From:	IN%"SEWALL@UCONNVM.bitnet"  "Murph Sewall"  5-NOV-1990 13:21:31.07
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Subj:	Henry Cate III brought to you by NUTS on LISTSERV@FINHUTC

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From: Murph Sewall <SEWALL@UCONNVM.bitnet>
Subject: Henry Cate III brought to you by NUTS on LISTSERV@FINHUTC
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Did you year that Israel has broken off ties with Washington?
 
The last time they talked to a bush they wandered in the wildnerness
for 40 years.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Of all the things I've lost
I miss my mind the most
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
I'm going to sponsor a convention for honest real estate agents as soon
as I can find a phone booth to hold it in.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
IM NOT TRYING TO SOUND PRETENTIOUS I JUST FIGURED YOU MIGHT WANT TO
KNOW THE REASON "DUCK TAPE" SOUNDS STRANGE IS BECAUSE THE RIGHT NAME
IS DUCT TAPE GENERALLY USED IN HEATING DUCT WORK APPLICATIONS.
 
-----
 
And I thought you used it to keep your ducks lined up !
 
-----
 
I WAS REALLY KIDDING BY SPELLING IT THAT WAY,  BUT I HAVE SEEN IT ADVERTISED IN
HARDWARE STORE ADS AS "DUCK " TAPE.  I HAD THIS DISCUSSION WITH MY WIFE ONCE
AND SHE WON WHEN SHE SAW THE AD.  AND I HAVE SEEN IT MORE THAN ONCE SINCE THEN.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
The cover story in the August 14 issue of Newsweek, "The Stuff That Dreams
Are Made Of" was an article about the nature and significance of dreams.
 
The appended follow-up letter to the editor appears in the September 4 issue:
 
"After reading your cover story, I dreamt I had a letter published in
Newsweek - even though I had absolutely nothing to say."
 
                  EDDIE STEINBERG
           Teaneck, N.J.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
     There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two
must be offered:  entertainment, food, and affection.  It is customary
to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a
moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection.  As
the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced
proportionately.  When the affection is the entertainment, we no longer
call it dating.  Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
               -- Miss Manners' Guide to
           Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
A customer was bothering the waiter in a restaurant.
First he asked that the airconditioning be turned up because he was too hot,
then he asked it be turned down cause he was too cold and so on for about
half an hour.  Surprizingly, the waiter was very patient, he walked back
and forth and never once got angry.  So finally a second customer asked him
why he didn't throw out the pest.
-"Oh I don't care." said the waiter with a smile, "We don't even have an
air conditioner"
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
    This recollection was prompted by a recent posting on this topic
in talk.bizarre:
 
     A friend went to the kitchen window to check on her
two-year-old son, who was playing in the yard with some older children
in the neighbourhood. She was horrified to see that they were feeding
him an earthworm.
 
    She quickly opened the window and screamed at them, "Don't feed
him worms! They'll make him sick!"
 
    They looked up at her with some puzzlement. "Was he sick yesterday?"
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
>From the LA Times, 8/22:
 
When a young man ran out of gas one night in 1985 on Interstate 10 in
Covina, he used the dubious method of sticking his finger into the tank
to assure himself the gas was gone.  The spring-loaded flap snapped shut
on his hand, pinning him to the car.
 
He had to wait an hour before a man in a pickup stopped and offered to
help.  The young man asked his would-be rescuer to go get him some gas
while he continued to try to free his finger.  As he took out his wallet
to give the man some money, the Good Samaritan grabbed the wallet and
sped away.
 
With his free arm, the hapless fellow finally hailed a highway patrol
car.  "He was really embarrassed," says Officer Mark Roe, adding that he
and his partner, Reuben Rios, "would take turns going back to our patrol
car to giggle."
 
Using a coat hanger, Roe and Rios worked for 20 minutes to loosen the
finger.  Finally, they called the fire department and, with the help of
a lubricant, the young man was freed two hours after he got stuck.
 
While the firefighters were working in the glow of their truck's
flashing emergency lights, a car pulled up behind.  When the highway
patrolmen asked if he needed help, the inebriated driver replied: "No,
I'm just stopping for the traffic lights."
 
Roe and Rios swear the whole story is true.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
     A man who speaks only Spanish goes into a small clothing store, with
the intention of purchasing a pair of socks.  He does not know where
the socks are located, however, and walks over to a sales clerk to ask
for them.  Unfortunately, the clerk knows only English, so the
conversation progresses rather slowly.
 
Clerk:  May I help you, sir?
 
Customer:  Quiero comprar medias (I want to buy socks)
 
Clerk:  I'm sorry...I don't understand Spanish.  Do you want pants?
        [points to pants racks]
 
Customer:  No, no.  Quiero medias.
 
Clerk:  Do you want shirts?  [Points at shirts.]
 
Customer:  No, no.  Quiero medias.  (No, no.  I want socks.) [Points at feet.]
 
Clerk:  Ahh...you want socks, right?  [Points at socks.]
 
