Conference turris::womannotes-v5

    Question:  Why were there only 49 contestants for the "Miss Ebonics 
    U.S.A." Pageant??
    
    Answer: No contestant wanted to wear a banner that said, "Idaho"! 

    
    		?
    
    
    
    
    E

    OK who is going to be brave enough to explain it to E?

    Jamie.

    
    ??  too
    
    Sharon

    I'll try...                 
    		and please remember this is a joke...
    
    
    	>background music-- Rap-- >street shot of city neighborhood--
    accent on the "hood"
    
    		woman in satin dress, clinging tightly-- with sash "Idaho"
    	draped from shoulder to opposite hip leans on lamp post...
    
    	Car drives by-- young man leans out and askes--
    
    				"You da 'ho?"
    
    
    	how did I do?
    	Jan
                                                                  

    If you be wearin' dat banner,
    You be sayin' you de ho!
    
    *I* ain't no ho, so I ain't sayin' I de ho.  :-)
    
    Leslie

It got a lot easier when I managed to trawl deeply enough to remember what
ebonics meant!

//atp

    
    OK maybe this is a US thing :} - what does ebonics mean anyway?
    
    Sharon

re Note 106.197 by KERNEL::WYETHS:

>     OK maybe this is a US thing :} - what does ebonics mean anyway?
  
        "Ebonics" is a name some have given to afro-american street
        slang, a variant of English (of course, almost all Americans
        speak a variant of English :-).

        Some public schools in the US (typically in urban areas) have
        proposed using ebonics in some way to improve the
        communication between students and teachers.

        Bob

    I understand the word 'ebonics' is a contraction of sorts, short for 
    EBOny phoNICS.

    ... to set up one's own SNARF?
    
    :-)
    
    Darryl
    

>
    ... to set up one's own SNARF?
>
	That term is not in my Amer. Heritage Dict.  Is that, perhaps,
	GEEKonics?

		(%^))=  Dick

    I see.  Well, could the title of this note please be remembered when
    people post jokes?
    
    E

    
    I'm with E on this one.  I have the definition of "ebonics" and Someone
    explained the joke but I just can't see the funny side which I why I
    said it must be a US thing - it doesn't carry across the pond very well.
    
    ho hum
    
    Sharon

    onics is taken from phONICS...a bastardation of the word...that 
    is a process in America that creates new words!!!

	How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

	Two.  One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub 
	with brightly colored machine tools.

    With all due respect I humbly post a note on the death of Pop N. Fresh.
    He always seemed so cheerful too! 
    
    =====================================================================
      NOTED DOUGH BOY DIES
    
      Veteran Pillsbury spokesman Pop N. Fresh died Wednesday of a severe
      yeast infection. He was 71. He was buried Friday in one of the
      biggest funerals in years. Dozens of celebrities turned out including Mrs.
      Butterworth, the California Raisins, Hungry Jack, Betty Crocker, and
      the Hostess Twinkies.  The graveside was piled high with flours, as
      longtime friend Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy, describing Fresh as 
      a man who  "never knew he was kneaded".
    
      Fresh rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with
      turnovers. He was not considered a smart cookie, and wasted much of
      his dough on half-baked schemes. Still, even as a crusty old man, he was
      a roll model to millions. Fresh is survived by his second wife. They
      had two children, and one in the oven.....
    
          

    groan

>      Veteran Pillsbury spokesman Pop N. Fresh died Wednesday of a severe
>      yeast infection.

	Please note that this is NOT an indication you should add Lotrimin to
your bread dough!
	(Nobody asked, but I worry....)

		Dick (%^))=

    
    If Oprah Winfrey married Depak Chopra, she'd be Oprah Chopra.
    
    If Sondra Locke married Elliott Ness, then divorced him to marry Herman
    Munster, she'd become Sondra Locke Ness Munster?
    

A BRIEF HISTORY OF USER INTERFACES

	Thousands of years ago, back in Paleolithic times, user interfaces
were very primitive.  They essentially consisted of a thick, wooden club
that was used to "access" your enemy's brains.  Simple but effective, this
interface has since been adopted by the famed BLAZEMONGER "Customer
Service" Department.

	At first, there was little or no standardization; users had to
learn entirely new methods of "access" for human enemies, mammoths,
mastodons, Saber-C tigers, etc.  But as time went on, people settled on two
basic modes of use:

	(A)	Run as fast as you can in a straight line, bashing everything
		in sight.

	(B)	Stand in one place, swinging the club wildly in all
		directions.

