Wow, did I receive a lot of response to yesterday's quote, "Live long and prosper." At least two hundred people wrote in to tell me that it was, in fact, Mr. Spock (the science fiction character) and not Dr. Spock (the noted child psy- chologist) that said this famous line. Which is, of course, very true.
But, if I had written, "Live long and prosper." -Mr. Spock it would not have been nearly as funny.
from Clean Laffs
.....
(okay, not sci-fi, but the phone's a technical element, and I like the guy's thinking)
LETTER TO THE BANK: The guy who wrote this is a genius. The letter to the bank below is an actual letter sent to a bank in the United States. The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the New York Times.
Dear Sir:
I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations some three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire salary, an arrangement which, I admit, has only been in place for eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account by $50 by way of penalty for the inconvenience I caused to your bank. My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. You have set me on the path of fiscal righteousness. No more will our relationship be blighted by these unpleasant incidents, for I am restructuring my affairs in 2003, taking as my model the procedures, attitudes and conduct of your very bank. I can think of no greater compliment and I know you will be excited and proud. I have noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, ever-changing, prerecorded, faceless entity which your bank has become. From now on I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan repayments will, therefore and hereafter, no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by check, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your branch whom you must nominate. You will be aware that it is an offense under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact Status form which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Notary Public, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof. In due course I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let me level the playing field even further by introducing you to my new telephone system, which you will notice, is very much like yours. My Authorized Contact at your bank, the only person with whom I will have any dealings, may call me at any time and will be answered by an automated voice service: Press buttons as follows:
1. To make an appointment to see me.
2. To query a missing payment.
3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
4. To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.
7. To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required. Password will be communicated at a later date to the Authorized Contact
8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 7.
9. To make a general complaint or inquiry. The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service. While this may on occasion involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call. This month I've chosen a refrain from "The Best of Woody Guthrie": "Oh, the banks are made of marble, With a guard at every door, And the vaults are filled with silver, That the miners sweated for."
On a more serious note, we come to the matter of cost. As your bank has often pointed out, the ongoing drive for greater efficiency comes at a cost which you have always been quick to pass on to me. Let me repay your kindness by passing some costs back. First, there is a matter of advertising material you send me. This I will read for a fee of $20 per page. Inquiries from the Authorized Contact will be billed at $5 per minute of my time spent in response. Any debits to my account, as, for example, in the matter of the penalty for the dishonored check, will be passed back to you. New phone service runs at 75 cents a minute. You will be well advised to keep your inquiries brief and to the point. Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement.
May I wish you a happy, if ever-so-slightly less prosperous, New Year.
Your Humble Client, (Name Withheld)
from IBLaffing
"An overweight Quebec teen, humiliated after a video showing him acting out a Star Wars sequence was posted on the Internet, will be compensated for the embarrassment." - News item
"The video showed the Grade 10 student, known only as Ghyslain, practicing Star Wars fight moves. His classmates uploaded it to the Internet file-sharing program KaZAA after they found the tape. Within days, millions of people had downloaded the tape, allowing them to view and snicker at the 15-year-old, who taped himself last November spinning around with a golf-ball retriever as though it were a sabre from a Stars Wars movie, making sound effects and kicking ...
"Mr. Baio, 26, initiated the campaign to raise money to buy Ghyslain an iPod music player. 'Geeks like us need to stick together,' he said."
And now, maybe he can humiliate himself once again doing one of those iPod commercials, "Mah gen-er-a-shun BAY-BEEEEEeeeee."
"If You're Reading This, The World Didn't End Last Thursday" - News Item
"There will be no refunds on disposable toilet bags or emergency dental kits, so if you purchased these or other "family preparedness" supplies from The Survival Center, in the expectation that a mysterious planet or rogue sister star of our own Sun would wipe out 90% of the Earth's population this month, you'll have to simply chalk it up to a moment's paranoia: the sun is shining, the planet is blissfully unmolested and Britney Spears has no plans for repopulating a post-apocalyptic Earth with you anytime soon."
" ... the long-awaited ... The Matrix Reloaded, the sequel to the 1999 blockbuster hit The Matrix. In the bizarre world of The Matrix humanity is enslaved by machines.
"The masses of dehumanized people rely upon the machines for food, education, protection, society, culture ... even the perverse reality of their existence is provided by the machines that pervade human existence.
"So in other words, it's exactly like modern society ... except for the culture."
from Clean Laffs
After getting ambushed and killed in a desert mountain base, a group of terrorists, to their amazment, found themselves in a similar base seemingly still alive. But everything looked so ... odd.
