Recycling

[brian]

[Xjmt]

We had about 75-80 new users since Monday, with varying gmail addresses, but IPs that traced to China. New user posts have to be approved by a mod, so we could see them but you couldn't. All of their posts were junk. All purged now.

For the time being, new user registration is disabled.

I didn't even know this was going on. Thanks for the silent repair job!

[AnneB]

Apparently their posts were hidden from everyone except admins, because they required approval. And not many of them posted.

[Henry J]

23) Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

24) Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

25) 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. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. 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 supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

26) Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire 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.

27) Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. 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.

28) 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.

29) The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't have any children.

30) 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. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

31) The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

----

Henry

[Henry J]

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Rich Cook
*****

Henry

[lswot]

[Henry J]

Optimism: The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. ... It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) - The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

*****

Henry

[Henry J]

*****For all of you that can't see the value of Daylight savings time:

September 1999, Jerusalem.

In most parts of the world, the switch away from Daylight Savings Time proceeds smoothly. But the time change raised havoc with Palestinian terrorists this year.

Israel insisted on a premature switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time to accommodate a week of pre-sunrise prayers. Palestinians refused to live on "Zionist Time."
Two weeks of scheduling havoc ensued. Nobody knew the "correct" time. At precisely 5:30pm on Sunday, two coordinated car bombs exploded in different cities, killing three terrorists who were transporting the bombs. It was initially believed that the devices had been detonated prematurely by klutzy amateurs. A closer look revealed the truth behind the explosions. The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to detonate on Daylight Savings Time. But the confused drivers had already switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists to their untimely demises.

*****

[lswot]

So much for the twelve....you know....probably can't say that word, here.

Anyone have the correct time?

[Xjmt]

"Does anybody really know what time it is?" Better check with Chicago Transit Authority.

[Henry J]

WHAT MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME!

My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE - "If you're going to kill each other, do it outside - I just finished cleaning!"

My mother taught me RELIGION - "You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL: "If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

My mother taught me LOGIC: "Because I said so, that's why."

My mother taught me FORESIGHT - "Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

My mother taught me IRONY - "Keep crying and I'll *give* you something to cry about."

My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS - "Shut your mouth and eat your supper!"

My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM -"Will you *look* at the dirt on the back of your neck!"

My mother taught me about STAMINA - "You'll sit there 'til all that spinach is finished."

My mother taught me about WEATHER - "It looks as if a tornado swept through your room."

My mother taught me how to solve PHYSICS PROBLEMS - "If I yelled because I saw a meteor coming toward you; would you listen then?"

My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY - "If I've told you once, I've told you a million times - Don't exaggerate!!!"

My mother taught me THE CIRCLE OF LIFE -"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."

My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION - "Stop acting like your father!"

My mother taught me about ENVY - "There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do!"

*****

Henry

[Henry J]

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat minor.

When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she'd dye.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.

*****

[Henry J]

*****

Thank you for calling VeriCom Customer Care. If you are calling from a touch-tone phone, press or say, "One."

If you are calling from a rotary-dial phone, please stay on the line while a customer care representative makes mocking, derisive faces.

Para asistencia en espa�ol, go to South America* and try your call again.

*****

*But not Brazil, of course.

Henry

[lswot]

[Henry J]

Subject: English?
This little treatise on the lovely language we share is only for the brave.
It was passed on by a linguist, the original author unknown. Peruse at your leisure, English lovers.

Reasons why the English language is so hard to learn:
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor is there ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible

PS Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"?

*****

Henry