Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Dumb examples of sex in 'educational' books Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 05:19:59 GMT Pugg (pugg71@hotmail.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Lots42 (lots42@aol.com) wrote: > > > > > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > > > > > I'd watch almost anything else before sitting through an episode > > > > of [...] "Are You Being Served Yet?"... > > > > > > Yet? Wherein comes the 'Yet'? I remember 'Are You Being Served'? > > > > Well, see, YOU haven't been served YET. That's why you can't have > > more tea, because you haven't had any tea yet, and you'll never have > > any tea until you realize that Steve Meretzky wants you to type > > "DROP NO TEA" and deposit a check for a negative amount to withdraw > > money to defend yourself against a heavily-armed Woody Allen and also > > if you cheat and turn to the last page of the "Zork" book it makes > > fun of you for cheating at a stupid "Zork" book. > > Y'know, it saddens me that I "get" most of Kibo's stupid video game > references, but almost none of his stupid movie or tv references. For the benefits of those who are culturally deprived in a different way from Pugg: Steve Meretzky was responsible for the puzzles in some of Infocom's early computer adventure games (the all-text ones), including "Zork" and the two Douglas Adams-inspired properties, "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" and "Bureaucracy". In the "Hitch-Hiker's" game your inventory list always included NO TEA and you couldn't acquire the tea because you obviously can't have tea and no tea at the same time, so you had to type "DROP NO TEA". Bureaucracy ripped the lid off those mysterious orange or green stickers that say "3" on your junk mail, and you had to cash a paycheck which had a typo consisting of a minus sign before the number, and avoid a gun nut who was always described as looking like "a heavily- armed Woody Allen." In the days when computer games were allowed to consist entirely of words, books were also considered a form of game-style entertainment (as evidenced by the "Dungeons & Dragons: Choose Your Own Adventure" books) and Steve Meretzky wrote a few "Zork" puzzle books, which were a bit more entertaining than all the competing ones because he's silly. Also there would occasionally be a page where the book said "If you have the Enchanted Underpants Of Velvis, go to page 253, otherwise go to page 252" and if you went to page 253 it would tell you there was no such item in the book, you filthy cheater. The last page would also be a cheat trap, with the actual endings hidden somewhere in the middle. Of course, these books could only contain about thirty minutes' worth of entertainment (more if you cheated) so they didn't really compare to the computer games, where you'd sit there staring at a blue screen for hours tearing your hair out trying to guess that you were expected to type "DROP NO TEA". > > "Are You Being Served Yet?", which may have only aired inside my head, > > is just like "Are You Being Served?" except the woman with the funny > > funny hair color has slightly less funny hair. > > Kibo, I think you're mixing up "Are You Being Served" with "What's > Happening Now." Remember, one relied almost entirely on fat jokes for > laughs, while the other deftly blended the fat jokes with gay jokes > and double entendres. I think you're thinking of "Happy Days Again", "More Happy Days", "Laverne & Shirley & Co.", "Laverne DeFazio & Shirley Feeney", or "More Real People", all of which I've actually watched because I like anything where they're not really sure what their own title is. > Wasn't there a series with exactly the same cast as "Are You Being > Served" playing the exact same characters, but they all worked in a > hotel, or on a farm, or a youth hostel, or something? That one was "Are You Being On A Farm Yet, Or In A Youth Hostel, Or Something, Yet?" It was cancelled after only two episodes (that's half a season in England) but to recoup the costs the BBC sold the title to Universal, which tried to slap the title on one of the versions of "Brazil" which ended with a big dance number where everyone got married and lived happily ever after. Terry Gilliam hated that title, along with the other fifty or sixty Universal tried (the best was "The Electro-Circuit Ball-Bearing Memory Buster") but fortunately he was able to get the film released with his title and his ending, where Jonathan Pryce was tortured into insanity and went on to star in a movie based on a theme-park ride ("Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Movie", Disney's followup to "The Country Bears: The Movie".) > Not that the setting mattered much to me; I only watched "Are You > Being Served" for its sensitive portrayal of gay culture in England > during the 70's. Wow, you've been gay a long time. If I ever turn gay, years from now, I'll only be comfortable watching shows from after I turned gay, so I'd be limited to seeing the twenty-fourth season of "The Simpsons" (the 3-D one) and episodes of Conan O'Brien's show where he does "In The Year 2100" and of course reruns of "seaQuest 2032". Incidentally, a memo was just leaked from Viacom detailing their plans to start an all-gay cable channel (the second one, after "E!") called "Outlet". They say they're going to make it a subscription-only channel so that nobody will ever complain about accidentally seeing it, but we know they're really just doing that so that the cable company will know precisely which customers ask to have their television made gayer so that the manufacturers of Zima will know where to send the free samples. I hope this channel doesn't get started because then I'll no longer be able to see "Knight Rider" on the free stations. > > > This led to a lot of frustrating moments later where I