"What is this?" asked one.
"Everything looks like the pixels of the infidels' computer screens," spoke another.
Then an explosion hit next to them, and they found themselves assauted by six dozen American soldiers. Some were acting professional, but others charged guns blazing as if barely trained. The terrorists fought back, but to their amazement, the attacking Americans could take multiple shots even in the head before falling while they themselves expired after only a few, even if being hit only in the feet. It wasn't long before they were all killed ...
And then they found themselves and the pixelized scenery back as they were as if nothing had happened, but after a few moments, the attack by the six dozen Americans began once again. And once again, the terrorists found themselves slaughtered. Then it happened again, and again, and again.
Finally in the middle of one firefight, one terrorist exclaimed, "What is happening?! We were promised eternal reward!"
Then came a voice that only the terrorists seemed to hear, "But this is your 'reward.' For killing innocent women and children, your spirits have been made part of this LAN network computer game - forever. As you killed, you will be killed, over and over again."
"But we were promised to be forever entertained by seventy-two virgins!"
"But you are. Most LAN users aren't exactly heavy daters."
.....
"Notes Towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare" - a twist on the joke about monkeys and typewriters, involving a computer in a macaque cage.
In the news, a scanner is being developed that can supposedly identify people by the way the walk, for use in anti-terrorist survelience.
New meaning to the term "Walk this way."
In the news, some scientists are proposing that chimpanzees are so similar to humans, they should be classified under the same genus, homo, technically bringing them into the human family. - News Item
Although the popularity of "reality TV" makes this more believeable to some, others think the scientists are monkeying around with the concept of "human."
COMPUTER PROBLEM REPORT FORM:
In order to streamline the handling of problems within the system, please fill out the following questionnaire before sending it in for help. With your co-operation we should be able to provide faster and more efficient fault resolution.
1. Describe your problem:
______________________________________________________
2. Now, describe the problem accurately:
______________________________________________________
3. Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem:
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
____________________________-_________________________
4. Problem Severity:
A. Minor__
B. Minor__
C. Minor__
D. Trivial__
5. Nature of the problem:
A. Locked Up__
B. Frozen__
C. Hung__
D. Shot__
6. Is your computer plugged in? Yes__ No__
7. Is it turned on? Yes__ No__
8. Have you tried to fix it yourself? Yes__ No__
9. Have you made it worse? Yes__
10. Have you read the manual? Yes__ No__
11. Are you sure you've read the manual? Yes__ No__
12. Are you absolutely certain you've read the manual? No__
13. Do you think you understood it? Yes__ No__
14. If 'Yes' then why can't you fix the problem yourself?
______________________________________________________
.....
15. How tall are you? Are you above this line?
______________________________________________________
16. What were you doing with your computer at the time the problem occurred?
______________________________________________________
17. If 'nothing' explain why you were logged in.
______________________________________________________
18. Are you sure you aren't imagining the problem? Yes__ No__
19. How does this problem make you feel?
_____________________________________________________
20. Tell me about your childhood.
_____________________________________________________
21. Do you have any independent witnesses of the problem?
Yes__ No__
22. Can't you do something else, instead of bothering me?
Yes__
from Jokesgalore
In the news, it seems the Italian Mafia has found a new use for the newer, picture-taking cell phones - Mafia turns to 3G video phones
"The 3G phones would be used by a voter in the polling booth to send back images proving they had cast their ballot as instructed."
Fortunetly, the government is getting wise and enacting a ban on these phones in voting booths. It was a development they couldn't refuse.
" Picasso's Technological dreamcoat "
" 'The Matrix' was cool, but it was based on too shaky a premise. ... "
A man arrives at the Pearly Gates and finds that St. Peter is not there, but a computer terminal is sitting next to the arch. He walks up to it and sees "Welcome to www.Heaven.com. Please enter your User ID and Password to continue." He doesn't have either, but underneath the fields is a small line reading: "Forgot your ID or Password? Click Here." So he does.
Up pops a screen which reads, "Please enter at least two of the following, and your pasword and ID will be e-mailed to you." The fields include "Name," "Date of birth," "Date of death," and "Favorite Food."
The man enters his name and date of birth, and clicks "Submit."
Up pops another screen which reads, "We are sorry, we did not find a match in our database. Would you like to register?" So the man clicks the button marked "Yes."
A long and detailed form appears on the screen, and the man spends some time filling it out. Then he clicks the "Submit" button.
Now he is faced with a screen reading, "We are sorry, this service is temporarily unavailable; please try again later." There is a button marked "Back." He clicks it.
