"The 2 most common elements in the universe
are hydrogen and stupidity."
(Donor Unknown)
OUR MAIN SQUEEZE
From Heidi Ziegler with an assist from Marv Wolfman:
The local bar was so sure that its bartender was the strongest man around that they offered a standing $1000 bet. The bartender would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and hand the lemon to a patron. Anyone who could squeeze one more drop of juice out would win the money. Many people had tried over time (weightlifters, longshoremen, etc.) but nobody could do it.
One day this scrawny little man came in, wearing thick lasses and a polyester suit, and said in a tiny, squeaky voice, "I'd like to try the bet." After the laughter had died down, the bartender said OK, grabbed a lemon, and squeezed away. Then he handed the wrinkled remains of the rind to the little man.
But the crowd's laughter turned to total silence as the man clenched his fist around the lemon and six drops fell into the glass. As the crowd cheered, the bartender paid the $1000, and asked the little man," what do you do for a living? Are you a lumberjack, a weightlifter, or what?"
The man replied, "I work for the IRS."
DAY OF PISS, 2000
I finally ran an item that pushed Penn's buttons. "Wow, that "Day of Peace" idea is really evil. It assumes that shooting off a gun on TV is the same as live. (NOTE: "evil" backwards, or "through the looking glaass? PP) It also assumes that shooting a gun when it doesn't hit anyone is evil. Man, is that bad thinking. (It's also bad aiming...PP) It's another way to take responsibility away from people. Very very bad idea. Wow, it makes me mad. If this catches on, you can bet I'll get a carry permit by then and be shooting them up. Also, the TV thing is TOO easy - every half thinking TV person will think they're really doing real good. Man, I could go on and on, but -- I'll just say I way disagree." Well, I agree to disagree too.
And now, look out Penn, here comes another:
INTERNATIONAL RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS DAY
May 1st is International Random Acts Of Kindness and Senseless Acts Of Beauty Day. Imagine if there were an outbreak of kindness in the world and everybody on the planet did one kind thing on a daily basis. 00:00 (midnight) GMT, May 1, 1997 begins a worldwide 24 hours of kindness. Wear something with a heart on it to show your support. Join billions of fellow human beings as we spontaneously do those little sweet or grand lovely things we do for no other reason than to make the world a kinder, more beautiful place.
The next toll-booth you come to, pay for a car behind you (Better not be an automatic one)...Send a thank you letter to a teacher you once had, letting him or her know the difference they made in your life. (You can get the address from your local State Corrections Department)...Ask an older person to tell you a story about his or her youth. (But remember, they could be making it up)...Order a mail-order gift, anonymously, for a friend or co-worker. (It will come in a plain brown wrapper form the "Leather Thighs" catalogue)...Give another driver your parking spot. (Or your parking ticket)...Let someone merge ahead of you on the freeway, smile and wave at them. (Then duck -- they may be armed)...Open the phone book, select a name at random and send that person a greeting card. (Like: "Greetings, you have been drafted!")...Write a note to the boss of someone who has helped you, thanking him or her for having such a great employee. ("When I needed a $50,000 loan, he/she was there with a company check!") Buy a bag of groceries and leave it on a doorstep in a poor neighborhood. (That doesn't have any poor dogs and cats around, that is.)...Praise the work or attitude of a co-worker to someone else in the office. ("I saw him/her working well past midnight on the files in your office, boss.") Write a note to the owner of a house or garden in your neighborhood whose beauty gives you pleasure. ("The flowers were so pretty, I took a bunch for my sick mother. Thanks!") Say "I love you" to twenty different people for whom it's true. (Start at a local pickup bar. You may get lucky.)
It's not about the spending money or buying expensive gifts. (Huh?) This is an opportunity for anonymous service and selfless giving. The gift is in your good intention. Moment by moment throughout the day people will be risking becoming significant. (Oh-oh) Time zone by time zone, country by country outbreaks of kindness will sweep across the planet (like a disruptive sunflare), following the course of the sun, potentially touching every single human being with gratitude and love (like a happy plague). You received this message because someone loves you. (I've got a trace out now.) Please mark your calendars and pass this on to everyone you know. (That won't take long for most of you.) And start practicing your acts of kindness and beauty right now...so that which comes to you as a seed gets passed on as a blossom, and that which comes to you as a blossom gets passed on as fruit. (I'm already a member of the Seed of the Month Club.)
And for this manic, cynical inspiration, a big smoochie kiss goes to those benevolent containers, David Ossman and Judith Walcutt)
TITANIC SEARCH
From Garry Goodrow, "One side note on The Titanic: a few years before the sailing of that ship. A novel was published whose plot featured all of the main points of the disaster: an 'invincible,' enormous ship, a huge hype, an encounter with an iceberg. Kinda makes a fella stop and think. [I know this is true, but my poor wounded brain doesn't remember some key things, like the title of the book.]"
Hmmm. Sounds like you're having a little trouble with Doctor...ah...Memory! Or, as our pal Carl Gottlieb said, "If you can remember the 60s, you weren't there..." So -- can anyone help?
