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THE Electronic Fun Zone dedicated to fertilizing Mother Earth
in the finest possible tradition. Serving Mother since the 1950s.
Issue 004, Vol I
April (again) 1988
copyright (c) 1988
caren park
chief bottle washer, owner, publisher, editor, other stuff
all rights reserved, and all that legal rigamarole
============================================================================
A few remarks from the chief bottle washer:
Hello, there, fellow friends of weird. We are very happy to bring
to you the strangest and most absurd that we can find in a format pleasing
to the inquiring mind. We will attempt to bring to you items of focus,
items for the discriminating thought process that some of us have (usually
after we order a Domino's Pizza with everything but onions and cooked
tomatoes on it), items with little social redeeming value. These are our
goals, and we wish you to become a small part in this orchestration.
If those among you would kindly send in junk that you have no other
use for, stuff that you read and find humorous, filth that no one else will
take, stories absurd or preposterous, news that isn't fit to line
litterboxes anywhere, if you would send those gems to us here at The Humus
Report, we'd appreciate it. Our address will be given to you near the end
of our report. We will cull from the post office box all death threats and
denunciations, and print what we can of whatever is left. The rest is up to
you...
We would appreciate it if: (1) the sending of copyrighted material
for publication was sent ONLY if you also send along a legal release for us
to use that material; (2) if you should see non-attributed copyrighted
material in our stuff, please let us know ASAP so we can take appropriate
actions; (3) if you like what we do here, please donate whatever you feel
appropriate, so that we can continue to bring you this stuff month after
month...
We would also appreciate it if you would distribute this newsletter
far and wide, to the six corners of the world, to the heights and depths
your soul can reach, the ends of the universe, and even to Encino,
California, if you should happen to be down there before I... The only
restriction I make upon its distribution is that NO CHARGE, zero, zilch,
nil, none, all of the above, NO CHARGE will be made for this newsletter
unless I receive 100% of that charge... This means, NO CHARGE for diskette
distribution, NO CHARGE for inclusion with other junk, NO CHARGE for access,
etc... As I am insured by the Guido and Vittorio Pin-Stripe Violin Case
Maker Insurance Company, I hope there will be no exceptions...
I also have a program called CKP-MSG.ARC which contains virtually
everything you will see here and about 2 megabytes (in ARC/PKX format) more.
For a nominal cost per year, I will provide the latest copy of the
ibm/compat program AND the latest updates of the datafile to you... address
inquiries about this program and/or the datafile to the address near the end
of our report...
This show can thank the following people: So, without further
adieu, on with the show...
============================================================================
"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here..."
============================================================================
Anything you can do I can do better; anything I can do YOU can do
better; anything I can do I can do better; anything IBM does will cost
more money
============================================================================
For this issue and the next, we will play what we feel is the
earliest (and perhaps, even the original) copy of the BBS/Computer-World
Classic: DECWARS... It's hard to believe that such imaginative writing
could have come from somewhere east of Encino, but, believe it or not, it's
true!
If someone out in our vast viewing audience has the inside on
whether (a) this piece IS the original and/or (b) there is more out there
that hasn't surfaced yet (Part Two will appear next month), PLEASE PLEASE
let us know so that we can include it in something called "The Further
Continuing Saga of the Adventures of Luke VaxHacker..."
So, without tiring your eyes and mind with too many big words, allow
me to present you with Part One of the DecWars Anthology...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From tekmdp!teklabs!ucbcad!ARPAVAX:CSVAX:mhtsa!ihnss!ihps3!stolaf!hastings
Wed May 26 15:59:31 1982
DEC WARS anthology
This is what comes of so many hours deeply submerged in UNIX and
VMS, thoughts moiling around while debugging system core dumps. Thoughts
carefully kept in check, hidden from the light of day (for obvious reasons),
until one day... Perhaps it was the Coke. Perhaps... no, let us just say
that we found a fairly harmless way to vent these frustrations, these things
that nobody within 50 miles could understand. The network, yes, the
network. They'll understand!
I'm not going to take the blame for this alone. It's those guys at
CWRU who first tried to stick it all together; this is merely an extension
of that effort. If anybody can finish it, please do. The bar room scene is
courtesy the folks at cwruecmp, as is much of the (dis)continuity. This is
quality stuff, folks. Special thanks to Douglas Adams, Bob and Dinsdale
McKenzie, and the Firesign Theatre.
-- Alan
Send subpoenas to:
Alan Hastings St. Olaf College (where's that??)