A new page appears. It reads, "Welcome to www.Purgatory.com. Please enter your User ID and Password to continue..."
from Jokesgalore
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
Rich Cook - from Clean Laffs
A British government report stated between 1970 and 1999, up to 22 thousand brains were removed from dead bodies in the country without the consent of families - Related Article .
The reason given was for research into brain disorders, but one can't help but wonder if those performing the autopsies smelled bad, looked worse than the bodies they handled, and kept muttering "brrraaaaaiiiiinnnnzzz."
.....
Maybe they should have called this the "Great Brain Robbery."
"Yakasses: Atlantic Monthly magazine had a contest to find the best word to find people who seem to have cell phones glued to their ears. The winning entry came from Tim Weiner of Mexico City: yakasses, an obvious play on jackasses. Other notable suggestions were audiots, cellfish, cellots, earheads, and imbecells.
"Believe it or not, there was life before cell phones. It was just quieter. People twiddled their thumbs. Sometimes they talked to the person next to them. It was possible to be alone.
"Fortunetly, we have cell phones. Fortunetly, no law requires them to be turned on all the time."
from the Virginian Pilot
In the news, an Oregon mental ward is looking to hire someone who speaks Klingon - News Item .
It turns out that some of the paitents they've been getting won't speak anything else but Klingon.
If this is an Oregon mental ward, I'd hate to see California's ...
How does one say "totally banannas" in Klingon? ...
And as one Star Wars fan put it, "It's always the Trekkies who go over the edge."
.....
Bonus Joke:
North Korean Leader KimII's livejournal , or is it?
" NationStates is a nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own political ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It's really up to you."
No word yet if it has butterfly ballots.
In order to combat music pirates, the music industry is considering tactics that border on the illegal, notablly sneaking files into popular file-swapping sites. Among the programs considered are those that mess with the computer's operation by freezing it for an indefinate time.
What next, computer viruses?
In the war against music pirates, the industry is whipping out weapons of mass disruption.
Not a joke, but still entertaining: " The infamous worm game"
(from a lady) "I purchased a telephone-answering machine with a prerecorded message that used a male voice. When Mother returned from vacation, I forgot to mention it to her."
"The next Saturday, the phone rang and the machine answered. After the message, there was a pause and the caller hung up. A second time and the same result. Then the phone rang a third time. 'This is your mother, I think,' I heard. 'If I am, please call me.' "
from Clean Laffs
"I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met."
Steven Wright - from Clean Laffs
From the Iraq War, "The unkillable laptop."
"No wider than an entry-level ThinkPad but much thicker and heftier, the $4,500 GoBook MAX is a waterproof, vaporproof, shockproof piece of field equipment. 'We drop each one 54 times from one meter, bake it in an oven, chill it in a freezer, vibrate it, and submit it to a shower of hurricane proportions,' crows the GoBook's brochure. Unlike most laptop makers, Itronix specializes in handheld gadgets for hardhats, not wussy desktop PCs. The GoBook MAX is designed for civilian emergency-response teams as well as soldiers in the field. In my hands-on tests, it easily survived a few tosses across the floor of a local Starbucks, plus a spill of my third double espresso onto its keyboard. Its rubber-gripped handle makes it feel like sports gear rather than fragile electronics."
Looks like this thing's built to survive everything thrown at it ... except maybe the next generation of laptops.
link from "Gryphon2"
.....
Bonus Joke:
Honda meets Rube Goldberg (Flash 6 - 4 Megabytes)
In the news, a study suggests aging brains could be helped by a neurochemical called "GABA."
It remains to be seen if health plans will soon be offering "the gift of GABA."
"Quarks are fundamental particles of which there are six types present in nature. The 'up' and 'down' quarks are the lightest, and are found within the nuclei of atoms of ordinary matter. There are also the 'charm', 'strange', as well as the 'top' and 'bottom' quarks. These are heavier than the up and down quarks. Quarks can also have antiparticles such as anti-down, etc. " (from BBC)
So would an "anti-strange" quark be called simply "normal?"
.....
"Our web site actually made money ... "
The war on music piracy took a twist when files that were supposedly Madonna's songs downloaded by music fileswappers turned out to be decoy files with nothing but obscenities from the 80's pop star. This was an elaborate prank by Madonna, having Warner upload the files onto music swapping sites.
While some thought this was a clever joke, at least a few decided to retaliate. The singer found her website hacked. So some are wondering if it was so smart after all.
A third group would argue not having produced a hit song in years, what was smart about Madonna's prank and retaliation was the publicity it generated.