Conference thebay::joyoflex

    The city of Gomorrah is famous for sexual depravation, but as
    a difference with Sodom, we ignore the precise nature of the vices
    they practiced there. For more details, see topic 654. 

    One can reasonably assume that it involved some extensive usage
    of the phallic organ.
    We know that Gommorah later became a centre for the production of
    asphalt. I don't want to speculate about the reasons why they chose
    to produce asphalt rather than anything else, but clearly there
    must be some link between the 2 successive specialities of the city.

    At the moment we don't know all the technical details, but the
    existence of such a relation is clearly demonstrated by the obvious
    connection between the words PHALlus and asPHALt.
    
    roger

        re:             <<< Note 655.1 by YIPPEE::LIRON >>>


	Roger,

	Why do you have to reduce everything to a phallusophical
	discussion?

	Delia

    Re .1 (Roger):
    
    Error.
    
    >We know that Gommorah later became a centre for the production of
    >asphalt. I don't want to speculate about the reasons why they chose
    >to produce asphalt rather than anything else, but clearly there
    >must be some link between the 2 successive specialities of the city.
     
    Certainly, though "phallus" isn't part of the word.  "Asphalt"
    is phonetically equivalent to "ass fault," meaning an improper
    ultlization of the tokus.  
    
    See how simple these things are? 
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    
    I thought the etymological smutticism derived from the pronunciation
    of asphault as 'ass felt'. No bawdiness intended.
    
    Richard.

    re .3. .4
    
    Now I understand ! 
    
    Thanks, folks. They never teach you the pratical 
    language at school.
    I knew something would come out of all this.
    
     roger    

    Moral:  It doesn't pay to be too subtle in a multi-lingual society.
    
    One for Roger:  "Cic�ron! C'est Poincar�!"
    
    If you don't get that one, I give up. :-) :-)
    
    Jeff.

    	I think the idea is worth continuing, so...
    
    	As everyone knows, most of the fur articles labeled "rabbit" are
    actually based on pet cats, obtained from professional cat hunters who
    operate at midnight in Suburbia.
    
    	Now this hunting is not an easy job. The best pelts come from the
    most pampered and overfed pets, which are not interested in poisoned
    fish. A shotgun tends to wake up the owners, and even a bow and arrow
    tends to make a nasty hole in the pelt.
    
    	The solution was a Y shaped piece of wood, with elastic between two
    of the prongs. This, and a suitably sized stone, allows the
    cat-a-pelter to stun his victim at some distance without damage to the
    fur or noise. The derivation of the name of his weapon is obvious.

Boston. An intriguing name, isn't it? Well, let me explain.

It's Dutch. As you all know, the Dutch were very active back in the days that
cities were founded in New England. Only our daily pastime here in Europe
(fighting the English, and losing every now and then ;-)) resulted in
anglicizing some of the names over there. New Amsterdam became New York, and New
England... well... {sigh} that's another story...

But Boston is our invention. The word is derived from the Dutch verb "barsten",
which means: "to burst", "to crack", "to split". There is a Dutch expression
(its use has become quite uncivilized now) saying "we gaan te barsten".
Literally, "we are going to burst", meaning "we will not survive".

This expression was used by the Dutch sailors when they were heading for Boston.
As you all know, there are lots of rocks and cliffs in the water before the
coast of Boston; it was very dangerous at that time to enter Boston's harbor. So
the Dutch spoke out loud what everybody was thinking. The anglophones
misunderstood, and thought they had given the name of "barsten" to that area;
and they started using it as such. "Boston"

By the way: knowing the real derivation of the word, you all now understand why
the Bostonians pronounce the name of their city as they do (something like
"Baaaah-ston"). It's equal to the pronunciation of the word "barsten" in one of
Holland's dialects....

Arie

    In the earliest days, vehicles on tracks were pulled by horses.
    An inventor who didn't want to see equines pulling multiple cars
    announced his intention of developing a mechanism that would relieve
    them of the toil.
    
    A frontiersman visiting his shop asked him whether he was doing
    his development because he would make a lot of money from it.
    