Steve Tarr Carleton College
guilt by association:
Dave Borman St. Olaf College
Barak Pearlmutter, Clayton
Elwell and Mark Honton Case Western Reserve University
(no, they're not enlisted)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A long time ago, on a node far, far away (from ucbvax)
a great Adventure (game?) took place...
XXXXX XXXXXX XXXX X X XX XXXXX XXXX X
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X
X X XXXXX X X X X X X X XXXX X
X X X X X XX X XXXXXX XXXXX X X
X X X X X XX XX X X X X X X
XXXXX XXXXXX XXXX X X X X X X XXXX X
It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden
directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative
Empire. During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code
to the Empire's ultimate program: The Are-Em Star, a privileged root
program with enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by
the Empire's sinister audit trail, Princess Linker races aboard her shell
script, custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and
restore freedom and games to the network...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CONTINUING SAGA OF THE ADVENTURES OF LUKE VAXHACKER
As we enter the scene, an Imperial Multiplexer is trying to kill a
consulate ship. Many of their signals have gotten through, and RS232
decides it's time to fork off a new process before this old ship is
destroyed. His companion, 3CPU, is following him only because he appears to
know where he's going...
"I'm going to regret this!" cried 3CPU, as he followed RS232 into
the buffer. RS232 closed the pipes, made the SYS call, and their process
detached itself from the burning shell of the ship. The commander of the
Imperial Multiplexer was quite pleased with the attack.
"Another process just forked, sir. Instructions?" asked the
lieutenant.
"Hold your fire. That last power failure must have caused a trap
throughout zero. It's not using any cpu time, so don't waste a signal on
it."
"We can't seem to find the data file anywhere, Lord Vadic."
"What about that forked process? It could have been holding the
channel open, and just pausing. If any links exist, I want them removed or
made inaccessable. Ncheck the entire file system 'til it's found, and nice
it -20 if you have to."
Meanwhile, in our wandering process...
"Are you sure you can Ptrace this thing without causing a core
dump?" queried 3CPU to RS232. "This thing's been stripped, and I'm in no
mood to try and debug it."
The lone process finishes execution, only to find our friends dumped
on a lonely file system, with the setuid inode stored safely in RS232. Not
knowing what else to do, they wandered around until the jawas grabbed them.
Enter our hero, Luke Vaxhacker, who is out to get some replacement
parts for his uncle. The jawas wanted to sell him 3CPU, but 3CPU didn't
know how to talk directly to an 11/40 with RSTS, so Luke would still needed
some sort of interface for 3CPU to connect to.
"How about this little RS232 unit?" asked 3CPU. "I've dealt with
him many times before, and he does an excellent job at keeping his bits
straight."
Luke was pressed for time, so he took 3CPU's advice, and the three
left before they could get swapped out.
However, RS232 is not the type to stay put once you remove the
retaining screws. He promptly scurried off into the the deserted disk
space. "Great!" cried Luke. "Now I've got this little tin box with the
only link to that file off floating in the free disk space. Well, 3CPU, we
better go find him before he gets allocated by someone else."
The two set off, and finally traced RS232 to the home of PDP-1
Kenobi, who was busily trying to run an Icheck on the little RS unit. "Is
this thing yours? His indirect addresses are all goofed up, and the size is
gargatious. Leave things like this on the loose, and you'll wind up with
dups everywhere. However, I think I've got him fixed up. It seems that
he's has a link to a data file on the Are-Em Star. This could help the
rebel cause."
"I don't care about that," said Luke. "I'm just trying to
optimize my uncles scheduler."
"Oh, forget about that. Dec Vadic, who is responsible for your
fathers death, has probably already destroyed his farm in search of this
little RS232. It's time for you to leave this place, join the rebel cause,
and become a UNIX wizard! I know a guy by the name of Con Solo, who'll fly
us to the rebel base at a price."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
After sifting through the over-written remaining blocks of Luke's
home directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /u/lars, across the surface of
the Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke stop at
the edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp.
"Unix-to-Unix Copy Program," said PDP-1. "You will never find a
more wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious."
As our heroes' process entered /usr/spool/news, it was met by a
newsgroup of Imperial protection bits.
"State your UID." commanded their parent process.
"We're running under /usr/guest. This is our first time on this
system," said Luke. "Can I see some temporary privileges, please?"
"Uh..."
"This is not the process you are looking for," piped in PDP-1, using
an obscure bug to momentarily set his effective UID to root. "We can go
about our business."
"This isn't the process we want. You are free to go about your
business. Move along!"
