Digest for Thursday, August 05, 1999
There are 10 messages totalling 490 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
- Reverend Spooners Tips Of The Slung
- Women T-shirts
- How To Shower.............
- Q&A
- Erryone Needs a Gud Educashun!
- The V-Files (revisited)
- Airlines
- MS is BRILLANT!!
- Grass (Puns)
- Micro$oftisms
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 06:47:06 -0400
From: Bill Stebbins <bs16@CORNELL.EDU>
Subject: Reverend Spooner's Tips Of The Slung
Stan's tribute reminded me of this little piece:
Rear Deeders, how your beds. Let us salute the eponymous master of the
verbal somersault, the Rev. William Archibald Spooner. He left us all
a legacy of laughter.
He also gave the dictionary a new entry: SPOONERISM. The very word brings
a smile. It refers to the linguistic flip-flops that turn "a well-oiled
bicycle" into "a well-boiled icicle" and other ludicrous ways speakers of
English get their mix all talked up.
English is a fertile soil for spoonerisms, as author and lecturer
Richard Lederer points out, because our language has more than three
times as many words as any other--616,500 and growing at 450 a year.
Consequently, there's a greater chance that any accidental transposition
of letters or syllables will produce rhyming substitutes that still make
sense--sort of.
"Spooner," says Lederer, "gave us tinglish errors and English terrors at
the same time."
Born in 1844 in London, Spooner became an Angelican priest and a scholar.
During a 60-year association with Oxford University, he lectured in history,
philosophy, and divinity. from 1876 to 1889, he served as a dean, and from
1903 to 1924 as warden, or president.
Spooner was an albino, small, with a pink face, poor eyesight, and a head too
large for his body. His reputation was that of a genial, kindly, hospitable
man.
He seems also to have been somewhat of an absent-minded professor. He once
invited a faculty member to tea "to welcome our new archeology Fellow."
"But, sir," the man replied, "I AM our new archeology Fellow."
"Never mind," Spooner said, "Come all the same."
After a Sunday service he turned back to the pulpit and informed his student
audience: "In the sermon I have just preached, whenever I said Aristotle, I
meant St. Paul."
But Spooner was no featherbrain. In fact his mind was so nimble his tongue
couldn't keep up. The Greeks had a word for this type of impediment long
before Spooner was born: METATHESIS. It means the act of switching things
around. Reverend Spooner's tendency to get words and sounds crossed up could
happen at any time, but especially when he was agitated. He reprimanded one
student for "fighting a liar in the quadrangle" and another who "hissed my
mystery lecture." To the latter he added in disgust, "You have tasted two
worms."
Patriotic fervor excited Spooner as well. He raised his toast to Her
Highness
Victoria: "Three cheers for our queer old dean!" During WWI he reassured his
students, "When our boys come home from France, we will have the hags flung
out." and he lionized Britian's farmers as "noble tons of soil."
His goofs at chapel were legendary. "Our Lord is a shoving leopard," he
once
intoned. He quoted I Corinthians 13:12 as, "For now we see through a dark,
glassly..." Officiating at a wedding, he prompted a hesitant bridegroom,
"Son,
it is now kisstomary to cuss the bride." And to a stranger seated in the
wrong
place: "I believe you're occupewing my pie. May I sew you to another sheet?"
Did Spooner really say, "Which of us has not felt in his heart a half-warmed
fish?" he certainly could have--he was trying to say half-formed wish.
Lederer offers these other authentic spoonerisms: At a naval review Spooner
marveled at "this vast display of cattle ships and bruisers."
To a school official's secretary: "Is the bean dizzy?"
Visiting a friend's country cottage: "You have a nosey little crook here."
Two years before his death in 1930 at age 86, Spooner told an interviewer he
could recall only one of his trademark fluffs. It was one he made announcing
the hymn "Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take," meaning to say "Conquering
Kings."
So if you have made a verbal slip, rest easy. Many have. Radio announcer
Harry Von Zell once introduced the president as Hoobert Heever. And Lowell
Thomas presented British minister Sir Stafford Cripps and Sir Stifford Craps.
