Collage 392              H u m o u r N e t              01 Apr 1998

<announcements>

Due to the rising cost of e-mail and the suspicious lack of unsubs
recently, I am considering increasing the unsubscription fee from
US$5.00 to US$35.00.

Either that, or I might have John Mozena guest moderate again; the
unsubscription fees from his last round in the driver's seat nearly
covered the entire R&D costs for HumourNet's geosynchronous
communications satellite program.

I'm still tossed up whether it'll be a fee increase or John Mozena.

Remember, HumourNet is still -- and will always be -- entirely free
to *join*, and there are no fees whatsoever for remaining on the
list. The only time that you will ever encounter *ANY* fees
whatsoever from this list is if you decide to unsubscribe.

If you are unfamiliar with the unsubscription fee, please refer to
the Welcome message you received when you joined the list. If you
lost your Welcome message, then send the command "get humournet hello"
(without the quotes) to the list server: <lyris@lyris.net>. A new
Welcome message will be returned to you. (There is a $0.50 fee for
this service.)

</announcements>

Meanwhile, many of you are looking at the dateline on this Collage,
and recalling the joke that I played on the list one year ago today,
in Collage 345. Well, you can rest assured that I would never dream
of doing something like that a second time -- after all, that's just
what you'd be *expecting* me to do.

No, I've decided to mess with a *different* mailing list of mine
this year ... <grin>

In the meantime, we have some great practical-joke ideas from the
audience:

Paul in Champlin, Minnesota, starts this one off with "Malpractice";

Mark B., purportedly an educator in the United Kingdom <g>, brings
us a pedagogical double header with "We'd Get Sued For This Today"
and "We'd Get Sued, Take 2";

Pastor Rus, HumourNet's very own Official List Chaplain, reveals his
Dark Side with "We'd Get Sued, Take 3";

Shawn King, moderator of our high-successful-until-the-lawsuits-start
"sister list," Bawdy.Net, brings us another double header with "We'd
Get Sued, Take 4" and "Fun With The Intellectual Proletariat";

JD in NJ -- one of the "Fab Five" original HumourNetters, and an all-
around great guy -- takes credit for contributing some "Good, Clean
Fun";

Jeff in San Jose, California, provides instructions for "Becoming a
Homicide Victim";

Mark D. in London, England, sends along "Call Us If You Don't Receive
This Message";

Matt in Hollywood, Florida, accepts kudos for the first installment
of "We'd Get Sued For These, Too";

and Randy Cassingham, author of "This is True" (see your Welcome
message for subscription instructions), brings us an piece that has
become an annual event, despite making its first appearance on
HumourNet today: "The Annual Internet Cleaning."

It's another "Practical Jokes" Collage, with the usual thanks going
out to our resident practical jokers.

Enjoy! And watch out for those jokes ...

- Vince Sabio
  HumourNet Moderator
  HumourNet@telephonet.com
____________________________________________________________________
          Opener (above) Copyright 1998 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: Malpractice

Here's a practical joke someone pulled here at the University of
Minnesota. "Boynton" is the campus health service ...

    "Well I put rubber cement on my chest to affix coffee grounds
    for the appearance of chest hair. And I am just wondering if
    you know of a solvent to get it off? I thought I could just
    rub it -- but it's not working."

    -- Norman, to the Boynton Health Nurse over the phone

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

SUBJ: We'd Get Sued For This Today
Apparently by C. Hargrave

Thought I would share the (maybe true) tale from my head. A few
years ago, [they] lined up the whole school by the medical room for
an "injection." The children were then sent into the room one by
one. They argued and were not at all happy about going in. Phone
calls to parents were not allowed.  Once in the room, the children
saw a board with a note, reading:

"Please scream loudly! April Fool!"

They would then exit by the other door and listen to the others
trying to get out of going in!

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

SUBJ: We'd Get Sued, Take 2

We also sent one to ask for 3m of fallopian tubing from the science
prep room. After a short while he came back looking really pleased
with a length of plastic piping that they had given him.

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

SUBJ: We'd Get Sued, Take 3

For Wedding Receptions:

Collect a lot of keys from the wedding party/friends WITHOUT the
bride and groom's knowledge. Pass them out to as many women as
possible (swearing them to secrecy). During your speech, announce
the "The bride realizes that the groom has had a lot of girlfriends
over the years. She would appreciate it if any of them who have keys
to his place could please return them."

This is the cue for all the women to bring their keys to the wedding
party table. Try to get a couple of pregnant women in the group and
maybe somebody's grandma.

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

SUBJ: We'd Get Sued, Take 4

Possibly by Kevin Klop

I was part of an OS Enhancements group that was building a multi-CPU
testing system. A large number of 300-meg removable disk pack drives
were shared between two CPUs.

As part of our work, we did what are commonly called "Thrash Tests"
wherein you seek back and forth between the outermost cylinder and
the innermost cylinder.

Remember that these are VERY quick drives, and that the heads build
up an hellacious amount of momentum.

There was also a night operator that was:

  a) Universally disliked

  b) Knew almost nothing about computers except how to follow a
     checklist.

We set up a timed job to run at midnight, just about the time this
operator would be starting his backups.

Along comes midnight, and suddenly all the disk drives in the
computer room start thrashing angrily "Chugachugachugachuga," and
rocking back and forth. Eventually they started walking themselves
along the floor.

At the same time, on the operator's console, the screen blanks, and
the following words appear, centered, on the display:

                       "I'm coming to get you."

The operator quit the next day.

