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 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: 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: 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. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Silliest phishing attempt this week. Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:25:50 -0500 Sometimes you have to admire the audacity of the phishers for making attempts so transparently stupid that people probably fall for them because they think "It can't be fraud because nobody would try anything this stupid." -> Subject: Message from eBay Member -> -> [...] -> -> eBay sent this message! -> -> [...] -> -> eBay sent this message on behalf of an eBay member via My Messages. -> Responses sent using email will not reach the eBay member. Use the -> Respond Now button below to respond to this message. -> -> Question from skaubraatmyra -> -> Hello, -> -> I recently placed a bid on item #5590717206 being a wheelchair for -> me that i really need do to my age(78 years old) and it seems that -> i can not find the auction anymore...May i please know if you are -> the seller of the item above? -> -> Regards, -> Gretta. It makes me sad to think how many bozos are clicking the "Respond Now" button (taking them to a Web page pretending to be an eBay signin page) just because they assume nobody would be a meanie pretending to be an elderly wheelchair idiot. But then some of the suckers have doubts about the message's authenticity, until they see that the message says "eBay sent this message!" right on their screen. I'm getting sorely tempted to open an Internet-based service to disinfect people's dirty credit cards. 'Cause you have to, you know, protect your credit cards from germs. Send me your credit card numbers and I'll wash them in special atomic bleach to keep the germs from stealing your credit cards. If you're worried about people stealing your credit card numbers, mail them to me before it's too late! -- Sincerely, Christopher Reeve. This message has been authenticated by your mom. She says to click here NOW. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Silliest phishing attempt this week. Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 18:32:07 -0500 Mark Edwards (Mark-Edwards@comcast.net) wrote: > > I'm confused. > > According to the text box on my computer screen, my credit card > number is ****-****-****-****, but according to the biil of sale, the > number is XXXX-XXXX-XXXX- and a few numbers. > > My numbers are apparently so dirty that they look different on > different media. Please help me, Mr. Popeil, er, Kibo! That's because it's a debit card. In order to convert your debit card to a real credit card, please mail it to me so I can asterisk-proof it with a special invisible spray made from chrysanthemums and ghosts. What I want to know is, why can you choose your own PIN but you can't choose your own card number? It would be so much easier to remember my card number if it was 666-666-666-666-666-666-666-666-666-666-666-666. Or 2. Like the secret code for remotely retrieving messages from your answering machine. Don't even bother going to look at the sticker inside your answering machine, I know it says "2". They're all 2. -- K. Now, an animation of a psychedelic pinball machine accompanied by a song to teach you how to count to 2. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Silliest phishing attempt this week. Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:12:43 -0500 Joseph Michael Bay (jmbay@Stanford.EDU) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > -- Sincerely, > > > > Christopher Reeve. > > > > This message has been authenticated by > > your mom. She says to click here NOW. > > THIS IS YOUR MOTHER. > > I KNOW YOU'RE LOOKING AT PORNO ON THERE. > > CLICK HERE TO DENY IT: www.ebay.paypal.fbi.gov.scam.ru/scam/yourmom.html > > PUT ON A SWEATER. Do it once, you're a philosopher. Do it twice, you're a pervert. Do it in a sweater, that's just weird. -- Voltaire Cue Morecambe & Wise discussing how those Egyptians do it with their socks on, then the obligatory "No socks please, we're British" pun, then the "eso si que es" pun-like item from Spanish class, then there's a commercial for anything made of Ban-Lon because Jerry Seinfeld wants to say "Ban-Lon" twice, which makes him a pervert. A Ban-Lon pervert. Uh oh, I said it three times. That means anyone who listens to me is automatically declared to be pervert. You perverts should wear more sweaters. -- Bob Newhart -- K. Then Jerry Seinfeld and Bob Newhart beat each other to death with pool cues on a double episode of "Seinhart" and "Newfeld". ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Obligatory TV cross-over fan-fic. Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:20:59 -0500 Bryce Utting (butting@ihug.co.nz) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > I apologize, but it had to be done, especially while the only four > > people who remember "Jabberwocky" are still alive. > > Oh crap. I SO needed to be on *another* death list. I think that could be the best B-movie ever. Because of that phenomenon where fans of a TV show are more insane if they believe there are relatively few of them, a guy travels around the country murdering all the other fans of his favorite obscure TV show to help make the show more popular. He'd ring people's doorbell and ask, "Do you remember that show that had that puppet named 'Dirty Frank' whose nose gradually crumbled away on camera?" and if they said, "Oh yeah, you mean the fake Oscar The Grouch?" they'd get a knife in the torso. The twist ending would be that the guy would ring a doorbell and the real Dirty Frank would answer. And then he'd take the guy to a cardboard box factory and push him into a machine to turn him into a cardboard box, then Dirty Frank would live in him. Then Rod Serling would thank you for watching his slasher movie. The second half of the double bill would be about the private life of Willie Whistle. -- K. Kids these days don't know how lucky they are not to be exposed to any locally- produced TV shows. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Obligatory TV cross-over fan-fic. Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 10:44:03 -0500 Mark Edwards (Mark-Edwards@comcast.net) wrote: > > Bryce Utting (butting@ihug.co.nz) wrote: > > > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > > > I apologize, but it had to be done, especially while the only four > > > people who remember "Jabberwocky" are still alive. > > > > Oh crap. I SO needed to be on *another* death list. > > Ha! I only remember Lochinvar: > > "T'was brillig and..." > > Oh Fuck! A-hem. Since you obviously aren't remembering the real "Jabberwocky", just Lewis Carroll's cheap imitation of it that he wrote so he could sleep with all the little girls who starred in it, let me remind you of the lyrics to the only true "Jabberwocky": (It's just a Jabberwocky world -- come on and see it with me!) Ê Ê Brothers and sisters... Ê Ê Ê Laughing and growing (giggle) Ê Ê Hammers and blisters... Ê Ê Ê Things you'll be knowing! (I have a feeling in my mind that I have been here before.) Ê Ê Flying machines Ê Ê Ê through space and time... Ê Ê Words and their meanings, Ê Ê Ê games for the mi-ii-ind... Ê Ê Touching and feeling... Ê Ê Ê Inside and outside... Ê Ê Hands on the ceiling... Ê Ê Ê Feet are on my side! (All the world's a Jabberwocky if you want it to be!) Ê Building a sound Ê Ê Ê you see with your ears... Ê Ê No need to frown, Ê Ê Ê your friends are all he-ee-ere-yeah! (Oh, this is Jabberwocky! Êgiggle) Note that I omitted the flash-frames of "GNARTLE!", "SEVENDY ELEVEN!", "WEIRD!", and "FIREFLY!" because those power words were never spoken aloud, nor did anyone pronounce the incantation in the crayoned speech balloon, "MY CHAIR WEARS UNDERWEAR!" The important thing is to giggle like a baby in a womb filled with nitrous at the appropriate places in that song, to make sure everyone knows which are the weird parts. If you want to see what all that looked like, just watch "Yellow Submarine" with your left eye and Terry Gilliam's life's work with your right eye while simultaneously hitting yourself over the head with a cinder block. -- K. "Daddy, what was a cinder block?" "Hush, Free Baby Junior, help me re-thatch our hemp hut here in the world of people who still remember the message of 'Jabberwocky', whatever it was." ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Saran Pants in the news Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 22:17:23 -0500 A short item linked from Fark.com. [www.nbc13.com] -> -> Man Wearing See-Through Pants Charged With Indecent Exposure Are these American pants or British pants? And if they were the latter, was this one of Bill Dauterive's dreams about Hank Hill? -> PELHAM, Ala. -- A Jefferson County man is facing charges for -> allegedly approaching woman wearing see-through pants. You should never approach a woman wearing see-through pants, because any woman wearing pants of any sort is a lesbian. You should only approach women wearing see-through poodle skirts, although if it's a proper see-through poodle-skirt it will look like a plain see-through skirt because you won't notice the invisible poodle, unless it's a dog-scented scratch'n'sniff see-through poodle skirt, which it better not be because I don't want those to ever be invented because I ride the subway. -> Darnell Evans, 29, is charged with two misdemeanor counts of -> indecent exposure. -> -> Pelham police said Evans would walk up to woman and ask, "If they -> could see what he had". ...and then they'd run away screaming, horrified by someone's bizarre ideas about how quote marks work. WOMAN Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans you're almost wearing? BAD PERVERT If they could see what he had? WOMAN I beg your pardon, sir? BAD PERVERT I asked, "If they could see what he had?" WOMAN Your poor communication skills are only helping to further expose your shortcomings. (SHE PULLS OFF HER LATEX MASK TO REVEAL THAT SHE IS SIR DAVID NIVEN.) WOMAN Now if you'll excuse me, enough of this unsipid... un... un... -- hold the cue card steady, please -- unSCRIPTED banter. I'm off to steal the Pink Pantsless -- STEADY, DAMN YOU -- Pink Panther diamond. -> Evans turned himself in and was questioned by Pelham investigators. -> According to police, another unspecified charge is pending. That's the one which interests me. Are they withholding the details of the other charge so as not to embarrass the weirdo? Also, I want to know more about why he turned himself in. My theory is that he wanted to be locked up before Robert DeNiro hooked his clear plastic pants up to the turd-duct. I bet Terry Gilliam owns hundreds of pairs of see-through pants. -- K. And most of them are filled with candy. DON'T EAT THE CANDY!!! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: "anti-teenager spray"? Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 23:23:22 -0500 [www.nytimes.com] -> -> What's the Buzz? Rowdy Teenagers Don't Want to Hear It -> -> By Sarah Lyall -> -> BARRY, Wales -- Though he did not know it at the time, the idea came -> to Howard Stapleton when he was 12 and visiting a factory with his -> father, a manufacturing executive in London. Opening the door to a -> room where workers were using high-frequency welding equipment, he -> found he could not bear to go inside. -> -> "The noise!" he complained. -> -> "What noise?" the grownups asked. -> -> Now 39, Mr. Stapleton has taken the lesson he learned that day -- -> that children can hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults -> can -- to fashion a novel device that he hopes will provide a -> solution to the eternal problem of obstreperous teenagers who -> hang around outside stores and cause trouble. I can think of several simpler solutions. For instance, the shop owner could ask the local school guidance counselor to set up a desk outside the shop offering free advice on careers, relationships, and homework time-management strategies. No bad teen will voluntarily spend as much as three seconds around a guidance counselor holding a handful of pamphlets with titles such as "The Importance Of Virginity." -> The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Mr. -> Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he -> says, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one -> older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people -> that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away. I can disprove this theory completely. Here are the top 10 songs played at my local club: 1. CONSTANT LOUD SQUEALING NOISE 2. CONSTANT LOUD GRINDING NOISE WITH SQUEALING NOISE 3. INTERMITTENT LOUD SQUEALING NOISE WITH FLESH TEARING 4. SQUEALING, GRINDING, TEARING, AND CHALK ON BLACKBOARD (DANCE MIX) 5. CONSTANT CHALK ON INTERMITTENT BLACKBOARD WHILE TEARING LOUD FLESH 6. 7. 8. There are no numbers 6 through 10, as the above five tracks are 9. the only ones they ever play. 10. Clearly the kids today like things that sound like the machine that attempted to cut Sean Connery's crotch in half in "Goldfinger". -> So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the -> entrance to the Spar convenience store in this town in South Wales. -> Like birds perched on telephone wires, surly teenagers used to -> plant themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, -> drinking, shouting rude words at customers and making regular -> disruptive forays inside. And let's not forget pitching pennies, disrupting planetarium shows, and combing their hair whenever they feel like it. And speaking in be-bop like in "The Wild One". Remember the scene where they mocked the old guy who didn't know that "tee-vee" was hep biker slang for "television"? Ah, those were the golden days of sass-mouth. -> "On the low end of the scale, it would be intimidating for -> customers," said Robert Gough, who, with his parents, owns the -> store. "On the high end, they'd be in the shop fighting, stealing -> and assaulting the staff." -> -> Mr. Gough (pronounced GUFF) planned to install a sound system that -> would blast classical music into the parking lot, another method -> known to horrify hang-out youths into dispersing, but never got -> around to it. But last month, Mr. Stapleton gave him a Mosquito for -> a free trial. The results were almost instantaneous. It was as if -> someone had used anti-teenager