From the Q Files, a subsidiary of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

 "Yes well, confession time.... I design/prog electronic systems
 for a living.  Bought a Sierra estate a few years ago, radio
 had a cassette player built in... ooh goody.  Then I noticed
 it only had a little narrow slot.... oh shit, it only takes
 special tapes.  Drove around for 14 months, cursing that
 rubbishy cassette player.  Then one day Monica was in the car
 as well, said "let's play some tapes", picked up an ordinary
 cassette tape, stuffed the frigging thing in lengthways, and
 off it went!!! I kept my mouth shut, think the steering wheel
 of that Sierra probably still carries my grip marks."



       Some years ago, the famous San Diego Zoo opened a second, 
larger branch called the San Diego Wild Animal Park. The Park is built 
around an enormous open-field enclosure where the animals roam free. 
To see the animals, visitors ride on a monorail called the Wgasa Bush 
Line which circles the enclosure. Here's the true story of how the 
Wgasa Bush Line got its name. 

       They wanted to give the monorail a jazzy, African sounding 
name. So they sent out a memo to a bunch of zoo staffers saying, "What 
shall we call the monorail at the Wild Animal Park?" One of the memos 
came back with "WGASA" written on the bottom. The planners loved it 
and the rest is history. What the planners didn't know was that the 
zoo staffer had not intended to suggest a name. He was using an 
acronym which was popular at the time. It stood for "Who gives a s*** 
anyhow?"



The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as
is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia
still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for
blacks and whites.



[Blah blah blah]...reminds me of a story of the late great Geoff Wilkinson.
It seems that on one rainy day in London, his graduate students decided to
entertain themselves by tossing chunks of potassium out the lab window,
into some puddles on the rooftop 2 floors below them.  An irate professor
(probably a theoretician) saw the fireworks from his office one floor
below, and stormed upstairs to Wilkinson's office.  He announced that
sodium was being thrown out the lab windows, demanded that the guilty
parties be summarily executed, and stormed back out.

Wilkinson confronted his students and demanded to know whether they had
been throwing sodium out the window as charged.  No sir, they replied,
it was potassium.  Wilkinson muttered "Bugger doesn't know his flame
tests..." and dismissed all charges.



Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.



In his legal practice, Abraham Lincoln was never greedy for fees and
discouraged unnecessary litigation. A man came to him in a passion, asking
him to bring a suit for $2.50 against an impoverished debtor. Lincoln tried
to dissuade him, but the man was determined upon revenge. When he say that
the creditor was not to be put off, Lincoln asked for and got $10 as his
legal fee. He gave half of this to the defendant, who thereupon willingly
confessed to the debt and paid up the $2.50, thus settling the matter to the
entire satisfaction of the irate plaintiff.



The Toronto Star has a weekly column by an attorney, consisting of humorous
excerpts from court transcripts. The following appeared a few weeks ago:

In a jury trial in Battleford, Sask., a few decades back, a farmer was
charged with bestiality after he became amorous with one of his cows.

The chief Crown witness, the hired man, testified that he saw his boss place
a milk stool behind the cow, then stand on the stool and take liberties with
the cow. Moments later, the witness said, the cow kicked over the stool and
the farmer fell to the floor of the barn.

Upon hearing this, a farmer in the jury box slapped his thigh and exclaimed,
"They'll do that every time!"

I found this warning on a small utility knife in MIT's lab supply:

Caution. Blade is sharp. Keep out of children.


(This allegedly really happened in Canada. )

Some guy on drugs jumped over a cliff but did not quite succeed in killing
himself. The rescue team tied his unconscious body into a Stokes litter and
proceeded to evacuate by means of a "fixed line flyaway." This means that
the litter is suspended a couple of hundred feet below a helicopter which
then flies to a level place where they can set him down (carefully) and
either load him in the aircraft or otherwise take further care of him. The
patient is accompanied by one attendant tied into the litter.

This patient began to regain consciousness during the flight. Remember he is
flying across the sky and being marginally conscious (as well as probably
still feeling the effects of whatever drug he took) probably doesn't notice
either the helicopter or the cable attaching him to it. The attendant, who
happens to have a nice bushy beard, notices that the patient is starting to
"come around" and in an effort to keep him calm says in his most soothing
voice:

Don't worry, I'll take care of you. My name is Peter.

