Floppyshop 2/Floppyshop - 2.zip/Floppyshop - 2.iso/diskmags/0022-3.564/dmg-0138/miscell2.txt

Text File | 1997-04-16 | 16KB | 350 lines

Subject:  I thought maybe Henry was among the missing,
          but here's another bit of f


Kind of missing the whole point

During the publicity prior to the 1979 solar eclipse, a woman called
a radio talk show in my locality and asked this question:  "If we can't
watch it, why are they even having it?"

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Father and son standing outside the elephant's cage in the Moscow
Zoo.  Father tells son ``If we stand around here long enough,
sometimes, one of them will throw some food at us.''

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From: [e-mail] (PAM in CA)


Jim Kevin, a good friend of mine just returned from traveling around the USA
for a year.  He had a lot of stories to tell, but this was my favorite.

It seems he was looking for a bank and stopped to ask directions. The man he
asked replied "Just drive down this road about 5 miles and then turn left at
the Stop n Go."

He drove 5 miles, then 6, then 7.  At about 10 miles down he stopped for
directions again.  The man he asked replied "Just go back down this road about
5 miles and turn right at the Stop n Go"

He headed out again but still had no luck.  When he got back to where he had
started he stopped again.  When he ask for directions the answer was exactly
the same.  This time Jim asked "Could you describe the Stop n Go for me?"  The
man gave him a funny look and said "It's on a pole. It's got a red light on
the top, a Green light on the bottom...."

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From: [e-mail]

A few years ago I had a job at night delivering pizzas. One night a women
orders and gives an address that was on a long dirt road in the middle of
noplace, right on the edge of our delivere area. She also helped by sayin that
there was a boat and a pickup truck parked out front. Well try as I might I
couldn't find the house number she had given me, and as any other dirt road in
Florida, every house had a truck and a boat parked out front. This road was
about two miles long and on one end dead ended into the woods. Driving out the
way I came in to get to the nearest payphone woulkd be about a four mile trip.
Where the road went into the woods there was a small goat path that was a
short cut to the nearest convenience store, I barley managed to coax my little
escort through the mud and all. When I called her and told her I couldn't find
her house she sounded like I must be the biggest idiot in the world. Her voice
dripping with pity for my poor mental state she told me that her two daughters
would be standing by the mailbox when I drove back by. So back through the
woods and there are the two girls by the mail box but wait the numbers on the
box are not the ones I was told to look for. I went up to the house and told
Mamma that she had given me the wrong adress. (hoping of course to shame her
into a tip) I told her she had said her address was xxxx when the box said
yyy. She again put on the voice reserved for the terminally stupid and told me
in an exsaperated tone "Well you shouldn't a gone by the numbers on the box,
they re-numbered the street a couple weeks back and we 'aint had time to
change 'em yet"

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From: [e-mail] (Alvin)

My brother used to be a police officer in Chicago.  (He's now a rather
high-up muckity-muck in the police dept., but that's beside the point.)
He's told me some amusing anecdotes from Chicago police-work.

There was one story about people shovelling the snow for a parking space
in front their house.  This apparantly is a problem for the Chicago
police every winter.  What happens is that somebody will park in a
nearby parking lot, then slave away for how ever many hours it takes to
shovel out a car-sized space in front of his house, naturally so he can
park his car there.  Then he goes back to the lot to get his car.

When he returns home, he finds that the space has been taken by some
_other_ car.  He is, well, upset.

What most people do is write nasty notes etc. and place them on the
windshield of the offending vehicle.  Where the police get involved,
however, is the occasional case where the individual vents his wrath
in somewhat more violent means.  Tires and throats have been slashed
over this.

One time a fellow got creative.  Instead of doing the usual nasty, he
got out his garden hose and watered the automobile down, real well.  I
mean, very, very thoroughly.  The water, of course, froze solid.  When
the owner returned, instead of a car, he found a car-sized popsicle.

The note on the car read: "You want the space?  Here, it's yours until
spring!"

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Thief at a fast food restaurant:
    "Give me a burger, large fries, and all your money!"
Service-Industry-Droid:
    "Will that be for here or to go?"

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When working for McDonalds (I don't want to hear about it, I was young back
then), our favorite pranks to play on new workers was rotating the rocks
outside the store (two huge boulders) and ice inventory.  One poor sap
counted about three-quarters of the ice bin (containing about fifteen cubic
feet of mini ice cubes) when the ice maker dropped the next batch down.
Needless to say, the rest of us were rolling on the floor in laughter.