    The inventor said, no; he was merely trying to make things easier
    for horses.
    
    "That's a loco motive," said the frontiersman, thus dubbing foreverr
    tha thing on a train furrthest from the caboose.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr. 

    Re: .8  Arie, that's brilliant!  ��n pilsje voor jou.
    					^
    					(he wins a beer)
    
    Now I know why a smattering of Dutch helps to understand the
    Bostonians.
    
    Jeff (who can't think of anything at the moment)

    Re .8 - then how was the Boston in Lincolnshire, England named?
    If I recall, it is also a (small) port. The hostess in the TWA
    Ambassador lounge at Logan (Boston, USA) airport once told me that
    a sailor who was supposed to go to Boston, England, turned up at
    Boston, USA.
    
    BTW, there is a district in Lincolnshire called Holland ... they
    grow a lot of tulips there :-)

    re .11
    
    That's easy ...

    The resemblance of the names of Boston Mass and Boston Lincs is
    purely co-incidental.
    
    Boston Lincs is a famous fishing port, known also as Boston Spa,
    the home of the British National Lending Library where they have
    just about every book ever printed.
    
    As you can see this town is good for both relaxation in the spas
    and for the availability of reading matter.  So, the fishing boat
    owners never go out on their boats, preferring instead to hire
    skippers as well as crews.  Out on the boats, during fishing seasons,
    all the workers were out in the boats, leaving their Bosses back
    in Town.  So all these fishermen referred to their town as the
    Bosses Town which in very short order was shortened to Bosstown
    and then Boston.
    
    Then to give the place some class, and trying to get tourists to
    visit, like most spa towns, they added Spa to the name.
    
    That is the derivation of Boston Spa, Lincolnshire.
    
    Stuart

Guys,

 I work at a large customer, on-site, delivering custom software. During
the day I occasionally use a Kermit-like utility to dial out to a DEC
terminal server and log in and check my mail and if it's lunchtime I will
sometimes take the opportunity ro catch up on my recreational Noting.
Sometimes the people I report to here will stop by my cubicle and chat and
glance over my shoulder at what's going on on the Enet. I think that on
balance this is a good thing, given that I am really careful not to expose any
company-confidential stuff; they are really intrigued by the broad range
of information that gets shared so easily, the kind of thing we take for
granted here within DEC that is very foreign to many corporate cultures.

 So this afternoon I checked in to this Conference during a chat with the
woman who is monitoring my project and found myself exposing screen after
screen of lame jokes about phalluses, ass faults, and such pre-adolescent
coprolalia to her bemused inspection. The vagaries of local processor speed
being what they are, nothing short of turning off the terminal would clear
the display.

 Dirty jokes are for kids. Given the staggering rates these people pay for
my professional services, I do not want them to think that I work for a
company staffed by sniggering children.

 If you MUST get your jollies this way, please at least learn to include a
form feed in your text, O.K.? Thanks.

-John

Re: .13

Little enough retribution for your violation of company policy.  If you're
at a customer site stay out of the notesfiles.  

					>>>==>PStJTT

    Re .13
    
    If you chose to read these notes files, that's one thing.  If you
    read them on customers' sites that's another.  And if you read them
    when customers are looking over your shoulder then that is entirely
    your problem.
    
    For example ... If you like watching X movies and your wife catches
    you, is it the movie companies fault for making the movie ?
    
    If you want to read these notes .... read them IN PRIVATE ... if
    you dislike the content don't read this conference.  You can rest
    assured that if people step over the line, our moderators will
    deal appropriately with the matter.

    I was informed by the moderator of one of the NOTESfiles that certain
    customers were officially allowed to use (some of) them.