The effect was somewhat less soothing than hoped for and the attendant
decided that next time he would use a name other than Peter.



Seen listed in the following order, on a
movie marquee in Costa Mesa CA:

"ONE FINE DAY
 MARS ATTACKS
 THE PREACHERS WIFE"




A supposedly true story from:

Bermant, G. (1976). Sexual behavior: Hard times with the Coolidge Effect. In
M. H. Siegel & H. P. Zeigler (Eds.), /Psychological Research: The inside
story/ (pp. 76-103). New York: Harper & Row.

One day the President and Mrs. Coolidge were visiting a government farm.
Soon after their arrival they were taken off on separate tours. When Mrs.
Coolidge passed the chicken pens she paused to ask the man in charge if the
rooster copulates more than once each day. "Dozens of times," was the reply.
"Please tell that to the President," Mrs. Coolidge requested.

When the President passed the pens and was told about the roosters, he
asked, "Same hen every time?" "Oh no, Mr. President, a different one each
time." The President nodded slowly, then said, "Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge."




Overheard at a campus eating establishment:

A guy grumbled at his friend, and then said, "Sorry, I'm in a bad mood
today." The friend asks why, and the guy replies quite mater-of-factly,
"Well, I'm in grad school."



Seen on the side of a garbage truck:

"Satisfaction guaranteed or twice your garbage back."



     Sometime in the early 1900's, P. T. Barnum, the owner of the Barnum &
Bailey circus and originator of the phrase "There's a sucker born
every minute" offered $10,000 in cash to any person who could
thoroughly dupe, or sucker, him.

Barnum was always looking for interesting new acts or novel creatures
to exhibit, and one day he received a letter from a fellow in Maine
who claimed to possess a cherry-colored cat and asked if Barnum were
interested in such a thing for his circus.  Barnum contacted the man
and said yes, if the cat were truly cherry-colored, he'd gladly put it
on display.  Well, a few days later a crate marked "live animal"
arrived for him.
When Barnum opened it, he found a somewhat frightened but otherwise
perfectly ordinary-looking black housecat inside, along with a note which
read:  Maine cherries are black. There's a sucker born every minute...

Thoroughly tickled, Barnum sent the man a check for $10,000.


The following is a humorous story reported in the Manchester Guardian some
time in the late 1970's.

Ben McTaggart, a farmer in the Scottish Highlands, was apprehended by the
local constabulary after a routine inspection of his croft revealed an
illicit whisky still.

McTaggart appeared in court next day to face charges of evading payment of
excise duties and the illegal manufacture of alcoholic spirits. Reviewing
the facts of the case before pronouncing verdict, the magistrate declared -

"Mr McTaggart, you have been found in possession of apparatus commonly used
in the distillation of alcoholic liquors. Although this equipment was
unused, and no trace of spirits could be found on your premises, the intent
of the apparatus should be clear to all, and I am obliged to find you guilty
of all charges brought against you in this court. Before I pronounce
sentence, do you have anything to say in mitigation of your offence?"

McTaggart glowered at the magistrate and replied -

"Your Honour, you can convict me of moonshining just because I have the
equipment, but you'd better convict me of rape as well, because I have the
equipment for that tae!"


       Cranberry Jello is the only jello flavor that comes from real fruit,
not artificial flavoring.



My brother used to be a police officer in Chicago. (He's now a rather
high-up muckity-muck in the police dept., but that's beside the point.) He's
told me some amusing anecdotes from Chicago police-work.

There was one story about people shoveling the snow for a parking space in
front their house. This apparently is a problem for the Chicago police every
winter. What happens is that somebody will park in a nearby parking lot,
then slave away for how ever many hours it takes to shovel out a car-sized
space in front of his house, naturally so he can park his car there. Then he
goes back to the lot to get his car.

When he returns home, he finds that the space has been taken by some _other_
car. He is, well, upset.

What most people do is write nasty notes etc. and place them on the
windshield of the offending vehicle. Where the police get involved, however,
is the occasional case where the individual vents his wrath in somewhat more
violent means. Tires and throats have been slashed over this.

One time a fellow got creative. Instead of doing the usual nasty, he got out
his garden hose and watered the automobile down, really well. I mean, very,
very thoroughly. The water, of course, froze solid. When the owner returned,
instead of a car, he found a car-sized popsicle.

