Hello Again, All!
Those of you who are old enough may remember an age before
TV reruns, when having a TV show run twice was considered
cheating the audience. In the early days, the networks would pay
for 39 original episodes, then fill the remaining 13 weeks with
other original programs. Boy! They sure got over that in a
hurry. Enter: the TV rerun.
These days, you are pretty lucky if your favorite TV show
makes 18 original episodes per year, which means you'll be seeing
each one a bunch of times. Often enough that even your all-time
favorites can eventually wear out their welcome. You do get the
impression that the networks are still a little embarrassed about
reruns, so they call them "classic episodes" or "encores." Even
though it's still the same old stuff all over again, of course.
While we haven't quite fallen into that trap here at SUNFUN,
we do run the occasional repeat. I've been away from SUNFUN
Central for the past week, so it makes this a perfect time to
rerun a few of the classics. I guess we should call this an
encore episode, but honesty makes me tell you that it really is
still the same old stuff reheated. Still good stuff, I hope.
Thanks this week to the Leung Family: Stanley, Rosana,
Jessica & Michael, for putting me up for the week. And also for
putting up with me from here to Canada and back. Hello also to
the folks back home, especially Carol J. Becwar, who made this
little junket possible. (She's my generous bride, by the way,
not my travel agent.)
Have A Great Week (Again)!
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From: TRADITIONAL FUNNIES 05/27/2001 (#250)
THE WATER BILL...
--------------
When you contract for a service, you had better pay for it.
That's what the Yakama Tribal Council is telling the federal
Bonneville Power Administration. Bonneville runs many of the
dams in Oregon, dams that were, until recently, nearly empty
because of a drought. The same dams that are now making huge
fortunes providing power to California.
With the shadow of drought hanging over the Columbia River
valley last March, the Yakama Indians were approached by BPA to
perform a weather ceremony, which most folks call a "rain dance."
The power administration sent a letter to Yakama Tribal Council
offering to sponsor 'events directed at reducing the impact' of
the drought, which the letter called a "drought mitigation
proposal." Naturally, no government bureaucrat is going to ask
for a rain dance.
Whatever the climatological cotillion was called, the
Yakamas did their "drought mitigation" dance, and the rains came,
helping to refill the dams. And, believing the he who calls the
tune should pay the piper, the Yakamas sent the government a bill
for services rendered, Re: rain. One thing this controversy does
is define the price of precipitation - $32,900, which the Indians
say was their cost in transporting, housing and feeding the
dancers.
"We're still trying to figure out if there's compensation
that could be provided these people who are basically traditional
people who did a service," said Yakama Tribal Council's Randy
Settler.
The BPA does admit that rainfall increased after the March
ceremony, helping to ease the water crisis for it's Columbia
River dams. Now Bonneville Power is afraid they will be stuck
trying to explain to Congress why it committed taxpayer money to
fund what might be considered a tribal religious ceremony. (KATU
Ch.2, Portland, Oregon)
[ And thereby hangs a tale: Many non-Indians believe
that all the Indian tribes have a fairly similar set of
traditions. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As with any other group, traditions tend to reflect the
local environment. Some years ago, when Wisconsin was
going through a serious dry spell, a Madison politician
asked the local Indians if they could do a rain dance.
They looked at him rather perplexed, then informed him
he was looking for some other Indian tribe. The local
Indians had no rain dance, for about the same reason
that the Eskimos have no snow dance; in this area, the
Great Spirit generally sends all the rain anyone could
want. And more. ]
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From: A DOG'S LIFE - 03/18/2001 (#240)
WAG THE DOG...
-----------
There is an old legend that people look like their dogs.
While this isn't quite true, it is pretty clear that people tend
to be surprisingly like their four-footed friends in personality.
Clearly, this is some self-selection to this. I mean, how likely
is it the some tough biker dude is going to be really into
miniature poodles?
According to a study by Canadian psychologist Stanley Coren,
dogs very often match the personalities of their owners, except
that they tend to be more loving, loyal and easier to live with -
- and they wag their tails. The furry ones wag their tails, not
the ones who walk upright.
Coren's book, "Why We Love the Dogs We Do," is the result of
interviews with over 6,000 people who ranked themselves on
extroversion, warmth, dominance and trust. The dogs were ranked
according to their cleverness, independence, friendliness and
steadiness. Hard to say if that's the way the dogs would have
ranked themselves, but apparently no one thought to ask them.
