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------------------------------------------------------------------------- @@@ @@@@ @@@ @@@@ @@@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@ @@@@ @@ @@@ @@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@@ @@@@ @@@ @@@ @@@ Electronic Humor Magazine. Issue020, (Volume V, Number 2). October, 1987. NutWorks is published semi-monthly-ish by Brent C.J. Britton, <Brent@Maine.BITNET> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Know what we hate most? Rhetorical questions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Contents ======== NewsWorks ...................... Points of Interest Nuts & Bolts ................... Commentary On Computers ................... Essay D-Ned .......................... Story Metabolic Fascism .............. Health Tips All-Purpose Joke ............... Joke ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NewsWorks ========= Good evening and welcome to NutWorks, the humor magazine that has been called "offensive", "sexist", "sophomoric" and many other words beginning with "o" or "s" (but not both), by people who are certainly loads more qualified to judge than we are. This is the first gala issue of the season, containing a more or less random sampling of the sort of material NutWorks is infamous for wasting your precious time with. So, without further ado, we'll just say thanks for reading: "Thanks for reading." We hope you consider it time well wasted. We'd like to thank "JRP" and his gang from across the pond for the massive amount of material they have sent to us over the summer. We will be printing bits and pieces of it here and there in forthcoming issues. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nuts & Bolts ============== by Brent C.J. Britton Instead of boring you with another one of my silly commentaries, I'd like to devote this month's Nuts & Bolts to something I think is pretty darn neat... Hazards of Deafness =================== Excerpted from the book, "HAZARDS OF DEAFNESS" by Roy K. Holcomb (@1977 Joyce Media, Inc) Distributed by Scott Allen Steinbrink <11SSTEINBRIN @ GALLUA> (Before you send flames, please note that both the author and the submitter are deaf.) "You" refers to a deaf person. -- You buy a car with the world's best radio and never use it until you trade your car in. -- A pebble gets into your hubcap and you go 800 miles before someone brings it to your attention -- You stop for gas. The serviceman asks if you want to fill her up? He then asks if you want him to check your oil? Yes, again. Your water? Yes. Then he says something which you don't quite "catch" but assume that it is tires this time and answer in the affirmative, again. However, the last question may be something to do with your liking the blizzard or wanting to buy his filling station. -- In the hospital you can't call your loved ones, but neither can the bill collectors call you. -- You can't phone friends to wish them a happy birthday or invite them to a poker party. But then, neither can anyone phone you while you're in the bathtub. -- You are introduced to a stranger. You do not "catch" the name after several repetitions. You try to alibi your way out of the embarras- sing situation by saying that people's names are often difficult to speechread unless they are easy ones like Smith, Brown, Reed or Jones. Then the stranger's name turns out to be Smith, Brown, Reed or Jones. -- You are stopped by a policeman. When you reach for your pad, he reaches for his gun - he can't take a chance. If you talk, your deaf speech may make him think you are a dangerous character. So, you could be in trouble either way. The best thing to do, it seems, is to act both deaf and dumb and not say or do anything. -- You judge a person to be very nice by his appearance and manners, never knowing that his voice labels him as a big phoney. -- You are enjoying yourself with some deaf friends and some hearing guy gives you a note inquiring, "Can you read and write?" Of course, you write back to him that you can neither read nor write. -- Announcements of special sales are made over a public system in a store. You save yourself a fortune by not hearing the announcements. -- At the movies you laugh aloud when others cry and cry when others laugh, because you don't see things the same as other people hear them in the movies. -- Birds sing their song of Spring. You know that Spring is here, too, not from the song of the birds but from their mess on your car wind- shield. -- When walking down on the sidewalk someone attempts to pass you on the right, then on the left, and then on the right again. Each time the person tries to pass you, you unconsciously move in that direction and lock him not hearing the person behind you, let alone knowing his intentions and your football coach told