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

SUBJ: Fun With The Intellectual Proletariat

Several years ago, on April Fool's Day, one of the local radio
stations announced that the Shuttle had landed in Vancouver.

[Editor's Note: One of the well-known alternate landing sites for
the Shuttle outside the U.S. ;-) </vs>]

About 1000 people showed up.

It gets better: One guy got [angry] at the radio station because
he got fired!

He told his boss he was going out to the airport to see the Shuttle.

His boss, not exactly a rocket scientist himself, said, "I don't
care if it's landing or not. You go, you're fired." The [idiot] boss
didn't even get the joke!

I was driving somewhere that morning and I heard the "report" of the
Shuttle having to make an emergency landing. I thought, "Ha ha. Very
funny. No one's stupid enough to fall for that."

Sadly, I was mistaken by about a thousand.

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

SUBJ: Good, Clean Fun

Want to have some fun in the dorm shower? Try this:

Enter the stall. Shower for about 3 minutes, then scream really
loudly, exclaiming, "Hey! I didn't know I had one of *those*!"

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

SUBJ: Becoming a Homicide Victim

Here's a good trick: Get a job as a judge at the Olympics. Then, if
some guy sets a world record, pretend that you didn't see it and say,
"Okay, is everybody ready to start now?"

[Editor's Note: The tricky part is that "judge at the Olympics"
step. Once you've got that, I'll bet that the rest of the joke is
pretty easy. </vs>]

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

SUBJ: Call Us If You Don't Receive This Message

A friend of mine has a nice little scam which he pulls each year on
the 1st April.

He quite often sends people jokes and the like in the form of two
messages -- the first is a question and the second is the answer.
Well, often the answer arrives before the question, so he puts some
text in the answer to tell the readers to not open the message until
they get the question.

On April 1 each year he sends out a message with the subject "Joke
answer: Do not open until you have read the question!" but never
actually sends out the question. Further, he requests a receipt
which is sent automatically when they open the message. This
provides him with a rather neat way of keeping score of how wise
people are. The ones who open it straight away are the savvy ones --
they know that it's a scam and do not wait. The ones who wait a few
days before opening it tend to be a little more embarrassed. But you
would be surprised to hear of the number of people who mail him
weeks later, irately demanding that he send the question again since
they do not want to open the answer until they get the question!

[Editor's Note: I'm not sure if this is a test of savvy or
integrity. ;-) Amusing, nonetheless ... </vs>]

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

SUBJ: We'd Get Sued For These, Too

Here's a few practical jokes we pulled at my college (Clearwater
Christian College, in Clearwater, Florida) ...

1) Jim came up with the idea of unscrewing the shower heads and
filling them with the contents of a packet of hot chocolate. (Also
works well with coffee and/or tea bags.)

2) Right before room inspections, Jim also discovered that if
he took an EMPTY (large and preferably Lay's) bag of potato chips,
filled it with shaving cream, slid the open end under the victim's
door, then stomped hard on the other end, pieces of chips and
shaving cream would cover everything. [If anyone attempts to repeat
this, place one foot on the back end of the bag BEFORE you stomp;
otherwise you may blow everything all over yourself, the hall,
etc...]

3) My personal favorite was the old Saran-Wrap the commode. Would do
that 2 or 3 days in a row. After every one was aware what was going
on, and was checking for saran wrap, I'd quit. All were looking for
Saran Wrap, and _nothing_ else. So then, my prank begins: I would
take 2 McDonald's ketchup (and/or mustard, mayo, Taco Bell sauce,
etc...) packages and carefully cut off ONE corner of each so that
there was barely a pinhole-sized opening [slightly larger opening
required with lumpy taco and relish sauces]. Then I'd put one of
these packages under each of the front "feet" of the toilet seats,
hole pointing BACK and IN. Amazingly foul language could be elicited
from "Christian" college students 8^)

[Editor's Note: Matt actually has quite a collection of these; I'll
save the rest for future "Practical Jokes" Collages. Stay tuned!
</vs>]

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

SUBJ: Annual Internet Cleaning

It's that time again!

As many of you know, each year the Internet must be shut down for 24
hours in order to allow us to clean it. The cleaning process, which
eliminates dead email and inactive ftp, www and gopher sites, allows
for a better working and faster Internet.

This year, the cleaning process will take place from 12:01 a.m.. GMT
on April 1 until 12:01 a.m. GMT on April 2 (the time least likely to
interfere with ongoing work). During that 24-hour period, five
powerful Internet search engines situated around the world will
search the Internet and delete any data that they find.

In order to protect your valuable data from deletion we ask that you
do the following:

    1. Disconnect all terminals and local area networks from
    their Internet connections.

    2. Shut down all Internet servers, or disconnect them from
    the Internet.

    3. Disconnect all disks and hard drives from any connections
    to the Internet.

    4. Refrain from connecting any computer to the Internet in
    any way.

We understand the inconvenience that this may cause some Internet
users, and we apologize. However, we are certain that any
inconveniences will be more than made up for by the increased speed
and efficiency of the Internet, once it has been cleared of
electronic flotsam and jetsam.

We thank you for your cooperation.

Kim Dereksen
Network Information Center
Network Solutions, Inc.
Reston, Virginia
<http://www.internic.net/>

********************************************************************
 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/>,
forward any HumourNet posting to <leave-humournet@lyris.net>, or see
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.

Also: Be *SURE* to remove the footer (with your e-mail address)
from this message before forwarding it!

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.
********************************************************************
</collage392>