 O.K., I didn't mean to spoil anyone's fun. Really. But I'm feeling a
little misunderstood myself.
 I'm fully aware of the policy about Internal Use Only and I don't think
I have violated it by reading Notes from a customer site. I don't give
out information. I don't read work-related conferences in the presence of
customers. We could easily argue the point, but I hope nobody wants to
make this an issue of Corporate Notes Policy, because every time the
Policy Police are asked to settle something like this it's bad news
for the Noting community.
 All I'm really asking for is a little common courtesy about off-color
postings. It could, after all, have been my wife or my mother or my kid
looking over my shoulder. And the dirty-movies analogy falls short in that
"Next Unseen" doesn't let me select what's going to show up on the screen;
it's as if all the movies at the local video store came in a black box
labelled "MOVIE".
 The Usenet has a convention whereby postings in questionable taste are
encoded in rot13 (rotate-13-characters) and can be decoded and read by
anyone who wants to do so. A simple form-feed and a sentence to the
effect of "low-grade humor follows<FF>:" is all I'm suggesting. And I
realize all the arguments about no-accounting-for-taste and
don't-tell-me-what-I-can't-say, and I'm not about to make up a list of
no-no words. But most of the people I hang around with have a sense of
when to lower their voices.

-John

    Re: .17
    
    I agree.
    
    twe

    re .17
    
    While I am not disagreeing that maybe smuttiness is potentially
    offensive, one thing I suppose that we must all remember is that
    the acceptability of smutty humour does vary from society to society.
    
    Just watch Benny Hill (the unexpurgated version) You see it normally
    on UK TV, what we see in N. AM. is heavily censored and cut.
    
    My movie analogy is valid.  If you want to watch such movies you
    don't do it if there is a chance of your wife walking in.  If
    you want to read notes files, you don't do it if the customer is
    likely to walk in.  You don't read notes in the office if your boss
    is likely to walk in, do you ?

    What I was trying to say is that you cannot blame the notes if you
    are using them a little carelessly.  On the other hand, a little
    more respect and acceptance of the varying world-wide standards
    of noters would be a good idea by all of us.
    
    Stuart    

    Regardless of whether there is a possibility of customers, wives, kids
    etc., getting sight of this or other notes files, there were probably
    quite a few Digital employees offended by the explicit terminology
    used.  I saw the potential humour in the innocent statement originally
    made, but at least I tried to be subtle about it, leaving readers to
    draw their own inferences.
    
    Jeff.

    
    Great. Let's get the mods to be more censorious, and while we're at it,
    let's take a closer look at the literature syllabus in our schools,
    newspapers that 'wives or kids' might read (!!!), and our own perhaps
    patronising, maybe sexist, or even misguided reactions.
    
    Richard.
    

    Re: .21  You should re-read my response.  I said nothing about
    externally-imposed censorship.  Read or write what you like, and
    I'll do the same.
    
    My use of 'wives' was merely as one class in a set of classes of reader
    that had already been used by others.  If you read me in context,
    you'll see that its use (by me) was not sexist or patronising.
    
    Jeff.

"Wives and kids" don't buy it.  They're still a violation of the Internal Use
Only unless they are employees.  That employees might be offended is a valid
argument, but I don't think ANYTHING written so far in this file is as strong
as what can be found in TV, movies or on the street.  In fact, my casual verbal
reply to this issue would be much stronger than anything written so far.

I would say rather than defend hypothetical people we each stick to worrying
about ourselves.  If we personally are offended, then it's time to make the
decision to stand and fight or hit the NEXT/UNSEEN key.  Let the imagined take
care of themselves.

Like the case of Salman Rushdie, or Madonna's "Like a Prayer" video, we've
already endowed the note with far more attention that it ever waranted.

					>>>==>PStJTT

    We all know about the link between -cens- words and burning - `incense'
    is an obvious example (I use the word `link' deliberately, but that's
    another story).
    
    The derivation of `censor' [and back-formations like `censure'] is
    therefore obvious. Someone who objected to - or was _incensed_ by -
    a book, burnt it.  Pope Adrian VII, feared by many a well-read
    cleric, was commonly referred to as Hadrianus Libricensor. There
    are libricensors in Bradford to this day.
    