Thanks to Reverend Spooner's style-setting sommersaults, our owm little tips
of the slung will not be looked upon as the embarrassing babblings of a
nitwit,
but rather the whimsical lapses of a nimble brain. So let us applaud that
gentle man who lent his tame to the nerm. May sod rest his goal.
(From Reader's Digest Feb 95)
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/bs16
http://members.xoom.com/bs16/
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 13:03:55 +0200
From: Maurizio Mariotti <mariotti@VENTURENET.CO.ZA>
Subject: Women T-shirts <adult-ish>
* Guys have feelings too. But like... who cares?
* I don't believe in miracles. I rely on them.
* Next mood swing: 6 minutes.
* I hate everybody, and you're next.
* Please don't make me kill you.
* And your point is ...
* I used to be schizophrenic, but we're OK now.
* I'm busy. You're ugly. Have a nice day.
* Warning: I have an attitude and I know how to use it.
* Remember my name - you'll be screaming it later.
* You KNOW you want me.
* Don't worry. It'll only seem kinky the first time.
* Of course I don't look busy. . . I did it right the first time.
* Why do people with closed minds always open their mouths?
* I'm multitalented: I can talk and annoy you at the same time.
* Do NOT start with me. You won't win.
* You have the right to remain silent, so please SHUT UP.
* All stressed out and no one to choke.
* I'm one of those bad things that happen to good people.
* How can I miss you if you won't go away?
* Sorry if I looked interested. I'm not.
* If we are what we eat, I'm fast, cheap and easy.
* Nobody knows I'm not wearing underwear.
* Don't make me mad. I'm running out of places to hide the bodies.
* Objects Under This Shirt Are Larger Than They Appear.
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 07:20:20 -0400
From: Terry Galan <galante@MCMAIL.CIS.MCMASTER.CA>
Subject: How To Shower.............
Like A Woman
1. Take off clothing and place it in sectioned laundry hamper according
to lights and darks.
2. Walk to bathroom wearing long dressing gown. If you see your
boyfriend/husband along the way, cover up any exposed flesh and rush
to bathroom.
3. Look at your womanly physique in the mirror and stick out your gut so
that you can complain and whine even more about how you're getting
fat.
4. Get in the shower. Look for facecloth, armcloth, legcloth, long
loofah, wide loofah and pumice stone.
5. Wash your hair once with Cucumber and Lamfrey shampoo with 83 added
vitamins.
6. Wash your hair again with Cucumber and Lamfrey shampoo with 83 added
vitamins.
7. Condition your hair with Cucumber and Lamfrey conditioner enhanced
with natural crocus oil. Leave on hair for fifteen minutes.
8. Wash your face with crushed apricot facial scrub for ten minutes
until red raw.
9. Wash entire rest of body with Ginger Nut and Jaffa Cake body wash.
10. Rinse conditioner off hair (this takes at least fifteen minutes as
you must make sure that it has all come off).
11. Shave armpits and legs. Consider shaving bikini area but decide to
get it waxed instead.
12. Scream loudly when your boyfriend/husband flushes the toilet and you
lose the water pressure.
13. Turn off shower.
14. Squeegy off all wet surfaces in shower. Spray mold spots with Tilex.
15. Get out of shower. Dry with towel the size of a small African
country. Wrap hair in super absorbent second towel.
16. Check entire body for the remotest sign of a zit. Attack with
nails/tweezers if found.
17. Return to bedroom wearing long dressing gown and towel on head.
18. If you see your boyfriend/husband along the way, cover up any exposed
and then rush to bedroom to spend an hour and a half getting dressed.
===========================================================================
Like A Man
1. Take off clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leave them
in a pile on the floor.
2. Walk naked to the bathroom. If you see your girlfriend/wife along the
way, flash her making the "woo" sound.
3. Look at your manly physique in the mirror and suck in your gut to see
if you have pecs (no). Admire the size of your dick in the mirror,
scratch your balls and smell your fingers for one last whiff.
