MELISSA, WE HARDLY KNEW YE...

With the arrest of hacker UhClem in Soprano, New Jersey, the infamous "Melissa" Virus, named after a topless dancer in Florida, is history. But BEWARE, cause the baddest one of all is on the way!

If you receive an email entitled "Badtimes," delete it immediately. It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer. It demagnetizes the stripes on ALL of your credit cards. It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you attempt to play.

It will re-calibrate your refrigerator's coolness settings so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles.It will program your phone autodial to call only your mother-in-law's number. This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will drink all your beer. It will leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company. It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, all while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing their hotel rendezvous to your Visa card.

It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye. It will give you Dutch Elm Disease and Tinea. It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretations of key sentences.

It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, but it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk. It will replace all your luncheon meat with Spam. It will molecularly rearrange your cologne or perfume, causing it to smell like dill pickles. It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.

>>> PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW<<<

"If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown, too?"

LET'S EAT!

The following Haiku is reproduced verbatim from a label that fell off a Korean cooking pot recently purchased by reader Jeff Martinek.

"Marvelous Cookware Of Serpantine Stone (Use Explanation)"

1. It's paste edible oil to boil over 100C in the salt's water.
   
2. It's principle to get used to it to be pot stewed.
   
3. The food must be attention to not get bumed (only cooking roast) The color of board pay attention to until it change to black color.
   
4. The case of arising fine crack to error treatment is not intervene to using.

"If the front of your car says 'DODGE,' do you really need a horn?"

FIRESIGN RULES!

From our triumphant, sold-out premiere of the new "Immortality" show in Santa Barbara this weekend, where Jonathan Winters graced us with his royal presence, we go on to the Warfield in San Francisco this coming Friday and Saturday and then to Portland, Oregon, the 24th, where until 1989 "it was against the law for a wedding ceremony to be performed at a skating rink." Even today, people may not whistle underwater, wear roller skates in restrooms and (in Myrtle Creek), you cannot box with a kangaroo. Statewide, though it's still illegal to buy or sell marijuana, it is legal to smoke it on your own property. However -- ice cream may not be eaten on Sundays, dishes must drip dry, and you may not pump your own gas in service stations.

We'll be there for four days performing at the Aladdin and fortunately for our audiences, although one may not bathe without wearing "suitable clothing," which covers one's body from neck to knee, the laws say nothing about taking showers.

"A lot of the people who keep a gun at home for safety are the same ones who refuse to wear a seat belt"
(George Carlin)

UPSTATE, WITHOUT A PADDLE!

If you come to see us in Seattle at the Bagley Wright from April 29 til May 2, please remember that you may not carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length; women who sit on men's laps on buses or trains without placing a pillow between them, face an automatic six-month jail term, and in nearby Spokane, TV's may not be bought on Sundays.

As for the State Laws: It is mandatory for a motorist with criminal intentions to stop at the city limits and telephone the chief of police as he is entering the town. All motor vehicles must be preceded by a man carrying a red flag (daytime) or a red lantern (nighttime) fifty feet in front of said vehicle, and a San Juan County Ordinance passed in 1995 states, "You may not ride an ugly horse. Furthermore, no structure shall contain more than two toilets that use potable water for flushing.

Sadly, all lollipops are banned, people may not buy a mattress on Sunday (not even from "Unconscious Village), it is illegal to paint polka dots on the American flag and even more so to pretend that one's parents are rich. Come bail us out...

"Why do fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?"

JESUS LOVES ME

A name-lost reader writes that he was sitting behind a car with a bumper sticker that said, "Honk if you love Jesus." So the light is red and he's in a good mood, so he gives the horn a honk; and the guy in the car rolls down his window, looks back at him incredulously and says, "It's red, asshole!"

[Go to next column to continue reading]

"The only good thing to come out of religion was the music"
(George Carlin)

I CAN BEER IT NO LONGER!

Timothy Tuffield sent me the following last year, but I was so plastered I forgot to pass it along:

Beer was the reason the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. According to the Mayflower's log, the crew didn't want to waste beer looking for a better site so the passengers were "hasted ashore and made to drink water that the seamen might have more beer."

Long beer-fore that, about 4,000 years ago in Babylonia, it was the accepted practice that for a month after a wedding the bride's father would supply his Son-in-law with all the mead (honey beer) he could drink; and since their calendar was lunar-based, this period was called the "honey month" -- know today as the "honeymoon."

Later, after consuming a bucket or two of vibrant brew they called aul, or ale, the Vikings would head fearlessly into battle, often without armor or even shirts. "Berserk" means "bare shirt" in Norse. And before thermometers were invented, brewers would dip a thumb or finger into the mix to find the right temperature for adding yeast. Too cold, and the yeast wouldn't grow; too hot, it'd die. This is where we get "rule of thumb."

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice; and in English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to "Mind their own pints and quarts and settle down." It may be where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's." And it was our very own Hundred-Dollar Ben who said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

"Why is American beer served cold? So you can tell it from urine"
(David Moulton)

FILL'S FUNNY FAX

The electric chair was invented by a dentist and Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors but bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers were all invented by women. Shakespeare invented the word "assassination" and "bump", and The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It to Beaver."

The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with. China has more English speakers than the U.S.; and if the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction. Did you know you share your birthday with at least 9 million people?

The Boston University Bridge on Commonwealth Avenue, is one of the few places in the world where a boat can sail under a train, driving under a car, driving under an airplane; and Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. State capital without a McDonald's. In the great fire of London in 1666, (The Year of the Beast?) half of London was burnt down, but only 6 people were injured. More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class; but the cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, still moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age; and though our eyes are always the same size from birth, our nose and ears never stop growing. Women blink nearly twice as much as men and Marilyn Monroe had six toes. The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.

But -- a crocodile cannot stick its tongue out, a snail can sleep for 3 years, many hamsters only blink one eye at a time, and if you keep a Goldfish in the dark room, it will eventually turn white. The pet ferret was domesticated more than 500 years before the common housecat, dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates, and humans, chimps and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.

"Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it."

EL BOYO LOCO

William Vega, a professor of public health at the University of California at Berkeley, released a study that claimed the longer Mexican immigrants remained in the United States, the more their mental health declined. "This is clearly a social effect, not a biological one," he said. "Mexicans come to this country with some kind of natural protection against mental disorder and that breaks down very quickly in American society."

"The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard."

BAND TOGETHER

Here follows my favorites from that list of actual band names first published in "Funny Times" and added to along the way: "Albino Toilet Boys, Alcoholics Unanimous, Bad Livers, Biff Hitler and the Violent Mood Swings, The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, Children Of The Bong, The Dead Sea Squirrels, Four Nurses of the Apocalypse, Honest Bob and the Factory to Dealer Incentives, Jehovah's Waitresses, Jim Jones And The Kool-Aid Kids, My Dog Has Hitler's Brain, Pabst Smear, Phlegm Fatale, Poultry in Motion, Reluctant Stereotypes, Roid Rogers and the Whirling Butt Cherries, Screaming Moist Accountants, Shirley Temple of Doom, Skeptic Tank, Strangulated Beatoffs, So I had to Shoot Him, TestosterTones, Willie Nelson Mandela, and Zombies Under Stress."

And the Grammy goes to... Pamela Polland and Jim Pasquotto.

"Long whiskers cannot take the place of brains"
(Russian Proverb)

(4/5/99)