would be > > > enjoying the show then get to the part I saw. > > > > Yeah, it sort of spoils those twist endings where Forest Whitaker > > reveals that THEY'RE ALL ROBOTS!!! > > > > -- K. > > > > and HE'S A PSYCHLO!!! > > > > and BILL COSBY SAID HE > > WAS RUINING FAT ALBERT!!! > > See? This is what I was on about earlier. One of this week's typically terrible "New Twilight Zone" episodes (the UPN ones hosted by an out-of-place-seeming Forest Whitaker, not the 1980s CBS episodes or the subsequent syndicated episodes) had that twist ending. See, these futuristic soldiers had to go into this forest to hunt this deadly offscreen creature that nobody had ever seen, and it was very dangerous, because their prey was THE!!! MOST!!! DANGEROUS!!! GAME!!! and it turned out that it was A GUY!!! AND!!! THEY!!! WERE!!! ALL!!! ROBOTS!!! That twist was so novel that it requires that many EXCLAMATION!!! POINTS!!! to slow it down to where your brains can comprehend how awesome it isn't. Forest Whitaker's previous work had been directing the live-action "Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids: The Movie" a few months ago, except that never happened because Bill Cosby fired him so that he couldn't ruin the timeless elegance of the crudely-animated cartoon about a bunch of deformed kids who were black and square. (Forest was going to use a big foam rubber suit to make Fat Albert fat enough, and computer animation to make Weird Harold tall enough, in order to make the live action look exactly like the cartoon, except in a creepy way. I have no idea precisely what convinced Bill Cosby that this revival was going horribly wrong, given that he was the one who made the worst of the three "I Spy" revival movies -- "Leonard Part 6" -- maybe Forest Whitaker had Fat Albert eat the wrong brand of pudding pop.) And before that, Forest Whitaker had been John Travolta's sidekick in "Battlefield Earth". He was the one who turned against John Travolta and joined forces with the humans to imprison in him Fort Knox until the sequel (which never got made.) There was also supposed to be a cartoon series (animated in France) but that never seems to have materialized either, so we'll never get to see Forest Whitaker with rubber tubes hanging out of his nose ever again. Unless he gets lung cancer. And that sounds almost as horrible to watch as "Battlefield Earth". Forest Whitaker used to be a respectable person, but lately he's been involved with three Bad Ideas in a row, so I think we can put him on that list of actor/directors who should be quarantined from any movies and shows that shouldn't be ruined. It would be okay for him to be in "Baby Geniuses 2: Superbabies", though. -- K. Something I forgot to mention in the discussion of the live-action "Pac-Man: The Movie": The boneheads who are making that -- a company called Crystal Sky -- have apparently finally completed production on their previous project... "BABY GENIUSES 2: SUPERBABIES". Wow. These bozos might actually be able to make "Pac-Man: The Movie" turn out even WORSE than everyone expects it to be. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: bad superheroes on TV (was: Dumb examples of sex in 'educational' books) Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 21:55:45 GMT talysman (talysman@globalsurrealism.com) wrote: > > [...] that made-for-teevee "wonder woman" where cathy lee > crosby was attacked by mud; But she's not attacked by it. She's just locked in a room where she LOOKS at it slowly oozing down a wall ... AND IT'S NEAPOLITAN! I seem to recall she worries about it over a whole commercial break before she just kicks open the door without ever touching the goop. I have no idea what the hell it was supposed to be, or why it came in three flavors, none of which did anything but still somehow scared Wonder Woman so much that she ran away from it after staring at it for several minutes. I get the feeling that that TV-movie was so low-budget (even for a TV-movie) that they couldn't get their only costume dirty. And what a costume! Wonder Woman fights crime in A SEVENTIES JOGGING SUIT! It makes the "Captain America" TV-movies look ambitious (but then again, so did the "Captain America" theatrical movie.) Wonder Woman didn't have any powers and never did anything and didn't even wear that little bathing suit. So what was the point? I'll tell you what the point was: TEDIUM! Like all TV-movies, it was carefully engineered to induce tedium, possibly to make the commercials seem interesting. One of the special things about TV-movies is that ratings get measured during the first thirty seconds of the first airing, so they really don't care about building up word-of-mouth to tell your friends to go see this movie, and they don't even try to keep you interested all the way through. Most TV-movies contain no entertainment at all, just two hours of mind-numbingly actionless filler. There have only been two or three in human history which contained ANY interesting moments. Let's put it this way: If they made a TV-movie and it turned out any good, they wouldn't show it on TV, they'd release it to theaters. (In fact, that's what happened to the pilot movie for "Buck Rogers In The 25th Century".) On the other hand, theatrical movies which turn out so bad that the studio thinks "We can never, ever allow anyone to see this because it would damage our reputation" get aired as "original" TV-movies on Fox and UPN. For instance, "The Tower", in which Paul Reiser is trapped in a skyscraper controlled by a computer designed to murder anyone who pushes the elevator button repeatedly (I am not making this up) but then he makes the building explode by singing "Bad Moon Rising" over and over, off-key. Really, the big "action" scene is PAUL REISER SINGING. This is the only movie which could have been improved if it had William Shatner singing instead. Paul