These 2 modes became so popular that they were given names that have
survived to this day:  "sequential access" and "random access."

	This went on for centuries, with users happily "accessing" each
others' bodily parts with bigger and bigger clubs, until the 20th century,
when the COMPUTER was invented.  Tired of crushing each other's skulls,
users flocked to the new invention, eager to put their talents to new uses,
like playing video games and building "Star Wars" missile systems.

	The first computer user interface consisted of a large button on
the front panel, labeled "0".  By pressing this button repeatedly, users
could "program" the computer to do all kinds of tasks.  Sadly, none of
these programs worked, and the scientists could not figure out why.
Then, in 1962, some dweeb finally had the idea to add a "1" button,
and the Computer Age officially began.

	But pressing "0" and "1" buttons was not anybody's favorite
pastime, so some other dweeb invented the computer terminal.  Thanks to
this clever device, with over 50 different keys, users were able to
create bugs and cause crashes dozens of times faster than before.
But at least the hardware was now in place, so it was time to address the
software issues of user interfaces.

	First, there was the command-line interface.  This allowed users
to type a line of text representing a "command", press the RETURN key, and
receive a response like "0x38754: ERROR_NOTEXT_PETUNIA".  Thanks to this
handy software tool, the suicide rate rose almost overnight.

	But in the mid 1970's, the clever folks at AT&T invented the UNIX
"shell".  This was a SIGNIFICANT advance over ordinary command-line
interfaces, as the following example shows:

	ORDINARY COMMAND-LINE INTERFACE:

		type myfile
		0x9852: ERROR_FILE_LACTOSE_ANAL

	UNIX SHELL:

		$ cat myfile
		Segmentation fault - core dumped

	For many years, command-line interfaces dominated the computer market.
Smart computer buyers began to compare the power of different operating
systems by how much they let you tailor the command-line prompt.  For
example, my friend John would only use computers that let him set the
prompt to:

		Suction?

Nobody knew why.  Eventually, John was given a job in the Federal Government.

	But these years of happy command-lining were fated to end.  Behind
the scenes, those clever folks at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto useR interfaCes)
were creating a completely graphic user interface.  We modern computer users
are familiar with windows, icons, and clicking, but the first attempts at
Xerox PARC were quite different from this.  For example, the early version
of the "mouse" was shaped more like a semi-automatic machine gun.  To select
an icon, users would point it at the screen, click the button, and blast the
icon to pieces.  This was great fun, and kept the Xerox programmers amused
for months.  Eventually, the Xerox hardware engineers developed a device
more like the modern mouse, and the programmers used that instead -- point,
click, and the icon blows up.  Alternatively, you could drag the icon around
the screen, smearing blood and guts all over the place.

	After a few years of fun and games, some dweeb at Xerox PARC finally
had the idea that the icons could be used to represent FILES.  WOW!!!  The
world had many responses to the Xerox breakthrough.  Computer users
congratulated Xerox for this brilliant manuever.  The President of the
United Nations pinned a medal right on the Xerox building!  And Apple
Computer stole the idea outright and created the Macintosh.

	The "Mac" truly brought computing power to the common people.  Even
the most naive, ignorant Mac user was able, with a simple mouseclick, to
cause a spectacular crash.  This same philosophy has stayed with the machine
through the years.  The most recent operating system version is called
"System 7", which to me sounds like a bad science-fiction TV show, and it
has many new and exciting features.  One of the most novel features is the
"Help Balloon" mode, which allows the user to see what anything on the
screen is thinking to itself.  Unfortunately, most computer icons and menu
items are very boring thinkers, so the balloons usually say things like "I
wonder when the user will click on me" or "Will you PLEASE move me away from
the 'HyperMoose' icon -- it smells really bad!"

	In 1985, two new machines with GUI's appeared on the market:
the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga.  The ST's graphic user interface
is called "GEM", which stands for "Graphic User Interface".  Although
initially popular, the ST has died a slow death, partly due to operating
system bugs, such as the infamous "40 folder limit".  If the user tried
to create more than 40 subdirectories inside a directory, Jack Tramiel
would come to his house and whack him on the head with a thick, wooden
club.  This caused permanent braindamage in many ST users, and they can
still be found to this day saying things on the Net like "Tramiel is God"
and "Amigas can't multitask".

	The Commodore Amiga was introduced with version 1.0 of its
system software.  This combined a great CLI, a great GUI, and the
awesome ability to crash 12 times per hour.  Following this success,
versions 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 were released rapidly over a short period of
only 25 years.

