From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Instant review: Mockba (by Brendan Connor) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 02:10:35 -0500 This just in from our correspondent in some weird country... Brendan Connor wrote: > > Could you post this to Kibology? > > Mockba. Mockba. Mockba! > > First, I would like to state that I believe that every nation is required > by law to have at least have one box of generic cereal with a kangaroo > as the mascot. Tony the Tiger has a slimmer face when compared to the > American Tony. Also, they are called Frostie Flakes. My favorite cereal > so far is "At One Jump," by the international company, USVI. It's like > corn bran with options such as plain or chocolate on the inside. Last night > I bought a box of Sweitie Wheities. (Insane Kangaroo mascots). Generic > puffed rice cereal, not bad. > > I've tried a couple different brands of frozen pizza. There's a brand > called Big American but I haven't tried it. Dr. Oetner's makes a decent > frozen disc. Freschetta has a European presence but the crust ain't > quite the same. > > Beer. I've been drinking Baltica. Not quite a real Russian beer, as > it's made by the folks that make New Castle and whatnot. However, it is > exclusively brewed for the Russians and is currently the best selling beer. > It comes in different strengths and types and each type has a designated > number. I've found that the "9" is quite tasty. Eight percent beer can > creep up on ya. > > Leather. I've been scouring the city for Kibo boots. The women wear the > tall leather boots, but it's another story for the men. They tend to wear > pointy shoes. There's leather everywhere, so Kibo, if you want something > give me a holler. > > Cold. Yes. > > Sun. No. > > I can't believe I live here. > > I gotta go. Should have an internet connection soon. Don't like web cafes > or google, so, whatever. > > Brendan I'd just like to say that the only Russian cereal I've ever eaten was Corn Loops Snack, which if I remember correctly, had a monkey with a baseball cap and a gay purse. It was sweetened with genuine Russian Alfasweet brand non-sugar-like chemical, which doesn't even have a hockey team named after it. Why do they need separate 8% and 9% beers? After all, you can make your own 9% beer by just mixing together nine cans of 1% beer (or eighteen cans of Coke.) -- K. The cereal tasted like it came out of a monkey's purse. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: I think the Universe is stuck. Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 02:06:59 -0500 Time appears to have stopped. I know this because many of the channels on my TV are showing still pictures. Fortunately, the effect seems to be confined to Atlanta because only Ted Turner's channels are frozen. Could this be an effect of Jimmy Carter's secret nuclear peanut-zapping experiments? Or did Ted Turner merely decide to re-enact Christopher Plummer's big scene in the movie "Starcrash" ("Imperial battleship, halt the flow of time!")? Maybe my cable company is once again trying to pressure me into upgrading to digital cable so the picture won't keep getting stuck the way the analog signal does. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go re-enact David Hasselhoff's big scene ("This! Is an energy! Shield! Mask!") But first the lava lamp's gotta warm up. The lava lamp is the ultimate weapon! -- K. If time stopped during that missing hour between 2am and 4am when Daylight Savings Time ends, how would we know? All our watches would be frozen at a time that doesn't even exist! Would the big hand and little hand point into the fourth dimension, or would the watch just melt? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Hair color update #20051118a. Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 01:52:55 -0500 Carime. Like the red M&M's were before they were discontinued and then later replaced with other, lamer, less-blood-like ones. I heard that at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel you can get my hair's recipe for $500. -- K. It's Manic Panic Amplified Infra Red. You owe me $500, plus $15 for that packet of peanuts from the mini-bar. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Obligatory TV cross-over fan-fic. Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:25:48 -0500 I'm told that this year, "24" will prominently feature JoBeth Williams. Therefore: JACK BAUER Tell me where the hot dogs are! Tell me! Where! The hot dogs! Are!!! DIRTY FRANK I don't know nothin' 'bout dose hot dogs what I ate, all da hot dogs in da woild. JACK BAUER Tell me where the hot dogs are or I'll open the Surprise Box! DIRTY FRANK No! Da Proposition might be in dere! I'll talk, if you don't let the mimes out! JACK BAUER And after you tell me where the hot dogs are, you'll tell me how cardboard boxes are made! DIRTY FRANK Noooooooooooooo! I apologize, but it had to be done, especially while the only four people who remember "Jabberwocky" are still alive. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the supermarket to buy what I need to make today's "Peanuts" cartoon. -- K. All the best bootleg cartoons are made from things people are allergic to. The world's greatest bootleg cartoon would be titled "Latex Bee Peanuts". ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Another dopey episode of "Wife Swap", aka "Bait And Switch" Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:49:53 -0500 [www.365gay.com] -> -> (Muskogee, Oklahoma) An Oklahoma man who agreed to take part in -> the ABC show "Wife Swap" is suing the producers for more than $10 -> million after the "wife" they sent to his home was a gay man. I'm confused -- I don't know whether to find this offensive in eight different ways or merely six. (I tried to find it offensive in seven different ways, but that just didn't work because of something about paired quarks and conservation of stupid.) I mean, this is one of those shows in the same genre as shows like "Studs" and "Blind Date", namely, the genre of "Let's See If You're Gullible Enough To Think We Really Can Force People To Fuck Strangers Just To Kill Airtime As Cheaply As Possible." But this one has the added twist of "We've Replaced This Man's Coffee With A Bacon- Wrapped Jug Of Drain Cleaner, Let's See If Our Viewers Are So Dense They Won't Even Notice Our Plots Can't Even Maintain Continuity With Both Words of The Title." -> Jeffrey Bedford of Haileyville says in his suit that he was -> "misled" and "threatened" by the producers. The suit names -> Walt Disney No, his parents named him. However, it'll be interesting to see the lawyers thawing him out to defend himself in court: "Your honor, although I HATE WOMEN MORE THAN HUMANLY POSSIBLE, I ain't gay. Now watch as I throw this Ping-Pong ball into this room filled with mousetraps to demonstrate how atomic energy will one day help me catch Communists." -> -- the parent company of ABC, the network, and production company -> RDF Media. ...and the creator of Mickey Mouse. Everyone knows that Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse shortly after Ub Iwerks animated the cartoon "Mickey Mouse Starring In 'Mickey Mouse'". -> Bedford says he became so emotionally distraught that he suffered -> "physical and mental illness." "Your honor, the plaintiff claims I gave him a mental illness. So, by his own admission, he's crazy, a nut, a real Looney Tu-- I mean, a real Silly Symphony. Therefore, his suit must be without merit. Now let's visit Monsanto's all-plastic House Of Tomorrow, filled with the wonders of radium and asbestos." -> Bedford claims that when he told the producers he did not want -> a "gay wife" they threatened not to tell him his wife's location -> and would not pay for her to be sent home. Wait, now I'm even more confused. If the gay guy is a "wife", then how come this woman isn't the straight guy's "husband"? "Your honor, I don't see why I should be expected to pay this woman's airfare -- I offered to drive her anywhere she wanted to go on the tiny train I have on a track in my back yard. Now here's Ludwig von Drake to explain what we can learn about human behavior from 'Song Of The South'." -> [...] -> -> "ABC is confident that RDF Media, the producer of 'Wife Swap,' -> treats participants professionally and with respect," ABC -> spokeswoman Anne Fort told the Muskogee Phoenix Yeah, that's also what the producers of "Super Sloppy Double Dare" said. Except that I think they could understand big words like "wife" and "husband". -> "The show is meant to challenge a family's norms and moreover, the -> agreement between the plaintiff and RDF specifically stated that -> the swapped spouse could be either male or female." This is the point where any competent laywer should vault over the courtroom table, grab the contract, circle the first word in the show's title, and scream "LOOK AT THE SHOW'S FUCKING TITLE!!!" Except I think cursing in front of Walt Disney now carries the death penalty due to the Constitution's "No Cursing In Front Of Walt Disney" amendment. (Geez, thanks a bunch, Air Pirates.) -> Fort said that the episode hasn't aired yet, but only because it -> hasn't been scheduled. -> -> "We have a number of 'Wife Swap' episodes stockpiled," Fort told -> the paper. -> -> "Since each is self-contained, (and should be hermetically sealed) -> we don't have to air them in any particular order, so I can't -> predict when we'll book this one." "Let's see, what night of the week are the viewers the stupidest?" -- K. "When two gay guys get married, how do they decide whether one isn't the wife?" ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: New AT&T logo! This one's... oooh... leaning forwards! Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:45:53 -0500 Yes, once again, as we do every five years, it's time to bow down before the newly-unveiled Slightly Different AT&T Death Star. Now with a tasty blue filling! [http://www.sbc.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=21908] -> -> The New AT&T Unveils New Corporate Logo on First Day as Nation's -> Largest Telecommunications Company So? I just founded the World's Smallest Telecommunications Company With The World's Largest Logo. My logo is superliminal because it's all around you. You're breathing it right now! Try not to step on the tail of the swoosh, it hates that. -> Logo That Stands for Telecommunications Revitalized for New Era of -> Integrated Communications and Entertainment Would Be Most Important Sentence Ever If Weren't Written Like Sign Held By Crazy Person On Subway -> San Antonio, Texas, November 21, 2005 -> -> The new AT&T began its first day as the nation's largest telecom -> company by introducing a revitalized corporate logo. -> -> "Today's shift to a new brand and a new look symbolizes the -> strategic transformation under way at the new AT&T. It also -> reflects the fact that, while our brand has a long and proud -> heritage, the attributes that bring it to life for our customers -> are as fresh and new as ever," said Edward E. Whitacre Jr., -> chairman and CEO of AT&T Inc. someone should teach him the name of his company. according to the new logo, he's ceo of "at&t" because there are no such things as capital letters, especially in acronyms. capitals have been banished to the land of rotary phones. this change in the corporate orthography is to represent that at&t is no longer a huge heartless conglomerate but an informal, fun 'n' friendly huge heartless conglomerate. you just know their executives are going around saying, "we care.(r) 'we care.(r)' is a registered trademark of at&t inc." except i'm not sure whether they'd pronounce the ampersand as "'n'" or "squiggly-doodle" to maximize the corporate level of funness 'n' friendlytasticness. -> "The revitalized mark symbolizes these attributes -- innovation, -> integrity, quality, reliability and unsurpassed customer care," -> Whitacre added. "Our customers know that we're focused on keeping -> our promises, committed to operating honestly, and dedicated to -> bringing them new products that make a difference in their lives." BLAH BLAH BLAH the ball got tilted BLAH BLAH BLAH. -> The new logo reinvigorates the AT&T globe -- one of the most -> recognized corporate symbols in the world. "Uh oh, everyone's learned to recognize the sign of evil! Quick, change it!" -> The new globe is three-dimensional, No it isn't. It's a two-dimensional drawing of a three-dimensional object. Just like the previous one. And the one before that. I think the big difference is that the new one is hollow so you can see there's nothing inside their tech bubble. Saul Bass's 1980 design (the black-and-white-striped globe) was a brilliant logo, creating a nice smooth shading effect from just a few hard-edged stripes. Then in the 1990s, they attempted to jazz it up and ruined it completely by turning it baby blue and adding a drop shadow behind it (which just made it look more two-dimensional, because now it was a circle casting a circular shadow.) This new one's not a bad design, but it sure looks like basically they were so frustrated with having to see the previous deformed version all day that they attacked it with a potato peeler. Also, I heard they just arrested M.C. Escher for jerking off into it. -> representing the expanding breadth and depth of services that -> the new AT&T family of companies provides to customers, as well -> as its global presence. "The old logo doesn't represent expanding breadth and depth!" "Okay, so let's tilt it." "Well, yes, that does represent expanding breadth and depth... But where's the love? More importantly, where's the wuv?" "That's why our acronym is in lowercase. It's the lowercase of wuv." "Brilliant! Okay, put the new logo into production and let's start thinking about the next one -- which way will we have to tilt our logo to make people accept us as their god?" -> Transparency was added to the globe to represent clarity and -> vision. Lowercase type is now used for the "AT&T" characters -> because it projects a more welcoming and accessible image. "We'll have to raise the budget for this logo another fifty thousand dollars so we can hire a designer who knows how to draw a lowercase ampersand..." Seriously, there's no such thing as an uppercase ampersand. An ampersand is a script ligature of a lowercase "e" and a lowercase "t", meaning that their new logo is the word "atett". -> The core of the new logo remains blue because both the SBC and AT&T -> brands are strongly associated with that color. The overall design -> more accurately represents the company that is leading the industry in ...being round? ...looking like it should have a seal balancing on it? ...smelling like latex? -> delivering best-in-class services to consumers and business -> professionals. IT'S JUST A FREAKIN' BALL, GUYS! IT DOESN'T REPRESENT ANYTHING! Here, let me write you the non-baloney version of the press release: "Like most other enormous companies, we needed a completely abstract logo because we have 50,000 divisions doing different things. We picked this abstract geometric shape because it's pretty. END OF PRESS RELEASE." There, see how much paper I just saved? You owe me a million dollars (not payable in blank paper.) In summary, it's not a bad logo, but come on, it's just a logo, and throwing words about corporate self-importance at it won't make it morph from a ball into a vision of techno-utopian four-dimensional tele-harmonium or whatever else this press release hopes to make me see if I squint really hard. -- K. Cue Len Cella: "Duhhhhh, is it a bowling ball?" ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: New AT&T logo! This one's... oooh... leaning forwards! Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:10:39 -0500 Distribution: world Captain Infinity (Infinity@captaininfinity.us) wrote: > > Kibo's article on the new at&t logo forced me to do a Google image > search because I couldn't remember what the old logo looked like. Nobody's forcing you to use Google. Not even Microsoft, which is merely trying to find ways to force you to punch yourself if you ever use Google. Here are the '80s, '90s, and 2005 logos: http://www.kibo.com/pix/2005_11_att_logos.jpg I apologize for the shadow of the middle one being blotchy and cut off at the bottom, but I couldn't find any large artwork of that one with the shadow (sometimes it appeared with, sometimes without) so this shadow was blown up from a Web graphic. (The globes were scavenged from various EPS and PDF files.) The lettering in "AT&T" is bolder in the top one than the middle one because in 1983, they had separate "large" (bolder) and "small" (less bold) versions of the logo -- i.e. Saul Bass wanted the "&" to have that distrating "+"-shaped intersection, but realized it would clot up when used on business cards, so there were two versions (the "small" version had lighter type, and fewer stripes on the globe. Then for the '90s version, they made all sizes the "small" version.) There are also versions where the elements are in different positions relative to each other, and the "negative" versions (where the highlight on the globe is actually a lowlight, so it will become a highlight when they print it in white ink on a black telephone. But most of the time the wrong one was used when people printed the logo in white.) Extrapolating the 2010 version of the logo is left as a really easy exercise for any reader who can't draw or letter. (I bet the next one will say "at+t" just to make Jan Tschichold cry.) I don't think the new, peeled globe is bad, though it's very impractical (how will it look in spot color? ...against black? ...at tiny sizes with coarse halftones in, oh, the phone book?) The 1983 logo had a "go-anywhere" quality (especially as it had a separate version for use at tiny sizes) and its sharp edges and solid color really captured the eye the way the new one wouldn't, on a cluttered page. (I always say that a good test of a logo is whether it would magnetize your gaze when it shows up as one of twelve logos seen crammed together in the Yellow Pages.) But it's the bizarre use of the plain lowercase letters -- something which was bad even back when it was trendy, now it's both bad and dated -- that pushes the new logo into the realm of "you paid for THAT?" Still, you gotta admire their chutzpah for putting all the color on the _inside_ of their hollow logo. See how completely it's drowned out by the older, louder logos. You can't do better than a white ball on a white background if you think the purpose of a logo is to be invisible. -- K. So how come stupid McDonalds hasn't yet twisted their logo around in an effort to make it trendy and three-deeish? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: AT&T coverage continues, here on The Conspiracy Channel Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:41:06 -0500 I couldn't remember whether I had complained about the previous redesign of the AT&T logo (the one which added the fuzzy shadow), so I searched my old articles for AT&T, and I didn't find anything relevant, but these two articles worth reposting did turn up. Pay close attention to the "Date:" headers when constructing a conspiracy theory about why they were trying really hard to keep people from watching TV the next morning... ////////// TWO RE-RUNS FOLLOW /////////////////////////////////////////////// From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Stupid Outside Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 01:30:14 GMT And Knowing Is Half The Battle (lot...@aol.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (k...