Fun_People Archive
10 Mar
Misc Silly Stuff (not all of it pathetic)

Date: Thu, 10 Mar 94 15:44:07 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: Misc Silly Stuff (not all of it pathetic)

Forwarded-by: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
Forwarded-by: rissa@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[These first two forwarded-bys apply to all the articles in this little digest.
 -psl]

Forwarded-by:	Frank Wales <frank@arcglade.demon.co.uk>

Some quotes taken from the news pages of the 'BBC Top Gear'
magazine:

  + one New Mexico bank has a parking bay marked 'armed robbery
    only' after a recent hold-up when police couldn't find a place
    to park until the robbers had fled

  + ambulance men in Melbourne, Australia have been sacked after
    advertising 'the world's fastest pizza delivery' on their vehicles
--------------------------

From: the "Stocks" column of the 9/24/3 chicago tribune:

In the early 1900's ... was a manufacturer of foldup or in-
the-wall beds with small electric motors attached to the frames.  
The owner pulled a ceiling cord sending current to the motor, and 
the bed would roll forward to a horizontal position.  Hence the 
name Motorola!
--------------------------

From:	weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)

Check out the Oct '93 SMITHSONIAN, for an inside look at the tabloids.

	"Eddie [Clontz, editor of the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS]," I say,
	"I can't help but notice that you have a rubber dog mask
	on your desk."

	"Yeah. I wear it from time to time, but this is my real
	reporter-waker-upper," he says gleefully as he opens his
	desk drawer and pulls out the biggest squirt gun I've
	ever seen. He aims it at Susan Jimison, ... specialist
	on Elvis sightings ....

	She looks up and groans, "Oh, no! Not again!" but Jack
	Alexander ... chivalrously holds up his word-processor
	keyboard to block the shot.

    From the photograph, the "squirt gun" is a Tidal Force III, the size
of a smallish machine gun.  Combine that with the education of the staff
(including Harvard, Penn) and salaries (no tabloid experience reporters
starting at >$50k), it seems like an interesting place to work.  Better
than 2Dpeople!

    They of course did not make up the story that revealed five senators
who were space aliens.  As they called up aides to find out who was and
who was not a space alien, a few spilled the beans about their bosses.

    Their biggest story of the past year, in terms of reader response,
was the revelation that there are baby ghosts.  A lot of people
(1000?) wanted to adopt one.
--------------------------

jim muchow:
    Given recent events in Florida, the tourism board in Texas has
    developed a new advertising campaign based on the slogan "Ya'll come
    to Texas, where we ain't shot a tourist in a car since November 1963."

from dave barry on WBEZ (local NPR):  "If you lived in Miami, 
you'd be dead by now"
--------------------------

From:	lyman@stpaul.gov (Chris Lyman)

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who wanted more than
anything to play Joseph at his church's annual Christmas pageant.
Imagine his disappointment when he learned that he was cast as
the innkeeper!  After the shock wore off, he decided he would
get even with everyone for such a horrible miscarriage of justice...

On the night of the performance, everything was perfect.  The kids
playing angels looked heavenly.  Not one halo was bent or out of
alignment.  The kids playing shepherds looked suitably rustic in
their burnooses and burlap robes.  Everyone remembered their lines
and the performance fairly crackled with energy.  However, the
little boy who played the innkeeper had not forgotten being slighted,
so when Joseph and Mary appeared before him and plaintively asked
if there was room for them, he replied, "Sure, there's room for you.
Come on in."

Whereupon the little girl playing Mary, remembering full well what
was _supposed_ to happen, said, "Let's find some other place to
stay, Joseph.  This place is a dump!"
--------------------------

From:	prudence!decwrl!ks25!garret@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Garret Toomey)
From: mbk%anl433.uucp@Germany.EU.net (Matt Kennel)

norman nithman (nrn@chinet.chinet.com) wrote:
: Architecture, pizza, blues, Algren, Sandberg, Speck, losing sports teams,
: futures/options markets...

: I guess Gates chose Chicago as a name because he felt that Chicago is
: the least exotic locale in the world.  This doesn't stop him from coming
: here every time he wants to pitch his latest $499 program.  I'd rather
: live in a town with some character than some foggy border town populated
: by a bunch of flannel-wearing, expresso-swilling, ex-Los Angelenos!

What about "Cairo" then?  Chaos, traffic jams, exotic-look-n-feel, massive
bureaucratic overhead, and a tendency to get blown up or killed for no
particularly good reason?  :-)

Let's continue along these lines... :-) 

Apple System 7:  Hollywood -- flashy and slick but lacking in substance.

SunOS (pre S5):  Boston --- nice college town full of nerds

UNIX:  Washington, DC --- More loopholes than a shoelace factory, but this
	is where everything important happens.

Taligent:  Oz --- "Somewhere, over the rainbow, somewhere far ...."

NeXTStep: Berkeley --- idealists dreaming away smoking dope but you never
	know what genius that dead head might turn out to be...

MVS: The Death Star --- "A long time ago, in a Galaxy far far away..."

Newton:  Disneyland *Tokyo* --- everything looks so bright and happy and
clean and friendly but absolutely nobody can understand a word you say.

OS/2:  Westchester county Connecticut --- They want to get out of NYC but
	they still can't completely leave...

Windows: NYC --- everybody lives there even though they know it's a pit.
             --- and is right next to....

DOS:  Newark, NJ --- did you ever see "Eraserhead"? 

© 1994 Peter Langston