spray around the entrance, the way -> you might spray your sofas to keep pets off. Where disaffected -> youths used to congregate, now there is no one. Unlike anti-teenager spray, which leaves teenage corpses all over your parking lot. Hey, next time I'm in the newspaper, I'm going to ask them to specify that my name also be pronounced in all caps. "Mr. Kibo (pronounced KIBO THE SPECTACULAR) has invented an anti-old-fart spray..." -> At first, members of the usual crowd tried to gather as normal, -> repeatedly going inside the store with their fingers in their ears -> and "begging me to turn it off," Mr. Gough said. But he held firm -> and neatly avoided possible aggressive confrontations: "I told them -> it was to keep birds away because of the bird flu epidemic." And it's a real epidemic here. 100% of the people in this country narrowly avoided catching it from the imaginary ones who have it. (I don't know if things are any worse over there in Wales, but they could hardly be better.) -> [...] -> -> Mr. Stapleton, a security consultant whose experience in installing -> store alarms and the like alerted him to the gravity of the -> loitering problem, studied other teenage-repellents as part of his -> research. Some shops, for example, use "zit lamps," which drive -> teenagers away by casting a blue light onto their spotty skin, -> accentuating any whiteheads and other blemishes. Oh, so that's why everyone in K-Mart looks like they have leprosy. I thought it was unlikely that more than 75% of K-Mart customers are actually hideous dizeezos. Now I know that the blue light is just helping the few normal ones buying malted milk balls blend in with the lepers buying Whoppers. -> [...] -> -> "It's very difficult to shoplift," Mr. Stapleton said, "when you -> have your fingers in your ears." Unless, of course, you're already deaf. That's one of the three plots they always used on Hanna-Barbera's "Differently-Abled Power Squad". The mad scientist would have an atomic bomb defended by ultrasonic loudspeakers so that only a deaf superhero could turn it off. The other two plots were, "Those lasers will blind anyone who's not already blind! Quick, summon The Eyeless Wonder!" and "None of us will fit through that door! Quick, summon The World's Most Respectable Midget!" It was a show that taught children that the only truly handicapped people were those who didn't have any handicaps to be proud of, because only handicapped people could save the world every week. Unfortunately, it started to get a little preachy after the first eighty episodes. Also it never had any black people on it. Still, the chimp that drove their van was funny. God bless Hanna-Barbera for bringing us that message of tolerance and wackiness. -- K. It was later retitled "Jim Henson's Deformed Babies". ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: "anti-teenager spray"? Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:45:25 -0500 Glenn Knickerbocker (NotR@bestweb.net) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > -> "It's very difficult to shoplift," Mr. Stapleton said, "when you > > -> have your fingers in your ears." > > > > Unless, of course, you're already deaf. > > --which raises the most important question: How many afternoons of > exposure before the Mosquito so damages the teenagers' hearing that they > can no longer hear it? This seems a bit like trying to keep prisoners > too tired to escape by subjecting them to an intensive exercise program, > only of course just the opposite. No, the most important question is: How come there was never an episode where Batman couldn't chase the bad guy into a nudist camp without revealing his secret identity? I think any streaker could outwit Batman so easily, because Batman's such a prude about always wearing his mask and clothing. But The Streaker would have to be sure to hide in an evil nudist camp so they wouldn't extradite him. So how come they never did that episode? For at least two decades, stores have tried using constant ultrasonic whines to prevent shoplifting, on the theory that it's subliminally discomforting enough to make you too nervous to shoplift. And yes, stores that have those things do keep people who can actually hear them from shopping there. I've run into them a few times. I bet Batman can hear them, even through that wetsuit hood he likes to wear all summer. The question is, can The Bionic Woman hear them over that beeping noise in her ear? And if she has super-powerful hearing, shouldn't she go deaf whenever she uses her hand muscles to make a tennis ball go "BANG!!!!!!!!!!"? -- K. And why didn't she ever go to nudist camps? ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Fruit nobody loves. Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:57:22 -0500 Remember how, a few weeks ago, I mentioned the sudden momentary appearance of Buddha's Hand fruits at one local Super Stop & Shop and also the Super 88 Supermarket? Well, I think much like watermelons, all the Buddha's Hand fruits for the year were delivered on one day. I know this because the ones at the Super 88 have been getting progressively fuzzier. Some of them are turning white and fluffy, while others are turning green and velvety. The perpetually- unsold Buddha's Hands are making penicillin like it's good for something. But in other gross fruit news, I heard that just in case durians are ever legalized, the big cereal cartels have secretly registered a bunch of trademarks for durian cereals. For instance, "Count Durula". -- K. "Bluh! Bluh! Eat my horrible cereal! Bluh!" ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: From our corrsepondent in an Anonymous Soviet Union-like Country Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 12:44:23 -0500 Brendan Connor sent this. I would have replied privately but he has one of those highly important E-mail addresses where if you reply to it, guys wearing Kevlar T-shirts have to X-ray it to check for anthrax, and we all know that X-rays destroy E-mail, leaving only the T-shirts and a few other things starting with consonants and hyphens. > Kibo, > > What has more evolutionary force; a razor blade, a General Electric > diesel locomotive or a bad science fiction writer? What would happen > if I were to shave a stubbornly hirsute giraffe's neck with a > evolutionary-force powered razor? > > Internetless Brendan > > p.s. I can't get incoming and I refuse to use government provided web-mail. > > p.p.s Say hi to everybody The question is whether the bad science fiction writer actually shaves or just rides a train. Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov liked trains (being terrified of cars) but they're good writers, while L. Ron Hubbard couldn't possibly ride a train unless the tracks extended into international waters. I'm not sure about Manly Bannister's views on shaving, but they were probably euphoniously manly. And bannisterial. Evolutionary force, in the future, will update this article to say "Y-rays", "F-mail", and "U-shirts". So our bodies will have to adapt to "U"-shaped shirts while we send our all-obscenity F-mails while Mickey Mouse uses those two black satellite dishes on his head to bombard us with Y-rays. -- K. Because he loves to hate you. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: devnull Nethack Tourney Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 18:54:27 -0500 Otto Bahn (GoAheadKissMyAss@Blew.Devels.com) wrote: > > [...] > > I don't remember posting any drug references. But you said you liked Texas Hold 'Em, which is a game played with cards, and nobody could possibly enjoy a non-video, non-exploding game made from cards unless they were hiiiiiiigh, man. 'Cause cards are all two-dimensional and medieval and stuff. People who aren't high prefer real games, like pinball and slot machines and "Who Can Hit The Softest?" At the mall yesterday, I saw another attempt to make poker into a modern game: "Hold'Em-Opoly". I am not making that up. It's a "Monopoly" knockoff where all the deeds have two poker cards printed on them, and the houses and hotels are "online sites" and "casinos". Instead of going to jail you have to play a round of Texas Hold 'Em with whatever hand you can make from the cards printed on your deeds. Apparently the game geniuses decided the world needed to be able to combine the tedium of "Monopoly" with the pointlessness of using anything other than normal cards to play a card game. Whether your favorite game is "Monopoly" or Texas Hold 'Em, you gotta admit that adding the other one to it makes it less fun. The more games you combine, the less fun it is! Let's face it, "Monopoly" is pure monotony -- combining anything with "Monopoly" creates something super-sucky. Except breakfast cereal. The "Monopoly" breakfast cereal was pretty good. It was exactly like Cap'n Crunch except with square marshmallows, which is what made it "Monopoly". 'Cause round marshmallows would have made it "Mousetrap". I predict that within three months there will be a "Hold 'Em Crunch" from General Mills. It'll have the look and taste of green felt with little clay chips. "Mmm! Poker is pica-tastic! Thanks for buying me this gambling-themed cereal, Uncle Daddy!" -- K. I miss pinball. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: devnull Nethack Tourney Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2005 11:47:12 -0500 TeaLady (Mari C.) (spressobean@yahoo.com) wrote: > > Otto Bahn (GoAheadKissMyAss@Blew.Devels.com) wrote: > > > > They also tend to have that Pac-Man combination with that > > alien-fighter game (it's name escapes me, Galaga or > > something). > > Galaga. I think. It used to be my "sober" test - if I could > make it to the 13th level, I was sober enough to drive home. > Or too sober to stay and dance and watch the drunks hit on > each other, whichever. "Ms. Pac-Man" and "Galaga". But it's not the _original_ version of "Galaga", it's the "fixed" version with a light modification to keep you from winning, just as "Ms. Pac-Man" was an attempt to make "Pac-Man" unbeatable by adding more randomness (and closing up the original hiding spot.) In the original Galaga you'd have to be really drunk not to make it all the way to level 999999 if you knew about the special feature. Kill all the bugs except one of the blue ones from the far left. Move to the right side and let it dive-bomb you for a while (about twenty minutes, if I remember correctly -- don't know if that's 256 passes, but you do have to pay attention and occasionally move out of your corner.) Eventually it stops shooting. Kill it and then none of the bugs on later levels shoot at you ever again. You see, I AM INVINCIBLE. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go click Pierce Brosnan's pen a large odd number of times while fantasizing about the two very big men who beat up Tom Cruise's only friend. (Please, guys, you can come back and beat up Tom too.) "Galaga" was a pretty dull game, with irritating sound effects (not as bad as "Galaxian", though.) I liked "Galaga '88". That was the one where, before every stage, there was a picture of a different alien saying "gurble gee gurp gurp". -- K. "See two very big men beat up Rob Schneider in 'Gurble Gee Gurpity Nurpy Dee Nurp Gurp'!" ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: devnull Nethack Tourney Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 11:28:13 -0500 Rose Marie Holt (rmholt1@mindspring.com) wrote: > > We have lots of pinball, but the slopes are steep and the balls are > magnetically attracted to the gap between the paddles. Um, Rose? Slopes should be steep. Good players like it that way because you have a lot more control over the ball. Machines which are flatter than they should be cause the ball to bounce more randomly as it descends, meaning you lose it down the side drains more often. This is why, whenever you see a machine where the arcade owners have taken out the little green bubble level, it's a sign that the machine will be too flat, not too steep. There's not really such a thing as too steep, but they make them flat if they want you to lose your money faster. (You want to see "steep", find an old "Banzai Run".) Worst-case scenario is a machine adjusted to be too flat, red flippers, and a dirty bumpy playfield. The ball will wander around like a Bumble Ball. A good machine will feel really slick with lots of north-south motion of the ball. Slopes should be steep, flippers should be black, and they should clean the dirt off the playfield once in a while to keep the ball moving fast. Whenever someone around here recommends I go to some specific dive because they have A Good Pinball Machine, I always ask whether it has the red flippers and the black flippers, and they won't know. That's like not knowing whether you're pitching a baseball or a softball. So I take comfort in knowing that despite the fact that the machine is probably broken because it was recommended by someone who doesn't know pinball, at least I'll beat them by a very high margin. As far as machines with "paddles" go, I haven't seen a "Pong" in decades. You're living in the '70s, man. Stop voting for Nixon! -- K. STOP THE WAR IN VIETNAM AND BRING BACK PINBALL! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: devnull Nethack Tourney Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 11:14:57 -0500 Otto Bahn (GoAheadKissMyAss@Blew.Devels.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Let's face it, "Monopoly" is pure monotony -- combining anything > > with "Monopoly" creates something super-sucky. > > I remember reaching the age where it was no longer because > it is a stupid game. Why it was fun before that, I cannot say. I feel that same way. Also about SpaghettiOs and "The Flintstones". > > I miss pinball. > > You didn't buy any used ones as they were being replaced > by video games? I still see pinball some -- places like > bowling alleys that have a little video game room usually > have them. Yeah, and all the good machines are broken because nobody's made any good pinball machines in at least ten years. The few new machines produced by Stern suck (and are way too easy.) I dare you to find a "Twilight Zone" machine where all the flippers work, or even an "Addams Family" machine where less than half the indicator lights are burned out. Only machines in private homes get properly maintained. The most popular machines from the early 1990s ("Addams Family", "Twilight Zone", etc.) linger in dark corners in various states