@world.std.com -- now marginally less broken) wrote: > > > > No "Cheers"? No "Jeers"? Did it at least have "Props"? > > "Props"? What the fuck? > > > What the fuck? Watch it with the potty mouth, kiddo. See, those of us who get a good selection of cable channels get so many that they have to give us two separate cable feeds to hold them all, and then we have to have two VCRs and two TiVos to see it all, and they give us a very special version of "TV Guide" which is exactly twice as big as your shrimpy little "TV Guide", and on some pages they just print the regular articles twice as big, but on other pages they use regular-size printing but they print twice as much stuff, like, we get extra Letters To The Editor (which are just as dumb as the ones you get) and instead of just one little page of "Cheers" and "Jeers" we get a big fat page of extra "Cheers" and extra "Jeers" and "Props", which is the third category of stuff in the Universe and it's only for cool people who pay double for Family Size "TV Guide". Except that at the moment my "B" cable feed is missing in action and I tried calling the cable company which told me "Thank you for calling AT&T Broadband, Formerly Cablevision. We are here to serve you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week" and then I pressed "2" for Customer Service and they played me a recording which said "Due to the increased volume of calls you need to call this 800 number" so I turned up the volume on my phone and called the 800 number and immediately got some dentist-office music with no introduction and I listened to this one dentist song for about eight repetitions (a single song, not even a whole album of dental music) before hanging up. Then I called back a few hours later and got a recording that said I should call back during business hours. Well, the next morning I called them again, and they told me they were there 24 hours a day again, and they told me to call the 800 number again, and I did again, and this time I got a nice lady who informed me that they didn't know my name or phone number any more, so I spelled all the information very slowly so that THE FREAKIN' PHONE COMPANY WOULD KNOW MY FREAKIN' PHONE NUMBER, and then she told me, and I am not making this up, "We'll FedEx this right over to the Boston office", BECAUSE THE FREAKIN' PHONE COMPANY CAN'T DIAL A FREAKIN' PHONE, LET ALONE USE A COMPUTER, and I still don't have my FREAKIN' CABLE, does that make you happy, you potty mouth? It would be interesting to invent a ray gun that would fuse all AT&T personnel into one person, and also I'd fuse all Verizon personnel into one person, and then I'd fuse those two people into one person, and I'd see if that person could then outsmart a mentally retarded green potato chip from the 1920s. And my money would be on the potato chip, even if it had moth holes in it. I wish Stephen Hawking would start a phone company. Or better yet, Dennis Miller could start it and Stephen Hawking would do the commercials. -- K. And Carrot Top would be required to listen to dentist-office music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. ////////// ANOTHER RE-RUN FOLLOWS /////////////////////////////////////////// From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Subject: Re: Stupid Outside Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 00:24:59 GMT Yesterday I wrote about how AT&T (a PHONE company) turned off my cable TV because they forgot I was one of their customers and when I called the PHONE company to tell the PHONE company what my PHONE number is they said they'd FEDEX it to my local office. That was last week. Today I called them again to ask them why my cable was out given that they should have received their FedEx from themselves by now. They said they hadn't, but the woman checked the computer and it said yes indeed I have been paying my bills, so now they know I continue to exist even though they didn't get their printout of a screendump of a photo of a fax in the mail saying "PLEASE LOOK AT YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN. CONTINUE NOT USING THE TELEPHONE IN CASE REGIS PHILBIN NEEDS IT." I pointed out that my cable had been out for six days and she said she would adjust my bill. Then I hear: (pencil noises) "six... divided by thirty-one..." (pencil noises) "...carry the two..." (continues for a few minutes before they decide to give me fifteen dollars) Okay, so now we know: AT&T doesn't have the ability to use the telephone, E-mail, or a calculator. And I suspect they probably lied about sending the FedEx to themselves. Total freakin' morons. At least I got my cable back. The only problem is, it still comes from AT&T. My only choices for buying cable service are from an evil phone company or from RCN, which is Boston's electric utility monopoly. The power company doesn't have as many cable channels as the phone company, although they have just as much right to be in the television business as those other people who shouldn't be in the television business. AT&T has informed me that they will be stringing my neighborhood for digital cable soon, which means they will raise my rate in an attempt to pressure me into giving up my twin analog cable feeds (which I will refuse to do, as the twin feed and twin TiVos allow me to record two TV shows at the same time) and also probably taking away all my favorite channels, or at least moving them to three-digit numbers where none of my equipment will be able to find them. (Bad user interface moment: I used to have a VCR that had a "100" button. To dial "7", I had to press "0, 7". "77" was "7, 7". "177" was "100, 7, 7". Shouldn't that have taken me to either channel 114 or 10077? Fortunately I got rid of that thing when I purged as much non-Sony hardware from my life as possible.) -- K. HOORAY FOR SONY. They at least make GOOD equipment with terrible interfaces. ////////// RE-RUNS END ////////////////////////////////////////////////////// My theory is that they wanted to have my cable switched off by September 11th because they mistakenly thought that everyone in my building was going to die crashing planes into the World Trade Center, instead of just _some_ of the terrorists living in my building. Seriously, I'd like to know whether the al-Qaeda people living upstairs were getting better or worse cable service than I was. 'Cause it would be impossible for them to have been getting worse service than me, which means that AT&T Broadband supported terrorists' right to watch The Cartoon Network. -- K. Terrorists think "The Flintstones" is hilarious. They must, because no good people do. (In the interest of actual, boring factual correctness: The terrorists living upstairs weren't on the planes, they just made the plan and sent the funds to the people who did hijack the planes. Or so Newsweek said.) ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: AT&T coverage continues, here on The Conspiracy Channel Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:50:54 -0500 On September 10, 2001, I wrote: > > I wish Stephen Hawking would start a phone company. Or better yet, > Dennis Miller could start it and Stephen Hawking would do the commercials. I'd just like to add that I wrote that on the very last day when the words "Dennis Miller" were an allusion to erudition and not a reference to some crazy guy whose brain was shattered by terrorists. As far as I know, the words "Stephen Hawking" still mean the same thing they did back when New Yorkers thought the World Trade Center was ugly. -- K. I heard the _really_ ugly replacement skyscraper's going to have to be toned down so they can replicate it at the Vegas casino "New York, New York". ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Correction. Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 22:25:03 -0500 I meant to go back and correct my article to say that the original, unfucked-with version of AT&T's globe was drawn by Saul Bass in 1983 -- not 1980 -- but my local Usenet server is being pokey so I can't cancel the article before everyone in the world sees it, therefore instead I have to correct my mistake by posting a separate article which contains this awkwardly-written run-on sentence which contains an extra word pantyhose pantyhose twice and then suddenly stops in mid- However, I did find this Web page listing all of AT&T's old bad slogans: [http://www.att.com/brand/history/index.html] -> -> AT&T Globe Symbol -> -> The AT&T globe symbol dates to 1983, following AT&T's agreement in -> late 1982 to divest itself of local telephone operations. See -> Milestones of the AT&T Brand. "Or just ask the Supreme Court why we changed our logo!" -> At that time, the globe symbol was joined with the new AT&T -> custom-drawn logotype to form a distinctive corporate logo -> for the restructured AT&T. "custom-drawn logotype" is two and a half words meaning "logotype". "distinctive corporate logo" is... oh, hell with it, I don't know why I'm even writing about how pointless it is for them to write about their own stupid ball. -> The globe symbol was designed by Saul Bass and symbolizes a world -> circled by electronic communications. It is made up of very -> carefully delineated "highlight" and "shadow" elements that may be -> reproduced to give the impression of a three-dimensional sphere -> illuminated from a distant source. Yeah, well, _my_ telecommunications company has a logo which may _not_ be reproduced. DraculaTone's logo does not show up in mirrors, photographs, or letterheads. -> In 1999, the globe symbol was refined to convey added dimension -> and depth, "Add some halftone dots to the circle! That'll make the circle even rounder!" -> as well as provide optimum legibility in all sizes, configurations -> and media. "Saul Bass drew eleven stripes? Was he getting paid