SHEARER MADNESS
Harry's "Le Show" continues to enlight and delight. Among the goodies on his last broadcast was a reference in "The Trades" to the most popular movie titles of the past and present. Apparently "Death, Love and Crime" has been supplanted by "Virtual Deadly Hostile Power" which I'm adding voices to next week at Universal. Watch for it soon at your neighborhood Movie Closet.
And visit Harry's ongoing show at his website at http://www.harryshearer.com
JUST THINK OF IT!
In the old West, lads took jobs as cowboys and lasses as hired girls. There were apprentices and greenhorns and some students, but those aged 12 to 19 weren't called "teenagers." People went straight from childhood to work and marriage. There was no such recognized category as "adolescence." In old Rome, it was legal until 374 A.D. for parents to kill their infants. (From LL Boyd's endlessly fascinating SAMPLER) http://www.LMBoyd.com/postscript.htm
LIGHTS BLURBS
Frank Bland says that this was passed on to him by Kathy Biehl but the original source in lost in the cybermyst...
Q: How many internet mail list subscribers does it take to change
a light bulb?
A: 1,331:
1 to change the light bulb and to post to the mail list that the light bulb has been changed, 14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently, 7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs, 27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs, 53 to flame the spell checkers, 156 to write to the list administrator complaining about the light bulb discussion and its inappropriateness to this mail list, 41 to correct spelling in the spelling/grammar flames, 109 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and to please email exchange to alt.lite.bulb, 203 to demand that cross posting to alt.grammar, alt.spelling and malt.punctuation about changing light bulbs be stopped, 111 to defend the posting to this list saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts **are** relevant to this mail list, 306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique, and what brands are faulty, 27 to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs, 14 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly, and to post corrected URLs, 3 to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to this list which makes light bulbs relevant to this list, 33 to concatenate all posts to date, then quote them including all headers and footers, and then add "Me Too," 12 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy, 19 to quote the "Me Too's" to say, "Me Three," 4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ, 1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup, 47 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion was meant for, leave it here; and finally, 143 votes for alt.lite.bulb.
ALIENS! REGISTER NOW!
My bud from New York, ex-cop, writer/producer Francis Grimes, is out here for a month contributing to the show "Strange Universe." Maybe we might get the "inside story" (hey, great name for a show, eh?) on the upcoming purported Roswell Alien Interview film, in which the poor little fellow suffers an on-camera seizure and leaves his container. They probably gave him a cheeselog, unaware that they're notoriously allergic to it. Furthermore, this week's e-mail contained a titillating missive from Hal "Mr. Interactive" Josephson regarding a 25-mile-across UFO that apparently sent the military into a high tactical alert. Anybody see it? We'll believe you.
MAC HELL
I've upgraded my computer again, which of course means: 1) I can't print anything, 2) I can't retrieve past e-mail 3) I can't get into my e-mail filing cabinet 4) I can't afford a new computer and 5) a friend of my good pal and Mac Meister Bill Bowles, named Dick Tickle is coming by on Thursday to help me kill myself. In the meanwhile, I'll just carry on as if nothing happened, because these days, you could say that about my career.
YOU'RE FIRED!
And the Firesign publicity blitz continues! Yes, One Of Entertainment Weekly's Picks as "The 30 Best Acts of All Time," (next to the sex act, I assume), was not even mentioned by writer Stephen Rebello in an article entitled "Hippier Than Thou; Bad Movies We Love" in the May issue of Movieline Magazine.
Steve describes the FT's 1971 rock western "Zachariah" as "the last word in homoertotic musicals...a veritable stoner's crash pad...that wobbles woozily from one hoot to another." Rebello's article is a hoot as well, and I'm mighty tempted to excerpt it here in more detail, but believing in the value of "intellectual property" as I do, I first recommend that you pick up a copy at your local newstand, read the item through and put the magazine back in the rack.
Oh, what the hell: "After (Jewish cowpoke John) Rubenstein has let his fellow buckeroo (androgynously pretty local blacksmith Don Johnson) fondle his shiny new pistol, Johnson bats his long lashes, whispers 'Far out,' and the guys chase each other around in a 'Love Story'-style montage. Later, Rubenstein queries (sic) philosophically, 'Which do you think it would be easier to shoot it out with, the sun or the moon?' Rubenstein answers his own koan all by himself. It's the moon, of course, because "it's old and dead."
To which Rebello adds, "Unlike, say, Hollywood..."
ZINE OFF
And finally, in Tower Records April issue of PULSE! there is a very upbeat review (with foto) of the Firesign Fanmag, "FIREZINE" by Yvette Cadeaux (Gifts) in their Zines "Wig Out1" section. It ends thusly, "Send $10 for five issues to P.P. Box 585, Hagerstown, MD 21741." It starts thusly, too.
And be sure to visit the newly updated and be-pictured PP site at somewhere or another. Look it up, it's fun.
PP, crippled but unbowed... 4/22/97
Published 4/22/97
PLANET PROCTOR
© 1996/2002 by Phil Proctor