	But the real Amiga breakthrough came with the introduction of
Amiga OS 2.04.  Originally, this was available only on Amiga 3000's
sold in Albania to certified developers who knew the secret password and
Marc Barrett's social security number; but after a mere 400 years, it was
made available to the public.

	OS 2.04 was the first version to make the GUI "Workbench" truly
usable.  In previous versions, dragging an icon with the mouse required the
user to hold down seven or eight different keys simultaneously while dancing
the "Funky Chicken".  In addition, not all files had icons, meaning that the
Workbench could not access them.  But thanks to version 2.04, every file
now has over FOUR HUNDRED different icons, for a totally streamlined
and efficient interface.


SHELLS VS. GUI'S

	With both shells and GUI's now in existence, each has its fans and
enemies.  Proponents of GUI's say they can do ANYTHING as well as shells can.
In fact, street corners in major cities are often occupied by these people,
stopping random folks as they pass by, and saying things like "I can do that
in FEWER than THREE mouse-clicks!!"  Currently, there is legislation pending
that will make such comments punishable by heavy fines and/or death.

	On the other hand, proponents of shells say that GUI's are a waste
of time.  They commonly cite examples like the "delete wildcard" problem.
>From birth, all shell users are able to type ridiculously complicated
"delete" commands like the following:

		1>  delete #?.(a|A?)*&-2^5%%*.*vavoom!

which says, of course, to delete all files named #?.(a|A?)*&-2^5%%*.*vavoom!
"Let's see you do THAT with a GUI!" they cry.  The GUI users are silent
about this, mainly because they are all out doing useful work instead,
like blowing up icons with a mouse.

	In any event, most people today admit that the ease-of-use of a shell
FAR exceeds the "thick wooden club" interface of Paleolithic times.  But
designers haven't stopped working on the problem of friendlier and more
useful interfaces.  So we now have...


MORE MODERN USER INTERFACES

	Extended keyboards.  Touch screens.  5-button joysticks.  Virtual
reality.  MIDI synthesizers.  Light pens.  Cardboard boxes.  Hand grenades.
Canned tuna.  Vaginal warts.  All of these concepts have affected the way
people use computers.  Thanks to modern research, many new and "hybrid"
interfaces have been developed.  The following is a brief description
of some of the more interesting ones.

(1)	Point 'n hit-return

		Clicking on the icon inserts text into the command line,
		which can then be edited.  Press RETURN when done.

(2)	Type 'n click

		The user types a command.  Every key pressed on the keyboard
		causes an icon to be displayed on the screen.  When finished
		typing, drag select or double-click the entire set of icons.
		Or just drag them into the trashcan... whichever is more
		efficient.

(3)	Point 'n spit

		Instead of a mouse, the user chews a large wad of tobacco
		or a small, dead animal.  To activate an icon, merely
		spit at the screen.

(4)	The pepperoni pizza interface

		The screen contains an image of a large pizza.  The crust
		represents the operating system, the cheese is the windowing
		system, and the toppings are the individual files.  Using
		a digital pizza cutter, the user hacks off a piece of the
		pizza and deposits it into an onscreen "mouth" which
		then digests the information.  A resounding belch comes
		from the internal disk drive, and it is ready for the
		next command.

(5)	The BLAZEMONGER interface

		This is, of course, the ULTIMATE interface.  It consists of
		a hunk of raw meat that is hurled with high velocity at a
		"touch screen".  If it hits the right icon, the user is
		rewarded by NOT having his/her nipples torn off with
		tweezers.


CONCLUSIONS

	That ends our little tour of user interface history.  This should
clear up all the .advocacy arguments from the past 3 or 4 months.

	If you are interested in learning more about user interface history
and comparisons, I suggest that you check out some of the following
references:

	o	"The History of User Interface Design", by Harold Dweeb,
		Linda Dweeb, and the Dweeb-ettes.

	o	"Shell Design", by Ima Clam.

	o	"I'm a User... I'm a Loser... I'm a Mac Plus Chooser", by
		The Steve Miller/Steve Jobs Band.

	o	"Deleting Files:  It's Not Just For Shells Anymore",
		by Peter Norton and Oliver North.

	o	"Really, Really, REALLY Graphic User Interfaces", by Adolf
		Hitler and BLAZEMONGER INCORPORATED.

	o	"UI's for U and I", by the cast of Sesame Street.

