Humor

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Humor

In a world where we spend much of our time making fun at our employers, co-workers, clients, and politicians, it's nice to take a break and poke fun at ourselves. This page contains jabs, jibes, japes, slashes, and barbs at our noble profession and hobby: the silicon-chasing geek. These items were either emailed to me or found on the USENET newsgroup alt.humor.best-of-usenet. Since truth in sometimes stranger (and funnier) than fiction, you'll find frightfully funny true-life stories of geeks up to their hip-waders in it on my computers web pages.

But before we start I want to share with you bruceab@teleport.com's wonderful parody on Dr Bronner's advertising methods:

Encrypt! Encrypt! OK! All-One-Key-Steganography-Privacy!
God's law prevents decryption above 1042 bytes - Exceptions? None!

And I'd like to point out that I'm hosting Simon Travaglia's Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH), the earliest vicious geek in-jokes I've come across.

Geekish
  101 ways to abuse USENET
  I laughed so hard that I teared up. Of course you and I have never done any of these posting faux pas, but you'll recognise others.
  30 Signs That Technology Has Taken Over Your Life
  How to tell if you're a geek. Oh, like the fact that you're reading these pages doesn't already tell you the ugly truth.
  Absence makes the hard drive fonder
  The Geek Squad meets the cast and crew of Gilligan's Island.
  Alice's USENET Flame
  Not to be missed! A parody of Arlo Guthrie's well-known song.
  Bloatzilla
  This was the second April Fool's Day joke that I wrote and posted to USENET. Netscape to license Microsoft Word 6 for inclusion in Navigator 3.5?
  CU-SeeMe Lite (humor)
  Of course you can run Cornell's CU-SeeMe over a 300 baud acoustic coupler, if you've got CU-SeeMe Lite.
  Digital Beer
  A refreshing snack of the future.
  Douglas Adams on Windows 95
  Douglas Adams - the author of the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy - expresses his opinions about Windows 95.
  Flame Form
  A handy Flame Form for putting your e-enemies in their place.
  Honors Rhapsody
  A geek parody of the late Freddie Mercury's song Bohemian Rhapsody entitled Honors Rhapsody.
  How to Deal With A Terribly Dissapointing Computer Dealer
  If the car companies had a technical support help line...
  Hunting Elephants
  How different techno-castes would hunt elephants. Pre-Dilbert, but in the same vein. On the money, though.
  If Dr. Seuss wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation
  Can you just imagine the result if Dr Seuss wrote a Star Trek  episode?
  La Boite Bleue
  Translated from the memoirs of Jean Turing-VonNeuman (a minor 19th century post-impressionist programmer).
  Lance Detweiler & The Theory of Nymity
  Sad humor. How our technical world can wear away at some of us.
  Monty Python Dead Server Sketch
  Life on the Internet (and being an Internet service provider) seems often like a role in a very bad comedy sketch. With that in mind, please enjoy the Monty Python 'Dead Server Sketch'.
  My, my... Lookee what's up *there*...
  Serious flamage by an pro. Be sure and wear your asbestos underwear before venturing too far out on the USENET raft.
  Philip Zimmermann Travel Agency
  This April Fool's Day contribution of mine caught many otherwise clueful folks.
  PlayStation Legal Page
  Taken from Sony's web site, this is a great legal disclaimer with an attitude.
  pshift(1) man page - paradigm shift
  The UNIX man(ual) page format has been so used for humor by geeks that there's probably enough material for a book. This is how to invoke a paradigm shift via the command line.
  Sendmail for matter transport
  What might happen if sendmail was used to control matter transporters.
  Sing The $cientology Blues
  Enjoy a parody of the Church of $cientology's attempts to convert salvation into legal tender: I am the very model of a modern legal criminal. Apologies to the 'Pirates of Penzance'.
  Spam Haiku
  There's some seriously strange karma between geeks and that bizarre meat meal-in-a-tin Spam. Here's a collection of Spam-inspired Haiku. Funny but wierd.
  The Karma of Inappropriate Posting
  Some day I hope that those who excessively cross-post get theirs. Here's one possibility.
