Date: Sun, 21 Oct 90 16:54:35 EST
From: Murph Sewall <SEWALL@UCONNVM.bitnet>
Subject: Henry Cate III brought to you by NUTS@FINHUTC :-)
Sender: PHYDESBONNET@vax1.ucg.ie

 
Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe. -- Frank Zappa
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
"How did the poet Mayakovsky die?"
   "Suicide."
   "What were his last words?"
   "Don't shoot, comrades!"
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
    Did you know that minors are on strike in USSR ?
    I wonder when the adults will go on strike ?
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
[Seen in the 'Daily Telegraph' (London) 18th or 19th July 1989, and known
 to be going round the House of Lords (UK Upper House).]
 
Q:  What did the Romanian people light their houses with before they
    used candles?
 
A:  Electricity.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Top Ten Secrets Felix Bloch Revealed to the Soviets
(Late Night With David Letterman, 26 July 1989)
 
10.  The stealth bomber can be knocked out of the sky with an ordinary
   garden hose.
 9.  So-called "secret sauce" nothing but catsup and mayonnaise mixed
   together.
 8.  Take the Reds and two runs over the Padres.
 7.  The Joker didn't die at the end of _Batman_.
 6.  Tom Brokaw's American Express number:  360-9950-4425 (expires 4/91).
 5.  101 guaranteed, sure-fire pickup lines.
 4.  The true identity of the San Diego Chicken.
 3.  Try lemon juice on those stubborn grass stains.
 2.  Helen Hayes goes nuts when you blow on the back of her neck.
 1.  Dan Quayle is just pretending to be a dumb guy.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Dan Quayle had a trip planned to Beijing, but was worried because of
the turmoil at that end. His security adviser however informed him that
it was pretty safe for D.Q. as,
"They are only harassing intellectuals."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Somebody once said of Canada,
   "Canada could have had the culture of France,
        the entrepreneurial spirit of the United States,
            and the British tradition of tolerance;
    instead it got the culture of the United States,
        the entrepreneurial spirit of Britain, and
            the French tradition of tolerance..."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate
it into their own language, and fortwith it means something completely
different.
 
--Goethe
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
BTW, did you know that in France they have a special agency that has to
authorize the name given to any child born there?  Foreign names (esp
japanese/chinese ones) are often nixed (on the grounds that they are too
different), and names such as the above are also subject to "annulment".  The
parents must then come up with a new name for their kids.  It raises my
liberal hackles, but, if you think of the torture of having to grow up
with one of those names . . .
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
  What's made of metal, glass, and rubber, and comes in 50,000 parts?
  A Lebanese used car.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
An Australian farmer is sitting on a stone near his farm, all in blood and
crying. His neighbor is passing by.
 
"What's wrong?" the neighbor asks.
 
"I bought a new boomerang," the crying guy answered.
 
"So, why are you crying?" the neighbor asks again.
 
"I cannot throw away the old one..."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
    When my daughter was living in Vienna, Austria we sent her a package
    and was upset that it took two months to get there.  It turns out that
    it went to Australia first.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
There was a letter to the editor in Unix World recently.  A subscriber in
Switzerland was complaining that he had recieved his first issue about 6 months
late and quite torn up.  Appearently it had gone to Swaziland first!
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
    A woman was visiting Mainland China on vacation and her eye
was caught by a peculiar medallion with some Chinese characters on
it.  She thought it looked nice, and so bought it.  For several
years se wore it as a good luck charm, and it was quite a converation
piece.  One day, she attended a dinner with some visitor's from
China.  On kept glancing at her, and then looking away discreetly.
Curious, she approached him and asked why.
 
    "It is the medallion that you wear."
    "Oh, yes, it is nice isn't it?  I picked it up on vacation."
 
    Then she realized that the man she was speaking to was Chinese.
 
    "I've always wondered what it says.  Could you translate it
for me?"
    "Oh, I couldn't," he said.
    "Please?"
    "I do not think you would be appreciative."
 
    She asked again, and he relented.
 
    "It says: 'Licensed prostitute, city of Shanghai.'"
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
A reportedly true story heard on Q107 yesterday:
 
    A man was driving from his home up to Thunder Bay, Ontario to visit
friends.  While there, he was involved in a collision with another car, but
the other  driver left the  scene of the  accident.   He reported it to the
police, who looked into it, and told him the next day that the car that hit
him was a stolen vehicle.  The man was able to drive his pickup truck home,
only to find when he got home that, lo and behold, his car was stolen! Sure
enough,  the  car that hit him several hundred miles from home was his own.
 