by the stripe? Cut it down to nine stripes. Then in 2005, we'll revise it again, just six stripes. Eventually, we'll have zero or fewer stripes, so we can stop buying that expensive striped ink!" -> "Globe AT&T" -> -> The AT&T brand has been brought to life as "AT&T" since 1981. As -> illustrated below, memorable marketing campaigns have further -> defined the AT&T brand to both consumer and business customers over -> the past 25 years. -> -> * 1981: Reach Out and Touch Someone Rejected: "We're Perverts, Are You?" -> * 1982: We Bring the World Closer Rejected: "Smell Your Neighbor" -> * 1982: That's AT&T. The More You Hear, the Better We Sound Rejected: "That's AT&ampT. Now With More Escape Codes To Make Sure It Never Comes Out Looking Weird." -> * 1987: Reach Out and Touch Someone Rejected: "We're Still Perverts. Have You Stopped Being A Pervert?" -> * 1992: The Right Choice Rejected: "It's Not A Choice, It's Genetic." -> * 1993: You Will Rejected: "You Vill" -> * 1993: The Best in Business* Rejected: "The Monkey Best In Monkey Business" (I did that one just because I want "you're the monkey best" to become a hot new catchphrase for 1993.) -> * 1994: For the Life of Your Business* Rejected: "We Could Kill You" -> * 1994: Simplify You Life Rejected: "Eliminat Som Letrs" -> * 1997: It's All Within Your Reach Rejected: "Aww, Let The Baby Have His Phone" -> * 1999: Your True Choice* Rejected: "We Don't Know The Difference Between Multiple Choice And T/F" -> * 1999: AT&T net.working* Rejected: "AT&T not.working" -> * 1999: Start Your net.working Rejected: "The net.working com.pany that likes org.ies because we're per.verts" -> * 2001: Boundless Rejected: "Bound Less Is Still Bound, Stop Whining Or We'll Tighten The Cuffs" -> * 2001: Innovative Networks. Innovative Thinking Rejected: "You Can't Spell 'Innovative' Without 'No'" -> * 2001: Right Now Rejected: "AT&T: Your Backseat Driver" -> * 2002: The world's networking company* Rejected: "We're The Doot In Dot Com" -> * 2002: Welcome to mLife (AWS) Between "You Will." and "Welcome to mLife.", AT&T has had the two most-mocked corporate slogans in history (narrowly beating out Sun's nonsensical "We're The Dot In Dot Com" and UPS's scatological "What Can Brown Do For You?") so I'll forgo mocking this one now, especially as I don't want to incur the wrath of its author, AWS (Automatic Writing System). I also won't mock the longer version, "Wel Dot Come At-Sign m Dot L Backslash i Smiley f e-e." -> * 2003: Talk is Good Rejected: "Talk Is Good, So Shut Up And Listen To Us" -> * 2004: Reach Out (AWS) Don't want to annoy AWS, so I won't mock this half of their pervert slogan. -> * 2004: & - Brings It All Together Rejected: "& - Sure, Your Keyboard Has A Colon, But This One Looks More Like The Small Intestine" -> * 2004-05: The world's networking company Rejected: "Don't Like Our Slogans? Don't Worry, We Only Use Each Of Them Two Or Three Times." -> *Targeted to Business Customers Rejected: "Hey Business Customers, We've Got A Sniper Dot On Your Forehead." Wait, that wasn't a slogan, it was just an asterisk. I forgot that "*" is just a punctuation mark but "&" and "." and "m" are the basis of corporate touchy-feely. -- K. 2006: "Ampersand Ampersand Dot Dot, Now You've Got The Cootie mShot." ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Correction. Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:13:49 -0500 Nick Bensema (nickb@eris.io.com) wrote: > > [...] > > That was fun, Kibo. Now tell us rejected David Spade lines from > his Capital One commercials. There were about five billion rejected ones, all of which were of the format "Hi, I'm _________, and I'm not annoying enough to be David Spade." Those commercials would have been cute if they hadn't aired them 75,000 times each. Or twice. Or once. Proof they're not good commercials: I've seen them so often I'm even sick of being sick of seeing them, and I still haven't learned what they're advertising. He mentions frequent-flier miles, so it's got to be an airline, a travel Web site, or that brand of pudding that used to give out frequent-flier miles, or a service that provides a virtual envelope you can use to virtually organize all your virtual mile coupons. I always enjoy the chutzpah of people who sell organizers for things that don't need organizing. For instance, I recently encountered the concept of an organizer for NetFlix DVDs. You see, you can't just leave them lying on the table, because that wouldn't be organized, and you can't put them into your alphabetical DVD storage rack with all the others, because they're rentals and therefore have to have special treatment, so you can buy this special plasticated nonleather leatherette wallet that can hold and organize all three of the DVDs you decided to pay to rent but not actually watch and send back. Now you can pay money to both NetFlix _and_ the makers of the wallet so you can have the privilege of storing NetFlix's discs without ever having to see them! There's a competing one, which is just an empty plastic DVD clamshell case -- just like the ones I can get stacks of for free in my apartment building's lobby, except that if I bought one I wouldn't have to do the work of throwing away the AOL DVD that comes in the free ones. (I'm told that in the early days of NetFlix, they actually gave subscribers giant chunky smoke-colored plastic disc organizers, but obviously they don't do that any more since they can't even be bothered to spend money packaging their rental discs as well as AOL packages its free garbage discs.) Remember when it seemed like every computer store was 50% mousepads and 50% ugly beige plastic boxes that could store and organize up to five floppy discs? Every time I saw those I'd feel sorry for people in Third World countries were people owned fewer than six floppy discs. Hey, you know what those overpopulated Third World countries need? Big plastic organizers they can keep their people in. Hey dictators, you'll never see a disordered mob rioting if you snap your population in the new PeopleKeeper! And it's modular so you can buy more than one if your country has more than five people! Order yours today! (EXCEPT YOU, NIGERIA. STOP EVEN TRYING TO PRETEND YOU WANT TO ORDER ANYTHING. AND LEARN TO USE LOWERCASE.) -- K. And now for a completely different segue. I'm glad the BBC did such a great job restoring the grainy old "Goodies" episodes for their second DVD release. This time you can even hear the dialogue! Wait, that wasn't a segue. Unless the Goodies were using capital letters in Nigeria. Hey, I bet if they were still making new episodes, they _would_ do that one. Except with blackface instead of capital letters because blackface is the video equivalent of capitals. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Holy crap! The cops raided the flea market! Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 22:44:04 -0500 Tim Chmielewski (webmaster@timchuma.com) wrote: > > Lots42 (lots42@gmail.com) wrote: > > > > The cops raided the flea market. Feds too! All for pirated CDS and DVDs > > and, with my knowledge of the flea market, they were QUIIITE busy. > > Oh come now, one person dressed as a member of the Village People walking > through the market does not constitute a raid. Hmm, I've never been to a flea market that's had only one person dressed like a Village Person there. Cops hate it when you compliment them by saying "Hey, that looks almost like a real cop's uniform!" I think the only bootleg I ever bought at a flea market was that ninth- generation VHS dub of Roger Corman's "Fantastic Four" movie-like waste of time. That was back before eBay was the best place to pay actual money for bootlegs if you felt too guilty about stealing MPEG files directly off the Internet. eBay is the place where everything's legal to sell as long as you agree to let them put ads for PayPal all over it. The thing about the comic-book-guy stereotypes selling repeatedly-copied videotapes (mostly taped off the Sci-Fi Channel) at those flea markets seemed to be that there were always a couple of porno videos mixed in with the "Automan" tapes. Assuming, of course, that you don't consider "Automan" some sort of super-nerd porn. -- K. "Hot Desi Arnaz Jr. On Guy Who Can Turn Into A DeLorean Action!" ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Sickening chili pepper news. Warning: very dark. Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 22:50:56 -0500 Gardner S Trask III (gtraskmobile@gt3.com) wrote: > > [...] I must ask that in the future you label these type > of posts with "[Spoiler]" because I had purposely not read the end > of the article, and was waiting for CSI: Brigham Circle to do that > internal organ rollercoaster shot where the chili pepper would track > from the child's thumb through various internal organs. Hey, at least I didn't tell you which end the rollercoaster came out. "CSI: Brigham Circle" is doing an episode next week where Andy Rooney dies from a scrotal inflation gone wrong. Tune in to see that, in "The Brady Bunch"'s old time slot. > Gard "This post was just another log for the fire in which I will > burn in Hell" Trask "CSI: Hell" will go two-parter on your ass. -- K. P.S.: [Spoiler] ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: ligatures and goatse Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:23:42 -0500 "Cam" (cam.barr@beer.com) wrote: > > [...] > > Poop is terror? My dog is the Osama of my yard. Here in the land of freedom, every man is the Osama of his own toilet. Except for the ones who prefer to poop on the floor in public restrooms. And that guy in "A Dirty Shame" who explained about "upper-deckers". That was the one thing in that movie that I hadn't heard of. Did anyone else spend that movie making mental lists of perversions John Waters forgot to make fun of? I counted eleven. If you came up with more than eleven, let him know, because his next movie is going to be about people who enjoy sitting in movie theaters counting the number of perversions the director hasn't heard about. -- K. What puzzles me about the "upper-decker" speech: Where does John Waters live where perverts can find public toilets which have actual tanks, and why the hell does he live there? I'd rather live downstairs from an actual Osama than live anywhere near an upper-decker. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Top 35 DVDs in Boston Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 23:35:25 -0500 I was curious how the statistically arbitrary "top DVDs in your area" lists on Amazon and NetFlix compared, so I compared them, and of course they had no movies in common. I wrote comments on each item on each list, but said comments were so long and boring that I don't know whether or not I should post them. I'd ask you whether or not I should post them, but of course you can't make an informed decision without seeing them, so here they are. Please let me know whether I shouldn't post this. [www.amazon.com] -> -> This list of DVDs is uniquely popular in Boston, MA, as compared with -> the rest of the country: -> -> 1. Path to War ~ DVD -> -> 2. Ike - Countdown to D-Day ~ DVD -> -> 3. The Boston Red Sox 2004 World Series Collector's Edition ~ DVD -> -> 4. Fever Pitch (Boston Red Sox Collector's Edition) ~ DVD -> -> 5. The 2004 New England Patriots - Three Games to Glory III ~ DVD -> -> 6. Super Bowl XXXIX - New England Patriots Championship Video ~ DVD Basically, what Amazon is saying is that Boston likes our local sports teams (perhaps because nobody else does) and war. This implies that in the rest of the country, nobody likes war. And I know that's crazy to imply, because everybody likes war! Except for those damn pacifists who go around beating up anyone who's violent. They all oughta be shot. -> 7. Baron Baptiste - Journey Into Power Level 2 ~ DVD I have no idea what this is, but any time someone with a name like "Baron Baptiste" offers to take me on a "Journey Into Power Level 2", I'm going to say, "Sorry, but I think you should stick to the 'teddy bear' level where there's only one ghost chasing Pac-Man." -> 8. The Trainer's Edge: Long and Lean Yoga ~ DVD I just looked the last two up, and surprise, they're both yoga workout videos starring this Baron Baptiste person who wears a do-rag to make sure you know that he's a tough guy even though he's a yoga instructor named "Baron Baptiste". My assumption is that these two are on the Boston list because he probably lives around here and ordered a copy of each. -> 9. Bad Education (Original Uncut NC-17 Edition) ~ DVD I had to look this one up, and it turns out that, according to one of Amazon's customer reviews, it's about a drag queen who's seen "diving into a swimming pool in his underwear", and I don't like movies starring people with size XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL underwear even if it's full of grout and chlorine. -> 10. The Office - The Complete Collection (First And Second Series Plus -> Special) ~ DVD Haven't seen it, but I can vouch for the fact that not just Boston but the entire world is full of people who will pin you against the wall and scream in your ear over and over that you must watch "The Office" because "The Office" is a show that everyone must enjoy and once you enjoy "The Office", "The Office" will open your mind to a new level of experience preparing you to accept L. Ron Hubbard into your life. At least, I assume Scientology is behind this, because everyone who loves "The Office" seems to have lost the ability to blink their eyes or make casual, non-imperative DVD recommendations. For comparison, here's the NetFlix local hit list. NetFlix thinks I live in a ZIP code rather than in a city, so it gives my address as "Roxbury Crossing" even though I do not live in Roxbury or in a crossing. [www.netflix.com] => => Local Favorites: ROXBURY CROSSING, MA => => Members in and around ROXBURY CROSSING, MA are currently renting => these titles much more than other Netflix members. => => 1. Twelve O'Clock High I had only heard of the TV series, so I looked the movie up: => Director Henry King's Oscar-winning war drama boasts => actual air combat footage. It's old enough that it was from the days when "THIS MOVIE CONTAINS STOCK FOOTAGE" was still a selling point. => 2. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery Seen it. But why does Boston like it more than other places? Boston's not a particularly shagadelic place. Except it's full of the audience most likely to want to see this more than once: stoners. This also accounts for the previous movie, for college students who rent it and then spend two hours giggling "Duuuude, 'Twelve O'Clock High' is four hours and twenty minutes early!" => 3. Next Stop Wonderland Of course the well-known, mass-market movie about a Boston subway stop made the list, while the much more intelligent TV series "Brigham Circle" remains in obscurity. Let's hope the people obsessed with forcing all their acquaintances to watch "The Office" never discover "Brigham Circle" and ruin it for everyone. => 4. Arsenic and Old Lace No idea why this made the list, unless "old lace" is slang for "doobie". => 5. Session 9 Guess Bostonians didn't like the first eight. Had to look it up: => Session 9 is a contemporary tale of terror set in an abandoned => insane asylum. The residents on Danvers, Massachusetts steer => well clear of the place. But Danvers State Mental Hospital, => closed down for 15 years, is about to receive five new visitors. As the only person in the world who has bootlegs of both "Outta Control" (filmed in Saugus, Massachusetts) and "Titicut Follies" (from Bridgewater, Massachusetts), I'm sure if I wanted to I could make the same movie as "Session 9" by just stapling together my "Outta Control" and "Titicut Follies" cassettes. Then I could start a competitor to NetFlix that only rents VHS tapes of movies that don't exist but could be made from mashups of bootlegs. Our version of "The Office" would consist of "Brigham Circle" stapled to "Next Stop Wonderland", and our "A Clockwork Orange" would be "The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T" stapled to "Starcrash". => 6. Scrubs: Season 1 (3-Disc Series) Every time someone or something mentions "Scrubs", I confuse it with "Nurses", which was the sitcom whose commercials prominently featured David "Sledge Hammer" Rasche peeing in his diaper. As a result, I will never even try to watch "Scrubs". => 7. Far from Heaven Never heard of it. Oh, wait, it's that period drama with Dennis Quaid and President Allstate, isn't it? Or is it that TV Show with Captain Decker and his disturbing cleft chin? I'm getting confused. => 8. Elephant Never heard of it, unless it's the Ionesco play, which it can't be, because that play was specifically designed to be impossible to put on any sort of "popular" list. Wait, that was a play about a slowly- enlarging rhino, not an elephant, so it can't even _not_ be Ionesco's "Elephant" because there's no such thing. Now I'm confused. Dear NetFlix, stop trying to confuse me! Stop mentioning movies I don't know anything about! => 9. Bear Cub (Cachorro) Thank you. => 10. Dirty Work Seen that one too, but I don't know why it's right after "Bear Cub" given that Boston must have a hundred times as many Spanish-speaking hairy guys as people who want to see any more movies which were star vehicles for people whose careers ended the moment they left "Saturday Night Live". I will say that "Dirty Work" is one of the few ex-"SNL"-cast-member star vehicles which is even mildly amusing, even though by the time it was over it still gave me that "GOTTA PUNCH SOMEONE IN THE FACE" feeling common to all ex-"SNL"-person movies except "Austin Powers" and... um... can I count "DodgeBall" if Ben Stiller quit the show after only one and a half episodes? => 11. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism "I hate Fox News, so I'd better rent this DVD to help remind me how much I hate it!" Every day, I hear people wandering around Boston mumbling that to themselves. If you never hear people doing that, it's because this DVD isn't on the list for your city. => 12. Blue (Trois Couleurs: Bleu) People in Boston don't have time to watch more than a third of any trilogy. => 13. To Have and Have Not Worst Shakespeare adaptation ever -- they shouldn't have tried to rewrite Hamlet's soliloquy. Did I spell "soliloquy" right? Hmm, I hope I remember to spell-check this before I post it. Of course, now that I've mentioned that I know how to spell-check, nobody will be impressed if I did spell it right already, so here: raspbeery computar invisibell diarrhaea <--- There, now if I forget to spell-check this, at least I'll get credit for spelling "soliloquy" right without cheating with my computar. => 14. Da Ali G Show: Season 1 (2-Disc Series) I saw him for ten seconds once, and was amused, but that was dependent on being able to turn him off after ten seconds. => 15. It Happened One Night Wasn't that the one that became the black-and-white parts of that "Time Tunnel" episode where they landed on the Titanic? I'd rather see the movie the color parts of that episode were stolen from. => 16. Minority Report One of Spielberg's best movies -- not even Tom Cruise could ruin it. Also, one of the few non-sucky movies to be made from something Phil Dick wrote while trying to kill time before he could take more speed. ("Blade Runner"'s the other good one. "Screamers", "Impostor", "Total Recall", and "Paycheck" were four of the 97 bad ones. Too bad John Lennon never got around to filming "Obik". Um, "Ubik".) => 17. 