of crippledness. All others from the early '90s or late '80s are gone (when was the last time you saw a "Star Trek 25th Anniversary"? "Spirit"? "Earthshaker"?) Even the two Williams "Pinball 2000" machines ("Revenge From Mars" and "Star Wars Episode I") have vanished. You're more likely to see primitive machines from the '70s still in circulation (fewer parts to break) than anything from the '80s and '90s. Basically, what you've got these days is that every bowling alley will have one broken "Addams Family" or "Twilight Zone", and one crummy machine of relatively recent vintage (either one of the last few Data East products, such as the awful "South Park" machine, or a brand-new machine, such as the tedious and trivial "Sopranos".) There's only one bowling alley around here that has more than a couple pinball machines, and sometimes some of them are in good condition, although of course their "Twilight Zone" is always beyond broken (at least it still has a Powerball, a lot of them don't even have that.) But pretty much every day there is a league day where the pinball room is filled with four-year-olds who do nothing but stand behind the players and shriek at the top of their lungs to kill time while daddy bowls drunk with his friends. That's also the place where they used to have a machine with one red flipper and one black flipper -- and this is the place with the _best_ maintenance in the area. My local club has a truly broken "Arabian Nights" machine. Know what its biggest problem is? The ramp. The inanimate plastic ramp. The thing is so beat-up that for some reason the ball stops halfway up the plastic ramp and falls back down, there's some sort of chip or deformity in the ramp (not enough light there for me to see precisely what's wrong, but the ball stops abruptly as if it's hit a force field halfway up.) Also of course one of the three ball locks won't, and two of the three skill shot sensors don't, though those problems don't render the machine unplayable the way the bad ramp does. It's one of those machines like "Addams Family" or Data East's "Star Wars" where you could normally conquer it by shooting the ball up the center ramp over and over. And there's a place in Worcester that has two pinball machines (a boringly simply "Austin Powers" machine and a good-condition "Simpsons" machine) but it's awfully far to go just to have access to one good machine. ("The Simpsons" has a lot of stuff in it.) The two machines I miss are "Twilight Zone" (especially as I see broken ones everywhere) and "Doctor Who" (now that was a nice mean game that really focused on skills, a relatively bare playfield but still a high level of difficulty.) Anyone who is as good at pinball as I am will be sad for the rest of their lives. Pinball's just plain over. All the companies are out of business except Stern, and all the classic machines have been beaten to death. -- K. And if anyone wants to know, I can actually tell you where to get replacements for your "Twilight Zone"'s Powerball -- there are a couple industrial sources for plastic spheres. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: devnull Nethack Tourney Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 11:55:15 -0500 Otto Bahn (GoAheadKissMyAss@Blew.Devels.com) wrote: > > [...] > > What is this "60's" thing I keep hearing about? Is > it anything like the Me Generation and Generation X? Man, remember that year when there was a "Generation X"? And everyone talked about it before deciding it didn't exist? It was after "P.C." was invented but before "soccer mom" and "metrosexual" were invented. Those are all terms where using any of them in a sentence makes you seem a million years old. "Generation X" turned out to be something that only existed in commercials, like "The Pepsi Generation" and people whose purses contain a bag of potato chips which was never factory-sealed at the top. > --oTTo-- > > Free the endorphins! Life is a lot like the episode titled "Mork's Mixed Emotions" where the little door in the back of his brain bursts open and all the emotions come out, bringing their endorphins with them. Especially because whenever I experience Earth emotions I also beat up a cardboard cutout of Steve Martin. WELL, EXCUUUUUUUUUSE ME! -- K. If you don't know what the '70s were, they were the decade that gave us our greatest spiritual guru: Mork. "Losing your car is just a concept!" ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: devnull Nethack Tourney Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:30:39 -0500 Otto Bahn (GoAheadKissMyAss@Blew.Devels.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > Life is a lot like the episode titled "Mork's Mixed Emotions" where > > the little door in the back of his brain bursts open and all the > > emotions come out, bringing their endorphins with them. Especially > > because whenever I experience Earth emotions I also beat up a cardboard > > cutout of Steve Martin. WELL, EXCUUUUUUUUUSE ME! > > Robin Williams: Poster child for drug abuse. He stopped > doing coke, he stopped being funny. Sorry, Chris Rock beat you to it. Regarding steroids in sports, he said something along the lines of "If there were drugs that could make me as funny as Richard Pyror I'd take 'em -- Richard took 'em!" However, Chris Rock is currently the poster child for dropping out of high school to become rich and famous (he's damn smart, I imagine school was just annoying to him) so Robin Williams can be the poster child for wacky crack comedy binges. I am the poster child for declaring that people are poster children for random things. Otto, I declare you to be the poster child for campaigning to dye lettuce blue so that people won't confuse it with carrots which have been dyed green. And I declare Anson Williams to be the poster child for licking only the red dots off the inside of your TV screen. And Edward Everett Horton is now the poster child for reprogramming the machinery at Build-A-Bear Workshop to give all the teddy bears poisonous bellybuttons. Anne Robinson is the poster child for Marjoe Gortner, and vice versa. Otto, now you're no longer the poster child for the lettuce thingie, you're now the poster child for the exact opposite of yourself. Also, I declare that you're all married. To the lettuce. -- K. Drugs are for losers who weren't cool enough to be born weird. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.mega-ego.yonderboy Subject: Re: I would like to register a complaint! Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 19:31:23 -0500 Alex Suter (asuter@xenon.Stanford.EDU) wrote: > > Jeremy D. Impson (jdimpson@acm.spam.org) wrote: > > > > Alex Suter (asuter@xenon.Stanford.EDU) wrote: > > > > > > Foaming exactly the right amount, > > > Alex, former cappucino maker > > > > Right, I'll have three former cappuccinos, then. > > You realize, of course, that I have to pee in your > mouth now. > > Pervert. No, a pervert is someone who eats nothing but asparagus, smoky bacon, and hot peppers before doing that. Also some of those cinnamon Tic Tacs that make your urine bright red. But you don't want to mix those in with your Stouffer's Watersports Classics Asparagus, Bacon, And Pepper Casserole because that would be weird. Look for Stouffer's Watersports Classics entrees in your grocer's restroom. -- K. And new from the makers of Cheez Whiz, it's Whiz Whiz! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Lots of 'Shocking' games in this catalogue Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 19:46:02 -0500 Tim Chmielewski (webmaster@timchuma.com) wrote: > > -> Shocking Shooting Game > -> > -> A shocking test of your aim and nerves. You and your mate strap on the > -> chest targets, set the guns to 'Wimp' or 'Tough Guy' shock level then > -> fire away. If you're hit, your gun will give you a shock through the > -> gun's hand grip. Five strikes and you're out. Sold per pair. > > Pah! They should be labelled from Tim Chuma to Kibo. And how's that different from "Wimp" and "Tough Guy"? The Stanley Milgram version has a third setting. "Wimp", "Tough Guy", and "X X X". Then when you lose it prints out a book about you where it brags that it could tell just from the shape of your face that you're obviously of low intelligence. Anyway, this game is not a new idea. I saw Klaus Maria Brandauer playing it against James Bond back when Klaus could still stay sober for ninety minutes. (If you want to see him as THE WORLD'S DRUNKEST ACTOR, rent "Druids", where he has trouble even standing up while playing Julius Caesar. He's drunker than all of Sid & Marty Krofft's actors combined.) > [...] > > Failing that, just stick a fork in the toaster. I eat with plastic forks. You got a problem with that? Hey, here's an idea: A game that stabs you with a fork whenever someone shoots you. It would have settings from "KFC Spork" up through "American Gothic". And there could be an entire season of "24" about it! "Terrorists have trapped Jack Bauer in a virtual-reality video game, and will crash the Space Shuttle into the nation's Strategic Helium Reserve if he doesn't use his virtual spork to win 'Chex Quest'!" Remember "Chex Quest"? And "Cheerios Playtime"? What other video games based on breakfast cereals should give Jack Bauer lethal shocks? -- K. (Sorry, Manwich isn't a cereal.) ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Short, shameful confession Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 12:58:44 -0500 Chris Chase (cdchase@gmail.com) wrote: > > I read ARK today for the first time in over 4 years. > > [...] > > I think Kibology makes me happy. I need more Kibology WITH 20% LESS FAT! So chop off Bob Hope's... wait, someone already did. Never mind. I think there should be roving bands of enforcers who, after people are told "never mind", will arrest anyone who ever again minds. As far as fat goes, bacon's good. And the Super 88 Supermarket's started selling those little packets of Howard's chicken rinds again. And half of the packets are still pre-rancidified and the other half are still delicious. My local gas station carries Howard's pork rinds but not the chicken rinds, and oddly, has about eight other kinds of pork rinds. It's an unusually pork-rind-obsessive gas station. They also sell giant 99c cans of "natural" blueberry soda which says, "MADE WITH PURE NATURAL CANE SUGAR" but the moment I poured some into a glass I knew this was a lie because it obviously foamed up like corn syrup. Apparently you can get away with saying something is "made with pure _____" as long as there was some point during Earth's history before you mixed the "_____" with the corn sludge. That gas station also stopped selling chorizo-and-egg sandwiches so now I don't know where to get those, short of making them myself, which wouldn't give them that authentic gas-station quality. -- K. I just mail-ordered a big bag of kalonji if you want to have a spoonful of kalonji. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Short, shameful confession Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2005 22:15:30 -0500 Rose Marie Holt (rmholt1@mindspring.com) wrote: > > I must be officially OLD because Broasted Chicken and other Minimart > foods give me esophageal reflux and spasm (gimme my nitro gladys) and I > cant eat fruit and nuts to my heart's content unless I am ready to > graduate to Adult Diapers. ...and then you'll be a biiiiiiig girl! And your diapers will be thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis biiiiiiiiiiig! Don't worry, you're not missing much by not eating fruits and nuts, and by not wearing a diaper. Stick to bacon and pants. Also, eat bacon and wear pants. How do you feel about poppy seeds? They're my favorite nuts, but they're kind of small. I've been buying these poppy seed bagels that actually have an adequate quantity of seeds -- the bagels are solid black all over. 'Course, proper poppy seeds have a nice blue color before they get cooked, but nobody likes to acknowledge that there are blue nuts in the world. And if you can't eat fruits, do you consider tomatoes to be a fruit or a vegetable? What about bananas? Green peppers painted to look like durians? Carmen Miranda's head? A golem made out of tamarind pulp and lead? And would you eat Fruit Of The Loom under there? -- K. So that people can't get away with saying "Under what?" when I ask "Hey, what're you eating under there?", I'm inventing Y-front cotton underwhats. They're like underwear except they taste worse. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: ok here is my best attempt to cram as much information into one post /LARGE POST about magic TV antenna stealth plane killers \\ mkpedestal2a Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2005 13:29:13 -0500 Mark Edwards (Mark-Edwards@comcast.net) wrote: > > Daniel Jackson (Jackson_SG-1@comcast.net) wrote: > > > > What exactly is so weird?Why the fuck everytime I post something > > someone bitches? > > Maybe because this is primarily a humorous group, Meow. > and you are seldom intentionally funny? Meow! > > Im allowed. > > So is [Hammond], and he isn't funny either. MEOW! > I'm not saying "don't post" - I'm saying I don't read much of what > you do post because it's rude, obnoxious, boring MEOW!!! > and makes my nose-hair fall out. In big clumpy handsful. And it > turns orange afterwards. Now that's just weird. You should call your vet. -- K. P.S.: MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW Have you bought your Meow Mix wall clock yet? If so, only 59 more minutes before you can enjoy that unforgettable melody again! It's like having Broadway on your wall in hideous mutant cat form! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Joke generalization Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2005 11:51:14 -0500 Jacob W. Haller (yoof@jwgh.org) wrote: > > Last year, I learned a new joke: > > Q: If you're an American in the kitchen, what are you in > the bathroom? > > A: Eur o pean! HAW HAW! Dude, not cool -- that's very offensive to Urine-Americans. Those of us who never pee have to be sensitive to the special needs of those who have that debilitating sleazy disease that makes them pee. We must never mock other people's bodily functions, even if we're better than those people! > Last night as I was half-asleep it occurred to me that this could be a > representative of an entire family of jokes about placenames with > similar properties. It turns out to be a little tricky, though; the only > place I could think of that seemed to have any possibilities is Ukraine, > and even there I couldn't come up with a joke that made any kind of > sense. Can any of you do better? SOMEONE GET JACOB A MAP OF THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM!!! -- K. I'm talking, of course, about Nepturd and Poopluto. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh DUHHHHHH! Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2005 22:54:19 -0500 [news.yahoo.com] -> -> Greenville County investigators are warning the public about -> a pair of swindlers. -> -> Deputies said a woman was in the parking lot of Wal-Mart on -> Woodruff Road when she was approached by another woman, who told -> the victim that she had $8,000 in cash, but did not like the serial -> numbers on the money and wanted to exchange it with the victim. This is where the wacky calliope music started circling around my brain as my brain began to sing: "Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh, duhhhhhhhhhh duhhhhhhhhhh duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh durhey!" to the tune of the theme from "Tron". But then my brain and my body started to wrestle, because my body wanted to be nice to the poor idiot woman who lost her money due to the stupid goodness of her heard, but my brain held my body down and farted on it until my body agreed to write the word "STUPERSTUPID" on a Post-It Note I'm mailing to her with a letter saying "Put this on your face for a month and then I'll mail you a trillion dollars, sucker!" -> The victim was asked to go to her bank with anothe man, withdraw -> $6,000 and give it to the suspect, and in turn she would receive -> the $8,000. -> -> When the victim withdrew the money and gave it to the woman, -> the woman and the man left without giving the victim anything. Not even a tiny card saying, "Hello, you have just been ~SWINDLED~ by the world's greatest genius, at least compared to you."? -> The victim was not nontarded? -> hurt. Oh. Well, don't worry, she's got such a tiny brain that she probably doesn't know what order numbers goes in so if her bank account is $6,000 less we can convince her that smaller is better, like how a score of 3 in miniature golf is better than a score of 300 in giant golf, and then she'll be happy. And stupid. And broke. And about to swallow this bug: (PICTURE OF WEIRD COCKROACH WITH GOOGLY EYES, SAYING "YOU'RE A BIG DUH!") -- K. Heaven help her if she ever meets a really dangerous con artist, like John Edward. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh DUHHHHHH! Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2005 23:10:19 -0500 Chris Lansdell (chris.lansdell@nl.HAWHAWSPAMTRAP.rogers.com) wrote: > > James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) wrote: > > > > But then my brain and my body started to wrestle, because my body > > wanted to be nice to the poor idiot woman who lost her money due to > > the stupid goodness of her heard, but my brain held my body down and > > farted on it until my body agreed to write the word "STUPERSTUPID" on > > a Post-It Note I'm mailing to her with a letter saying "Put this on > > your face for a month and then I'll mail you a trillion dollars, > > sucker!" > > The mental image of your brain holding your body down and farting on it > is making me almost implodiate. Please desist. That's okay, I grant you permission to use my awesome wrestling move in your routine. And you can use the Post-It Note bit as a finisher. So how's the wrestling business? Andy Kaufman seemed to enjoy it, but he didn't get into it for the same reason you did, unless you have a secret interest in women rubbing against your duct tape. And remember, when your brain farts, the neighbors can't hear it unless they read your newsgroup. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go use my brain to open a can of paint. Sure, I may have been born with a brain shaped like a screwdriver, but at least I'm a Phillips and not a flathead. -- K. Paint tastes like Pepto-Bismol except not so colorful. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: On My Desk Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2005 23:14:57 -0500 Darla Vladschyk (Darla4695@gmail.com) wrote: > > On my computer desk right now is a paper napkin from a tapas bar in > Barcelona, and I wouldn't feel cooler if I had an ass full of ice cubes. That sound you hear is the CIA frantically erasing the line in their dossier which says "Darla's ass is full of ice cubes." By the way, paper napkins aren't cool. Now, a leather napkin, that would be "ayyyyyyyy", you nimnul. -- K. Also, the CIA is erasing the next line, "Darla has a bug in her ice cubes." ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Joak Tolled Rong Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 16:39:47 -0500 Captain Infinity (Infinity@captaininfinity.us) wrote: > > Q. What time is it to go to the dentist? > > A. "Tooth-Achey"!! > > HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA AHAHA HA HA HA HA HAHA H > H AH AH HAHA AHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA > HA HA H AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH HA HAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAH > HA HA HA HA HA HA HAA__ HA __ HAHAHA___H AH AH H HAHA HA HA HAHA > HAHA HA HA HA HA HA | | | | / \HAH AHA HA HA HA HAHA HA > H AHAH AH AH AH AH A| |__| | / _ \HA HA HA HA HAHA HA HAH > H AH AH AH AHA HA HA| __ | / /_\ \HA HA HA HAHA HA HA HA > HA HA HA HA HA HA HA| | | | / ,___, \A HA HA HAHA HA HA HA > H AH AH AH AH AH AH |__| |__| /__/ \__\HA HAHA HA HA HA HAA > HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA H > H AH AH AH AH AH AHAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA > H AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH > HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ! I still think mine is the king of jokes which don't require any effort to tell correctly: "Hey -- know why Dr Pepper comes in a bottle?" "No, why does Dr Pepper come in a bottle?" (pained look) "I... don't... know! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA." Here's another one: "These two penguins are on an iceberg. But the iceberg breaks in half and the two penguins are drifting further and further apart. Then they both drowned! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA." When telling a joke like that, you have to end it by screaming "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" so that nobody can hear that the other person forgot to laugh. And remember, if some loser accidentally tells a joke which makes you actually laugh, it's vitally important to point your index finger at their face while you're laughing so that people will think you weren't tricked into laughing _with_ them. -- K. When is a door not a door? When it's open! ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Instant Review: My Stupid Dream Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 17:07:11 -0500 Lots42 (lots42@gmail.com) wrote: > > I dreamnt that I was part of a major motion picture about a talking > cow. > > Yes, a talking cow. Which only understood my family. Because I fell > asleep while 'Dr. Doolittle' was on. > > The movie ended with the cow drowning horribly, because it couldn't > wait for us to figure out how to get it to a swimming hole safely. Wow, you dreamed you were George Burns. Now I'm going to have to watch all my old videotapes and see if there were any episodes where he wore a pirate hat. Somehow it's just not right to say "ARRRRR!" while wearing a tuxedo. > Fortunately, for the kids in the audience, some talking seals showed > up. Did you used to dream about talking WACs back when you were straight? I've never met any SEALs. I do know some ex-Navy men who are frighteningly rugged. Not people you'd want to be paddled by during one of your equator-crossing dreams. > Stupid cow. Okay, now you're getting your Benny Hill in your George Burns. Stop that or I'll have to re-enact that episode of "The Goodies" where they put Benny Hill and George Burns in the zoo together and they gave birth to 50,000 elderly people attempting to do wacky slapstick much to the audience's horror, like when the audience gasped as Lucille Ball creakingly climbed up the ladder in "Life With Lucy". -- K. If you really are George Burns, prove it by letting Garry Shandling rip off your show. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: When Conan O'Brien goes to Finland Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:03:47 -0500 Tim Chmielewski (webmaster@timchuma.com) wrote: > > Hopefully he meets Finaland's favourite son, Tom of Finland, so he can > pretend to get beaten up by him and they can start doing 'Tom of Finland' > material on the show and employ Kibo as a scriptwriter exclusively for > leather jokes. So in your world, will I be given access to Conan's time machine? I recall correctly, shortly before he died, he'd started dating a guy with a fluorescent pink Mohawk. Just to impress you with what else I can recall -- with videotaped proof that I do recall it -- if you want to see Conan's time machine, come over and I'll let you watch my tape of Conan's "Time Travel Week" from his first year on the air. (It was advertised in "TV Guide" with a lovely graphic of Conan O'Brien running through an accurately- drawn graphic representing Irwin Allen's "Time Tunnel".) It was back when Conan was still doing special experimental things (like the episode where Dave Foley got called boring by the all-little-kids audience.) The premise was that late one night, when Conan and Andy were in their jammies, they wandered backstage and fell into the mouth of a cardboard scary clown time machine named "Mr. Time", accompanied by a parody of the theme song from the Kroffts' "Lidsville". My favorite episode that week was when they materialized in the early 1980's so David Letterman kicked them off his set. I miss Andy. But at least bootlegs of the unaired episodes of "Andy Richter Controls The Universe" have surfaced. I can't help but wonder, if they revived that series as a movie with Chris Elliott as Andy's stupid friend, would David Letterman's acting have improved any for his cameo? You just know his tombstone's gonna say, "Wanna buy a monkey?" Anyway, Finland loves Conan O'Brien, France loves Jerry Lewis, Germans love David Hasselhoff (which proves my theory, that Norm MacDonald likes to point out that Germans love David Hasselhoff) but the United States only likes the massively untalented Larry The Cable Guy (this century's Andrew "Dice" Clay.) I say we should elect David Cross President of the United States so he can write a long, hilarious Constitutional amendment explaining exactly why Larry The Cable Guy isn't even half as funny as an eighth of the word "fart". Our Constitution is weak on bashing the untalented. So, Tim, if you _promise_ I can use the time machine to help introduce Conan to Tuoko Whassisnamenna -- and then keep the time machine for my own evil shopping needs (Space Food Sticks!) -- then I love you. I love you more than David Cross hates Larry The Cable Guy. However, I love the fact that David Cross hates Larry The Cable Guy more than I love you... I love David Cross so much that I changed a period to an ellipsis just to put David Cross's name next to David Cross's name everywhere in this para except the one right above this. But if you're lying about Conan having a real time machine, then I'm going to become President just so I can fuck up the Constitution to let everyone know how you promised me a time machine. -- K. Also I'm going to add a second Constitutional amendment that brags about how I've seen every episode of Conan's show, as well as every appearance he made before then, even when he played a cop for half a second in "Not Necessarily The News". And no, seeing that wasn't what killed Tom. ----------------------------------------------------- From: James "Kibo" Parry (kibo@world.std.com) Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Whee! Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:18:21 -0500 Rich Holmes (rsholmes+usenet@mailbox.syr.edu) wrote: > > If I'd known in advance how it was going to turn out, I might have > kind of enjoyed Saturday's automobile accident. A free, though very > brief, thrill ride, sliding back and forth and spinning around on a > snow-covered back road. I was sure I was going to go into a ditch. If you'd like to have more fun like that, come on over and I'll get the powdered lye. Just try not to crash into J.G. Ballard on the way over. > Instead I skidded right into... > > a freakin' _driveway_. Snug up against a snowbank. Facing out toward > the road, even. > > No damage to me, no evident damage to the car, slight damage to the > snowbank. I got my heart rate down a little, put the car in drive -- > no, it wasn't even stuck in the snow -- and headed for home. > > Once I got up to speed on the main road, the car started shimmying. Watch out! Your car's caught boogie fever! > I figured I'd knocked something out of alignment or bent something, > and we were all set to get the car towed to the mechanic's. But they > suggested (and I'd been thinking of it myself) checking under the > wheel covers. Voila, snow and ice packed in there. I cleared that > out and the car seems to be fine. > > I thought I'd been driving at a prudent speed. I wasn't. Folks, if > there's snow on the road, _slow down_, and then -- the part I > neglected -- *slow down some more*. Stop with the lecturing and go get a concussion like a real man! If you've never even had a concussion, you're not qualified to tell us we should always wear helmets with waffle fries and a large Coke please, and can you turn off that phone that keeps coming out of the stained glass cuckoo clock? Mmm, waffle fries, so many waffle fries, lemme count 'em... one... didn't something used to come after one? Sincerely, Santa Claus 2000 "Your Vest Balue In Menswear" only on Fox's "Nanny 911" for a limited time, may not be combined with ABC's "Supernanny", void in 59 states, sorry, Don Adams. Remember before Ronald McDonald had eyes? That was creepy if it ever happened. The city of Cambridge is like a rubber stamp. Why does my head hurt and where are my waffle eyes? -- K. If you concentrate, you really can make your own brain feel even more special than a real concussion would, which is really improves whatever episode of "Nanny 911" you're watching. I'm not sure but I think that tonight one of the kids is a Dalmatian.