                                                        Dan

 //////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
| Dan Barrett -- Dept of Computer Science, Lederle Graduate Research Center |
| University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA  01003  --  [email protected] |
 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////////////////////////////////
---
Copyright 1992 by Daniel J. Barrett.  All rights reserved.
This article may be freely distributed as long as it is distributed in its
entirety.  It may not be included in any publication without the written
permission of the author.

Is anyone familiar with the book + cd called 'Grunt Pigorian Chant'?  What is 
it, pigs snorting the chants instead of the usual human voices intoning them?  
I saw it in a store on a recent trip but didn't buy it, and now I'm thinking my
daughter might like it.  I think it's by Sandra Boynton. Mainly I'm wondering, 
how funny is it? 

Thanks,

D.

    Actually, much of the singing is in Pig Latin...

From: 	BULMASH.COM Humor Server[SMTP:[email protected]]
Sent: 	Thursday, February 13, 1997 3:45 AM
To: 	Humor List
Subject: 	BULMASH.COM - Humor Column - ASCII - Feb 13, 1997

----------------------------------------------------------------------
                   THE BULMASH.COM HUMOR COLUMN

                      http://www.bulmash.com

                      February 13, 1997 ISSUE
          Copyright 1997 - Greg Bulmash - All Rights Reserved
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Well folks...

Valentine's day is tomorrow.  Ugh.  Even if I did have a girlfriend, I 
wouldn't have had time for her during the last few weeks of craziness, 
so tomorrow would have been spent kissing a body part lower than her 
lips (and on the opposite side) to try to get forgiveness.  Maybe it's 
a good thing that I'm single.

Anyhoo, last year's Valentine's Day column and Post Valentine's Day 
columns have turned out in the last 12 months to be a couple of my 
more popular pieces, so I'll be re-running them this week and next as a 
sort of tradition.  I hope you'll enjoy them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

              NEXT ON THE TEENAGE MAKE-OUT DOUBLE-FEATURE
                            by Greg Bulmash


From all of us who aren't in love to all of you couples out there, I
have one message...  _Cut it out!_

Forgive me for my cynicism, but we all know it's not gonna last.  Sure,
you go around for a while with that stupid grin on your faces, talking
baby talk to each other, kissing in malls.  But in a few months where
are you going to be?  Married?  Living together?  Noooo...  You'll be in
the bathroom of some bar, on your knees, with your best single friend
grabbing a handful of your hair to keep your face from touching the
bowl.

We have to endure not hearing from you for weeks.  Then, when we get you
out alone, you're getting up every thirty minutes to call home and say
"No, I love _you_ more."  At least this is a pleasant respite from
listening to you talk about when your significant other said or did the
_sweetest_ thing.  But what do we get in return for putting up with
this?  Puke duty at the local saloon?  If only life was that fair.

"She's got this cousin... great personality.  Really good looking once
you get past the harelip, goiter, and glass eye."  And the great capper,
"he/she just got over a really bad break-up, so be nice."

And you do so direly want us to be great friends with your new flame.
You set up a special evening so we can get to know this love of your
life.  "You two have so much in common..."  Like what?  We both have all
our own teeth?  Neither of us is a cloned Velociraptor?  We've both been
to Burbank?  The reality is that we disagree on everything from politics
to religion to whether or not "Bikini Babes from Venus" left so many
unanswered questions that a sequel was really necessary to fill in the
gaps.  The only thing we do have in common is that by the end of the
night we're both ready to ask "what the hell were you thinking when you
hooked up with that person?"

Okay, so maybe this time it's gonna work.  Perhaps the days of puke duty
are over.  Perhaps you've even learned not to fix us up.  But this is
only a portion of what you inflict upon the world when you're in love.
Yes, you know what I'm talking about.  Better known by their acronym,
PDA, public displays of affection are the nation's second leading cause
of single people ending up on rooftops with high-powered rifles.  The
leading cause is jobs at the post office, but that's another discussion
entirely.

Oh, sure, it all seems sweet and endearing, but when you refer to that
person in your life as "punkin" you are actually calling them a round,
orange member of the squash family.  And I don't get this whole thing
with giving cutesy nicknames or pet names to each others' genitalia
either.  I've always been told it's harder to eat something after you've
named it.

Have you yet realized how much you couples annoy your single friends?
Have I yet made my case for declaring anyone who falls in love incapable
of managing their affairs with a modicum of sensibility?