I'd just like to see if his insurance agent breaks down laughing or crying.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
[From an article in the SD Union, Aug 7th, 1989]
 
Astronomers are predicting that the biggest meteor shower of the year will take
place this Friday night/Saturday morning.  There should be over 50 meteors an
hour.  Viewing will be best after 1 A.M.  The meteors will appear to be coming
out of the northeastern portion of the sky, near the constellation Perseus.
 
And just after sunset on Wednesday, there will be a total lunar eclipse, at
least in the San Diego area.  The moon will rise at 7:33 PM, at which time I
presume the eclipse starts.  The eclipse will begin to end at 8:56 PM, and the
moon will be full again at 9:56.
 
But getting back to meteors... millions of tons' worth of meteors enter the
Earth's atmosphere every years.  Almost all of them are the size of a grain of
sand, and vaporize completely in a fraction of a second.  But then they
condense back into solids.  As they drift downward, water vapor condenses
around them to form raindrops.
 
So if you were to put out a bucket and catch rainwater, then run a magnet
through it, you'd wind up with metallic particles from these meteors.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Taken from _Quakers Are Funny!_ by Chuck Fager, Kimo Press, 1987:
 
     One World War II Quaker conscientious objector had been a
professional wrestler.  Once when he and some other inmates of the
Coshocton CPS camp in Ohio made a trip into town, they were hassled
about their pacifism by some local youths, who insisted that only
force could change the German's views.
 
     In response, the ex-wrestler took off his coat, challenged one of
the local boys to a match, and promptly threw the townie across the
room.  He then asked the youth, "*Now* do you believe that force won't
change people's views?"
 
     "Heck no!" the local boy hollered back.
 
     "That's exactly my point," said the CO, who put on his coat and left.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
This guy, John George, and a colleauge wrote a book on phony quotations
("They Never Said It: A Book Of Fake Quotes").  A lot of the quotations
that we think are genuine were in fact never uttered by the alleged speaker.
So anyway, your job is to read each quotation and decide whether it's phony.
I'll even give you a hint -- about a third are real.
 
[From an article in San Diego Union, 7/17/89, p. E-3]
 
"I have not yet begun to fight."  John Paul Jones
 
"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them."
Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin
 
"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people
all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
Abraham Lincoln
 
"I shall return."  Gen. Douglas MacArthur
 
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian."  Gen. Philip Sheridan
 
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Mark Twain
 
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right
to say it."  Jean Francois Arouet Voltaire
 
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."  Alexander Pope
 
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
"Anybody who hates children and dogs can't be all bad."  W.C. Fields
 
"In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes."  Benjamin Franklin
 
"That government is best which governs least."  Thomas Jefferson
 
"In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed,
and never will exist."  Jean Jacques Rousseau
 
---------------------------
 
All of the quotations are false, except for the ones by MacArthur, Pope,
Franklin, and Rousseau.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
About a month ago, I asked for real life headlines from such magazine as
Weekly World News (well, "real life" is a subjective term, here).  Anyway,
I promised to summarize the results I received, so here dey be...
 
From: willey@arrakis.NEVADA.EDU
 
RUSSIA CLONES 600 HITLERS! [Weekly World News]
TELEVANGELISTS ARE ALIEN BEINGS [Sun]
REAL LIFE "SHOP OF HORRORS" [Weekly World News] (woman eaten by plant)
SURGEON READY FOR HUMAN HEAD TRANSPLANT [News Extra]
TEENAGER "CURED" BY ATTEMPTED SUICIDE [San Diego Tribune]
 
MAN WEDS 20 WOMEN IN ONE YEAR [National Examiner]
DOLLS IN THE SLAMMER [Sun]
THE CHICKEN THAT ATE CHERNOBYL [Sun]
MOM TRADES TWINS FOR LOTTERY TICKET [National Examiner]
TWO-TOED E.T. CHILDREN [Sun]
 
KHOMEINI HOOKED ON "HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL" [Weekly World News]
HER SON IS A WEREWOLF [News Extra]
FORMER NUN JILTS HUSBAND FOR LESBIAN LOVER [Sydney Dailey Mirror]
PREACHER GOES TO HELL AND BACK [Weekly World News]
DOCTOR FREEZES DEAD FIANCEE [News Extra]
 
WORLD'S FATTEST MAN BREAKS SCALE [Flint Journal]
QUADRIPLEGIC SHOT WIFE WITH TEETH [Pensacola Florida News Journal]
SPACE ALIEN CURES TEEN'S ACNE [Sun]
FERGIE'S BABY IS UFO TARGET [Weekly World News]
BODYBUILDER EXPLODES [Sun]
 
FAN SWALLOWS REMOTE [Sun] (man swallowed remote control and changes channels
                           by hiccuping)
TAMMY FAYE'S DEVIL DOG [Weekly World News]
HITLER WAS A WOMAN! [Weekly World News]
EARTH IS A GIANT EGG [Sun]
WOMAN MARRIES SPACE GOD [National Examiner]
 