Reiser is so irritating in this movie that they practically had to put up a caption saying "THIS IS PAUL REISER, NOT RICHARD LEWIS". And the Sci-Fi Channel's programming now consists of 50% shows about how ghosts and werewolves and vampyres and the Dean Drive are really, really, really real, really, and 50% awful TV-movies, all of which are "Alien" or "Terminator" knockoffs with no budget so that the only way you can tell the hero and the monster apart is that one of them's Mark-Paul Gosselaar and the other's just some guy who wasn't even on "Saved By The Bell". But I fail to see what this has to do with me getting new eyeglasses next week. Oh, that's right... Cathy Lee Crosby was replaced by Lynda Carter (thankfully) who was a professional eyewear model. You couldn't go to an optician in the 1970s without seeing big posters of Lynda Carter's head with even bigger eyeglasses. She had a face specially designed to promote really huge eyeglasses. Sort of like if Brett Somers was younger and liked to tie up men with her golden lasso. If I wander into the "inspired by comic-book-quality TV" section of the eyewear store, I'll have to be careful not to accidentally buy Clint Howard's eyeglasses from "Space Rangers". -- K. "Space Rangers" is one of those shows where I spent the whole time composing lists of in what order I would want to punch most of the characters in the face, after swooping in with my jetpack to carry Linda Hunt and Gottfried John to a different show. I think the stubbly hero (played by Jeff Kaake), "Doc" (the guy with a mechanical heart he kept taking out to show us, because it was in a CD tray) and "Mimmer" (Clint Howard trying to be EXTRA- geeky) wound up in a three-way tie, followed by the butch woman and the fake Klingon. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: bad superheroes on TV (was: Dumb examples of sex in 'educational' books) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 02:35:21 GMT Matt McIrvin (mmcirvin@world.std.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > And the Sci-Fi Channel's programming now consists of 50% shows about > > how ghosts and werewolves and vampyres and the Dean Drive are really, > > really, really real, > > And they're now promoting them by making up a political lobbying > organization (the "Coalition for Freedom of Information" run by > Clinton's White House chief of staff) and sponsoring pseudoscientific > conferences (were I in the process of choosing an institution of higher > education, I would now think twice before considering George Washington > University). > > The Sci-Fi Channel is entering an amazing new phase of evil. I know > that all sorts of people labor mightily to make the public stupider, > but no entertainment conglomerate has been quite so explicit about it > until now. I think AOL Time Warner has them beat. The current incarnation of their "Headline News" channel (which was once "CNN2") has now evolved to the point where it doesn't even contain a headline, let alone a newscast. Every half hour they stop the show for a musical number! A MUSICAL NUMBER! They find some country and/or western singer who records under the AOL Time Warner label and he sets up his gee-tar in the middle of the "news"room and sings a song and then they interview him about how great his new album is. That's what replaced the lifestyle segment. What replaced the science and medicine segment, you ask? Celebrities talking about diseases that their relatives have. Just to make it really clear there's no actual science or medicine involved, the segment is called "Bio-Rhythms". I suspect that within a week, the sports segment will just be a guy sliding down a hill on a piece of bubble wrap yelling "EXTREEEEEEME!" and the weather segment will be a guy operating a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. Also note that all the alleged business news on Headline News is about press releases from AOL Time Warner, and to avoid a conflict of interest they follow any report on how wonderful America Online software is with the anchor smiling as she recites the disclaimer, "America Online is owned by AOL Time Warner, which also owns this network," and then there's a commercial for whatever they just pretended they were reporting on. This isn't just one of those fake newscasts that's driven by advertising -- this is a fake newscast emanating from a conglomerate so big that they don't feel the need to plug anyone else. Let me put it this way: AOL Time Warner's fake news channel is even more self-promotional than MSNBC... the Microsoft "news" channel. At least Microsoft sometimes sort of pretends they're bringing you news. AOL Time Warner doesn't care. And now, here's the guitar guy! Oh, there are other dumb things on other dumb channels too. And the Sci-Fi Channel does a pretty good job of making gullible idiots stupider for about two-thirds of its broadcast day. But at least the Sci-Fi Channel's intelligence level goes UP when "Crossing Over With John Edward" stops and a Flowbee infomercial comes on. CNN Headline News, on the other hand, is aggressively brain-damaging for twenty-four hours a day. They can achieve that level of perfection because they only film fifteen minutes of stupidity which they then show ninety-six times a day. It's the channel for people who, at 3 a.m., want to know what happened around lunchtime yesterday, but can't afford a VCR. -- K. I miss the old Sci-Fi Channel, when they showed science fiction instead of crapola. And I miss the old Headline News, when they had serious journalistic integrity and only reported on waterskiing squirrels that weren't owned by AOL Time Warner. There, I have now guaranteed that I can never get my own cable TV show. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: bad superheroes on TV (was: Dumb examples of sex in 'educational' books) Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 05:37:10 GMT Jim Blackburn (tae1fra001@sneakemailHAWHAW.