4. Get in the shower.
5. Don't bother to look for a washcloth. (you don't use one)
6. Wash your face
7. Wash your armpits
8. Crack up at how loud your fart sounds in the shower.
9. Wash your privates and surrounding area.
10. Wash your ass, leaving hair on the soap bar.
11. Shampoo your hair (do not use conditioner).
12. Make a shampoo Mohawk.
13. Pull back shower curtain and look at yourself in the mirror.
14. Pee (in the shower).
15. Rinse off and get out of the shower. Fail to notice water on the
floor because you left the curtain hang out of the tub the whole
time.
16. Partial dry off.
17. Look at yourself in the mirror, flex muscles. Admire dick size.
18. Leave shower curtain open and wet bath mat on the floor.
19. Leave bathroom and fan light on.
20. Return to the bedroom with towel around your waist. If you pass your
girlfriend/wife, pull off the towel, grab your dick, go "Yeah baby"
and thrust your pelvis at her.
21. Throw wet towel on the bed. Take 2 minutes to get dressed.
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 08:07:03 -0400
From: Paul Benoit <pbenoit@SPEEDLINETECH.COM>
Subject: Q&A <adult>
Q: Why is the space between a woman's breasts
and her hips called a waist?
A: Because you could easily fit another pair of tits in there.
--------------------------------
Q: What's a practical nurse?
A: One who marries a wealthy, terminally ill patient.
--------------------------------
Q: How can you tell which blonde is the waitress?
A: She is the one with the tampon behind her ear,
wondering what she did with her pencil.
--------------------------------
Q: What should you *never* call an intergalactic
moving company?
A: Uranus-Hertz.
--------------------------------
Q: How do you get a man to stop biting his nails?
A: Make him wear shoes.
--------------------------------
Q: Why didn't the space shuttle launch on Aug. 19th?
A: The pilot couldn't find her keys.
--------------------------------
Q: What did the blind man say as he passed the fish market?
A: "Good morning, ladies."
--------------------------------
Q: What do you call a person who keeps on talking
long after people are no longer interested?
A: "Professer."
--------------------------------
Q: Why did the Siamese twins leave the U.S. to go to England ?
A: So the other one could have a chance to drive.
*******************************************
"Have you noticed that all the people in favour
of birth control are already born?" -- Benny Hill
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 08:08:44 -0500
From: Les Pourciau at UMem <POURCIAU@LATTE.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Subject: Erryone Needs a Gud Educashun!
5 August 1999
California State Assemblyman Scott Wildman put out a press release last
week headlined, "Department of Education Failes in it's oversight of
the federal adult education program." But, anyone can make a mistake!
A new release was rapidly issued, headlined, "Department of Education
Fail's in it's oversight of the federal adult education program."
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 09:44:11 -0400
From: Jim Mica <jmica@ITHACA.EDU>
Subject: The V-Files (revisited)
Could wilted lettuce be the next research frontier? ...jhm
Subject: Research Report Singled out by the Annals of Improbable
Research
-----------------------------------------------------------
1999-07-19 May We Recommend
Research reports that merit a trip to the library.
(This item is in addition to the many, many which appear in the
pages of AIR itself.)
REACH FOR THE SUN
"Viagra makes flowers stand up straight," Judy Siegel-Itzkovich,
British Medical Journal, vol. 319, no. 7205, July 31, 1999, p.
274A. (Thanks to Len Finegold for bringing this to our attention.)
The author reports that:
1 mg of the drug (compared with 50 mg in one pill taken
by impotent men) in a solution was enough to prevent two
vases of cut flowers from wilting for as much as a week
longer than might be expected.
------------------------------------------------------------
(c) copyright 1999, Annals of Improbable Research
------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
1999-07-23 Our Address (*)
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
PO Box 380853, Cambridge, MA 02238 USA
617-491-4437 FAX:617-661-0927
EDITORIAL: marca@chem2.harvard.edu
SUBSCRIPTIONS: air@improbable.com
WEB SITE: http://www.improbable.com/
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 12:02:36 -0400
From: Greg (|:o) <wiffles@SUPERIOR.NET>
Subject: Airlines <off. to those with old computers>
UNIX Airways
Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come
to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the
plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what
kind of plane they are supposed to be building.