The note on the car read: "You want the space? Here, it's yours until
spring!"



[From The Economist of July 8, page 49 (year?):]

Mensa, the club for "highly intelligent people," advertised a competition in
a children's newspaper--closing date, June 31st.



ST. LOUIS--The winning numbers drawn Tuesday night in the daily Missouri
Lottery Pick 3 game were 9-9-9.

A winning $1 ticket with the numbers in the correct order paid $500; a
winning $1 ticket with the numbers in any order paid $160.

	(From the Blue Springs Examiner, Missouri)



	The little lump of flesh just forward of your ear canal, right next
to your temple, is called a tragus.



This story was told to me by a family friend who is an Illinois State
Trooper. One day he was pulling off an expressway near Chicago. When he
turned onto the street at the end of the ramp, he noticed someone at a
chicken place getting into his car. He placed the bucket of chicken on top
of his car, got in and drove off with the bucket still atop his car.

So the trooper decides to pull him over and perform a community service by
giving the driver his chicken. So he pulled him over, walked up to the car,
pulled the bucket off the roof and offered it to the driver. The driver
looks at the trooper and says, "No thanks, I just bought some."



"The University of Wisconsin presented nearly 4,000 diplomas to graduates in
May, but it took six months for someone to notice that the name of the state
was misspelled 'Wisconson.'"

-- [From The Seattle Times, Saturday, Dec 17th] (Year?)



"The following announcement was made on the PA system while we were browsing
in a local Wal-Mart store:

'Attention Wal-Mart Customers!
We are having a Red Light Special in the women's department!'"



On May 15, 1930, the first airline stewardesses boarded planes with the
following set of instructions, notes an early Stewardess Manual:

- Keep the clock and altimeter wound up.
- Carry a railroad timetable in case the plane is grounded.
- Warn the passengers against throwing their cigars and cigarettes out
the windows.
- Keep an eye on passengers when they go to the lavatory to be sure they
don't mistakenly go out the emergency exit.



	...As heard from a Search and Rescue pilot at Canadian Forces Base
Bagotville, Quebec. It's an apocryphal story that allegedly happened late
one night during bad weather, as heard over the tower radio:

Helicopter Pilot: "Roger, I'm holding at 3000 over  beacon."

Second voice: "NO! You can't be doing that! I'm holding at 3000 over that
beacon!"

(brief pause, then first voice again): "You idiot, you're my co-pilot."



A recent questionnaire sent out in the... uh... "Soviet Union"
contained the questions:

1. Where were you born?
2. Where did you go to school?
3. Where did you attain your majority?
4. Where do you wish to live?

One return provided the following answers:

1. St. Petersburg
2. Petrograd
3. Leningrad
4. St. Petersburg



In an effort to snag more long distance telephone calls (charged to a credit
card or a third number), AT&T reserved the toll-free number 1-800-OPERATOR.
Not to be outdone, and perhaps knowing the public better, MCI reserved the
number 1-800-OPERATER and has been scooping up calls intended for its
arch-rival.



An entomologist at New College, Oxford ("New" because its only a few
centuries old), discovered beetles infesting the oak beams supporting the
roof of the Great Hall. It was fairly urgent that these be replaced before
the roof collapsed--but anyone who has looked at the price of oak lately can
tell you that this was not something the college budget was prepared for.

Since oak from a commercial supplier was out of the question, someone
suggested that the college Forester be sent for. His job was to administer
the various scattered tracts of land that had been deeded to the college
when it was founded. The trustees hoped he might know of suitable trees on
college land.

It turned out that there was indeed a suitable stand of mighty oaks. They
had been planted when the college was founded, and down the centuries each
Forester had told his successor: "You don't cut those oaks; those are for
when the beetles get into the beams in the Main Hall."




     Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the 
Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined. 
            


       On a trip to the South Sea islands, French painter Paul Gauguin
stopped off briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer on
the Panama Canal. 



       The microwave oven was invented after a researcher walked by a
 radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. 



The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe. 



Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England. 




You've probably heard about the Mars Pathfinder probe. Once it landed on
the Red Planet, Pathfinder released the Sojourner Rover, a little
laboratory on wheels. Sojourner cruised about the Martian surface
performing experments. It turns out that Sojourner and Pathfinder 
communicate using two standard, off-the-shelf 9600 baud radio modems. 