you that you were a poor blocker. -- Your barber gets a "mouth rest" while cutting your hair as he doesn't have to chatter. However, you lose out on the latest barber news and jokes. -- In the kitchen you don't dare ask your wife something when she has the butcher knife in her hand and she might answer in sign language and you might be minus one head. -- You let a friend out of your car. Your car door slams on her coat. You start up; your friends runs for dear life, hollering all the time. You finally glance to the right and wonder what in the world a 60-year lady is doing racing your car on foot before you realize what has happened. -- At a meeting you try to "sh" people and make more noise with your "sh" than the people who are making the noise. -- You pay a thousand dollars to take a tour through Europe. You get nothing from your guides, except for watching the petite French one, the pretty German lassie, and oh, yes, the Dutch girl you couldn't take your eyes off for more than two minutes at a time. -- Breaking your arm becomes a type of laryngitis. -- Someone tells you that you are a very good lipreader and you reply, "What did you say? -- You always get up early on Saturday mornings to cut your lawn. You never know how happy your neighbors are when your lawn mower breaks down. -- You go to a restaurant with your gang. Since you have good speech, you do all of the ordering and talking with the waitress. After eating, who do you think gets the check every time? -- You can't tap a watermelon to see if it is ripe and ready to eat. -- You sign some dirty words. Your parents get angry. You laugh and say it will not do any good to wash your mouth with soap as you signed the dirty words. Your parents then wash your hands with soap. -- Dial-a-Prayer Dial-a-Friend Dial-for-Help All of those are out of reach for you except your Dial Soap. -- You go to a dark, public toilet. You push the door open to go to a stool. A guy in there hollers. You keep going. The guy keeps holler- ing. You keep going. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Q: How many Monty Python fans does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Eleven. One to say that it is an ex-bulb and it is no more. Another to claim that it's resting. One to put a paper bag on his head at the mention of the word lightbulb. Another to say that he didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition. Three to burst in and say that their main weapons are fear, surprise and ruthless electricity. Another to have his head nailed to the lightbulb. Finally, one to do a silly walk, one to say "And now for something completely different...", and one to change the bulb. -- jrp et al ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Computers ============ by: Michael Moscovitch, Rob Milette and Eugene Gershtein WARNING: Parts of the following text deal with microcomputers. (You know, those small boxes your kids leave lying around in the driveway so you can back over them with the car). None of this is virtual, in fact its almost real. Many people are fascinated by computers. This is only natural since they offer a release from the repetitive manual labour required for some tasks such as filing and sorting. All good things, however can be taken too far. Before we try to utilize a computer for a certain task we must first decide if it is worth the effort. Will the computer be more effi- cient than our present scheme? For example, a common selling point of home computers is recipe filing. Now just imagine how stupid this really is. First of all, you need to have the machine nearby so you place it on the kitchen counter. At this point, it is extremely important that you are careful to avoid spilling things like coffee, chicken soup, or tomato juice inside the computer. These foods are not necessary for it, and might even cause some damage if you are lucky. If you are not lucky then you will be the first person to cook chicken soup on a hot cathode ray tube. Do not even put cereal in the serial interface, unless you have a very strong vacuum cleaner. So now that you have gotten your computer back after paying the $384.57 repair bill because you used it to defrost a chicken, you can start using it for recipe filing. First of all you must remember to put the disks in the drives and the bread in the toaster, not the other way around. This will avoid burning all your data and formatting your breakfast. Another thing to remember is never touch the computer with sticky hands. You'll understand this when you have to walk around with a RETURN key stuck to your hand. Unfortunatly, we can't tell you any more about recipe filing because we accidentally used the wordprocessor on a milkshake and the food processor on this column. Needless to say, the computer did not survive and this is whats left of the column. Not very pleasant is it? Next time we will show you how to get choclate siroup out of a keyboard. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Q: How many theoretical computer scientists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: One, who fetches eleven Monty Python fans, thereby reducing the problem to an earlier joke. -- jrp et al ------------------------------------------------------------------------ D-Ned ===== by Andy Zaslow This is not copyrighted (c) 1984 by D. Griffith. If you really want to use it for commercial purposes, go ahead. Keep in mind(s), however, that everyone else in this world has the right to make as many copies of this document as they see fit. "meln torp prot nabble, nabble zot nab" - Richard Terrill, D. Griffith "bork" - Roland Bevan Once upon a time, there was a potato. This potato was however not a potato but a pink and green striped flea named Ned. Unfortunately, Ned was color-blind and unable to smell that he was pink and green (or green and pink depending how you looked at him, but it did not matter when he looked at him because he was color-blind or so he thought and we thought because it said so above). He jumped off a cliff (with a velocity, v and acceleration, a). Because Ned (or Joe as his enemies called him) took Physics I and he (or she) was unable to calculate his velocity upon impact, he survived even though the C compiler will not arrive until next week. So, it was just as well that he did know what the SWITCHe statement did because Moon Jockey Chung could not even be understood by Sam (also known as Ned or Joe or Sam or Ned or Joe or Sylvia or Bob or the cold little crumpled little piece of white little small piece of paper on the old large wooden dirty floor while MJC explains the C lan- guage). Suddenly!!! ( <-- not a real sentence) An oncoming train hit Ned (or...) and due to his background in physics and materials Ned (or...) destroyed the train with its poorly calculated momentum and was sentenced to life in prison for N years as N -> oo (infinity, that is) and there he stays whoever he really is. Part II (oo years later) Ned, who happened to be dead, was walking around his cell for he (or she) was a one celled organism and became entangled in his DNA and in the process split one of his genes into one piece two thirds as long as the original, one pi/4 as long as the original, one sqr(e/3.2) as long as the original, and one 0/1342 as long as the original. This would have created quite remarkable affects but as we said, Ned was dead. A few days or weeks or years or bergs (a unit of measurement named after Chris Berg) later it was still oo years later and Ned was released from prison. Ned was excited and frolicked through fields of flowers because he went and stored that in location 505, realizing at the same time that he did not know whether the location was expressed in decimal, hex, octal or any other integer base K, where K>5. This matter did not trouble Joe long for he looked up and saw the JMS (Jump to Subroutine) on the screen and his mind(s) or lack thereof was totally filled with the question "Why is the letter M used in the JMS statement?" He may have realized that it was the "M" from the word Jump, but his parser was unable to decode the question because he used double quotes around the 'M' and not single quotes. His brain then hung and he walked around aimlessly until he tripped over a cold boot and found himself vaca- tioning in Africa. Not having any ROM he had to wait many years while hundreds of monkeys randomly keyed in code until power-up was achieved. Joe lived happily for many years until a slave ship picked him up and brought him to America. He was not sold however because the code that Fred monkey keyed in had a minor flaw which caused Ned to play movie tape of a princess asking for help from Obie Wan, but the message was preempted by a homework assignment "Homework Assignment #1 Due 20 Sept 1984 2.7 and 2.10." In the confusion Odie (not Obie) was called and he flipped many pointy objects and he then blew up the world, but Ned sur- vived because he was not there because the supreme being got tired of writing. Part III (the next day in Intro to Micro) When the supreme being finally started to write again Ned was in an empty void, for the world had been blown up. Sam did not explode in the vacuum due to his impossibly strong pink and green outer shell. As he was near death he said, "Let there be light." The supreme being, who can even hear in a vacuum replied by saying "You lose, bill." However, since the supreme being was not used to his supreme power had made a mistake. Because there was no Bill (an old reference to Bill Casino, a real loser) to lose and since all things that the supreme being says must occur by some process which even he (or she or...) does not necessarily know, an