  The Parable of the Two Programmers
  The difference between a Real Programmer (tm) and someone who follows management guidlines.
  The Pilot Who Ate Bugs
  (True!) Check out the trail left by this email as it wound its way from Bosnia towards us.
  The Radioactive Boy Scout
  The true story of the radioactive-centric adventures of a very misguided youth. Should be a Darwin Award runner-up...
  The ultimate Usenet complaint
  Lusers. What happens when lusers run full force into reality.
  Theological computing - God as programmer
  There are some profoundly disturbing questions that suddenly make sense if God is a programmer.
  To post or not to post
  A rather good adaptation of William Shakespeare to an ugly USENET moment.
  Trinidad Database Woes
  You think your days are difficult? Imagine you've placed the combination to your country's armory into a database and then forgotten the password? This really happened in Trinidad.
  UNIX and Lesbian Love
  What does UNIX have to do with finding lesbian love?
  What the C and Bourne shells have to teach us
  It's in there. Really.
  You know you live in San Francisco...
  A bit of topical humor. How we realize that we're no longer from the East Coast but rather we've become honorary natives of San Francisco.
  You may be an engineer if...
  There's no doubt left, you are a geek. Take this test and be sure.
Non-geekish
  Airline Blues
  Did you ever wonder what life looks like to the person who takes your airline reservations over the phone?
  Buzzword Compliant: what the high-tech marketing spiel really means
  Ever wonder what all the marketing buzzwords really mean?
  Californians
  A Californian view of the current energy crisis and the blackouts rolling across our state this springtime (2001).
  Corporate Santa - Droppings
  The certain result of efficiency at Santa's Workshop.
  Dark Bicycle Fantasy, with Tanks
  A Bicyclist's dark fantasy (inspired by the silly state of legislation).
  Dead Frozen Chickens and Airplane Windshields
  There can't possibly be any connection between Dead Frozen Chickens and Airplane Windshields, right? Wrong.
  Heavy Boots
  Did you ever wonder if perhaps moon-walking astronauts didn't float away because they wore heavy boots?
  High Flight (John Gillespie Magee, Jr.) with FAA Supplement
  How Godzilla Got His Name
  If you've ever wondered how Godzilla got his name, wonder no more. Here's the true story from the responsible party.
  Irresistable Forces meet the US Navy
  There is a power greater than might, but it's not at all obvious.
  Need Help With Creationism
  A delightful definition of creationism (chortle).
  Quotations Gallery
  From time to time I come across a nugget of expression. Sometimes it's in a .signature, or from the Quote of the Day mailing list. They're keepers. Here's where I keep them.
  The best excuses if you get caught sleeping in your office or cubicle
  You know you've been there. Heck, I brought a sleeping bag to the office back in 1987 or so, but that's not what the author thought.
  The Seeing-Eye Chihuahua
  The brave and stupid joke about a seeing-eye chihuahua.
  those responsible have been sacked
  One of the most succint responsible email message I've rec'd from the corporate culture.
  Upstate New York
  You know you're from upstate New York when...
  Vote Early, Vote Often
  A memo about vote-fraud that was given to me by an artist friend while we were both sitting in a San Francisco café.
  Why did the chicken cross the road?
  Famous philosophers, scientists, phychologists, authors, and actors weigh in on the big question.
Privacy-related
  PGP, RSA, NSA, and Gravity Fields
  A tongue-in-cheek description of why astronomers are watching the National Security Agency's headquarters for evidence of gravitational disturbances.
  The Pretty Good Privacy Blues
  Roy Silvernail's ditty about cryptography. Had me humming all afternoon.
  Transparent Trees (a PGP privacy tale)
  This amusing cryptography analogy about the sorry state in which we're in is a good way to explain the fight for digital privacy to the technophobe in your life.

Have you found errors nontrivial or marginal, factual, analytical and illogical, arithmetical, temporal, or even typographical? Please let me know; drop me email. Thanks!
 

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