Customer:  Medias, si!  Eso, si, que es!  (Socks, yes!  That's exactly it!)
           [Pronounced S-O-C-K-S]
 
Clerk:  Well if you knew how to spell it, why didn't you say so, in
        the first place?
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
The next few are from Ben Wick's _Book_of_Losers:
 
When Lorenzo Castelli was struck and killed by a train, the Italian
railroad sued him for delaying rail schedules for 29 minutes.
 
----
 
Bandits trying to break into an office for a payroll robbery even went so
far as to fire a submachine-gun burst at the lock, but still didn't manage
to get inside.  Finally, they gave up and fled.  Police said they had
been pulling at the door instead of pushing.
 
----
 
A man runs off to a nearby city in search of his wife.  After a day's
long search he returns to his room and requests a call girl.
Imagine his surprise when he sees his wife!
 
----
 
A woman was so depressed and angry after her husband abandoned her.  She
jumped out of her window.  She landed on her husband.  Her husband died,
she survived.
 
----
 
A lady golfer competing in the 1912 Shawnee Invitational for Ladies at Shawnee-
on-Delaware took a glorious wack at the ball and watched as it sailed
majestically into the Binniekill river.  But luck was on her side.  The ball
remained floating, making it possible for the energetic golfer to leap into a
boat and set off in hot pursuit.  Each time she was within range of the ball
our heroine would give an almighty swipe.  She eventually connected and sent
the
ball up onto a small beach, 1.5 miles from where she had started.  After
leaping out of the bat she bagan to tackle the next hurdle - a forest lying
between her ball and the hole.  She finally made it in a magnificent 166
strokes for the 130-yard, par 3, 16th hole.
 
----
 
A French motorist's Citroen stalled on a railroad crossing.  Unable to move
the car, he fled.  A freight train hit the automobile, derailed, tore up 300
feet of track, and spilled twenty box cars loaded with beer into an adjacent
river.  Three cranes had to be rented to remove the remains of the freight
train.  Rail service was disrupted for six weeks.  The beer killed all the
fish in the river and put local fishermen out of work for the season.  And
the locomotive engineer sued for two cracked ribs.  The total claim against
the motorist's insurance company exceeded seven million dollars.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
subject: Helicopters can stall, too
 
Helicopters don't fly -- they just beat the air into submission.
 
One helicopter test pilot that I know characterizes helicopters as
"a collection of spare parts flying in roughly the same direction
at roughly the same time."
 
    When I worked at Lockheed, the description of a helicopter was
    "10,000 spare parts flying in close formation".
 
I have always wondered how those funny machines stayed airborne :-)
 
According to Susie Kennedy, contract airframe designer at Boeing,
helicopters can't really fly.  "They're so ugly the earth repels them."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
One spill resulted in a drama so long-running that it has passed into
the realm of urban myth.  In the late 1960s, a poultry truck overturned
and dumped more than three dozen chickens along the embankment of the
southbound Hollywood Freeway at Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood.
Nesting in the shrubbery at the side of the freeway, the chickens
prompted complaints from motorists by wandering out on the roadway and
stopping traffic.
 
An elderly widow named Minnie Blumfield made the chickens famous when
she began spending $30 a month of her Social Security check to feed the
small flock.  She sprinkled seed through the chain link fence, and the
chickens multiplied until estimates of their numbers reached as high as
75.  "They're just chickens," Blumfield said, "but I do love them."
 
Eventually, she and a neighbor, actress Jodie Mann, persuaded Caltrans
to let animal regulation crews trap the birds and truck them off to a
farm in Sylmar.  It took three months to catch them with baited traps
Blumfield, then in her 90s, died in 1977.  Some of the chickens must
have evaded capture because a few still live at the edge of the freeway,
according to CHP Officer Monty Keifer.  "We had a chicken hunt and tried
to catch them," Keifer says, "but we weren't too successful.  As soon as
we showed up, they took off into the bushes."
 
Mann says the story of Minnie and her chickens is a persistent favorite;
every couple of years a journalist calls her to revive it.  The last
call prompted Mann to dust off a screenplay she wrote about the incident
a few years ago and "try to peddle it around town." Some people at a
major studio, she says, are "very interested."
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
                     William Safire's Rules for Writers
 
Remember to never split an infinitive.  The passive voice should never be
used.  Do not put statements in the negative form.  Verbs have to agree with
their subjects.  Proofread carefully to see if you words out.  If you reread
your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be
avoided by rereading and editing.  A writer must not shift your point of
view.  And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a
preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)  Don't overuse
exclamation marks!!  Place pronouns as close a possible, especially in long
sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.  Writing carefully,
dangling participles must be avoided.  If any word is improper at the end of
a sentence, a linking verb is.  Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
metaphors.  Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.  Everyone should be
careful to use a singular pronoun wiht singular nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom.  The adverb always follows the verb.  Last
but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
[From San Diego Union, 14-Sep-89]
 
"The Catcher in the Rye" was banned from the Boron (Calif.) High School
students reading list.  The replacement: "Fahreinheit 451," a book about a
future book-burning society.
 
[From the Cuttings column of Punch, the British humor magazine.]
 
