10.	Bill Gates found spare change in his trousers
9.	First and last month's rent on empty office space in Cupertino
8.	Fee: Steve Jobs to give charisma lessons to Microsoft CEO
7.	Two words: Rhapsody 98
6.	Small price to pay for world domination
5.	Bill to Larry: I own you now, too
4.	Jobs and Woz threw in a signed Apple I as part of the deal
3.	Best way to assure Gates a starring role in next Pixar animated feature
2.	Easier than bribing entire Justice Department
1.	Strategic move: Apple users now hate Jobs more than Gates

In Redmond, Washington, Microsoft's headquarters, a popular joke has Bill Gates sending an e-mail to his chief financial officer, Greg Maffei:

"You bought WHAT? You spent my $150 million on what? Don't you listen? I said, 'Snapple!'" (Wayne Knew It)

Received from Aaron Berg in Phoenix and sent on by Gregg Berger: Interesting things that you learn about computers in the movies...

 

1.	Word processors never display a cursor.
2.	You never have to use the space bar when typing long sentences.
3.	All monitors display 2 inch high letters.
4.	High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some-such governmental institution, have easy-to-understand graphical interfaces.
5.	Corollary: You can gain access to any information you want by simply typing "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard.
6.	Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS." Viruses cause temperatures in computers, just like they do in humans. After a while, smoke billows out of disk drives and monitors.
7.	All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off.
8.	Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer as the characters come across the screen.
9	People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
10.	A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
11.	Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.
12.	Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.
13.	When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
14.	If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen. There are no ways to copy a backup file-- and there are no undelete utilities.
15.	No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.
16.	The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren't labelled.
17.	Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability.
18.	Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY-MP.
19.	Any photograph can have minute details pulled out of it. You can zoom into any picture as far as you want to.

A woman has twins, but she gives them up for adoption. One boy goes to Egypt, where his new parents name him "Amahl." The other is sent to Mexico, where they give him the name "Juan."

Years go by. Juan decides to contact his biological mother, so he sends her a picture of himself. She opens the letter, admires the photo, then says to her husband, "I'd be so happy if I could just have a picture of my other son."

"But they're twins," her husband replies. "If you've seen Juan, you've seen Amahl."

One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor... Back Up My Hard Drive? How do I Put it in Reverse?... I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory... Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film... When the chips are down, the buffalo is empty.... Seen it all, done it all, can't remember it... Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.... I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.... He's not dead, He's electroencephalographically challenged... She's always late. Her ancestors arrived on the Juneflower... You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you... I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges... Pardon my driving, I'm reloading... Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular?... Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool... Diplomacy is saying "nice doggy" until you find a rock... A day without sunshine is like, you know, night... Save the whales. Collect the whole set!... Atheism is a non-prophet organization... On the other hand, you have different fingers. (Bbob Lloyd)

Doc T O. Neil says that one of my recent orbits featured a joke about a neutron at a bar. This joke came to his email box from AT&T consultant Lili Fuller: Two atoms are walking down the street when they run in to each other.

"Are you all right?"

"No, I lost an electron!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm positive!"

Garnett Sailor wrote:

"Feeling Stressed Out? Picture yourself near a stream.

Birds are softly chirping in the crisp cool mountain air.

Nothing can bother you here.

No one knows this secret place.

You are in total seclusion from that place called "the world."

The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with serenity. The water is clear.

You can easily make out the face of the person whose head you're holding under the water. Look. It's the person who caused you all this stress in the first place.

What a pleasant surprise.

You let them up...just for a quick breath...then ploop!...back under they go...

You allow yourself as many deep breaths as you want.

There now... feeling better?"

Timothy Kahn, the inventor of "Absolut Magic", came up with this thought... "the English are Puritans in Public and Perverts in Private..." I wonder if that's where the expression, "Pip pip!" comes from?

Everybody knows the story -- An ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well-fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

Well, here's the Modern American Version, thanks to Mike Harris and friends... Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well-fed while others are cold and starving. CBS, NBC, and ABC show up and provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to film of the ant in his comfortable house with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can it be that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Then a representative of the NAAGB (the National Association for the Advancement of Green Bugs) shows up on Nightline and charges the ant with "green bias" and makes the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of greenism.

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when he sings "It's Not Easy Being Green." Bill and Hillary Clinton make a special guest appearance on the CBS Evening News and tell a concerned Dan Rather that they will do everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the Reagan summers, or as Bill refers to it, the "Temperatures of the 80's." Richard Gephardt exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings that the ant has gotten rich off the "back of the grasshopper" and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Greenism Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare moms who can only hear cases on Thursday afternoon between 1:30 and 3:00 PM when there are no talk shows scheduled. The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he's in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him, since he doesn't know how to maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. And on the TV, which the grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing Bill Clinton standing before a wildly applauding group of Democrats announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned in America.

(From Dr. Laura's Website)

A subscription to the Fun and Foto-packed FIREZINE is only $15.00! Send that check to PO Box 585, Hagerstown, MD 21741-0585. (http://www.intrepid.net/~firezine/)

New and rare Firesign product can be purchased through the LodesTone Audio Theatre by calling 1.800.MIND or visiting the website at http://www.lodestone-media.com

Published 8/24/97

PLANET PROCTOR
© 1996/2002 by Phil Proctor