Collage 250               H u m o u r N e t               17 APR 96

Our list of Operation Joint Endeavor Distinguished Members is
growing; I'd like to welcome our two most recent OJE subscribers:

* MAJ Marty Lucas, "mostly" from Des Moines, Iowa (which also happens
  to be MAJ Jeff Ash's home town), and

* 1LT John Saunier, currently in Slavonsky Brod, formerly stationed
  in Mannheim.

Welcome aboard, soldiers. <audience applause>

In reality, Marty and John have been with us for several weeks now,
but it actually takes this long to work even the *prioritized*
material through the queue.

Speaking of working through the queue, the results of the "Geek Test"
are in -- and it looks as if the *normal people* have won, hands down.
(Quite a shocker, huh?) For those of you who are new to the list (or
just have short memories), the poll was taken after the following joke
appeared in the most recent "Geek Collage" (Collage 240):

Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant with a grape?
A: Elephant grape sine theta.

There were 115 total votes cast, divided among the categories as
follows:

1. I understood the joke and thought it was amusing: 38 votes (33%)
   (These people should be ashamed of themselves. ;-)

2. I understood the joke but did not find it amusing: 3 votes (~3%)

3. I did not understand the joke, and thus did not find it amusing:
   67 votes (58%)

4. I did *not* understand the joke, but found it amusing, anyway:
   6 votes (5%)
   (This group really has me perplexed --- and concerned. ;-)

5. You, Vince, are not amusing: 1 vote (~1%) (although he then stated
   that it's only 30% of the time, so I guess this works out to 0.3%)
   (BTW, I did not unsubscribe him for this vote; I merely removed
   30% of his address from the subscription list.)

6. Paul invented a new category: "I did not get the joke, but it
   may have indeed been funny." (1 vote) He managed to create this
   category because he's a liberal arts major -- and we all know
   that liberal arts majors aren't constrained by *rather simple*
   instructions. ;-) Paul also took the time to enlighten me/us on
   the subject of his "geek friends," and their take on the joke:

      "... several of my friends thought it was funny. These,
      though, are the same people who find great enjoyment in
      sitting in a bar on Saturday night ... and spending the
      entire evening calculating the force with which one of them
      hit the ground when he fell off a 3-story parking garage and
      broke his leg. They were even graphing. For a liberal arts
      major, this was about as close to the inner circle of hell
      as I ever wanna go. I need new friends. Stat."

    Actually, Paul, we *only* do that sort of thing when there are
    non-geeks around -- it's fun to watch the "I-don't-believe-they
    are-actually-GRAPHING" expressions dawn across their little
    faces. Nonetheless, you still need new friends.... ;-)

And so goes the Geek Test -- hopefully, Karen (the subscriber who
inspired the poll in the first place) feels vindicated now.

But all vindications are short-lived around here. Thus, I present to
you the *next* Geek Collage, complete with a follow-on "Elephant
Crossing" joke.

We open Collage 250 with "Benched," from Shawn King (the Bawdy.Net
moderator). Although, at first glance, this one would appear to be
Bawdy.Net material, it really isn't very risque at all. What it *is*
is a joke with a punch line that will probably appeal only to EEs,
electronics-technicians, and other people who've had exposure to
the field.

Following "Benched" is "The Geek Sig," brought to us by Paul in the
U.K.

Rich provides us with some "Geek Ponderings."

And finally, the Christopher-and-Viktor team sends us "Elephant
Crossing, Take Two," the follow-on to the infamous original.

Many thanks to Shawn, Paul, Rich, Christopher, and Viktor -- and to
everyone who responded to the "Geek Test." Oh, and also to Mike, for
the heads-up on the developing Photoshop problem.

Happy Bytes!

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1996 by Vincent Sabio
  Permission is hereby granted to forward or post this "Collage";
  please observe the guidelines stated at the end of the message.
____________________________________________________________________

SUBJ: Benched

My girlfriend always seemed to enjoy seeing just how much she could
get away with doing some form of bondage in public. She does this
partly because she finds it fun, mostly because she knows it drives
me out of my tree. Usually, I'm able to fast-talk my way out of
potentially embarrassing situations with Mundanes, but yesterday she
nearly got me fired.

Yesterday afternoon we had lunch together. Afterward, she
accompanied me back to my place of work. I thought this slightly
unusual, since she had never before expressed an interest in my work
(electronic engineering), but it didn't occur to me that she had
something planned.

We arrived at my workbench, where I'm currently trying to figure out
why the #%$& board on which I'm working is not performing the way I
designed it.

"Is this where you work?" she asked.

"At the moment," I replied.

I reached over to turn on the scope, thereby completely failing to
notice the huge studded black leather collar she produced from her
purse. Before I could even blink (it is amazing the speed at which
she could do this), she had locked the collar snugly around my neck,
and locked the end of the six-foot jack chain to the center of the
bench (where there just happened to be a mounting hole, dammit). I
turned to face her in utter disbelief, mouth agape.

"I'll be back for you at five," she said.

"HAVE YOU GONE COMPLETELY WACKO!!?!? I yelled in a hushed voice.
"HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO EXPLAIN THIS???"

"You'll think of something," she said, dropping the keys into her
cleavage. "You always do."

"But suppose I have to go to the bathroom," I countered.