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A while ago Steve Barkley of Pebble Beach was caught speeding in the
photo-radar speed-trap in Campbell.  In the mail he received a ticket for $45
together with the photo of his car in the trap as evidence of the speeding.  To
be humorous, he sent the Campbell Police Department a photo of $45.  Well,
Campbell police chief James A. Cost was equal to the challenge.  He mailed
Barkley a photo of a set of handcuffs.  Your move, Steve!

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From: [e-mail] (Mark J. Reed)
Subject: A cop with a sense of humour (true)
Approved: [e-mail]

The person I heard this from ("Al" in the story) swears that it really
happened.   (And no, I'm not this "Mark" - you should be able to figure out why
I chose those names. :)

Two guys (we'll call them "Mark" and "Al") are out cruising.  Mark is driving,
and they're on some out-of-the way roads.   Mark is distracted and doesn't see
a stop-sign, and a few moments after he runs it they hear a siren and see blue
lights.  Mark has never been stopped by the police before, and gets really
nervous.

    MARK: OhnowhatdidIdo? I wasn't speeding, was I?  No, I wasn't speeding.
        What'd I do what'd I do?

He pulls over, shaking like a leaf.  The cop pulls in behind and walks up to
his window.

    COP: You realize you ran a stop sign back there?

    MARK: [panicky] No, honest!  I didn't see it!  I didn't *mean* to run it!  I
        just didn't see it!  Really!

    COP: I'll need to see your drivers' license.

Mark pats his pants for a few seconds before remembering that he's wearing
shorts with no pockets.  He looks around the car, finds his wallet, opens it
up, and starts frantically throwing things out of it into the back seat.
No license.  He enlists Al's help, and together they search the glove
compartment, under the seats, behind the cushions, front and back, to no avail.
After ten or fifteen minutes of searching, Al looks up and catches the
officer's eye.

    AL: You don't need to see his identification.

    COP: [without missing a beat] I don't need to see his identification.

    AL: These aren't the droids you're looking for.

    COP: These aren't the droids we're looking for.

    AL: He may go on about his business.

    COP: You may go on about your business.

    AL: Move along.

    COP: Move along.

At this point the cop turns around, walks back to his car, gets in, and drives
away.

Mark pulls out and makes it about 200 yards down the road.  Then he stops
and just shakes for a few minutes, finally asking Al to drive.

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  The following is an old anecdote, but a good one. Sometime in the early
 1900's,
P. T. Barnum, the owner of the Barnum & Bailey circus and originator of the
phrase "There's a sucker born every minute" offered $10,000 in cash to any
 person
who could thoroughly dupe, or sucker, him.
  Barnum was always looking for interesting new acts or novel creatures to
exhibit, and one day he received a letter from a fellow in Maine who claimed
to possess a cherry-colored cat and asked if Barnum were interested in such
a thing for his circus. Barnum contacted the man and said yes, if the cat were
truly cherry-colored, he'd gladly put it on display. Well, a few days later
a crate marked "live animal" arrived for him. When Barnum opened it, he found
a somewhat frightened but otherwise perfectly ordinary-looking black housecat
inside, along with a note which read:
                 Maine cherries are black.
                 There's a sucker born every minute...
  Thoroughly tickled, Barnum sent the man a check for $10,000 (I'm not sure
what happened to the cat, I think Barnum may have kept it as a reminder of the
day he got suckered.)

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[ believed to be original from my officemate Scott Wallace ]

We get hit up by door-to-door salespeople all the time, and they always
seem to miss the "Absolutely no solicitors" sign on the door.  My
officemate put up a new sign:

    To Salespersons

    Please remove rings, watches, belt buckles, and other metal
    objects before entering.  Our pit bull has trouble digesting
    such items.  Thank you for your cooperation.

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From: [e-mail] (Nicky Ranganathan)
Subject: Judges, Lawyers and Whales
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny

[From the "Around New York" column of the New York Times, April 3, 1991]

COURT SAYS LEGAL AID LAWYERS HAD RIGHT TO WEAR BUTTONS

A state appeals court ruled yesterday that Legal Aid Society lawyers
had a constitutional right to wear "Ready to Strike" buttons in
October, when they argued their cases in court.

The lawyers were wearing the buttons to signify their support of a
threatened strike. But Justice George Roberts of State Supreme Court
ordered them to remove their buttons in his Manhattan courtroom on the
ground they could prejudice the court and upset their clients.