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > the weather segment will be a guy operating a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. > > I heartily endorce this product and/or service. > > That is, until the 30th Sno-Cone or so. At that point, the cheese > grater/ice shaver gets dull and you get Glacier-Cones instead. You must live in an area where everything is colder, and sharper. When I tried the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine the blade got dull well before the first Sno-Cone was completed. It would spit out a small quantity of melted slush, and by the time I got a whole ice cube shaved, it had all melted away. I think the DANGER! SHARP! parts were just made out of aluminum foil with microscopic perforations in it. I only bought it because of the theme song! In the future, if I ever again want a Sno-Cone, I'll just grab a big chunk of frost from inside my freezer, and flush it down the toilet, and say to myself, "That would have tasted just as bad as whatever would come out of the Snoopy Sno-Cone machine, but this way is easier," and go to bed early. -- K. "DaAaAaMmNn YoUuUuU ToOoOoOpY!" ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: And at White Castle, the seats are really squishy. Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 05:45:04 GMT Lots42 (lots42@aol.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Fun fact: My local 7-Eleven suddenly started carrying potato chips > > ("potato crisps", actually) made in Northern Ireland. [...] > > I wouldn't be surprised if these were here in Boston as some > > sort of IRA funding scheme -- > > When I was younger, I liked to draw. ...before Commander Mark took all the fun out of it by emphasizing the violent, fascist, military dictatorship nature of all doodling! (Does anyone but me remember that show?) Mark Kistler's a great guy, I just thought the paramilitary angle to that show seemed a little... odd... > I sort of did it improv, so one scene was a construction worker > digging a hole while an IRS agent watched. But I put IRA on his > briefcase. My mom saw it and was confused and it was only much later > I realized she thought I was drawing terrorists. It's okay as long as you touched it up to make the IRA guy and the construction worker holding hands to represent world peace, as long as you didn't make them the same color. In other foreign snack news, I'm eating Tohato's exciting new product, "Chocorinco 2", yet another Japanese snack made from the same stuff as Cheetos except with something more entertaining than cheez. These are corn puffs which are shaped (for no reason) like pretzels of two different sizes. The little white ones are white chocolate flavor and the big green ones are white chocolate plus green tea flavor. They're actually pretty good if you like the combination of tea, grease, and crunch (which are three of the five food groups in Japan, they forgot to include the other two, dried fish shavings and seaweed-flavored carbon paper.) Tohato seems to specialize in making fake Cheetos of every conceivable color and flavor. Except they haven't yet gotten around to bacon ones. THERE MUST BE BACON CHEETOS SOMEDAY. Or I will tell the potato-chip terrorists to blow up Japan so that Commander Mark can build a giant slave-labor bacon Cheeto factory with huge tank treads so that it can roll around crushing its enemies. I always wonder if Commander Mark wore his uniform in real life. I think he probably did, because he probably needed felt-tip pens all the time, and most clothes don't have those convenient pen holders built into the epaulets. I also wonder whatever happened to him. No, wait -- I just looked him up on the Web, and found a picture of him -- and now I know what he's doing right now -- HE'S SADDAM HUSSEIN! It's always such a shame when art instructors turn evil. If you don't believe me, see www.drawsquad.com for proof that he's Saddam Hussein... although I think that's The Six Million Dollar Man's jumpsuit. OH NO! SADDAM HUSSEIN HAS BIONIC POWERS! AND HE CAN DRAW! -- K. I was born too early for "The Secret City", so I learned to draw from "Captain Kangaroo". Now I can only draw on tissue paper, from the back side. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: And at White Castle, the seats are really squishy. Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 22:19:05 GMT Gregory King (greg@flyingpawn.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com): > > > > I always wonder if Commander Mark wore his uniform in real life. > > I think he probably did, because he probably needed felt-tip pens > > all the time, and most clothes don't have those convenient pen > > holders built into the epaulets. > > Oh, NOW I remember that show. I was pretty young then, so I think I did > learn drawing techniques from it, but I never knew when it was on so I > was never prepared to draw along with Mark. Also, I think my drawings > were always disappointing, if for no other reason than the fact that dull > pencil on the back of a church bulletin doesn't look as nice as felt-tip > pen on a sketch pad. Still, I thought I did pretty well, and at some > point I'm sure I thought I was going to be a cartoonist when I grew up. Is there anyone here who didn't have that fantasy? Didn't we all spend a lot of time wishing there was a way we could grow up to be an astronaut who also had a syndicated newspaper comic strip we could draw in outer space? Commander Mark's show ("The Secret City" -- he also has had several other shows, although he only dressed funny on that one) was actually a very good art-instruction show. He's an excellent teacher and makes sure that the lessons involve stuff that everyone can actually do, and introduces lots of advanced topics such as shading and