According to Jet Propulsion Laboratory program manager Donna Shirley,
the modem manufacturer warned JPL that sending the modem to Mars would
void the warrantee.

(This came from amsat-bb, an email list for amateur radio satellite
enthusiasts).


	The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.



	Spot, Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation, 
was played by six different cats. 
	Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named Livingston. 


Subject: Texas county votes ``hell'' out of hello
                
KINGSVILLE, Texas 
        Heaven-o, how are you?  
         It may take some getting used to, but Kleberg County  
commissioners have thrown their support behind a local man's 
campaign to take the ``hell'' out of hello. 
         County Judge Pete De La Garza said Wednesday that the  
commissioners voted unanimously for a resolution urging the use 
of ``heaven-o'' instead of hello in greetings. 
         ``Is everybody using it? The answer is of course, no. It is  
a very new thing and everybody's a little apprehensive,'' De La 
Garza told Reuters. ``I suppose it's like everything else, once 
you get adjusted to it, you might start using it.'' 
         The idea was spawned by flea market operator Leonoso  
Canales, who told the San Antonio Express-News, ``I see hell in 
hello. It's disguised by the o, but once you see it, it will 
slap you in the face.'' 
         Canales, 56, wanted the commissioners to make heaven-o the  
official greeting of the county, but De La Garza said the 
resolution only supports its optional use. ``We didn't want to 
get into the separation of church and state issue,'' he said. 
         The commissioners gave Canales their support because ``he's  
a local guy,'' but their vote ``has nothing to do with anything 
pious,'' De La Garza said. 
         Canales believes his campaign will gain momentum now that it 

has the weight of officialdom behind it. He now plans to go to 
Texas Gov. George W. Bush to propose heaven-o as the state's 
official greeting. 
         ``I feel we have made history here in Kleberg County and set 

a new precedent,'' he said. 
         The judge said he was not yet accustomed to the new  
greeting, but that he was trying, awkwardly, to use it. 
''Heaven-o, sir. Adios,'' he said at the end of the interview. 



Ratio of RAM needed to run the Space Shuttle's onboard 
computers to that needed to run WordPerfect for 
Windows '95:  1:8



   Boris Karloff is the narrator of the seasonal television special "How 
the Grinch Stole Christmas." 



      THE WORLD'S EASIEST QUIZ

1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?
2) Which country makes Panama hats?
3) From which animal do we get cat-gut?
4) In which month do Russians celebrate the 
    October Revolution?
5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?
6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named 
    after what animal?
7) What was King George VI's first name?
8) What color is a purple finch?
9) Where are Chinese goose-berries from?
10) How long did the Thirty Years War last?

Answers:

     1) 116 years, from 1337 to 1453.
     2) Ecuador.
     3) From sheep and horses.
     4) November.  The Russian calendar was 13 days behind ours.
     5) Squirrel fur.
     6) The Latin name was Insularia Canaria - Island of the Dogs.
     7) Albert.  When he came to the throne in 1936 he respected the
        wish of Queen Victoria that no future king should ever be
        called Albert.
     8) Distinctively crimson.
     9) New Zealand.
    10) Thirty years, of course.  From 1618 to 1648.


The oldest known goldfish lived to 41 years of age. Its name was Fred.


Overheard in a police station:

Indignant drunk: "I demand to know why I have been brought in here!"
Sergeant:        "You were brought here for drinking."
Indignant drunk: "Hey, awright! Gimme a Bud Light!"



        All three major 1996 Presidential candidates, Clinton, Dole and Perot,
        are left-handed.



     The word "queueing" is the only English word with five consecutive vowels.



        "A friend of mine worked as a State Highway patrolman in Wyoming for
several years. Whenever he pulled someone over for speeding, he would
always ask them why they were exceeding the speed limit. If the excuse
was original, he would usually let them off with a warning. He said
the best excuse he ever got was the following:

Him: 'So, why is it that you were doing 70 mph in a 55 zone?'

Driver: 'Well, officer, my wife is going to get pregnant in 30 minutes
and I want to be there when it happens.'"



 "There is a store in Pennsylvainia called Bung Hole Liquors."