The Apellate division of the State Supreme Court said "the mere act of
wearing a button" was protected by the Constitution's guarantee of
free speech.

Justice Richard W. Wallach pointed out in a concurring opinion that
Justice Roberts had said he would have allowed non-political buttons
such as those that said "Save the Whales". But Justice Wallach issued
a caution to all lawyers:

"If the choice had to be made between saving the lives of lawyers  or
saving whales, there is little doubt that the overwhelming majority of
Americans would come down on the side of the whales"

[.....]


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From: [e-mail] (wayne d. correia)
Subject: Robert Bulmash Leads Charge Against Telemarketers
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom

  WARRENVILLE, Ill. -- Robert Bulmash is the telemarketing industry's
worst nightmare. He and a small army of followers, fed up with the
modern epidemic of junk calls, are fighting back. Their motto is
"Leave Us Alone or Pay the Price!" Their strategy is mischievous,
ruthless and surprisingly effective.

  Bulmash instructs the 550 members of his group, Private Citizen
Inc., to answer junk calls cordially and tease out all the information
they can about the identity and location of the "junker." Then twice a
year, he sends a notice to more than 800 telemarketing companies, with
a list of his members and a warning on their behalf:

  "I am unwilling to allow your free use of my time and telephone ...
I will accept junk calls for a $100 fee, due within 30 days of suchuse
 ...  Your junk call will constitute your agreement to the reasonableness
of my fee."

  Private Citizen members, who pay $20 a year for the service, say
their junk calls drop 75% or more. As for the "invoice," it has left
Sears, Roebuck & Co., ChemLawn, and a handful of other telemarketers
so bemused they've actually coughed up the $100. Others, though not
all, have had it dragged out of them in court.

  The leader of this rebellion is an intense 45-year-old paralegal
with the flair of an angry stand-up comic. His little war, run out of
his home in his spare time, has stirred up the giant telemarketing
industry, where mention of the name Bulmash draws shudders of disgust.

  "Everyone in the industry knows Bob Bulmash," sighs Kenneth Griffin,
an American Telephone & Telegraph Co.  official and past head of the
American Telemarketing Association. He worries that the Bulmash
crusade will "regulate us and put us out of business," and adds: "I'm
sorry, but we're going to defend ourselves." (In fact, AT&T right now
is defending itself against a $100 claim from Bulmash.)

  At the other end of the telemarketing line, Bulmash is a hero.
"Thanks for taking on the greatest annoyance to man since the
invention of the housefly!"  wrote a grateful Oregon woman who read
about him in a local newspaper.

  In a 1990 national survey of telemarketing targets, 70% said they
consider such calls an "invasion of privacy." Walker Research Inc. of
Indianapolis conducted the survey via, of all things, random calls to
U.S.  telephone numbers. The survey also found that 44% of the targets
considered their last telemarketing call "pleasant," and 41% think
telemarketing serves a "useful purpose."

  All these calls are coming from an exploding industry with an
awesome arsenal of new technology. American companies will spend an
estimated $60 billion on telemarketing this year, up from $1 billion
in 1981, says the industry association.

  One especially popular purchase, all too familiar to households, is
the "adramp," short for automatic dialing recorded message player. It
courses like a virus through the phone system, blaring its come-on to
one number after another in sequence.

  Another hot new weapon is the "predictive dialer," which speed-dials
one number after another, sending to live agents only the calls that
answer. With one of these, a telemarketing shop can double the number
of prospects its agents talk to in a day.

  Lawmakers are starting to worry about this calling frenzy. A
proposed federal law would create a national list of people who don't
want junk calls, and make it illegal to telemarket them. States have
also introduced some 300 bills this year curbing unsolicited sales
calls.

  Bulmash's group, Private Citizen, is reachable at Box 233,
Naperville, Ill. 60566.


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News of the weird:

May 5, 1991

On a Saturday morning last June, two men, searching for a place to purchase
travelers checks, walked through the front door of a West Hollywood bank,
even though the bank does not do business on Saturday.  Apparently the
janitorial crew forgot to lock up.

May 19, 1991

DOGGED APPROACH TO WHAT'S IMPORTANT

In a two-day period in New York City recently, a homeless man, a train
maintenance worker, and a dog were killed on the subway tracks.  Ninety
people telephoned the Transit Authority to express concern about the dog,
but only three called about the worker and no one about the homeless man.