anti-Bill (Note: Bill, when preceded by You lose is in lower case) was created (or not created depending on your universe). Seeing the problem, the supreme supreme being also known as The Twos Complement Which Goes All The Way to 255 (0FF in hex) complemented Bill's bits, which happened to produce the bit representation of the world in the year 1971 some time in the beginning of May. Sam (who from now on may be called Greg, or jim for short) was quite relieved and was so joyful that he added 973 and the twos-complement of 654 to get the result of 346. Being his supreme self, the supreme supreme supreme being saw a major flaw in the world. This was that there were two Jims in the world (or Jim or Ned or...), so he destroyed the Sam who had just learned of twos-complements. That was ok (pronounced as it is spelled, with one syllable) though, because the wise supreme supreme supreme being knew that by Sylvia existing for the short time that he (or she) did he changed the course of some air molecules which would eventually be used in the machinery that Odie would use to blow up the world. In fact this change would cause a malfunction in the detonator apparatus, to which Odie would reply, "Skippy eatee bow wow snarf" or something to this effect. The net effect of this chapter is that the world really was not blown up and that the H (1) bit in the accumulator (known as the half- carry) was set. ---------- 1. This is a carry over (pardon the pun (haha)) from the 4 bit computer. Part IV (the CAOS begins) Ned, who knew nothing of the world's destruction or any of the events leading to the recreation of the world was still having problems with the code keyed in by Fred (an allusion to D. Griffith) the monkey But, suddenly before much happened the supreme being became interested in something other that the world, and the world stopped for a while. Intermission (lights, music plays, smoking in the lobby only, please) Spuddy Soap --- The Soap with Spud And here we are in a supermarket with some famous athlete who claims to use Spuddy Soap. JOCK - Excuse me sir or miss... Yes, you in the pink and green. NED - Uhh, me? JOCK - Yes you! Do you use Spuddy...uh...Soup..uh, no...Soap? NED - Well, I can't speak English but I... zap ZZzzing!... Help me Obie Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope...Help me Obie Wan Kenobi...You're my only...Zzlard..Zing pop! JOCK - Well, uh there (scratches his balls) you have it. Spuddy Soap - the Spuddiest Soap around... Are we done y Now for something really funny! Knock, knock. Who's there? Who's there!?! Damn deaf people with their white canes. (opening door) Wow!! It's a baby with a note. (acci- dently sticking the baby with the pin which held the note, the baby deflates spewing blood and other wonderful things all over the place. Oh, Shit! (A green and pink or pink and green Ned or Jor or... walks around the corner). You called? Who are YOU! Yes I am. (Note: The answer makes sense as he can be called by just about any name and "Who are YOU!" is good enough and therefore passes as a boolean TRUE.) (A total solar eclipse occurs and when the light returns something happens which the supreme being has not thought of yet... but since he is in CAOS a transistor drives by but does not make it much further because its inputs were low. Shocked, Ned barely jumps out of the way of the transistor in time (much less space) and asks for a picanic basket, eh Booboo? Realizing that he is not a bear Ned rides off into the sunset while converting AND-OR expressions into NAND expressions. Going a little faster than he wanted, Ned, moving faster than the angular velocity of the earth's rotation finds himself in mid-morning the same day. All of a sudden, Ned felt quite strange as his colors changed. The end of this part of the story I guess since it is almost time for lunch and my arm and mind(s) are getting weak while the construction of the CII is still being built and people walk by outside the lecture hall and the prof continues to talk as someone sneezes and other people talk and rumple papers and close paper binders while I stop writing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Three women are discussing how their husbands make love. The first says, "My husband is a footbal player. He is really powerful and energetic in bed, and this is a real turn on for me." The second says, "My husband is a musician, and when we make love it's as if he were playing me. He al- ways knows exactly what I want and gives it to me without my asking." The third says, "Well, my husband is a sales representative for IBM. When we make love all he does is sit on the edge of the bed and tell me how good it's going to be when I finally get it." -- Richard Solensky <RSOLENSKY@SBCCMAIL> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Metabolic Fascism ================= (or Amanda, We're Outta Chock Full O' Nuts Again.) by Basil Hosmer Submitted by Dave Boyes Every programmer has some experience with bodily abuse. Sooner or later, all of us do things to ourselves we wouldn't admit to Mom. Most of the time we say we're provoked by circumstances: whether it's the representative from your client's company -- a not pleasant man who looks a lot like Herman Munster, breathing heavily on your neck -- or some towering, unstoppable endorphin rush that threatens to rip your medulla out of its socket if you don't code up that monstro algorithm RIGHT NOW and forget about your wedding. We generally attribute our protracted binges to some external force. This attitude bespeaks a hideous wrong-headedness among programmers. We seem to get some masochistic pleasure out of responding to pressure by sitting in front of our machines until our fingernails are too long to type. Our eyes get varicose veins. We run fingers through our hair until we get split ends. We drool. Why? Because, the deluded among us would answer, we have to. Some specter is chaining us to our chairs, making strangers of our families, removing us from the throb of humanity. It's not a pretty job, we sigh nobly, but someone has to do it. This is, as my sister used to say, pompous fudge- cakes. We do it because we like it. In view of this, I submit a philosophy of life which has served me well for the past couple of years. I call it Metabolic Fascism. There are several basic tenets to this philosophy, but one provides the foundation for the rest: You Are At War With Your Body. Picture a table. A lobbyist for your brain sits on one side, a lobbyist for your body on the other. They are pushing their respective interests as you go through your life. In a democratic regime, one might overhear something like this during a normal day: BODY: Nothing like a good, hearty breakfast to kick-start the day. BRAIN: Yeah...I feel some serious creativity coming on. It's gonna be a banner day for original thought. Can we arrange a little rush from a relevant gland to start things off? BODY: Why, sure. (Drains a mug of java...) There we go. BRAIN: Thanks. (Some eight hours later.) BODY: Okay, it's about time to wind things down. BRAIN: But... BODY: C'mon, it'll be better in the morning if we quit now. BRAIN: Aw, okay. (After some interval, sleep, then repeat cycle.) Now, this has its obvious advantages. Brain and body maintain a working camaraderie, the cycle of ups and downs is never too extreme or debili- tating, and the productivity of the two working in tandem is fairly consistent and predictable. On the other hand, come the day when Herman Munster is breathing down your neck, you might HAVE to trash that comfy little system for some- thing a little more, well, authoritarian. My solution is simple: metabolic fascism. Not when you have to crank it out, but ALL the time. To wit: BODY: Not coffee AGAIN. BRAIN: You don't want it, throw it up. But don't bother me. Have some dessert. BODY: Lucky Strikes a la carte. Delectable. My lungs look like Fire- stones. BRAIN: Listen. I'm on the verge of a universe-tilting breakthrough. I don't need your sniveling. BODY: Are we gonna get some sleep this week? BRAIN: Yeah, yeah. (Some 14 hours later.) BODY: Look, man, I'm gonna die here. I wanna go to bed. BRAIN: SILENCE! (Rains vicious blows upon the Body Lobbyist until he sinks beneath the table, a simpering lump of protoplasm.) Philistine. (Some 10 hours later, the Body Lobbyist has risen from beneath the table, wearing full body armor and a catcher's mask.) BODY: Sleep. Now. (The Brain lobbyist produces a dreadnought Louisville Slugger, festooned with nails, and clubs the Body Lobbyist senseless.) BRAIN: Where was I? (Some eight hours later, the Body Lobbyist rises and leaves the room. The Brain Lobbyist, deep in some amphetamine-induced trance, fails to notice. Several minutes later the Body Lobbyist re-enters, carrying a bazooka. He liberally distributes the Brain Lobbyist about the room.) BODY: Sleep. Now. (Perhaps 20 hours later, another Brain Lobbyist enters the room. Repeat cycle.) There are tradeoffs to this methodology, sure. But the advantages are overwhelming. First, it's more honest. After all, the first time a deadline or a good idea rolls around, you're gonna shaft your body anyway, right? Why not accustom yourself to those inevitable caffeine fests BEFORE they descend on your unsuspecting, pampered physiognomy? Second, there is no better way to accumulate a comprehensive, detailed knowledge of one's body than by abusing it regularly. Whereas most humans can only recognize vague, ambiguous bodily states and apply almost meaningless words like "good," "bad," "tired" and "rested" to the way they feel, a metabolic fascist becomes sensitive to the most subtle changes in his system. He