According to Coren, breeds like setters, with their
independent personalities, are best suited for men with low trust
and extroversion scores. You might say that they are the perfect
pets for paranoids. Terriers, on the other hand, were better
companions for humans with dominant personalities. It's no
coincidence, Coren says, that former President Richard Nixon
liked Irish Setters and John F. Kennedy favored Welsh terriers.
I'm not sure this quite explains why poodles were former British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill's favorite breed. Maybe he
liked having someone in the room that always looked sillier than
he did. Coren does claim that dogs individual personalities
really fulfill deep human needs.
"The fact that we treat dogs as part of our social life --
like friends or companions -- is perhaps best shown by the fact
we talk to them," said Coren, a psychology professor at the
University of British Columbia. (Reuters)
[ Because we talk to them? I would guess
that Coren has never been around many people
using computers... ]
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From: A DOG'S LIFE - 03/18/2001 (#240)
"Outside of a dog, a book is probably man's best
friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
- Groucho Marx
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From: WORKING FOR A LIVING - 03/04/2001 (#238)
NOT OH-KAY!
-----------
The town council of Gold Hill, Oregon, voted to fire Police
Chief Katie Holmboe for selling Mary Kay cosmetics out of her
police cruiser while on patrol. Holmboe, who was the town's only
paid police officer, also reportedly required suspects to profess
their faith in God before she would release them. She had
previously announced her belief that some of the criminals she
arrested were possessed.
[ Maybe the devil made her do it? ]
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From: WAXING PHILOSOPHICAL - 02/25/2001 (#237)
"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated,
which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not
become still more complicated."
- Poul Anderson
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From: THE WRITE STUFF - 02/04/2001 (#234)
NIVEN'S LAWS FOR WRITERS
------------------------
- Writers who write for other writers should write letters.
- Never be embarrassed or ashamed by anything you choose to
write.
- Stories to end all stories on a given topic, don't.
- It is a sin to waste the reader's time.
- If you've nothing to say, say it any way you like. If what
you have to say is important and/or difficult to follow, use
the simplest language possible.
- Everybody talks first draft.
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From: THE WRITE STUFF - 02/04/2001 (#234)
"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank piece
of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
- Gene Fowler (1890-1960)
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From: OH, BABY! - 01/14/2001 (#231)
RETRO TECH...
----------
"My son came home from kindergarten on his first
day of school very excited. He told of all the new
kids, the new toys, and all of the daily activities. I
asked if he was good for his teacher? He replied,
'Yes but this other kid wasn't. She got in trouble for
touching the teacher's radio thing.'
"About then, my husband walked into the room, and I
told the story as, 'Some kid got in trouble for touching the
teacher's radio.'
"'No, Mom! The radio thing... The thing that plays
the BIG CD's,' my son corrected.
"It was a record player and my son had no idea what it
was. Enough to make you roll your eyes and feel very old
very fast."
- from the WEB...
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From: ERROR MASSAGES - 01/07/2001 (#230)
LAND OF CONFUSION...
-----------------
Leave it to the French... Feeling continually threatened by
the flood of "English-based" slang from cyberspace, the French
National Academy keeps bailing and trying to pretend that people
are really going to call new web companies, "les start-up," by
anything as clumsy as "jeunes pousses d'enterprises" -- literally
"young sprouts of companies."
The French language police are not only appalled by English,
they even hate the Quebec-French coinage for "Email", "courriel."
In proper French, the Academy decrees, this will only be known as
a "message electronique." Most French just say "mel," anyway.
It's a curious and almost inexplicable backlash, but the
Academy is serious about it. And they have the power to enforce
their decrees, at least to government publications and official
dictionaries. A few of their government approved phrases have
caught on in France, such as "logiciel" for software and
"informatique" for computer science. But both on "le Web" and in
the real world, the English slang seems to be winning overall.
French dictionaries already define the official term "octet" with
its English equivalent -- byte.
And when French President Jacques Chirac visited a group of
new web companies based near the Place de la Republic in Paris,
his press office announced it as a "visite des 12 start-up de
Republic Alley." (Reuters)
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From: SEE YOU NEXT MILLENNIUM! - 12/31/2000 (#229)
SIGNS YOU'VE HAD TOO MUCH OF MODERN LIFE
----------------------------------------
- You just tried to enter your password on the microwave.