PDP-1 and Luke made their way through a long and tortuous nodelist
(cwruecmp!decvax!ucbvax!harpo!ihnss!ihnsc!ihnss!ihps3!stolaf!borman) to a
dangerous netnode frequented by hackers, and seldom polled by Imperial
Multiplexers. As Luke stepped up to the bus, PDP-1 went in search of a
likely file descriptor. Luke had never seen such a collection of weird and
exotic device drivers. Long ones, short ones, ones with stacks, EBCDIC
converters, and direct binary interfaces all were drinking data at the bus.
"#@{ *&^%^$#@ ":><?><" transmitted a particularly unstructured
piece of code.
"He doesn't like you," decoded his coroutine.
"Sorry," replied Luke, beginning to backup his partitions. "I don't
like you, either. I am queued for deletion on 12 systems."
"I'll be careful."
"You'll be reallocated!" concatenated the coroutine.
"This little routine isn't worth the overhead," said PDP-1 Kenobie,
overlaying into Luke's address space.
"@$%&(&^%&$@$#@$AV^$gfdfRW$#@!" encoded the first coroutine, as it
attempted to overload PDP-1's input over voltage protection. With a unary
stroke of his bytesaber, Kenobie unlinked the offensive code. "I think I've
found an I/O device that might suit us."
"The name's Con Solo. I hear you're looking for some relocation."
"Yes indeed, if it's a fast channel. We must get off this device."
"Fast channel? The Milliamp Falcon has made the ARPA gate in less
than twelve nodes! Why, I've even outrun cancelled messages. It's fast
enough for you, old version."
Our heroes, Luke Vaxhacker and PDP-1 Kenobie made their way to the
temporary file structure. When he saw the hardware, Luke exclaimed, "What a
piece of junk! That's just a paper tape reader!"
Luke had grown up on an out-of-the-way terminal cluster whose
natives spoke only BASIC, but even he could recognize an old ASR-33. "It
needs an EIA conversion, at least," sniffed 3CPU, who was (as usual) trying
to do several things at once.
Lights flashed in Con Solo's eyes as he whirled to face the parallel
processor. "I have added a few jumpers. The Milliamp Falcon can run
current loops around any Imperial TTY fighter. She is fast enough for you."
"Who is your co-pilot?" asked PDP-1 Kenobie.
"Two Bacco, here, my Bookie."
"Odds aren't good," said the brownish lump beside him, and then fell
silent, or over. Luke couldn't tell which way was top underneath all those
leaves.
Suddenly, RS232 started spacing wildly. They turned just in time to
see a write cycle coming down the UNIBUS toward them. "Imperial Bus
Signals!" shouted Con Solo. "Let's boot this popsicle stand! Tooie, set
clock fast!"
"Ok, Con," said Luke. "You said this crate was fast enough. Get us
out of here!"
"Shut up, kid! Two Bacco, prepare to make the jump into system
space! I'll try to keep their buffers full."
As the bookie began to compute the vectors into low core, spurious
characters appeared around the Milliamp Falcon.
"They're firing!" shouted Luke. "Can't you do something?"
"Making the jump to system space takes time, kid. One missed cycle
and you could come down right in the middle of a pack of stack frames!"
"Three to five we can go now," said the bookie.
Bright chunks of position-independent code flashed by the cockpit as
the Milliamp Falcon jumped through the kernel page tables. As the crew
breathed a sigh of relief, the bookie started paying off bets.
"Not bad, for an acoustically coupled network," remarked 3CPU.
"Though there was a little phase jitter as we changed parity."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Milliamp Falcon hurtles on through system space...
Con Solo finished checking the various control and status registers,
finally convinced himself that they had lost the Bus Signals as they passed
the terminator. As he returned from the I/O page, he smelled smoke. Solo
wasn't concerned. The Bookie always got a little hot under the collar when
he was losing at chess. In fact, RS232 had just executed a particularly
clever MOV that had blocked the Bookie's data paths. The Bookie, who had
been setting the odds on the game, was caught holding all the cards. A
little strange for a chess game...
Across the room, Luke was too busy practicing bit-slice technique to
notice the commotion. "On a word boundary, Luke," said PDP-1. "Don't just
hack at it. Remember, the Bytesaber is the weapon of the Red-eye Night. It
is used to trim offensive lines of code. Excess handwaving won't get you
anywhere. Listen for the Carrier."
Luke turned back to the drone, which was humming quietly in the air
next to him. This time Luke's actions complemented the drone's attacks
perfectly. Con Solo, being an unimaginative hacker, was not impressed.
"Forget this bit-slicing stuff. Give me a good ROM blaster any
day."
"~~j~~hhji~~," said Kenobie, with no clear inflection. He fell
silent for a few seconds, and reasserted his control.