PINT-SIZED FALWELL SUSPENDED [Newsday]
BABY ADOPTED BY ANTS [Sun]
RAVIOLI WORKER ROLLS IN DOUGH [New York Times]
COLONEL QADDAFI HOOKED ON THREE STOOGES [Weekly World News]
WALKING CATFISH EATS FARMER [National Examiner]
 
SOUTH RAVAGED BY WEREWOLVES [National Examiner]
DOOMED CANNIBALS ATE AIDS VICTIM [Weekly World News]
FACTORY WORKER THINKS HE'S DIED AND GONE TO HELL [Son]
ALIENS WROTE THE CONSTITUTION [Sun]
TRANSVESTITE CHESS CHAMP [National Examiner]
 
WIFE TAKES LIFE WHEN LATE WITH LUNCH [San Francisco Chronicle]
CANNIBAL SINGING SENSATION [Weekly World News]
ROACHES TAKE OVER NEW YORK CITY BUS [Boston Globe]
PLUMBER GOES DOWN THE TOILET [Sun]
NURSE SAVES DYING ALIEN ABOARD UFO [Sun]
 
From: pbe@hplb.hpl.hp.com
 
  "No. 67 bus found on far side of moon" and a week later...
  "No. 67 bus mysteriously vanishes from far side of moon"
[ All from The Sunday Sport ]
 
From: gt2868a%prism@gatech.edu
 
"Cabbage-patch Dolls are being possessed by the Devil"
 
From: stogner@cs.unc.edu
 
"Pope Arrested in Pizza Case" [ Durham (N.C.) Morning Herald -- a "real"
                   newspaper -- the arrestee was James Pope ]
 
"Chinese Protest Mushrooms" [ Columbia Journalism Review, the publishers of
                    "Squad Help Dog Bite Victim" ]
 
From: bob@datran2.UUCP
 
Regarding tabloid headlines, don't miss Arnold Sawislak's terrific novel,
                       "DWARF RAPES NUN; FLEES IN UFO"
 
I've just finished reading William Kotzwinkle's novel,
                           THE MIDNIGHT EXAMINER
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Tabloid headlines include:
             UFO CAPTAIN STABS PEDESTRIAN WITH SWORD OF LIGHT
 
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
A Jewish couple have a Son who is a bit troublesome: at age five
he starts in school, and pretty soon, his parents get to hear that
things aren't going well. After a couple of months, they are asked
to "take him out of school", since he is not setting a good example
to the other Jewish children.
 
Things go from bad to worse: after only a month in reform school
he's thrown out again, and even the state correction center can't
deal with him.
 
Eventually, in desparation, the parents take him to the only place
left: a local Catholic school. The don't hear anything concerning
his performance, no reports of trouble, but their curiosity is really
aroused when he comes home at the end of the semester with a report
card showing three B's and the rest A's.
 
Things continue in the same vein, and at the end of the second semester,
he's running straight A's, and by the end of the school year, his
performance has been so good that he is head of the class list.
 
His mother taks him aside and asks:
 
"What's going on? We send you to your own people, and they throw you out.
The reform school can't deal with you, and even the state correction
center wasn't enough. But now, with these Catholics, you're getting the
best grades ever."
 
"Well momma," says the boy "I wasn't too bothered by those other places,
but the first thing I see when I go into that Catholic school is a Jewish
kid nailed to a cross. I know when to back down...."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
From the July issue of /Harper's Magazine/.
 
----------
/From a memorandum circulated to members of a search committee at the
University of California.  The committee was created to recommend a new dean of
the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences./
 
To: Fellow Members, Dean's Search Committee
From: Ad Hoc Committee on Referee Rhetoric, Leo Braudy, Chair
 
Due to some confusion in interpreting the comments included in candidates'
letters of reference, we have put together a glossary of terminological
translation that we hope will help your deliberations.
 
bridge builder:  likes to compromise
 
charismatic:  no interest in any opinion but his own; gives frequent print and
television interviews
 
committed to the university:  appears at every cocktail party
 
consults with faculty:  indecisive
 
doesn't suffer fools gladly:  rude and abrasive
 
intensely interested in graduate education:  hates teaching
 
intensely interested in undergraduate education:  has ceased to do her own
scholarly work
 
internationally known:  likes to go to or run conferences
 
listens well:  has no ideas of his own
 
mover and shaker:  doesn't care what anybody else thinks; favors steamroller
tactics
 
remarkably intelligent:  listens without yawning when I describe my latest
article
 
straightforward:  blunt and insensitive
 
very solid in his field:  no administrative experience
 
visionary:  can't handle paperwork
 
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