But then I remember the last time I fell in love.  I remember exactly
how I behaved.  And I think sometimes that if falling in love makes you
stupid, I want to be an idiot for the rest of my life.  So, as
Valentine's day approaches and passes, my message to couples out there
is to realize how lucky you are.  And as you spend that special evening
together and you look into the eyes of that person who has made you feel
like you went from a half to a whole, I just want you to remember these
three little words... get a room.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW TO CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

E-mail: [email protected]
Fax: (562) 431-0455
Snail: Greg Bulmash, P.O. Box 2598, Seal Beach, CA 90740-1598  USA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

    
    A girl asks her boyfriend to come over and have dinner with her
    parents.  And since this is such a big event, the girl also
    announces that afterwards, she would like to go out and have sex for
    the first time.  Well, the boy is absolutely ecstatic because he too is
    a virgin.
    To be prepared, he takes a trip to the pharmacy to get some condoms.
    The pharmacist helps the boy for about an hour and tells him
    everything there is to know about condoms and sex.  At the
    register, the pharmacist asks the boy how many condoms he'd like to
    buy, asingle, a 3-pack, a 10-pack or the family pack.  The boy insists
    on the family pack because he "knows" he will be rather busy, it
    being his first time and all.
    That night, he arrives at the girlfriends and is taken directly to the
    dinner table where the girl's parents are seated.  The boy
    quickly offers to say grace and bows his head.
    A minute passes.  The boy is deep in prayer with his head down.
    Two minutes pass.  Still no movement.  Finally, after eight
    minutes of silence with his head down, the girlfriend leans over
    and whispers to her boyfriend, "I had no idea you were this
    religious."  The boy turns, and whispers back, "I had no idea
    your father was a pharmacist.

    (*8
    

That reminds me of a supposedly true story told by my college roomate about
a friend of his. (Back in the pre-sexual-revolution 1950's.)
	That college freshman had a roomate who was very excited, one
weekend, because his hometown girlfriend was being brought for a college
visit by her mother.  In a great mood, he went off to the lavatory to shower
and shave.  Returning to the room, feeling might chipper, he bounced in
the door, naked, waving his 'dong' and yelling "bang, bang, you're dead"...

...much to the amazement of not only his roomie, but also his girlfriend
and mom, who had arrived only a moment earlier!

    
          "How To Keep A Healthy Level of Insanity in the Office"
    
    Put a chair facing a printer, sit there all day and tell people you're
    waiting for your document.
    
    Arrive at a meeting late, say you're sorry, but you didn't have time
    for lunch, and you're going to be nibbling during the meeting. During
    the meeting eat 5 entire raw potatoes.
    
    Insist that your e-mail address be [women]
    "[email protected]" or [men]
    "[email protected]"
    
    Every time someone asks you to do something, ask them to sign a waiver.
    
    Every time someone asks you to do something, ask them if they want
    fries with that. 
    
    Send email to yourself engaging yourself in an intelligent debate about
    the co-worker and ask her to settle the disagreement.  
    
          

    Yesterday whilst driving back from the hospital I was listening to BBC
    WS on the car radio. They were interviewing Arthur C. Clark, as this
    month is the month HAL was supposed to have first been powered up.

    He told a rather amusing tale about a convention he had been at
    recently to mark the event. 

    They had a competition to find the best "First Words" spoken by HAL
    when he was first booted up.

    Arthur's contribution was, "Gentlemen I feel my mind is growing!"
    This was a parody on his last words, "I feel my mind is going

    The winning entry was, "Gentlemen I have taken the liberty of removing
    Windows95 from the hard drive."

    I was laughing so hard I found it difficult to drive.   
    
    Jamie. 
          

    During a visit to the local zoo you enter a room that contains three
    primates. In alphabetical order they are... 

    An ape with an axe.

    A gorilla with a gun.

    And a monkey with a monkey wrench.

    Question. Who is the most intelligent primate in the room? 

    With any luck, me.
    
    
    E

    Huh, and I thought the answer had something to do with Windows NT!
    
    Chuck

    
    Tell us Jamie!
    

    
    I think it's E, too 8^).
    

    I'm off for a week, I'll give you the answer when I get back.
    
    Jamie.

    
    NO NO NO....don't do this to me.....

    re .219
    
    The answer is supposed to be "you", but it's got to be one of the
    others; if "you" had any brains you wouldn't be standing around in a
    room with three armed politicians.

    
    Okay Paul.  Thanks.  I never get jokes like that one.  I was looking
    for some sort of "play on words".
    
    -Nancy

    >I think it's E, too 8^).
    
    
    (*8
    
    
    E