Twice. On the second try, it worked.
- You haven't played solitaire with a real deck of cards in at
least a decade.
- Your daughter sells Girl Scout Cookies via her web site.
- She has made more money on the web this year than Amazon.com
and is being considered for an IPO.
- Getting your PDA, smart watch, text pager, laptop and home
computer synchronized consumes more than three hours a week.
- You didn't give your spouse a Valentine's Day card this
year, but you did post one for your Email pals via a web
page.
- A list of 15 phone numbers is required to reach your family
of three. This doesn't even include the nine Email
addresses.
- You drive a wide-tired, four-wheel drive sport-utility
vehicle with a winch, brush bars and a full body pan, just
in case any mountains or jungles suddenly spring up in front
of you while driving the two miles to work.
- The telephone company bothers you at suppertime to offer you
Caller ID Service for your phone line, in order to prevent
being bothered by calls at suppertime.
- You realize with a shock that the new "Best of the Beatles"
CD cost more than all of your original Beatles LP's put
together.
- You page your son's beeper to let him know its time to eat.
He Emails you back from his bedroom to ask "What's for
dinner?"
- If you are offline for more than a day, you start suffering
symptoms of Email withdrawal. Sometimes you phone your ISP
anyway, even when you don't have a computer with you, just
to hear the familiar modem whistle.
- Your idea of being organized is using color-coded Post-it
notes.
- Your daughter just bought a CD of all the records your
college roommate used to play.
- In a week, you recieve twice as many calls from
telemarketers as friends and relatives.
- You check the ingredients of a can of chicken noodle soup to
see if it contains today's bad food item.
- You chat several times a day with a stranger from South
Africa, but you haven't spoken with your next door neighbor
all year.
- Every commercial on television has a web-site address at the
bottom of the screen.
- Your dining room table is now your flat filing cabinet.
- Spending over a dollar for 2 cents worth of water in a half-
cent plastic bottle somehow makes sense to you.
- You buy a computer and a week later it is out of date and
sells for half the price you paid.
- The concept of using paper money to make a purchase now
sounds weird to you.
- You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to
see if anyone is home.
- You buy the low-fat versions of everything, no matter how
much more they cost. Even of products that contain hardly
any fat to begin with.
- You have lost contact with the part of the family that does
not have Email addresses.
- You now consider "second-day air" as being in the same
delivery class as sending something by clipper ship or
carrier pigeon.
- You hear all of your jokes via Email.
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From: WHAT'S YOUR SIGN? 12/17/2000 (#227)
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE...
-------------------------
If the medium is really the message, then a company trying
to show support for U.S. Senate candidate Mark Neumann made a
particularly bad choice.
The John Meyer Construction Company outfitted a red and blue
truck with a fancy white sign reading: "Neumann for Senate."
Unfortunately, it was one of their dump trucks, so the
overall message looked more like Dump Neumann.
Neumann lost. (Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel)
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From: PLOP GOES THE WEASEL AND OTHER TAILS - 12/10/2000 (#226)
INHERITED TRAITS...
----------------
The Queen of England is worried. Of course, there's Charles
and that whole mess, but this time she is worried about the royal
budgerigar birds that have inhabited the grounds of Windsor
Castle since the 1930's. The Queen recently appealed for a stock
of fresh, purebred female birds to help increase the dwindling
number of birds there.
Graham Stone, a fellow stuck with the comic-opera title
"Keeper of the Royal Budgerigars," says that he believes the
problem to be that there hasn't been any fresh blood for decades.
"They seem to have lost the vigor of breeding in the past
two years, because they are getting too inbred," Graham said.
(AFP)
[ His training as a royal servant is
reflected in the fact that he can say this
around the royal family without even a hint
of irony in his voice. ]
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From: ARTIFICIAL STUPIDITY - 11/19/2000 (#223)
"My greatest fear in life is that no-one will remember
me after I'm dead."
- Some dead guy
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From: ARTIFICIAL STUPIDITY - 11/19/2000 (#223)
HE MISSED...
---------
Kesaraporn Duangsawan won 6,000 baht ($138) and a place as
first runner up in the beauty pageant in the central Thai
province of Ratchaburi last week, only to be disqualified on a
technicality.