   [If you think this is funny, please seek professional help]



        "Internet traffic has been increasing enormously, straining the
infrastructure.  Click here to download a 2.5MB Quicktime movie about it."

                --Seen on the CNN web site.



Associated Press - October 3, 1996

Hamburg, Germany - A Spanish businessman and devout Roman Catholic who
stopped to pray at a church during a trip to Stockholm ended up a
millionaire, the Bild newspaper said Wednesday.

The church was empty except for a coffin containing the remains of a
man, so Eduardo Sierra knelt down and prayed for the deceased for 20
minutes, the Hamburg-based daily said.

Sierra, 35, signed a condolence book after he saw a note saying those
who prayed for the dead should enter their name and address.  He
noticed he was the first to sign.

Several weeks later he got a call from the Swedish capital informing
him he was a millionaire, Bild said.

Jens Svenson, the man he had prayed for, was a 73-year-old real estate
dealer with no close relatives.  He had specified in his will that
"whoever prays for my soul gets all my belongings," Bild said.



  ...Another Day in Tech Support

Customer:  "I'm running Windows '95."
Tech:           "Yes."
Customer:  "My computer isn't working now."
Tech:           "Yes, you said that."



        The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
        Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US
railroads were built by English expatriates.
        Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first
rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad
tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
        Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built
the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building
wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
        Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they
tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old,
long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
        So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads
in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions.
The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts,
which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons,
were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made
for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
        Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United
States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the
original specification (Military Spec) for an Imperial Roman army war
chariot.
        So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what
horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial
Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the
back-ends
of two war horses.

    [Editorial question: Does anyone know exactly how true this is?]


(Heard from an MIT grad, who says it's a classic).

A student pushes a loaded shopping cart up to the express checkout
lane at a Cambridge grocery store.  The cashier looks at the cart,
looks at the student, looks at the "EXPRESS -- EIGHT ITEMS OR LESS"
sign, and says to the student, "Are you from Harvard, where they
don't know how to count?  Or MIT, where they don't know how to read?"



        "The University of Wisconsin presented nearly 4,000 diplomas to
graduates in May, but it took six months for someone to notice that the
name of the state was misspelled 'Wisconson'."

                -- From The Seattle Times, Saturday, Dec 17th, 1988



Caller: "The coffee mug holder on my PC is broken.  How do I get that fixed?"

Technical Support Rep: "The coffee holder?"

Caller: "You know, the cup holder attached to the front of the modem."

Tech Rep: "I'm confused.  Are we talking about a freebie item you were
given at a trade show?"

Caller: "No no no.  It came with the computer.  You push a button and it
slides right out.  It says '4x' on it, whatever that means.  I slammed my
chair into it and accidently snapped it off.  It really was nice and
convenient to have that cup holder there."

(A long silence.)

Tech Rep:  "Um, that's not a cup holder, that's the load drawer to your
CD-ROM."

Caller:  "Oh."



In a recent issue of  "Meat and Poultry" magazine, there was a quote from
"Feathers" (Calif. Poultry Industry)

It seems that the US Federal Aviation Admin has a device to test the strength
of windshields on airplanes.  The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken
at the planes windshield at approximately the same speed the plane flies.

The theory is that if it does not crack, it will survive a real impact from
birds in flight.

It seems the Britsish were interested in testing the windshield of the high
speed trains they are building.  They borrowed the FAA's launcher, loaded the
chicken and fired.  The ballistic chicken went through the windshield, through
the engineers chair (empty, thank heavens), broke an instrument pannel, and
embedded itself into the back wall of the unit.

The British were stunned, and asked the FAA to check if all was done correctly.

The FAA reviewed the experiment and had one recommendation:
"Use a thawed chicken."



Cessna: "Jones tower, Cessna N12345, student pilot, I am out of fuel."

Tower:  "Roger Cessna N12345, reduce airspeed to best glide!!  Do you
have the airfield in sight?!?!!"

Cessna: "Uh...tower, I am on the south ramp; I just want to know where
the fuel truck is."



        Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".

        Disraeli replied, "That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace
your principles or your mistress."



A Lady of high Society was chatting with Winston Churchill at a function, when
she was heard to remark "sir, If you were my Husband, I'd poison you."
His reply was "Madam, if I was your husband, I'd take it."



At a party, a woman once said to to Winston Churchill,  "Mr. Churchill,
you're drunk!"