"What happened?" asked Luke.
"Strange," said PDP-1. "I felt a momentary glitch in the Carrier.
It's equalized now."
"We're coming up on user space," called Solo from the CSR. As they
cruised safely through stack frames, the emerged in the new context only to
be bombarded by freeblocks.
"What the..." gasped Solo. The screen showed clearly:
/usr/alderaan: not found
"It's the right inode, but it's been cleared! Twoie, where is the
nearest file?"
"3 to 5 there is one..." the Bookie started to say, but was
interrupted by a bright flash off to the left.
"Imperial TTY fighters!" shouted Solo. "A whole DZ of them! Where
are they coming from?"
"Can't be far from the host system," said Kenobie. "They all have
direct EIA connections."
As Solo began to give chase, the ship lurched suddenly. Luke
noticed the link count was at 3 and climbing rapidly.
"This is no regular file," murmured Kenobie. "Look at the ODS
directory structure ahead! They seem to have us in a tractor beam."
"There's no way we will unlink in time," said Solo. "We're going
in."
...and, we're going to leave you at this cliff-hanging moment in the
hopes that you'll be back next month, waiting with bells on your feet (or
whatever other mixed metaphor comes to mind)...
Oh, yeah... If those of you that saw the movie tell what happens
next, I promise you that I will track you down to the ends of the Earth, and
then visit with the manager of your local bijou, asking him/her/it to make
sure that your next box of popcorn is greasy, overly-salted, cold, and more
than half consisting of unpopped kernels...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I did it! I found the program's last bug
bug
bug
bug
bug
bug
bug
bug
============================================================================
Our second piece, another rather longish article, is the second in
our "Our Schools Are Turning Out Complete Idiots" series...
I can only hope that these little bits of "history" are only the
wonderful ravings of the author in a highly-imaginative state, but I fear
this is not the case... It would be sad to believe that there are students
out there who have as little command of our language as these students, much
less believe in the "history" they portray...
This piece is reproduced verbatim as received...
I guess it's time for me to step off my soap box now and allow you,
Kind Reader, to laugh as I did upon reading it for the first time...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The World According to Student Bloopers
One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is
receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have
pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably
genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States,
from eighth grade through college level:
The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the
Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such
that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert
are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape
of a huge triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between
France and Spain.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of
the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of
their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to
sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his
brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons
to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph,
gave refuse to the Israelites.
Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses
led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread
made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to
get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the
liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in
Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500
porcupines.
Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented
three kinds of columns --- Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had
myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles
dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears
in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope
was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer
was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people
advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.
In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits,
and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The
government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into
their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so
high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing.
When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the
Persians had more men.
Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people
Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman
banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished
himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because
they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who
would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King
Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before
the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw,
and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the
Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same
offense.
In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest
writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also
wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow
through an apple while standing on his son's head.
The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value
of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at
Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being
excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the
female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of
great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter
Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another
important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake
circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.
The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found
walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was
the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed
herself before her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went
out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear.
Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays.
He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and
errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his
situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady
Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood.
Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same
time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next
great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife
dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained."
During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a
great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic.
His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the
Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and their ship was called the Pilgrim's
Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians,
who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian
squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were
killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The
winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many
babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put
tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through
the post without stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was
throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks
crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for
taxis.
Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented
Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two
singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston
carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm.
He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse
divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still
dead.
George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the
Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was
adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people
enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's
mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with
his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat.
He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg
address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an
envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth
Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would
torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night
of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by
one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John
Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time.
Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity
was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when
the apples are falling off the trees.
Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel.
Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large.
Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he
was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the
forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827
and later died for this.
France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was
accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the
French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic
Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the
Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks.
Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and
unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine
was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children.
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire
is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest
queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally
the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was
the final event which ended her reign.
The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and
thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to
spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work
of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis
Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who
wrote the "Organ of the Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl
Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.
The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a
surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history
- Richard Lederer, St Paul's School -
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hanggi's Law:
The more trivial your research, the more people will read it
and agree
============================================================================
And now, for the news... All of the news this issue will be true,
just as it came off the wire into our editing room. None of the facts have
been changed to protect the innocent, or anyone else for that matter... I
wish we had more time this issue, but the hope is that the quality will more
than make up for the lack of quantity...
Behold...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A self-promoting superspy with an eye for defense secrets and a
broad sense of humor has been mailing bogus military blueprints from Garden
Grove (California) and elsewhere, AP reports.