24: Season 1 (6-Disc Series) That was before President Allstate got elected, back when he was still just a Senator and the President was that talking gecko who has a different voice every month. Those of you who are lucky enough not to own a TV have no idea what I'm talking about. If you have no TV and want to know more about commercials you'd hate to see, just ask. => 18. The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions Barbares) Eww, someone in Boston likes Quebecois films. This worries me because it means if I keep reading the list it'll have other Quebecois productions -- "Battlefield Earth" followed by 348 Cirque de Soleil androgynous slow-mo wire-fu butoh performances. And then I'll be bored after John Travolta's home planet gets blown up by that lit cigarette because its atmosphere is all gasoline, or whatever, I can't remember that movie too clearly 'cause it was hard to pay attention since all the Body Thetans living in my ear canals were screaming about "The Office". => 19. North by Northwest Some of Martin Landau's best work, probably because it was before Barbara Bain started having to be in everything her husband was in. The movie has also made generations of spies wonder, "Which would be better, having our secret rendezvous on top of George Washington's head, or on top of the Statue Of Liberty, or on the roof of the White House?" => 20. Entourage: Season 1 (2-Disc Series) Again with the Quebecois stuff, this was that sci-fi series with the awful Rod Stewart theme song, and every third episode was about the captain spending the day trapped in the elevator with his beagle, and -- wait, that was something else, and it wasn't Quebecois, it just had a bad theme song. I don't know what "Entourage" is, and because I've already filled up this paragraph, I don't have to go look it up. I win! => 21. American Psycho Go get 'em, Christian Bale! => 22. A Few Good Men Okay, I'm going to use my stapler to combine #21 and #22 into "Christian Bale The Charming Psychopath vs. Jack Nicholson The Guy Who Says That One Line That Got Made Fun Of Too Many Times Already." Here's the whole movie: JACK NICHOLSON You can't handle the truth! CHRISTIAN BALE (killing him with a Vegematic) "Sports" was not Huey Lewis's best work, but was nevertheless a groundbreaking blend of innovative music and cultural commentary. JACK NICHOLSON Hurry up and kill me so I won't have to listen to this. CHRISTIAN BALE Ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight? => 23. Chappelle's Show: Season 1 (2-Disc Series) Note how "Da Ali G Show" was a lot higher than "Chappelle's Show". This is because "Roxbury Crossing" contains no black people. Either that, or NetFlix got my address wrong _and_ got Roxbury's ethnicity wronger than wrong. => 24. 24: Season 2 (7-Disc Series) See, now President Allstate's actually President in this one. Because of his three entries, this makes Dennis Haysbert the most popular person in Roxbury Crossing, even though he's black. => 25. Manic I thought Anthony Hopkins was good, but the ventriloquist dummy was even better, though I didn't like the way they both had fluorescent orange hair in the sequel to "Manic", "Panic" -- oh, NetFlix is confusing me again. Shame on NetFlix. This is actually a different movie about someone in a mental institution, bringing to a close this list of movies about psychopaths and mental institutions and other things people in Roxbury Crossing like. -- K. If they really reflected _my_ area, these list would have more movies titled "Ichi The Killer". ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Top 35 DVDs in Boston Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 01:17:28 -0500 David DeLaney (dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Please let me know whether I shouldn't post this. > > After reading most of it, my opinion is that you should, but need a bit of > a rewrite on some of the early part first, or perhaps a lie-down. Okay, fine, I'll rewrite that first part and flesh it out a lot before I repost it in a few minutes. > Also, why does one list go to 10, and the other waaaaay past eleven? Because Amazon is a little less pushy than NetFlix? NetFlix's habit is to recommend anything that got four stars (out of five) from their customers, barely taking your own preferences into account, and since NetFlix customers agree that everything in the world gets four stars (except things which haven't yet been released, which usually get four and a half) NetFlix tends to tell you that you have 3000 DVDs recommended. (Amazon gives much less scattershot recommendations, as your own preferences take priority over consensus preferences.) I think this is indicative of a general NetFlix attitude to try to get you to rent as many movies as possible (after all, they charge by the number of movies you may simultaneously rent) because if they get you to rent more, then that clause in their terms of service kicks in that says that they can deliberately degrade your service in order to give people who rent fewer movies better service. (They got sued over that.) So, because Amazon wants _everyone_ to give them money, they don't get pushy about stuff (except pots and pans, there must be some conspiracy to sell cookware) but because NetFlix wants the people who give them a little money to give them more money but wants the people who give them a lot of money to just go away, NetFlix gives more recommendations, longer lists of things they think you should rent, etc. I'm always on the verge of cancelling my NetFlix account because of the various ways they jerk their customers around (and things like the fact that they can't even be bothered to pay for _cardboard_ DVD sleeves) but I've built up a list of 400 things I want to rent in my queue and it's still the cheapest, easiest way for me to see those things. > > => 14. Da Ali G Show: Season 1 (2-Disc Series) > > > > I saw him for ten seconds once, and was amused, but that was > > dependent on being able to turn him off after ten seconds. > > The game store's very own group of slightly-ex-teenagers who are this > century's answer to Beavis and/or Butthead won't stop watching this one. > > He'd be a good-looking guy if his brain actually worked right, but as it is, > it's like those puppets which are scary because of what contortions they're > being forced into by their puppeteers... I think he's very funny -- whenever I see him showing Conan O'Brien a clip I'm struck with how good he is at the game he plays -- but I can't imagine actually watching even half an hour of him at a time. I'm not one of the people whose thought processes are "That dancing baby icon on that Web site was kind of cute during the two seconds I saw it, therefore, I'm going to go produce two 'Baby Geniuses' movies!" -- K. Beavis & Butthead were good too, but their show became a lot better when they gave Daria a bigger role and kicked Beavis & Butthead off. I hope that someday they also do a spinoff all about the "Mr. Anderson" character, you know, the dorky guy who sells butane (and butane accessories.) ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Hockey perversion in the news Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 01:33:38 -0500 [www.durhamregion.com, found via Fark] -> -> PORT HOPE -- A six-pack of incidents which bordered from hazing to -> general misconduct in the eyes of the Ontario Hockey Association -> has resulted in Port Hope Predators Coach Bret Meyers being -> suspended for one year from the league. -> -> [...] -> -> During its investigation the league was able to confirm there had -> been: under-age drinking at a non-sanctioned team party; a -> team-building paint-ball event in which rookies were isolated; -> a 'Kangaroo Court' incident where players were made to ride a -> stationary bike naked while they were paddled with hockey sticks -> and a 'Hot Box' where players on a bus were made to strip naked and -> forced into the bus washroom to dress into their clothes. Wait, by definition, it's not physically possible to paddle someone with hockey sticks. Paddling is what Ping-Pong players and canoeists do. If you're riding an exercise bike naked, hockey players will give your butt a high stick. -> The investigation also focused on an allegation of diapering of -> players until they defecated but Mr. Ladds noted that activity -> could not be "validated. Validation of corprophilia should be an issue for the psychiatrists, not the hockey league. I mean, you wouldn't ask Sigmund Freud how to close up your five-hole, so you shouldn't ask the OHA to validate your turdiness. -> We have left the issue open about the diapering. PLEASE CLOSE THE DIAPER ISSUE AND OPEN A WINDOW -> We are not satisfied we have found everything about that." If you can't find the diaper gravy in your hockey league, just close your eyes and follow your nose. I mean, eww. I'm glad the NHL behaves more respectably than these Canadian hockey leagues. -- K. How is the diaperpoopification supposed to make the skaters better hockey players? Everyone knows only the goalies need diapers. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Kesuke Miyagi R.I.P. Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 19:14:04 -0500 TomH (address@my.sig) wrote: > > In an apparent direct hit, Herr Kibo has death-rayed > Pat Morita: > > > > Message: (kibo-0402051648530001@10.0.1.2), Fri, 04 Feb 2005: > > > > > > I'm also not sure how many of Arthur/Arnold/Al there were -- the diner > > > was "Arthur's" in the pilot and "Arnold's" after that, and in the first > > > season there was an Arnold who wasn't Pat Morita, and then Arnold > > > was Pat Morita, and then Al Molinaro replaced Pat Morita, and then > > > eventually Pat Morita replaced Al Molinaro. So I think Pat Morita > > > might have been Arthur/Arnold/Al #2 and #4 since we never saw Arthur. Hey! I'm not German. If I were a member of the Axis, why would I have tried so hard to kill a Japanese actor by mentioning him several months ago? If I were German, I would have instead mentioned somebody Jewish, and I don't think I've ever mentioned any Jewish actors. Also, I mention plenty of Japanese actors more frequently than I've ever mentioned Pat Morita -- I think currently Tadanobu Asano is in the lead, followed by Riki Takeuchi and Ultraman -- yet none of them has dropped dead. Of course, I don't think I could kill either Tadanobu Asano or Riki Takeuchi, because they're both protected by an impenetrable layer of coolness, except in that one movie where Tadanobu Asano is protected by a fuzzy sweater that says "MR. DOG". Where can I get that same sweater? I've already nailed a coelacanth to my bed so now I need to get the sweater so Quentin Tarantino will like me. Oh, and also, I still want one of those ski masks from "Unlucky Monkey". Get me the sweater and the ski mask and I'll let you watch when Tarantino starts following me around begging me to be his friend. I'll even give you Tarantino's underwear after he throws it at me. -- K. It's your only chance to find out whether he wears Clutch Cargo Underoos. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Kesuke Miyagi R.I.P. Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 04:09:43 -0500 [on the passing of the beloved yet wacky Pat Morita] TomH (address@my.sig) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Hey! I'm not German. > > I know you're not German. And you know that I know that > you're not German. And I know that you know .... &c. > I think you must have suffered from some cursed reversal of > capsaicin intoxication, causing you to lash out at sitcom > restaurant cooks. The only reason Al Molinaro is still alive > is that you hit Morita five times and Molinaro only twice. Yeah, but Al Molinaro wins by a nose. > [...] > > > Oh, and also, I still want one of those ski masks from "Unlucky Monkey". > > Get me the sweater and the ski mask and I'll let you watch when > > Tarantino starts following me around begging me to be his friend. > > I'll even give you Tarantino's underwear after he throws it at me. > > Why don't you like Mr. Tarantino? I like him! I really liked "Pulp Fiction", except for that bad actor who played "Jimmie". You know, that guy with the weird giant head like he thought he was in a sequel to "Mask". Brr! Someone told me they heard that Tarantino himself played the Gimp, but I don't believe that, because they don't make leather hoods that big. > > It's your only chance to find out whether he wears Clutch Cargo Underoos. > > Or his underwear? Shouldn't you be waiting for Wapner? -- K. I heard Mike Nesmith is making a sequel to "Head" starring Quentin Tarantino, John Lithgow, Ted Kennedy, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus titled "Head 2: Head 2 Big 2 Be Letterboxed." ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Everyone's favorite weird supermarket in the news Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 03:53:55 -0500 [www.boston.com] -> -> Bustling stores ask: What blue laws? -> Super 88 says warning missed -> -> By Megan Tench and Chase Davis, Globe Correspondent -> November 25, 2005 -> -> Blue laws? Huh? -> -> That was the reaction at the Super 88 Market chain, whose six -> Boston-area supermarkets were open yesterday despite 17th-century -> legislation that prohibits large retail stores from operating on -> Thanksgiving. Yeah, 'cause the Founding Fathers weren't smart enough to realize that people would need to be able to get seizure-inducing Korean squid candy 365 days a year. I mean, the Massachusetts Constitution isn't even modern enough to contain homophobia. Heck, it's so old that it says "Commonwealth" because they hadn't yet invented states. -> Managers and employees contacted at five of the Super 88 stores -> said they knew nothing about the warnings issued by Attorney -> General Thomas F. Reilly last week telling retailers to stay closed -> on turkey day or face criminal charges. At the Quincy location on -> Hancock Street, they found out at 11:30 a.m. yesterday, when -> police, acting on a tip that the store was abuzz with customers, -> ordered it to close. I'm at the Super 88 in Dorchester a few times a month and it's never "abuzz" with anything. (The tub of "Death Crabs" sure ain't buzzin'.) So maybe I should start going to the one in Quincy to see if they're selling bags o' bees. Buzzing bees, not death bees. Beware the death bees and their insidious silence! -> [...] -> -> But at the Super 88 at the South Bay Center in Dorchester, -> customers battled for parking. A sign taped to the door read: -> "Happy Thanksgiving" and posted holiday hours of 8:30 a.m. to -> 8 p.m. Shoppers' carriages were filled with disposable turkey pans, -> fresh fish, vegetables, sodas, and milk. "That's a lie," said the manager, "We've never sold fresh fish." -> A store manager, who declined to give his name, said he was unaware -> of the centuries-old restrictions. He said the chain, which -> specializes in Asian foods, closes one day a year, in observation -> of the Chinese New Year, which falls in January or February. The -> next Chinese New Year is Jan. 29, 2006. I always like to go there on holidays, especially Christmas, when not only is the market empty, it's not even playing the same icky Christmas carols as all the other stores. They just have that one CD of Generic Asian Imitations Of Old American Bubblegum Pop they were always listening to on "M*A*S*H". I think its title is something like "Chinese Elvis Girl Sings Wayne Newton" or "Japanese Wayne Newton Team Sings Thai Abba". My least favorite track is the one where Thai Abba and Elvis Costello do "Who's On First?" -> [...] -> -> Police did not close the four Super 88 stores in Boston, a police -> spokesman said. Likewise, the Malden store was allowed to operate, -> according to Malden police. Well, duh. That's because blue laws don't actually work because the cops are also forbidden from working on holidays. I was in the Dorchester market the day before Thanksgiving, and I noticed they just got those creepy "Buddha's hand" fruits (which look like giant yellow dodecapuses) so I'm assuming someone, somewhere stuffs their turkey by shoving a big yellow hand up its butt. (The turkey's done when the tentacles pop out.) -> Reilly issued his warnings after Whole Foods, the health-oriented -> supermarket chain, had announced plans to keep its 14 Massachusetts -> stores open for Thanksgiving to provide customers a chance to buy -> the fresh organic turkeys. But when officials from its competitor, -> Shaw's Supermarket, learned of the plans, they wrote a letter to -> Reilly citing the state's Colonial-era blue laws and asking him to -> block the Thanksgiving openings. I think last year, a few Whole Foods (aka Bread & Circus) locations were open on Thanksgiving, in case anyone hadn't talked to their kids all year and just found out they'd converted to Buddhism so now they needed an emergency tofurky. -> In addition to Whole Foods, Reilly warned Wal-Mart, Family Dollar, -> and Big Lots not to open. I don't want to think about what sort of turkeys they sell at Family Dollar. They probably come in the same pull-ring cans as the Potted Meat Food Product. -> The businesses assured Reilly they would not open; no one answered -> phones at outlets of these chains in Greater Boston yesterday. That was a shame, 'cause I wanted to spend Thanksgiving calling Family Dollar over and over. "How much are your dustpans?" "How much are your bendy straws?" "How much are your packets of water-damaged Swiss Miss?" "How much is your gray oregano?" "How much are your fake Barbie clothes? What? You'll have to speak up, I have a hearing impairment that makes it impossible for me to hear the letters 'O', 'N', 'E', 'D', 'L', 'A', or 'R'." -> Super 88 officials reached yesterday said the warnings were news -> to them. ...which means they wrapped it around a jar of weirdly-shaped tiny pickles. Every time I shop there, when I get home I have to spend an hour picking crumpled-up Chinese newspapers out of my food. At the secret special supermarket I own, we wrap all groceries with really special newspapers containing nothing but articles about Andy Rooney and George Clooney beating each other to death with pool cues, and smutty sudoku. -> "We don't celebrate" Thanksgiving, said Rudy Chen, a former -> manager of the Super 88 in Chinatown who is now working as a senior -> buyer for the chain's corporate offices. [...] -> -> "All the businesses in Chinatown are open. The whole community," -> he said. "On holidays, when we have nothing else to do, we go into -> Chinatown. . . . They are the only businesses that are open." Chinese people don't celebrate any holidays, but they buy lots of fireworks anyway. Those are just their everyday fireworks. -> The state's blue laws were first enacted in the 1600s, intended to -> prevent colonists from straying from church or hearth to drink or -> transact business. In their current form, the laws ban retailers -> with more than seven employees from opening on Thanksgiving and -> Christmas. ...proving that the owners of the Super 88 don't watch "King Of The Hill" because Hank Hill knows how to get around that problem. So if Chinese people don't celebrate holidays and don't watch TV and only own one CD, why are they supposed to be so much fun? Oh, right, 'cause they can all teach you kung fu. -> Pharmacies may stay open. And this suggests another solution to the Super 88's dilemma, especially as the one in Dorchester contains two or three pharmacies. 