Churchill's reply: "Yes, madam, and you are ugly. But, in the morning, I
shall be sober."



     A defending attorney was cross examining a coroner.

     The attorney asks, "Before you signed the death certificate had
you taken the man's pulse?"

     The coroner says, "No."

     The attorney then asks, "Did you listen for a heart beat?"

     "No."

     "Did you check for breathing?"

     "No."

     "So when you signed the death certificate you had not taken any steps
     to make sure the man was dead, had you?"

     The coroner, now tired of the brow beating says, "Well, let me put it
     this way. The man's brain was sitting in a jar on my desk, but for all
     I know he could be out there practicing law somewhere."



A lady who was known as Winston Churchill's main rival in parliament was
giving a
speech.  Churchill, with his usual enthusiasm for his rival, dozed off while
the lady was speaking.  She stopped her speech and awoke Sir Winston by
yelling, "Mr. Churchill, must you sleep while I talk?"  Churchill sleepily
replied, "No, ma'am.  I do so purely by choice."



The following is a verbatim transcript of a sentence imposed in 1881 upon a
defendant convicted of murder in the Federal District Court of the
Territory of New Mexico.  The judge who imposed the sentence was a United
States judge.

The trial was held in Taos, NM, in an adobe stable being used as a
temporary courtroom.

"Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales, in a few short weeks it will be
Spring.  The snows of Winter will flee away, and the ice will vanish, and
the air will become soft and balmy.  In short, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar
Gonzales, the annual miracle of the years will awaken and come to pass, but
you won't be there."

"The rivulet will run its soaring course to the sea, the timid desert
flowers will put forth their tender shoots, the glorious valleys of this
imperial domain will blossom as the rose.  Still, you won't be here to
see."

"From every treetop some wild woods songster will carol his mating song,
butterflies will sport in the sunshine, the busy bee will hum happy as it
pursues its accustomed vocation, the gentle breeze will tease the tassels
of the wild grasses, and all nature, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales,
will be glad, but you.  You won't be here to enjoy it because I command the
sheriff or some other officers of the country to lead you out to some
remote spot, swing you by the neck from a notting bough of some sturdy oak,
and let you hang until you are dead."

"And then, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales, I further command that such
officer or officers retire quickly from your dangling corpse, that vultures
may descend from the heavens upon your filthy body until nothing shall
remain but bare, bleached bones of a cold-blooded, copper-colored,
blood-thirsty, throat-cutting, chili-eating, sheep-herding, murdering
son-of-a-bitch!"

United States of America vs Gonzales (1881)
United States District Court, New Mexico Territory Sessions


Prosecutor:  Did you kill the victim?

Defendant:  No, I did not.

Prosecutor:  Do you know what the penalties are for perjury?

Defendant:  Yes, I do.  And they're a hell of a lot better than the
     penalty for murder.



"Response to a wildfire on the south of France's Cote d'Azur was billed as a
marvel of modern fire-fighting technology. Two specially-built flying boats
zoomed in, skimmed the waters of the Mediterranean, scooping vast amounts of
water into their belly tanks, and then dropped the water on the hillside
fire. All was jolly and the wine flowed freely until a body was found in the
ashes.

"The coroner found that the gentleman had apparently fallen from a great
height, suffering serious injuries before being burned to death.  The report
further noted that the victim was wearing a bathing suit, snorkel, and swim
fins."

[Editorial note: I have received notice that this didn't happen.  
Still, it was a good story, wasn't it?]



        Induhvidual:    Now what do I do?

        Tech Support:   What is the prompt on the screen?

        Induhvidual:    It's asking for "Enter Your Last Name."

        Tech Support:   Okay, so type in your last name.

        Induhvidual:    How do you spell that?



 The man at the bar, deep in private thoughts of his own, turned to a
woman just passing and said, "Pardon me, miss, do you happen to have the
time?"

  In a strident voice she responded, "How dare you make such a proposition
to me?"

  The man snapped to attention in surprise and was uncomfortable aware that
every pair of eyes in the place had turned in their direction. He mumbled,
"I just asked the time, miss."

  In a voice even louder, the woman shrieked, "I will call the police if
you say another word!"