    More recently, things other than books (plays, films, songs and so on)
    had to be consigned [there's another one: `ignis' meaning fire; see
    what I've got myself into] to the flames; so libricensor became
    plain `censor'.
    
    b
    

    An oar uses an oarlock as a fulcrum so that it has a point to rotate
    about when propelling a boat.  A two-bladed cutting instrument uses
    a common fulcrum for its back-and-forth strokinglike motion.  Since
    there is no separate bulkhead for each blade, the cutting tool was
    considered as something at a plane _within_ that of oars, and took
    the prefix "cis" (for "within") to name the implement "cis-oars."
    
    The evolution to "scissors" was but a simple step.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    The word 'recursion' is a delightful example of self-referential
    evolution.  It derives from an older word, which was (of course)
    'recursion'.
    
    Ian.

    Richard Nixon had a friend named Robert Abplanalp. More than one
    person has told me that "Abplanalp" means "from the flat Alps."
    
    -John

    Re 13
    
    At the risk of causing further offense by having to nearly use the
    problem words, it seems to me you are in part a victim of the
    difference between 'proper' English and 'American' English.
    
    Thus, on the east side of the Atlantic an ass is a quadruped, hairy,
    mammal, not too dissimilar to a donkey.
    
    This in turn gives rise to the Limerick, which I found in a collection
    made by Isaac Asimov, (yes really), and is probably quoted elsewhere but
    which I'll paraphrase anyway...
                                               
	    There was a young girl from Madras,        
	    Who had the most beautiful ass,            
		It is not as you think,                    
	        Soft, ...., ...., and pink,                
	    But was grey, had long ears, and ate grass. 

    Meanwhile on the east side of the Atlantic the offensive (?) word is made
    by re-arranging the following letters:
                    
    		AERS
    
    Does this diminish your dilemma?
    
    Nick

    G'day,
    
    re .25
    
    In naval parlance, the oarlock may be referred to as
    
    'thole-pins', 'rowlock' (pronounced rollock) or simply 'crutch'
    
    depending on shape, action and style of boat.
    
    I wonder what cutting instrument might be derived from each of these
    ;-)  ??
    
    
    derek
    

Another logical derivation.

"Diet" is a contraction of "die-eat", of course.

Arie

    Once upon a time, there was a village where the wise-man would
    teach his craft to his son.  After a while, an enormous store
    of knowledge was accumulated.  Information about how to interpret
    the stars, to see when to plant, and to understand the old
    legends where all held by the current wise-man.
    
    In the course of the generations of wise men, a great one emerged.
    His name was Richard, or as everyone simply called him, Dick.
    There was only one dissappoint though -- he had no son to teach.
    He though long and hard on the matter and finally resolved that
    his son would be a book.  Not just any book, no, his son/book would
    be the ultimate compendium of all lore, teachings, and knowledge.
    Years of effort went into the production of "Harry" as the book
    was affectionately called.
    
    Though Dick's life was long and fruitful, eventually came the day
    of his death.  "Who shall we ask," called the villages, "now that
    our wise man is dead?"  Silence.  Finally a small voice suggested
    the answer: "We could look it up in the Dick's son Harry..."
    
    (dictionary     groan!)

    Way back in the early days of motoring cars tended to be for the
    rich, the poor just making do with Shanks' pony (or not even that
    if Shanks happened to be using it).  The rich, as the term suggests,
    liked to buy expensive opulent luxurious extravagant cars, the better
    to impress the neighbours with.
    
    In the UK, Mr Rolls and Mr Royce had this market cornered.  Their
    cars couldn't be beaten for quality, style and image.  Herbert Austin,
    although a maker of smaller and less expensive vehicles, had always
    harboured a dream of building a car to see off the Rolls Royces.
    It was going to be the smoothest, the most expensive, the most
    powerful, in fact the absolute epitome of automotive engineering
    at the time.  He had decided that the car would have to be completely
    gold plated, with commemorative gold chains and medallions for the
    owners to wear whilst driving it.  Just so as not to keep anybody
    guessing, the price of the car would be displayed on the roof in
    flashing lights.  The name of the car? It was to be...
    
    
    
    The Austin Tatious.

Tenure, that employment condition that teachers enjoy after a sufficient
time on the job, comes from a corruption of the amount of time required:
ten years.   (Well, that's how long it was where I went to school.)

Dave C.