Kesaranporn was held to be ineligible for the Miss Loy
Krathong Festival Pageant based only on the fact that she was
discovered to be a he. A police officer told reporters some of
the contestants had complained of unfair competition telling
judges that Kesaraporn was actually male. The 22-year-old winner
handed back the money, but asked to keep the "Miss Media" runner-
up sash. (Reuters)
[ I guess that disqualifies him for "Miss
Congeniality," too... ]
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From: POLS, POLLS & POLES - 11/05/2000 (#221)
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SPEAKING...
-----------------------------
Sometimes, politicians say really stupid things. Leave out
the sometimes - OFTEN they say stupid things. How stupid?
"You mean there are two Koreas?"
- U.S. Ambassador designate to
Singapore Richard Kneip, revealing
the depth of his geo-political
understanding in a congressional
hearing.
"This was not a junket in any sense of the word."
- Senator Strom Thurmond (D, SC),
explaining why he billed taxpayers
for airfare on a five-day trip to
the Paris Air Show with his wife,
two children, a next-door neighbor
and eight staff people.
"We've got a strong candidate. I'm trying to think of his
name."
- Democratic National Committee co-
chair Senator Christopher Dodd, on
a memorable candidate (who later
lost)
"There is no prostitution in China; however, we do have some
women who make love for money."
- A Chinese Foreign ministry
spokesperson
"The key in terms of mental [ability] is chess. There's
never been a woman Grand Master chess player. Once you get
one, I'll buy some of the feminism."
- Conservative commentator and
sometimes presidential candidate
Pat Robertson, apparently unaware
that at the time he said this there
were five women who were Grand
Master chess players
"That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a
jackass, and I'm just the one to do it."
- A congressional candidate in Texas.
"We are trying to change the 1974 constitution, whenever
that was passed."
- Representative Donald Ray Kennard
(R, Baton Rouge) during a debate in
the Louisiana legislature
"Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it's gotten into
the wrong hands."
- Senator Jesse Helms (R, NC)
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From: SPY VS. SPY - 10/08/2000 (#217)
A KINDER, GENTLER SECRET POLICE
-------------------------------
With the fall of the old Soviet Union, the pressure is off
both Western and Eastern spy agencies. And it shows.
Recently, General Andrzej Kapkowski, Poland's intelligence
chief, issued new work rules for that country's spies.
From now on, Polish cloak and dagger employees will be
required to work only 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday,
from 8:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. If weekend work is required, the
secret agents will get compensation days.
Also, according to the new regulations, pregnant spies must
not be made to work more than eight hours per day, agents can
only be put "on call" from home four times per month, and anyone
who has to work surveillance missions in bad weather is allowed
to go home two hours early. (AFP)
[ So nowadays, "The Spy Who Came In From The
Cold" gets to go home early? ]
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From: THE CASE OF THE DEFECTIVE DETECTIVE - 09/17/2000 (#214)
MOVE ALONG - I MEAN IT!
----------------------
A rookie police officer was assigned to ride in a cruiser
with an experienced partner. A call came over the car's radio
telling them to disperse some people who were loitering. The
officers drove to the street and observed a small crowd standing
on a corner.
The rookie rolled down his window and said, "Let's get off
the corner."
No one moved, so he barked sharply, "I said, GET OFF THE
CORNER!"
Intimidated, the group of people began to leave, casting
puzzled glances in his direction. Proud of his first official
act, the young policeman turned to his partner and asked, "Well,
how did I do?"
"Pretty good," replied the veteran, "Especially since that
was a bus stop."
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From: "YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN STUPID..." 08/13/2000
(#209)
"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered
minds; our planet is the mental institution of the
universe."
- Johann von Goethe
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From: "YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN STUPID..." 08/13/2000
(#209)
TIMING IS EVERYTHING...
--------------------
Crime is a serious problem in Rio De Janeiro these days.
One of the latest trends is outlaws that hold up bus passengers.
But one bus bandit exhibited record bad timing last month.
After allegedly stealing over $800 from bus passengers at
gunpoint, Jose Roberto Rocha ordered the bus to stop and jumped
off.
At least he chose a good spot for it - right in front of a
square where 410 uniformed police officers were gathered for an
awards ceremony. Dozens of officers chased after Rocha,
including the commanding general, who jumped off of the awards
podium to give chase. Rocha was captured after a short foot
pursuit. (Reuters)
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From: WITHOUT RHYME OR REASON - 10/22/2000 (#219)
A WORD TO HUSBANDS
------------------
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
- Ogden Nash
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© 2002 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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