"Sri Lanka moves to curb violence by telling forces: 'Shoot on sight.'"  -
Montreal Gazette
 
"A maker of dentures who believes he is an ancient Egyptian god is running for
the city council of Palo Alto, Calif. -- with a proposal to dig a tunnel to the
coast that would double as a shelter for the homeless.  It is more than 20
miles to the Pacific Ocean, but anything is possible for Ronald Francis Bennet,
51.  'I am Ptah,' he said.  'I am god.'"  -  London Evening Standard
 
Adult Literacy Tudors Required -- We are seeking interested people to train as
volunteer tudors.  Volanteer tudors are encouraged to commit themselves to
tudoring with an adult initialy for 12 months."  -  The Courier, Ballarate,
Australia.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
The specification for pipes:
 
1.1   All pipe is to be made of a long hole, surrounded by metal centered
      around the hole.
1.1.1 O.D. of pipe must exceede the I.D., otherwise the hole will be on
      the outside.
1.2   All pipe is to be hollow throughout the entire length.
1.2.1 All pipe is to be supplied with nothing in the hole so that water,
      steam, or other stuff can be put inside at a later date.
1.3   All pipe is to be of the very best quality, perfectly tubular or pipular.
2.1   All acid proof pipe is to be made from acid proof material.
3.1   All pipe is to be supplied without rust, as this can be more readily be
      applied at the job site.
3.2   All pipe is to be cleaned free of any covering such as mud, tar,
      barnacles, or any form of manure before putting up, otherwise it will
      make lumps under the paint.
4.1   All pipe over 500 feet long will have the words LONG PIPE clearly painted
      at each end so the fitter will know that it is a long pipe.
4.1.1 Pipe over two miles long must also have the words painted in the middle
      so the fitter will not have to walk the full length of the pipe to
      determine if it is a long pipe or not.
4.2   All pipe over six inches in diameter is to have the words LARGE PIPE
      painted on it so that the fitter will not use it for small pipe.
5.1   All pipe closers are to be open on one end.
6.1   All pipe fittings are to be made of the same stuff as the pipe.
6.2   No fittings are to be put on the pipe unless specified. If you do,
      straight pipe becomes crooked pipe.
6.3   Fittings come in all sorts of sizes and shapes.  Be sure to specify
      the direction you are going when ordering.
6.4   Fittings come bolted, welded or screwed -- always use screwed. They
      are best.
7.1   Flanges must be used on all pipe. Flanges must have holes for bolts
      quite separate from the big hole in the middle.
7.2   If the flanges are to be blank or blind, the big hole in the middle
      must be filled with stuff.
 
----------------------------------------------------
 
Title: Single Board Nuclear Reactor Supplies Standby Power for 12 Years
 
    Now available on a full-length plug-in card for IBM PC or
    compatible computers, the QBX-1 add-on nuclear-reactor card
    provides backup power for as long as 12 years.  When the card
    senses a power failure, explosive bolts eject moderator and
    control rods from the reactor's interior within 20 micro-
    seconds, bringing the reactor to its fully rated output of 20 kW
    in less than a millisecond.  Over its 12-year active life, the
    reactor's power decreases by 25% to 15 kW.
 
    Integral heat fins provide convection cooling of the reactor's 500W
    power dissipation while the reactor remains in its standby
    condition.  If your computer's fans can't furnish 400 ft^3/sec of
    forced air for cooling, consider buying the manufacturer's
    heavy-water cooling jacket and stainless-steel pump module, which
    fit conveniently under a desk or workbench.  Latches on each side
    of the reactor module let you quickly exchange the radioactive
    core, should you need to replace it.  An optional circular viewing
    port of lead glass lets you check the reactor's  internal mechanical
    assemblies.
 
    To protect users from undue radiation, each reactor includes a
    shielding kit comprising five self-stick lead plates and 20
    radiation-monitoring film badges.  The lead plates mount inside your
    computer's enclosure and reduce the gamma rays that cause soft
    errors to floppy-disk and RAM data.  For further protection,
    consider buying the manufacturer's 200-ft extension cords for
    keyboards and monitors.
 
    Because the reactor can supply more than enough power for your
    computer, you can sell excess power to your local utility company.
    An add-on phasing and metering kit (PMK-1) lets you connect
    your reactor to the local power grid.  Each PMK-1 includes standard
    powersale contracts and Rural Electrification Board rules and
    regulations.
 
    Although not required in all localities, each reactor card package
    includes a standard 23-volume site-evacuation plan.  The plan
    includes blank forms for you to fill in the name and address of
    your reactor site and then mail to the Nuclear Regulatory Com-
    mission.  As an option, the manufacturer supplies the plan on
    12 MS-DOS compatible disks in Wordstar format.  User-friendly
    templates let you type in information so that your word
    processor can create a complete, printed document.
 
    Reactor prices start at $2.3 million(1).  Delivery, seven years ARO.
 
                        -Regus Patoff
                        Luminescent Electronic Products Inc
                        Box U-235, Trinity Site, NM 43210
                        INQUIRE DIRECT
 
    Written under a picture of the reactor board:
 
    Nuclear reactor supplies CPU power during power failure or other
    power emergencies.  The reactor also glows in the dark (as will
    you), which makes it easy to find your computer.
 