'Cause you need to be able to buy ma huang on Thanksgiving to counteract all that magic tryptophan secreted by your turkey's placebo gland. -> Reilly told the Globe this week that tradition, and giving workers -> a day off, outweighs shopper convenience. "Thanksgiving is a time -> when people should be with their families, not working," he said. "That's why, on the first Thanksgiving, we made sure that whenever we killed an Indian, we sent his whole family to join him. The only good Indian is an entire dead family of them." -> But not all traditions are the same, said some customers who -> flocked to the Super 88 in Dorchester yesterday. While some scoured -> the shelves for holiday fixings, others were huddled by the lobster -> tub, apparently opting for a Thanksgiving without the traditional -> stuffed turkey. Maybe they wanted to stuff a turkey with a lobster stuffed with a durian -- the famous turlobdurian. And then there's a turkey sitting in lobster sauce, also known as "Big Bird with diaper gravy", or sometimes just "number two". -> Some said they didn't know it was illegal for the store to be open. -> "I was just driving around, and I saw it," said Edgar Mynor of -> Chelsea, who was shopping with his teenage son. "I did my shopping -> for the week so tomorrow we won't have to do it, and we can spend -> an extra day with family." Except then he had to spend Thanksgiving in jail for shopping for irregular durians on a holiday. Also, I'm not sure it was legal for the Boston Globe to report this -- it certainly wasn't legal for anyone to go buy a copy of yesterday's paper. -- K. I want to stuff a tofurky with a turkey stuffed with a tofurky to create a tofurkurkeyfurkey. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Everyone's favorite weird supermarket in the news Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 09:33:10 -0500 rone (^*&#$@ennui.org) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > -> But not all traditions are the same, said some customers who > > -> flocked to the Super 88 in Dorchester yesterday. While some scoured > > -> the shelves for holiday fixings, others were huddled by the lobster > > -> tub, apparently opting for a Thanksgiving without the traditional > > -> stuffed turkey. > > > > Maybe they wanted to stuff a turkey with a lobster stuffed with a > > durian -- the famous turlobdurian. And then there's a turkey > > sitting in lobster sauce, also known as "Big Bird with diaper gravy", > > or sometimes just "number two". > > A friend said that her Trader Joe's checker said he was looking > forward to his vegan turducken with vegan shrimp stuffing. Is there > no end to the perfidy of vegans? At the Super 88, they not only sell vegetarian shrimp (made from yam paste that's been squoozed through that Play-Doh Fun Factory template that makes the potato turds curl up) but they have vegetarian versions of almost every other meat product too. Of particular note are the packets marked "VEGETARIAN INTESTINE" (cannibalism isn't wrong if it's not a milk-fed human!) and "VEGETARIAN SWALLOW BALLS" (I think those might be made from teabags.) However, the Super 88 doesn't have the vegetarian veal that the Whole Foods (Bread & Circus) market sells. Said vegetarian veal is not to be confused with "Veat", which is one of the many supermarket products designed to resemble non-specific meat, like "Quorn", which is another one except made from mildew and its poop, which is not to be confused with "I Can't Believe It's Not Beef", which I believe is not to be confused with "Smart Bacon", which is not to be confused with "Beggin' Strips", which are not to be confused with bacon unless you're a dog because dogs don't know it's not bacon so you can pay extra to feed them fake bacon which is probably even worse for them than real bacon. The proliferation of names for fake meat is bewildering, especially since it's easy to confuse them with the names for fake fish. "Seitan" is a soy product, "Kibun" is a fish loaf product. Oh, and then there's natto, which is a soy product that can't be passed off as anything edible. There are even many names just for fake hot dogs (the best name: "Not Dogs".) While fact-checking my memories, I found a lawyer's resume on the Web: => Counsel to the Lipton unit of Unilever in a trade dress and => trademark infringement case against Foodtech International Inc. => regarding the famous trademark "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!"TM. => Foodtech, a maker of soy-based foods, was selling its product => under the name "I Can't Believe It's Not Beef!" As a result of => the firm's efforts, Foodtech ceased all use of the infringing mark => and trade dress. I wonder what they changed it to -- "I Can't Believe It's Not 'I Can't Believe It's Not Beef'"? "I Can't Not Believe It's Not Beef"? "I Can't Say The Rest Of This Product Name"? "Can't Touch This"? "Who Let The Dogs Out"? "Eat Me"? "Don't Eat Me"? "Not Plops"? "Ewwwwwwwwwwwww"? I really want to know what's wrong with those people who buy stuff like Quorn -- people who refuse to eat meat and also refuse to eat real vegetables. Do they live on nothing but extruded stuff and Tater Tots? If so, that makes the purpose of Trader Joe's much clearer. Whoever Joe is, he sure likes to extrude stuff. If you don't believe me, go to the back of the bakery department and you can see the guy squeezing out a loaf. -- K. "It's organic, it's got little green things living in it!" -- Chong ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: The customers frustrate me again Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 09:47:48 -0500 Lots42 (lots42@gmail.com) wrote: > > Yesterday, I schemed to 'get back' at the rude customers by being > polite and innocent. Example, ::cheery smile:: "Oh, no, sir. This two > dollar comic CAN be pulled out of the bag and board and read." This, > after a rude, snotty remark about them. Or worse, a rude, snotty, > ignorant remark about my mom's crafts. > > So of course, the customers foiled me by being rude with gibberish. > > Yes, that is probably confusing. Serves you right for trying to use sarcasm on the untrained. You may have to stoop to their level and follow it with smilies. In practice: "Hey, you're a GENIUS." "I am? Gawrsh, thanks, Mister Person!" should be: "Hey, you're a GENIUS. :-)" "Oh no, my soul has withered as it knelt before your almighty zinger!" but watch out for: "Hey, you're a GENIUS. :-)" "Oh no, my soul has withered as it knelt before your almighty zinger! :-)" ...a tragedy you can only prevent by punching them before they can say their line. > In other words, passing snotty remarks that make no sense. [...] I could say something about your pirate hat, but I might accidentally say something that made sense about it because I don't know whether it's lavender or mauve this week. > So I thought of a new tactic that will work for a few weeks. Whenever > a customer is snotty and rude, gibberish or not, I will say 'Merry > Christmas!'. Politeness always makes the mean customers madder. And > what can they do? Complain to the front office I wished them season's > greetings? I've noticed that the clerks at Whole Foods (Bread & Circus) like to say "Have a good one!" because either they're living in the 1970's, or management has told them they can't say "Have a nice day!" because people will assume they're being sarcastic like that police department that forbade cops to say "Have a nice day!" when they handed out speeding tickets. Perhaps this is a sign of the impending world of "Blade Runner", where people will say "Have a better one!" when they're not busy listening to a Trafficator or playing their Penfield Mood Organ. Getting back to your retail sales techniques for preventing customer sassback: Customers won't jerk you around so much if your store has more than one employee in it. So get someone else to hang around on your side of the table offering moral support rays. Have you considered doing like Mick Jagger and hiring the Hell's Angels? That would be the easiest solution, providing you could get them to wear pirate hats. -- K. I wouldn't try getting them to wear steering wheels. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Operation "Tigers" in Iraq-Star Child Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 10:00:40 -0500 Mark Edwards (Mark-Edwards@comcast.net) wrote: > > Any subject is funny if you rub enough tootpaste into it. You oughtta > know this by now. What about Tom's Natural Fennel-Flavored Toothpaste? There's no way to make that funny even if you rubbed real toothpaste into it. Come to think of it, most things from the health-food store aren't funny. I think today I already mentioned one that is (vegetarian veal) and the only other one is the picture of the filthy homeless man on all Burt's Bees products. He's like if Paul Newman didn't bathe for forty years instead of just not aging for forty years. Hey, yesterday I found a store that sells Sen-Sen. Apparently the crate of Sen-Sen they manufactured in 1867 still hasn't sold out, so get your Sen-Sen while you can, sometime during the next three hundred years. The question of "Why did anyone ever buy these?" has been superceded by "Why do they think anyone will ever buy these again?" After all, actual candy has been invented. If you haven't tried Sen-Sen (a pre-toothbrush-era breath-freshener which was coming in condom packets long before condoms were invented) I strongly recommend you do so that you can then say, "Wow, from now on, everything else in the world will taste delicious by comparison." It's little pellets of compressed camphor, with just enough licorice to make you say "Bleah, this tastes like camphor _and_ licorice!" Keep some in the band of your top hat between your fountain pen and your alum. -- K. The predecessor to Sen-Sen was just called Sen, and was pure lye. Remember lye? I don't understand why homes no longer have faucets supplying concentrated lye.