"Don't give me that," she said. "I've seen you go for a whole day
without visiting the bathroom."

"But...," I tried to say.

"SHHH! The subject is closed. I'll be back at five. Bye."

She turned and left, against my hushed protests. I sat in panic and
tried to think myself out of my situation. I tried to think of all
the people who might visit. Most of my co-workers were friends who
knew that my girlfriend and I were a bit odd, so this shouldn't
surprise them. But I had *no* idea what I was going to say if one
of my bosses came in.

I checked my watch to see how long I would have to endure this
ignomity. 1330 hours. (I'm a military-time weenie.)

"Three and a half hours," I thought. I heaved a sigh, and got to
work, such as I could.

As it happened, three of my co-workers visited for what-not. All of
them immediately noticed the collar (it would be pretty hard not
to), and asked if it was my girlfriend's idea. I said yes. They
asked what I would say if my supervisor saw it. I said I hadn't the
faintest idea.

One of the aforementioned colleagues took the bench next to me, and
after a few remarks (and a question as to where he could get a
collar like the one I had), settled down to work in silence.

After some time, I checked my watch. 1640hrs. "Gee, I just might
make it through this after all," I thought. I was even beginning to
get a handle on the problem on the #%^*@! board on which I was
working. Murphy must have been standing right behind me reading my
thoughts, for not more than two minutes later one of my bosses
entered the room. And not just any boss. Noooooooo. This was Mr.
Narrowminded himself. This was the guy who took Lifespring *and*
became a born-again fundamentalist. How he came to have the power
of hire-and-fire over us is one of the Great Mysteries of The
Universe. We avoided this guy at all costs.

His eyes fell upon me immediately. A few picoseconds later, he saw
the collar around my neck in all its splendor. "My life is over," I
thought. I still hadn't thought of a plausible explanation for
this. Mr Solderbrain (the name we called him behind his back; a
corruption of his real name) started to walk slowly and deliberately
over to me, his eyes fixed on the collar.

Fifteen agonizing seconds later, he was standing beside me. I
thought the guy next to me was going to have a seizure stifling all
his giggles. I continued to work, acting as though there were
nothing the least bit unusual about my predicament.

Finally he spoke.

"What. The. HELL! Is. That??!"

I don't know how I thought of what I said. In fact, I'm pretty sure
I didn't know what I was going to say until just as I was saying it.
I'm even more amazed that Mr. Solderbrain actually bought it and
didn't fire me on the spot.

I turned to face him calmly, with total nonchalance, exuding
complete confidence in what I was about to say, even though I didn't
quite know what it was yet. I didn't even miss a beat.

"Grounding strap," I said, and returned to work.

The guy next to me fell off his chair and nearly died laughing.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: The Geek Sig

Black Holes are where God divided by zero.

[Editor's Note: I must disagree. *Quasars* are the points at which
God divided by zero. Black holes are the points at which power series
converge absolutely. </vs>]

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Geek Ponderings

Is a polar bear a rectangular bear after a coordinate transformation?

"Character Density": The number of very weird people in the office.

"... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking 'zero,' they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs." -- Robert Firth

Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3---not even for very large values
of 2.

There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.

========================[ H U M O U R N E T ]=======================

SUBJ: Elephant Crossing, Take Two
Apparently adapted from RPI's "Geek Magazine" (is that for real?)

Q: What do you get when you cross a tsetse fly with a mountain climber?
A: Nothing -- you can't cross a vector with a scalar.

[Editor's Note: I will *not* be taking a poll to see who got this
one. :-) </vs>]

********************************************************************
 Anyone Without a Sense of Humor Is At The Mercy of The Rest of Us.
********************************************************************

"HumourNet" is brought to you by Lyris -- an innovative new e-mail
list server from The Walter Shelby Group, Ltd. For more information
on Lyris, see <http://www.lyris.com/>.

To subscribe to the "HumourNet" mailing list, send the following
command to <lyris@lyris.net>:

subscribe HumourNet your_name, your_city, your_state or country

where "your_name" is your real name, etc. If you run into problems,
then either (1) send any message to <HumourNet-info@lyris.net> for
a more detailed set of instructions, (2) subscribe via Lyris's Web
interface at <http://www.lyris.net/>, or (3) send a *detailed*
description of the problem to <Listmom@telephonet.com>.

To unsubscribe, visit our Web interface at <http://www.lyris.net/>
or refer to your Welcome message for detailed instructions.

For instructions on contributing to HumourNet, send any message to
<contribution-guidelines@lyris.net>.

>>> Note: Attributions in Collage openers are to the contributors,
not necessarily the authors. Authors' credits are included in the
text wherever possible. <<<

The HumourNet archives can be accessed via the Web and FTP:

    Web: <http://www.humournet.com/HumourNet/>
    FTP: <ftp://ftp.humournet.com/pub/HumourNet/Collage.Archives/>

Permission is granted to forward or post this Collage, provided that
1) the message is forwarded/posted in its ENTIRETY, from the line
containing the Collage number and date to the end of this trailer,
and 2) no fee is charged.

There are "relaxed" forwarding/posting guidelines available; for a
copy of them, send any message to <posting-guidelines@lyris.net>, or
refer to your Welcome message.

********************************************************************
    "HumourNet" is a trademark of HumourNet Communications, Ltd.
********************************************************************
</collage250>