuce or cheese, but they give you a paper cup with some cole slaw and/or salad in it, suitable for future assembly, proving conclusively that a taco patty is an essential part of a completely awful meal. > and how come this teryaki bites? > > http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/teryaki-bites.jpg Now there's another great example of a complete meal: Some doggie treats, a biscuit, an eighth of an orange floating in Tang, and milk. Plus two napkins for fiber, including the napkin which is tucked under the biscuit to keep the under-biscuit grease from dissolving through the plastic tray. There is also a bigger, prettier version of the same one: http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/beef-teraki.jpg Maybe one is an entree and another is a buffet for two, or something. > why does "italian dunkers" look like pieces of bread and a cup of > tomato sauce? > > http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/italian-dunkers.jpg Another awesomely nutritious complete feast. Bread AND ketchup! Plus the exercise you get putting the two together to make them soggy! It always amazes me that the government runs so many asinine TV commercials telling kids to eat healthy snacks and obey the Food Pyramid and yet they allow children to be fed crap like this. (Don't even ask about what grade of meat is used in the ones that contain meat. Basically, kids aren't allowed to complain or sue, so they always get the stuff that CAN'T be sold to adults.) I poked around that Web site a while and here are some of my other anti-favorites: http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/baked-ham.jpg They must have done a lot of work to get the ham and the bread to be exactly the same color. http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/chick-sal-pita.jpg The color isn't accurate because the picture was taken when it had been out of the refrigerator for three days. For an accurate depiction, they should have waited another week. http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/bbq-meatballs.jpg Note that, for maximum efficiency, each entree has been assigned a code name, shown in the corner. "Mmm! This is the best-tasting BM I've ever had!" Of course, they can get away with that because only grown-ups giggle when asking for "a plate of BM", kids would never do that. http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/sliced-turk.jpg They're not even trying to disguise it as "Soylent Green" any more! Sliced Turk is people! It's people!!! Well, at least it's halal. (I'd hate to see the stretching machine that makes Turkish Taffy.) http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/taco-tub.jpg That taco tub would leave one heck of a bathtub ring. Eat one, take a bath, watch as the grease magically transfers itself from inside you to outside you through every pore of your malnourished body. http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/MVC-548S.JPG I know this nameless item can't be a novelty plastic barf, because plastic barf is more realistic looking. This barf has corners! http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/soft-taco.jpg To properly describe this entree, a new adjective must be invented: "diaprous". http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/ham-c-pita.jpg DIAPROUS MAXIMUS WITH GRAVY!!! Now back to what you said, now that we have the vocabulary to deal with it. > and for kibo, here's a nice cheezy meal: > > http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/water/2-lunches/cheese-s-shells.jpg That one's revolting but not diaprous. It's worse than diaprous. It's past vomitrocious and blecchsplosive. It's in the realm of grossness where there aren't even any nonsense words to describe it. What is that dirty, prolate item next to the slurry? My guess is that it's some clown's attempt to make a balloon-animal bacillus. I didn't mention the eight or nine different things which claim to be pizza (solid yellow rectangles with sparkly highlights from the grease pools) but I will quote this page of instructions for lunch ladies everywhere: -> Click "print" when you find the right picture -> -> After it prints... -> -> cut out the picture and laminate it. -> -> A card catalog is a great way to store them. -> -> Now your students will know exactly what they're going to get! "Yay, It's oozing yellow blob day! I wondered what color blob we were going to get, but now I know exactly, it's yellow blob day!" And the site also says, -> As with all material found on the Internet, teachers and parents -> should be very careful in allowing students to explore these sites -> unless direct supervision is provided. This is because the school hates having to pay for a psychiatrist to treat the kids who have come down with hysterical blindness after seeing the close-up of Taco Patty. -- K. I'd hate to see what this stuff looked like before they touched up the photos. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: food that tastes as good as it looks Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 20:13:00 GMT Stacia (stacia@world.std.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > "talysman" (talysman@globalsu