  Grabbing his drink, and embarrassed very nearly to death, the man
hastened to the far end of the room and huddled at a table, holding his
breath and wondering how soon he could sneak out the door.

  Not more than half a minute had passed when the woman joined him. In a
quiet voice, she said, "I am terribly sorry, sir, to have embarrassed you,
but I am a psychology student at the university and I am writing a thesis
on the reaction of human beings to sudden shocking statements."

  The man stared at her for three seconds, then he leaned back and
bellowed, "You'll do all that for me all night for just ten dollars?"


(Lifted from a DNRC operative):

        At a goodbye lunch for an old and dear co-worker who is leaving the
        company due to "rightsizing," our manager spoke up and said,
        "This is fun. We should have lunch like this more often."

        Not another word was spoken. We just looked at each other like
        deer staring into the headlights of an approaching truck.



My girlfriend was looking for a used car to buy and showed me an ad she
found in the classifieds. It read : Brand new 1995 Mercedes Benz Slate
blue, loaded , etc. Sell for $150.00. My friend & I were astonished and
decided to call the seller and check it out. The woman selling the car
was glad to show it to us and to our surprise the car was in perfect
condition. We asked the woman, "Whats the catch? Why are you selling
this car for so cheap?" "Well," she said, "its my husband's car
actually, and he recently ran off with his young secretary. I got a
telegram from him last week that read : "In Miami...need money...sell
car."!!

                        - (Last quoted by) Theresa French


        A South African doctor wrote about an epitaph he had seen in a
local cemetery:

        "In memory of my father: gone to join his appendix, his
        tonsils, a kidney, an eardrum, and a leg prematurely
        removed by an intern who needed the experience."


        A Georgia school teacher was disciplined because he denied students
a moment of silence.  He obviously doesn't realize that kids today need
time to think..."Did I remember to bring ammo...to pick up my free
condoms...to drop
off the baby at day care...?"

        --  From the L.A. Times.



There's a story about an MIT student who spent an entire summer going
to the Harvard football field every day wearing a black and white striped
shirt, walking up and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes
throwing birdseed all over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off
the field.  At the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard
home football team, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle,
and the game had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to
get off of the field.  The guy wrote his thesis on this, and graduated.



 It seems a teacher walked into the boy's bathroom and caught four
 boys having a contest to see who could pee highest on the wall.
 The teacher was disgusted and took the boys to the Principal's office.

 Later the teacher told an associate what had happened, and the
 associate asked her what the Principal's reaction was.  She replied:

    "Well, he hit the ceiling!!!"



    "You seem to have more than the average share of intelligence for a man
of your background," sneered the lawyer at a witness on the stand.
    "If I wasn't under oath, I'd return the compliment," replied the witness.



The following is a courtroom exchange between a defense attorney and
a farmer with a bodily injury claim.  It came from a Houston, Texas
insurance agent.

Attorney: "At the scene of the accident, did you tell the constable
you had never felt better in your life?"

Farmer: "That's right."

Attorney: "Well, then, how is it that you are now claiming you were
seriously injured when my client's auto hit your wagon?"

Farmer: "When the constable arrived, he went over to my horse, who
had a broken leg, and shot him.  Then he went over to Rover, my dog,
who was all banged up, and shot him.  When he asked me how I felt, I
just thought under the circumstances, it was a wise choice of words
to say I've never felt better in my life."



There were in a country two very large monopolies.

The larger of the two had the following record: the Vietnam War,
Watergate, double-digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages,
bankrupt airlines, and the 8-cent postcard.

The second was responsible for such things as the transistor,
the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
satellite.

Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the telephone
business?


True Microsoft story

I once got an especially helpful reply to a question I asked on Microsoft's
on-line tech support service. I wrote back to thank them for a complete and
concise reply, and said how much I appreciated it.

The next day I had a response:

"We are looking into the problem and will contact you with a solution as
soon as possible."




Carlson was charged with stealing a Mercedes Benz, and after a long
trial, the jury aquitted him. Later that day Carlson came back
to the judge who had presided at the hearing.
    "Your honor," he said, "I wanna get out a warrant for that
dirty lawyer of mine."
    "Why ?" asked the judge. "He won your aquittal. What do you
want to have him arrested for ?"
    "Well, your honor," replied Carlson, "I didn't have the money to pay
his fee, so he went and took the car I stole."