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More Usenet Humour

Dept. of Heroic Self-Experimentation

I wish to make it clear that this hilarious first-hand account of testing a tazer is not from me (though it could well be, given my own bouts of unstoppable curiosity). Here is “Tom and the Tazer”:

• My wife is fond of saying that my last words on this earth will be something akin to “Well, I have out done myself once again.” No doubt you will see this true story chronicled in a Lifetime movie in the near future. Here goes.
• Last weekend I spied something at the pawn shop that tickled my fancy. I bought something really cool for my wife. The occasion was our 7th anniversary and I was looking for a little something extra for my girl. What I came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket/purse-sized Tazer gun with a clip. For those of you who are not familiar with this product, it is a less-than-lethal stun gun with two metal prongs designed to incapacitate an assailant with a shock of high-voltage, low amperage electricity while you flee to safety. The effects are supposed to be short lived, with no long-term adverse affect on your assailant, but allowing you adequate time to retreat to safety. You simple jab the prongs into your 250 pound tattooed assailant, push the button, and it will render him a slobbering, goggle-eyed, muscle-twitching, whimpering, pencil-necked geek. If you've never seen one of these things in action, then you're truly missing out… way too cool!
• Long story short, I bought the device and brought it home. I loaded two AAA batteries in the darn thing and pushed the button. Nothing! I was so disappointed. Upon reading the instructions (imagine that), I found much to my chagrin that his particular model would not create an arc between the prongs. How disappointing! I do love fire for effect. I learned that if I pushed the button, however, and pressed it against a metal surface that I'd get the blue arc of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs that I was so looking forward to. I did so.
• Awesome!!! Sparks, a blue arc of electricity, and a loud pop!!!
• Yipeeee. I'm easily amused, just for your information, but I have yet to explain to my wife what that burned spot is on the front of the microwave.
• Okay, so I was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn't be all that bad with only two AAA batteries, etc, etc.There I sat in my recliner, our cat looking on intently (trusting little soul), reading the directions (me, not the cat) and thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh and blood target. I must admit I thought about zapping the cat for a fraction of a second and thought better of it. She is such a sweet cat, after all. But, if I was going to give this thing to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised. Am I wrong?
• Was I wrong to think that?
• Seemed reasonable to me at the time. So, there I sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses perched delicately on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, Tazer in the other. The directions said that a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant; a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms and a loss of bodily control; a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water.
• All the while I'm looking at this little device (measuring about 5 inches long, less than 3/4 inch in circumference, pretty cute really, and loaded with two itsy, bitsy AAA batteries) thinking to myself, “no friggin' way!” Friggin' way - trust me, but I'm getting ahead of myself. What happened next is almost beyond description, but I'll do my best. Those of you who know me well have got a pretty good idea of what followed.
• I'm sitting there alone, the cat looking on with her head cocked to one side as if to say, “Don't do it, buddy”, reasoning that a one-second burst from such a tiny lil' ole thing couldn't hurt all that bad (sound, rational thinking under the circumstances, wouldn't you agree?).
• I decided to give myself a one-second burst just for the hell of it. (Note: You know, a bad decision is like hindsight - always twenty-twenty. It is so obvious that it was a bad decision after the fact, even though it seemed so right at the time. Don't ya hate that?) I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and HOLY **** !!!! I'm pretty sure that Jessie Ventura ran in through the front door, picked me up out of that recliner, then body slammed me on the carpet over and over again.
• I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, soaking wet, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position. The cat was standing over me making meow sounds licking my face with that sandpaper tongue undoubtedly thinking to herself, “Do it again, do it again!” (Note: If you ever feel compelled to mug yourself with a Tazer, one note of caution. There is no such thing as a one-second burst when you zap yourself. You're not going to let go of the thing until it is dislodged from your hand by a violent thrashing about on the floor. Then, if you're lucky, you won't stab one of the prongs 1/4" deep in your thigh like I did. SON-OF-A-* that hurt!)
• A minute or so later (I can't be sure, as time was a relative thing at this point), I collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape. My reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. How did they get there??? My triceps, right thigh and both nipples were still twitching. My face felt like it had been shot up with novocaine, as my bottom lip weighed 88 pounds… give or take an ounce or two, I'm pretty sure. Still haven't found my testicles. I'm offering a reward.
• Tom

A Short Introduction to Office Slang

Basic stuff that every office worker needs to know:

• 404: someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message “404 File Not Found”, meaning that the requested document could not be located. “Don't bother asking him … he's 404, man.”
• ADMINISPHERE: the rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are as a rule profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
• BLAMESTORMING: sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
• CHAINSAW CONSULTANT: an outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the top brass with clean hands.
• CHIPS & SALSA: chips = hardware, salsa = software. “Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or your salsa.”
• CLM (Career Limiting Move): used among MICROSERFs to describe ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM.
• CUBE FARM: an office filled with cubicles.
• DILBERTED: to be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip character. “I've been Dilberted again. The old man revised the specs for the fourth time this week.”
• MICROSERFs: strange sect of people who's idea of heaven is to work for Microsoft.
• MOUSE POTATO: the on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
• PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: the fine art of whacking the heck out of an electronic device to get it to work again (try not to dent the case).
• PRAIRIE DOGGING: when someone yells or drops something loudly in a CUBE FARM, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
• SALMON DAY: the experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get scr*wed and die in the end.
• SEAGULL MANAGER: a manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.
• SITCOMs (Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage): what yuppies turn into when they have children and one of the parents stops working to stay home with the kids.
• STARTER MARRIAGE: a short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.
• STRESS PUPPY: a person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
• SWIPED OUT: an ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
• TOURISTS: people who take training classes just to get a vacation from their jobs. “We had three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists.”
• TREEWARE: hacker slang for documentation or other printed material.
• XEROX SUBSIDY: euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.

Random Quotes

Collected here and there; most are simply funny, though one or two are here because they are rather clever.

• Bing-bong. Brimish Rull regret that mumble maz bem dermumble a mir mumble mumble bimble late. Passengers mizzing to mumble rimble mumble are advised to momble mar at murmble. Thank you mor mumble mimbling Brimble mum. Bing-bong. --Gaz on railway announcements in Britain
• We aim to please. Ourselves, mostly, but we do aim to please. --Anthony DeBoer
• Remember — if all you have is an axe, every problem looks like hours of fun. --Frossie
• I'm an apatheist. The question is no longer interesting, and the answer no longer matters. --petro
• Heaven: The Police are English, the Cooks are French, the Mechanics are German, the Lovers are Italian, and the Whole Thing is run by the Swiss. Hell: The Police are German, the Cooks are English, the Mechanics are French, the Lovers are Swiss, and the Whole Thing is run by the Italians.
• Windows users: … are generally regarded as either thieves, people who lost their keys, or just complete morons too stupid to use doors.
• Q: Why do computer scientists confuse Christmas and Halloween? A: Oct 31 == Dec 25
• Error: keyboard not found -- press F1 to continue
• Who the hell is “General Failure” and why is he reading my disk?
• AAAAAA: American Association Against Acronym Abuse Anonymous
• Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 but only for extremely large values of 2.
• There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.

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$updated from: More Usenet Humour.htxt Thu 27 Apr 2017 10:06:48 thomasl (By Thomas Lauer)$