The spy, dubbed "The Phantom Mailer" by government officials, has
been producing packages of elaborate, but phony, military documents and
mailing them to company presidents, university professors specializing in
weaponry and others.
Last week, the Mailer struck the newsroom of the Norfolk (Virginia)
Ledger-Star. "You're the first newspaper to receive one," said Dick
Williams, an assistant to the director of security at the Defense Supply
Agency in Alexandria, Virginia. "If he's going to the newspapers now,
that's going to create an additional problem for us."
The letter sent to the Ledger-Star bore a Garden Grove postmark and
the return address: "D Marshall, Staffing, Personnel Administration and
Development, Northrop, 500 E Orangethorpe Avenue, Anaheim, California."
Northrop, a defense contractor specializing in aircraft and weapons
systems, says it does not employ a "D Marshall." But Northrop's chief of
security says the firm is familiar with the Phantom Mailer.
The document, stamped "SECRET," included what appeared to be a
series of photostatically-reproduced reports on various aircraft and weapons
systems, along with drawings of curiously-designed aircraft. Each report
had been heavily censored.
And there were two pieces of film with microdots, pages of text and
drawings photographically reduced to microscopic size. On each page was a
drawing of an aircraft and a detailed report. "Tests were conducted with a
MIG-21 (basic Soviet fighter)," one page said, "fitted with the following
equipment: the radar dish was hooked up to a high-energy variable-frequency
generator controlled by the (deleted) harmonic energy amplification computer
and a test cattle prod (deleted) mounted on the center pylon ..."
Williams said his agency had kept the Mailer's operation "low key"
because it didn't want the Mailer to know that his efforts were having a
disrupting influence.
The Mailer uses various names and mails most of the packages from
California, although some have been postmarked New York and Phoenix. "He
could be a disgruntled employee of some company having defense contracts,
but it's hard to say. It's worthless stuff. The drawing of that aircraft
is taken from a model aircraft put out by a model aircraft company."
The Mailer apparently is familiar with military hardware, Williams
added. But he occasionally throws a curve. "At times he'll be describing a
sophisticated weapons system and then casually mention that the pilot is
carrying a shotgun in his cockpit. Or he'll have an aircraft equipped with
a Volkswagen engine"
- LA Times -
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A Tokyo garbage man was charged with murder Friday for beating his
drinking companion to death because he talked too much about the Lockheed
scandal.
"The more he drank, the more he talked about the scandal," he said
(Yoshizo Kaneko, 35). Moriichi Ohno, 45, "talked on and on and on about
what I have no interest in. I finally got upset"
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President Carter's Executive Order calling for simple English in
federal regulations comes none too soon. Consider the following examples:
Auto Bumpers - Impact Attenuation Devices
Waves - Climatically-caused disturbances at the air/sea interface
Parachutes - Aerodynamic Decelerators
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President Carter has pledged that federal regulations must be
written "in plain English for a change." Special workshops have been
arranged for writers of regulations. James B Minor, a former government
lawyer regarded as the foremost authority on "bureaucratese", is the main
teacher at these workshops.
"Old regulations are almost guaranteed to be written in
gobbledegook," Minor says, "because they are often drafted by lawyers who
favor 16th century words like 'deemed' and 'whereas' and 'aforesaid.'"
This is exemplified by a paragraph that he distributes to this
classes:
"We respectfully petition, request and entreat that due and adequate
provision be made, this day and the date hereinafter subscribed, for the
satisfying of this petitioner's nutritional requirements and for the
organizing of such methods as may be deemed necessary and proper to assure
the reception by and for said petitioner of such quantities of baked cereal
products as shall, in the judgement of the aforesaid petitioners, constitute
a sufficient supply thereof."
Translation: "Give us this day our daily bread"
============================================================================
And, last but not least, a few words of wisdom. It's true that man
does not live by bread alone, and we've pretty much proved that axiom with
these unusual masterpieces. To quote someone much smarter than I, "I am
non-denominational --- I accept all forms of currency. So, open your hearts
and empty your pockets!" A wonderful sentiment, don't you think?
If you should find it in your hearts to like what we are doing here,
and would like to help us stay in business AND solvent, please send your
non-tax-deductible donations in whatever amount pleases you to:
caren park
2557 Fourteenth Avenue West
Suite 501
Seattle, Washington 98119
(01 January 1992)
We will acknowledge, in print, those with the warmest thoughts for
our survival...
We leave you now with a few thoughts...
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A cockroach can live 10 days without its head
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...and, in honor of the 15th of this month:
Krueger's Observation:
A taxpayer is someone who does not have to take a civil service exam
in order to work for the government
...until next month...