perspective and stuff. The goal was to teach you how to draw what you imagined, not just copy. It was just the way he did this while wearing a sort of fascist dictator outfit that was weird, seeing this genial, smiling man drawing pictures while dressed like Idi Amin. It was a very good show if you didn't look directly at the costume. Bad art-instruction shows and books always bother me. There are the ones that consist of "Draw four eggs and a trapezoid, and now let me take this one out of the oven I made earlier -- look, offscreen, those four eggs and a trapezoid somehow turned into Abraham Lincoln! Now go practice drawing this one thing in this one specific pose with no background because that's the only thing I've told you how to draw." Commander Mark was one of the ones who emphasized creativity and technique, while a lot of the others emphasize copying (and of course your copy never looks as good as the one on TV, unless you get it exactly right, in which case you still don't feel good about it because it's not yours.) The major flaw in "Blue's Clues" is that the drawing segments are the bad kind. If you follow along with the show, you have about ten seconds to draw whatever the rugby-shirt guy draws... "Make a line here, add a curve here, put a line here, and now your drawing looks exactly like mine," is the basic principle, but I doubt toddlers can keep up given that the instructions go really fast and they have to look at the paper and not the screen when they're drawing. Plus you have to buy the special expensive notebook with only eight non-refillable pages in it. -- K. Now let's add a happy tree to this article. You can make the tree as happy as you want, because it's your world. Why are you all asleep? Is it my giant spherical hair? Hey, suppose we cross-bred Bob Ross with Jon Gnagy. What would we call the new hairstyle combining the size of the Afro with the pointiness of the devil goatee? And why was Bob Ross the one with the spherical hair, given that Jon Gnagy was the one who made everything out of spheres and cubes? "Ball, cube, cylinder, cone. By using these four shapes, I can draw any picture I want. And so can you!" -- Jon Gnagy (Think about the meaning there: He can draw any picture he wants... And we can also draw any picture he wants.) ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: And at White Castle, the seats are really squishy. Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 05:58:43 GMT Rune Ness (runen@netcom.no) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > -> STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) -- A customer in an international > > -> hamburger chain outlet in western Sweden lost his appetite when > > -> he discovered the restaurant's toilet seats were being washed > > -> in its dishwasher alongside the kitchen utensils. > > Luckily I've only eaten at one McDonald's restaurant in Sweden. What are > the odds this happened in that one? Probably a million to one! Yes, but those are better odds than getting both Boardwalk and Park Place in their stupid fake rigged "Monopoly" sweepstakes. (Do you have Monopoly in Scandinavia? Are all the streets still named after parts of Atlantic City that now have casinos on them, or are the streets named after fjords?) > > I like how CNN says "an international hamburger chain outlet" so that > > they won't get sued by a big scary clown wearing makeup made from > > ketchup and mustard. > > I, however, am broke, so I'm not afraid of some suit. McDonalds! It's not the money that you should be scared of. Ronald McDonald has far worse ways of punishing us for talking about him on the Internet. For instance, there was this one guy, who said he found a rat in his milkshake, and Ronald McDonald took off his red wig and smothered the guy with it, and it was a lot worse than being suffocated by a regular wig that doesn't smell like rancid clownburger grease. > > -> The man noticed on a visit to the bathroom in the restaurant in > > -> Arvika, Sweden, that all the toilet seats had been removed. > > GAAAAH! ONE LOUSY RESTAURANT VISIT, AND I HAD TO CHOOSE THE MCDONALD'S > IN ARVIKA! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! > > And the sucky part is, I *know* it's the McDonald's, because there are > no other international fast-food chain franchises in Arvika! One > super-sized Big Mac meal coming right up! Soon there will be no other international fast-food chain franchises anywhere. I think White Castle is only in the United States, so maybe it will be allowed to continue operating, although I think only about seven restaurants are still open (they never quite recovered from the stock market crash of 1929.) I like them even though their hamburgers are tiny, square, and very damp. Does Scandinavia have anything like White Castle? Would a Swedish White Castle serve little meatballs the size of peas? Would Norwegian White Castle serve lutefiskburgers, or isn't lutefisk squishy enough? -- K. Sadly, the original Buzzy's in Boston was torn down last week. Now I don't know where I can go to get french fries that are two inches thick and still raw on the outside! I miss going there at 2:00 in the morning to eat improperly cooked fast food in the middle of a cloverleaf in front of the jail under the highway next to the hospital. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Goofy goggles Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 06:12:25 GMT Jacob W. Haller (spog@jwgh.org) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > What sort of glasses should I get? Bear in mind I'm at (if memory serves) > > something like minus ten diopters per eye, which means lenses that are > > really thick around the edges. > > At first I was all like "Why doesn't Kibo just have them put the new > lenses in his old frames so he can save BIG BUX?" But then it occurred > to me that maybe you didn't want to walk around BLIND for the twenty > hours it takes to hew your lenses out of raw obsidan using only > primitive tools or however they make eyeglass lenses these days. No, see, my current eyeglasses are several years old. They're going to disintegrate into a fine cloud of green brass oxide if I don't get the frames replaced along with the lenses. I've already had the nosepiece and the screws and the earpieces replaced at different times, and now structural failure is imminent. Remember, I live on the coast, where the salty air makes metal rot away even if I forget to sweat all over it. And to all who told me to get the extra-thin lenses: I ALREADY HAVE THE EXTRA-THIN LENSES, DAMMIT!!! What, do you think I went out of my way to get glasses this thick? I take a strong prescription because my eyeballs are the shape of coctail weenies because I'M A GENIUS! I'm thinking nobody else has glasses with one big lens and one small lens, so I'm considering getting one pair from the John Lennon collection and one pair from the Charles Nelson Reilly collection and cutting them both in half to make two pairs of glasses so wacky that nobody would notice how thick they are. Either that or I could just get a big ball of glass that encloses my whole head. Except it would probably have to be inside-out because I need demagnification, not magnification. But it's still a good idea. -- K. Also, I'm still not decided on the matter of the nose ring: A two-inch one would look really boss, but a one-inch one wouldn't interfere with lollipops. Is it okay to get one with a big gap in the bottom, for eating? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Goofy goggles Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 02:58:54 GMT Sean Case (gsc@zip.com.au) wrote: > > What about a set of frames that look like the machine in the > optometrist's office that they put different lenses into while > you try to read the chart through them? That's a cool idea. Especially because I could drive people crazy by saying "BETTER ONE... OR BETTER TWO?" over and over while not changing anything. But I'd have to get new business cards printed up saying my name is "E FP TOZ", and "FP" is a weird middle name. Also I'd have to cover myself with Enron logos pointing in four different directions. I suspect I'm going to be disappointed by whatever they have in stock at the nerdvision store, because I always am. They never have anything really cool, like eyeglasses that fire death lasers when you wink. -- K. I've been looking for a pair of those for several years, and I'm starting to think they don't make them any more. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Goofy goggles Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 02:51:39 GMT pete (pfiland@mindspring.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I usually just pick out the biggest frames I can find, > > because I want to get the most glass for my money. > > Big frames will get you the most carbonate plastic for the money. > > Small frames will allow you to get real glass lenses which > you can clean off on your shirt, without scratching them. It was an expression, son. I call my glasses "glasses" and the glass in them "glass" even though I haven't had real glass ones in about twenty-five years, just like we call the stuff inside pencils "lead" even though it better not be, and we call Grape-Nuts "Grape-Nuts" even though that would be a big improvement on the hard clumps of sawdust, and we call underwear "underwear" even when we're wearing it by itself. As I've said before, last time I went for an eye appointment they told me I should switch to the super-thin polycarbonate lenses, before realizing that I already have those, and "super-thin" is a LIE. If my eyeglasses were real eyeglasses with real glass in them, my nose would be crushed like if Wile E. Coyote hit Michael Jackson in the face with a shovel. And people would keep saying, "Hey, put those glass blocks back in the bathroom window where they belong!" I have the plastic lenses which get scratched up easily simply because glass ones would be too heavy (and less bulletproof, always a concern for those of us who do our grocery shopping at the Prudential Star.) Also, please tell Wile E. Coyote my idea about Michael Jackson. -- K. I am so tired of this week's newspaper and TV and Web stories about how, in case I didn't realize it, MICHAEL JACKSON HAS HAD SOME ELECTIVE SURGERY! Why do they try so hard to cover something as small as his nose? Also, why won't any reporters agree to come to my eye exam? ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Swim Team Story of the Day Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 06:23:43 GMT Kenton Cernea (requiem@socket.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com): > > > > I recently got a big catalog of supplies for gym teachers. > > Please tell me if they have pickleball supplies. I played pickleball > in 10th grade, and have never seen nor heard of it ever since. It's > like ping-pong with giant paddles and a whiffle-ball on a > badminton-sized slice of the gym. Very Kibological. Oh, do they ever have pickleball. And every other weird made-up trademarked sport created solely to exploit the gullibility of gym teachers. Dozens and dozens of sissy fake sports designed to not be too hard for us bookish kids who aren't up to the rigors of real Ping-Pong or badminton. I'll write up a full book report on this catalog this weekend, once I figure out what to say about the horrifying "CO-OPER BLANKET". I requested the catalog because I was researching Super Pinkies after someone mentioned them here, and wow, have I found a treasure trove of things every bit as interesting as Super Pinkies. -- K. Super Pinkies are not the same as Super Pinky Lee, who would be ripped off by Super Pee-wee Herman, who would get accused of hoarding Super Child Porn, which is a terrible thing to own, unlike ordinary Super Porn. ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Things with funny names that gym teachers might like. Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 06:37:35 GMT Okay, as promised, I went through every item in my catalog of gym teacher supplies. Ignoring all the whistles, climbing ropes, flag football flags, dance music on your choice of vinyl records or newfangled cassettes, and awesome computer programs on five-inch DOS floppies, here are the items I thought were noteworthy, with the catalog descriptions and/or my lies. RANDOM THINGS IN A CATALOG OF WEIRD STUFF FOR GYM TEACHERS: "Skillcoach Shooter Basketball" (a basketball with hands printed on it to show you where to hold it, in case you're so stupid you hold it with your feet) "Heads-Up Dribble Aids" (I thought these were funnels that attached to the lower lip, but they're just sport goggles that don't let you look down) "Possession Indicator" (penalize any player determined to be the devil) "Fan Shooting Station" (all the fun of being Mark David Chapman!) "Hockey Butt Ends" (what's worse is when your hair turns into Hockey Hair With Butt Ends) "Gym Canoes" with "Mushroom Paddles" (what is this, a catalog or "Mad Libs"?) "All Ball" (and now they're letting Koko name products) "Tilt & Roll Bleachers" (to guarantee people will get seasick at the game) "2 Sided Ball Locker" (I usually just store my 2-sided balls in an envelope) "Rubbermaid Containers" with "Brute Dolly" (must be 18 and German to order) "Deluxe Kink Free Hoops" (not for use with Brute Dolly) "Dyna-Might!!!" ("Work-Out Using A Latex Strip Called A Dyna-Band"... I just mention this because "latex strip" fits in with the theme of things that are not kink-free) "Heavy Duty Game Cone Transport" and "Lightweight Cone Transport" (wheeled things used for moving plastic cones around -- really, apparently gym teachers are too wimpy to move traffic cones without a wheeled cart) "Triathlete Chute" (the photo shows a woman running with a little parachute attached to her belt. I think it's a practical joke.) "Step-N-Stones" ("...audibly release air and become flat when stepped or pushed on... employs color and number recognition elements for implementation of cognitive activities" meaning that anyone young enough to be entertained by farting rocks can probably learn something from having "1", "2" and "3" printed on them) "Peacock Feathers" (for only the very wussiest gym classes) "Chess" (I stand corrected about the peacock feathers) "Spinning Plates" (who knew Ed Sullivan was a gym teacher? Yes, these really are plastic plates that you have to balance on sticks.) "Heavy Duty Unicycles" (if you're not one of those clowns who's only pretending to weigh 600 pounds) "Hijax(tm) Aluminum Stilts" (the box doesn't include stilts, just a gun and a pre=printed note saying "I'm taking your stilts to Cuba.") "Black Hole" ("Group members must pass through the Black Hole to return from outer space.") "Commodore's Retreat" ("The idea is to move the commodore (inside the large green ball) from the bridge of one 'ship' to another. Set includes a large gymnic ball...") "Nuclear Waste Transfer" ("A teamwork activity... Set includes one wooden octagonal isotope mover... The nuclear warhead is now your 2-liter soda pop bottle -- not included.") "Belly Bumbers" (I think they mean "Belly Bumpers", but I like the idea of belly bumberchutes better.) "Bucket Of Chickens" ("and they chirp when you squeeze them") "Deck Tennis Rings" (I always wondered what those 7" rubber rings in the Special Gym equipment room were for. Well, now I know what they're called. I still have no idea what they're for. How does one play tennis with a doughnut, and why would one do so on the deck of a ship?) "Hoop-La Activities Book" (I mention this book of hoop games just because its cover shows a bald blue superhero in red underwear playing with a hoop, and he has a big "H" carved into his forehead like someone rejected from "Red Dwarf" for being too ridiculous-looking) "Bury-All Plate" (In Russia, home plate steals YOU! <-- You have to imagine Yakov Smirnoff yelling that while pounding on the table with a cleated shoe.) "Yellow Dudley Thunder" (I call dibs on using that name in a short story about an oddly-colored giant rabbit who lives on an Indian reservation and dyes Easter Eggs all day) "Football/Lacrosse Jerseys" (there's nothing funny about those, until you read the description and say "Eww! Sounds icky!" because they have a "double knit shoulder yolk".) "Smedley III Grip Strength Tester" (measures how much stronger you are than anyone named Smedley) "High Quality Licorice Speed Rope Ex-U-Rope" (is it the speed of high-quality licorice, or the quality of high-speed licorice?) "Heavy-Duty Vaulting Box" (I mention this solely because my elementary school had one the teacher only ever referred to as "the Swedish box" and now at last I know what it's really called although I have no idea what made the Swedishness of ours more important than its intended purpose.) "Co-Oper Blanket" (this is the single weirdest thing in the catalog. It's a big spandex doughnut designed to encase thirteen kids. I have no idea what you do once you've packed your kids into a doughnut. I guess you tell the doughnut to inch towards the other side of the room to encourage cooperation by telling the kids you're going to flunk all thirteen of them unless they learn the valuable skill of moving a giant doughnut with their butts from the inside.) "Body Sox" ("Body Sox are designed specifically for spatial awareness and creative movement. Each pillowcase like sack is made from four-way stretch LYCRA with a reinforced velcro closure. Once inside, users shapes become amorphous and art-like. Because the LYCRA is translucent, the children inside will be able to see out.") PARACHUTE