Air DOS
Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump
on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again.
Then they push again, jump on again, and so on ...
Mac Airlines
All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents
look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions
about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't
need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done
for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.
Windows Air
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards,
easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After
about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning
whatsoever.
Windows NT Air
Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes,
and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius
when it explodes.
Linux Air
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to
start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters,
and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to
cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download
and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you
are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the
seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is
very comfortable, the plan leaves and arrives on time without
a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to
tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but
all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 11:04:29 -0500
From: RANEBOUX <raneboux@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Subject: MS is BRILLANT!!
MICROSOFT TO SELL AD SPACE IN ERROR MESSAGES
Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) announced that it
is selling advertising space in the error messages
that appear in Windows. Acknowledging for the
first time that the average user of their
operating system encounters error messages at
least several times a day, Microsoft is trying to
take financial advantage of the unavoidable
opportunity to make an ad impression.
"We estimate that throughout the world at
any given moment several million people are
getting a `General Protection Fault' or `Illegal
Operation' warning. We will be able to generate
significant revenue by including a short
advertising message along with it," said Microsoft
marketing director Nathan Mirror. He also
mentioned that Microsoft is intended to add banner
ads into its Blue Screen of Death in the near
future.
The Justice Department immediately
indicated that they intend to investigate whether
Microsoft is gaining an unfair advantage in
reaching the public with this advertising by
virtue of its semi-monopolistic control over error
messages.
--
If u cannot find the pot of gold.......
~Just enjoy the Raneboux~
RAINY
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 10:07:08 -0700
From: Stan Kegel <kegel@FEA.NET>
Subject: Grass (Puns)
A rock group on tour is motoring through Wyoming in its luxurious
recreational vehicle. Suddenly, their passage is obstructed by
hundreds of steers. The musicians hail a cowboy and politely ask if
they may drive through in order to meet their concert date.
“No way,” snaps the cattleman.
The rockers huddle to consider their options, then return to the
stubborn cowboy.
“We’ve got some really unusual grass,” they offer slyly. “Marijuana
in suppository form.”
The cowboy accepts the bribe and reins in the animals long enough to
allow the group’s bus to proceed.
Moral? ... A herd in the band is worth boo in the tush. (From the
National Lampoon)
This whole thing reminds me of an incident a few years ago, in my
home town school district, wherein a certain high school teacher was
accused of "introducing" some of his students to marijuana.
Apparently several of the students eventually developed such strong
pot habits that they had “munched” themselves 20-30 lbs. overweight,
and had voluntarily turned the teacher in out of anger.
It was not the first time . . . a pot smoker had been given away by
dilated pupils. (By RumpL4skn)
Three men are sitting in a room smoking cannabis. After a few
spliffs, they run out of gear. One of the men stands up and says
'Look, we've got loads more tobacco, I'll just nip into the kitchen
and make one of my specialty spliffs.
Off he goes into the kitchen where he takes some Cumin, Turmeric and
a couple of other spices from the spice rack, grinds them up and rolls
them into a spliff.
On his return he hands it to one of his smoking partners who lights
it and takes a long drag. Within seconds he passes out. Ten minutes go
by and he is still out cold, so the others decide to take him to
hospital.
On arrival the nurses immediately take him to intensive care. A
doctor returns to the friends and asks 'So what have you been doing
then? Smoking cannabis?'
'Well sort of,’ replies one of the guys, 'But we ran out of gear, so
I made a home-made spliff.' ‘
Ah’ replies the doctor, 'And what did you put in it?'
'Oh, just a bit of cumin, some turmeric and a couple of other
spices.'
The doctor sighs. 'Well that explains it.'
'Why, what's wrong with our friend?' asks one of the men.
The doctor replies, ... 'He's in a karma.’
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Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 16:53:59 -0400
From: Steve and Cindy <atlas@EZNET.NET>
Subject: Micro$oftisms
"If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...
... Oh, wait a minute, he already does."
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