learns to check his pulse by noting the fre- quency of the shaking in his hands. He learns to check his blood pressure by gauging the accuracy with whichhe hits the reboot switch. To a metabolic fascist, the body is a finely-tuned machine operating somewhere past the ragged edge. One pays much more attention to an engine about to explode than to one that is idling, and a metabolic fas- cist knows his body to adegree of detail that, among other humans, only long-distance runners and new mothers achieve. (Not to mention the fact that this mode of living produces a certain manic lookabout the eyes that is useful for everything from terrifying muggers to staring down that fossilized waitress who never, EVER, takes back a cheeseburger because it's too well- done.) The peripheral benefits are legion. When was the last time you really wondered what day it was? A genuine scratch-your-head-and-call-up- Sidekick kind of puzzlement? When was the last time you were truly surprised that the sun decided to rise? When was the last time you stared, entranced, as the sort routine you just wrote turned into little green soldiers that danced across your screen? To the metabolic fascist, life once more becomes that fascinating, unpredictable thing most humans never see after they graduate from diapers. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A high ranking manager responded to a subordinates request for a pay raise by saying: "Because of the fluctuational predisposition of your position's productive capacity as juxtaposed to government standards, it would be monetarily injudicious to advocate an increment." The subordinate listened carefully and said, "I don't get it." The manager responded, "That's right." -- John 'Goblin' Gavin <SCST3001@IRUCCIBM> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All-Purpose Joke ================ Submitted by Alan B. Clegg These three strings go into a bar and order a martini. One string notices a horse with a sign that says "Make me laugh, make me cry, win a $1000" on it. Meanwhile, a bell starts ringing in the clock tower over- head, and suddenly there is a loud thud as a body falls to the street in front of the bar. "I'm a Frayed Knot!" screams one enraged string at the bartender, and then disappears. Kant leaves via the back door. The other string stands in front of the horse and pulls down his pants. It isn't clear at this point why the horse is wearing pants. The Inspector walks in the front door and says to no one in particular, "I can't remember his name, but his face rings a bell." Several dozen customers instinctively stab their F keys. The remaining string gulps down the rest of his martini and says "And at these prices, you're not likely to see many more!" At the table in the back, the Doctor looks intently at his patient and says "And if you don't quit jerking off, your elbow's never going to get any better!" "You think your thore," the patient screams back, "I can't even thit!" There's a loud thud as another body hits the pavement in front of the bar, and a Purdue freshman runs in the door and says "And now his broth- er's a dead ringer, too!" The door to the bathroom opens and a young boy in a vaguely Medieval costume wanders out. "Do you know where some Yellow Fingers are?" he asks. Suddenly, there is a loud crash outside and a bleeding man comes stum- bling into the bar. "Was that a penguin I just ran over, or a nun with sunglasses?" he asks. "I think not," says the bartender, and disappears. A yokel gets up from a corner booth and asks the bartender (who has mys- teriously reappeared), "Bartender, where is the library at?" The bartender looks askance at the hick and replies "We don't serve people from Purdue, *ASSHOLE*!" and hits him over the head with a bat, killing him instantly. Immediately, several people scream out "I'm a dead ringer for my brother!" (Fortunately, at this point the election results came in and Ferdinand Marcos won 512 to 2.) An Indian walks into the bar and asks the bartender for a Q-tip. "Wax problem?" the solicitious bartender asks. "No, buffalo come," replies the red man. The bartender notices a man scrawling grafitti on the wall and levels him with both barrels of a sawed-off shotgun. The first part of the grafitti reads: >>>Electricians do it for the halibut. >>I have a haddock. >Cod, I hate this. The bar explodes into spontaneous applause. A prison convict stands on his chair, clears his throat and says "57!". The room is dead silent. The silence is broken by screams from the man trying to remove his appendix with the scalpel he found underneath his chair. There are several examples of Universes scattered about the floor beside him. A disgruntled reader gets up and leaves via the front door... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Issue020, (Volume V, Number 2). October, 1987.