MUSIC CDs: "Rhythmic Parachute Play" ("do the umbrella, mountain, and mushroom") "Chute The Works" ("do the twist, the bump, the grapevine...") "A World Of Parachute Play" (includes the "Star Trek" theme) "Pop Rock Parachute" (includes "Bubble Squash") "Playtime Parachute Fun" (includes -- I am not making this up -- "Parachute Rollerball". I'm not sure what that super-violent song sounds like, but it will "turn kids on to teamwork as their gross motor skills develop".) MADE-UP BRAND-NAME SPORTS: "Rimball" (a basketball hoop on four legs so you can put it in the middle of the gym) "Funball" (a plastic basketball bucket with three holes in the bottom so you don't know which way the ball will come out, which apparently is what creates fun) "Funballs" (an unrelated product, "whiffle style balls") "Z-Ball" (a ball with seven "Bounce Bumps" to make it all wacky) "Reaction Ball" (a ball with six "bounce bumps" to make it slightly less wacky in lowercase) (Interestingly, their Web site says both have six bumps but I will assume the printed one is correct because they couldn't say it in print if it weren't true, and everything on the Web is wrong) "Tri-Ball" ("VOLLEYBALL WITH A NEW TWIST": volleyball for three teams at once) "Global Ball" (like volleyball except it has three holes in the "Space Net" which are goals, and also the ball has continents printed on it) "Wallyball" ("Transforms your unused racquetball court into a volleyball arena... adds some unique Wallyball rules too") "Billy Ball" ("The Game Keeps Moving Because The Ball Keeps Changing... One point is scored each time a 'scoring object' is thrown through the goal.") "Swing Ball" ("At the heart of Swing Ball is its deeply grooved corkscrew shaped track. Within this track, the ring of a tethered tennis ball rides.") "Prowickets Soccer Game" ("You'll play soccer croquet, soccer golf, lawn bowling, and more...") "Spongee Polo" (I think he discovered stretchy spaghetti) "Pillo Polo" (this is good over rice, as "Arroz Con Pillo Polo") "Ring Hockey" (the puck is a ring, and the sticks have no blades -- this shows every sign of a factory reject being sold as a new sport) "Broomball" (it looks like curling, but without the fun) "Turbojav" (26" foam darts with tail fins. "There's no such thing as failure, yet tremendous potential for success; whether it wobbles for 5' or flies for 200'.") "Squellet Balls" (the name says it all) "Squidgee Ball" (the name says it all) "Spider Ball" ("admittedly, one of the strangest balls around") "Stabiball" (not to be confused with the much more entertaining "Stabbyball") "The Duel Game" (it's tug-o-war except you have to stand on a plastic square that says "DUEL" and yell "DUEL!" $32 gets you a rope, two squares, and full instructions.) "Lo/Lo Ball" (sold at lo/lo prices) "Poi-Poi" ("with a poi in each hand, players perform various patterns of swinging activities to the beat of a chant," just like at Hef's mansion) "Goaltimate" (it's like frisbee golf combined with frisbee soccer) "Trapp Ball" (catch the ball in a net held in both hands) "Rallyball" (no description, but it looks like Ping-Pong without a net) "Shuttle Smash" ("a badminton game with a shorter racket with better control") "Trac Ball" (one of those plastic jai-alai variants with handheld scoops) "Scatterball" ("a non-elimination form of dodgeball where everyone stays in" -- oh, the horror, the horror!) "Stick-A-Ball" (ball with suction cups so it will stick to your paddle) "Deluxe Sacket Game" (like baseball, except without second base) "Eclipse Ball" ("the hottest new racquet and ball sport created") "Toppleball Game" (involves a playground ball, a flat bat, and a small ball balanced on a post -- sort of like cricket, except even less popular in the United States) "Pickle Ball Tennis Set" (it's like tennis except also like pickle ball, combined into the exciting new sport of pickle ball tennis. Includes two "rackets".) "Pickle-Ball -- With Bases" (includes four "diller paddles") "Pickle-Ball -- Without Bases" (includes four "paddles") "Pickle-Ball Book" ("Even includes test questions for your class." Like, is it played with rackets or paddles or diller paddles?) ----------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Things with funny names that gym teachers might like. Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 03:07:49 GMT Madge (deletethisbit.madge@justice.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > RANDOM THINGS IN A CATALOG OF WEIRD STUFF FOR GYM TEACHERS: > > > > [...] > > > > "Pickle-Ball Book" ("Even includes test questions for your class." Like, > > is it played with rackets or paddles or diller paddles?) > > Dear Ms Landers > > I know it was a long list and probably used up a lot of his lexicon but > the BigK and sidebar was missing from the bottom of Kibo's message. I > have to ask (Gulp) is everything Ok in kiboland? > > Concerned of Pershawar Maybe I got bored after looking at 3,000 items in a catalog of stuff that would only interest people who enjoy blowing whistles at children. Or maybe, just maybe, the "-- K." is buried under a hill of fire ants that biplanes are dropping nuclear bombs on. You could try digging it up, it's directly beneath the corpses of lots of two-dimensional gym teachers. It might get easier if you waited until Darth Vader's spaceship finished blowing up all the biplanes. Someone really should do a coffee-table book of kids' pictures of gym teachers in Hell. Also, there should be a TV show where a cast of professional stuntmen act out those scenes. Or better yet, mimes. MIMES WITH WHISTLES! -- K. Also, how come so many people put transparent cubes in their doodles, but I'm the only one who ever draws a dodecahedron? I bet Jon Gnagy couldn't draw a good dodecahedron! Could someone please draw me a picture of Carl Sagan's flying dodecahdron dropping atom bombs on Jon Gnagy?