August 7, 2007

Computer Humour

What if people bought cars like they buy computers?

General Motors doesn't have a "help line" for people who don't know how to drive, because people don't buy cars like they buy computers
--- but imagine if they did . . .

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Helpline: General Motors Helpline, how may I help you?
Customer: I got in my car and closed the door, and nothing happened!
Helpline: Did you put the key in the ignition and turn it?
Customer: What's an ignition?
Helpline: It's a starter motor that draws current from your battery and turns over the engine.
Customer: Ignition? Motor? Battery? Engine? How come I have to know all of these technical terms just to use my car?
******************************************************************

Helpline: General Motors Helpline, how may I help you?
Customer: My car ran fine for a week, and now it won't go anywhere!
Helpline: Is the gas tank empty?
Customer: Huh? How do I know?
Helpline: There's a little gauge on the front panel, with a needle, and markings from 'E' to 'F.' Where is the needle pointing?
Customer: I see an 'E' but no 'F.'
Helpline: You see the 'E' and just to the right is the 'F.'
Customer: No, just to the right of the first 'E' is a 'V.'
Helpline: A 'V!'
Customer: Yeah, there's a 'C,' an 'H,' the first 'E,' then a 'V,' followed by 'R,' 'O,' 'L' . . .
Helpline: No, no, no sir! That's the front of the car. When you sit behind the steering wheel, that's the panel I'm talking about.
Customer: That steering wheel thingy -- is that the round thing that honks the horn?
Helpline: Yes, among other things.
Customer: The needle's pointing to 'E.' What does that mean?
Helpline: It means that you have to visit a gasoline vendor and purchase some more gasoline. You can install it yourself, or pay the vendor to install it for you.
Customer: What? I paid $12,000 for this car! Now you tell me that I have to keep buying more components? I want a car that comes with everything built in!

******************************************************************

Helpline: General Motors Helpline, how may I help you?
Customer: Your cars suck!
Helpline: What's wrong?
Customer: It crashed, that's what went wrong!
Helpline: What were you doing?
Customer: I wanted to go faster, so I pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. It worked for a while, and then it crashed -- and now it won't even start up!
Helpline: I'm sorry sir, but it's your responsibility if you misuse the product.
Customer: Misuse it? I was just following this damned manual of yours. It said to make the car go, to put the transmission in 'D' and press the accelerator pedal That's exactly what I did -- now the damn thing's crashed.
Helpline: Did you read the entire operator's manual before operating the car sir?
Customer: What? Of course I did! I told you I did EVERYTHING the manual said and it didn't work!
Helpline: Didn't you attempt to slow down so you wouldn't crash?
Customer: How do you do THAT?
Helpline: You said you read the entire manual, sir. It's on page 14. The pedal next to the accelerator.
Customer: Well, I don't have all day to sit around and read this manual you know.
Helpline: Of course not. What do you expect us to do about it?
Customer: I want you to send me one of the latest versions that goes fast and won't crash anymore!

******************************************************************

Helpline: General Motors Helpline, how may I help you?
Customer: Hi! I just bought my first car, and I chose your car because it has automatic transmission, cruise control, power steering, power brakes, and power door locks.
Helpline: Thanks for buying our car. How can I help you?
Customer: How do I work it?
Helpline: Do you know how to drive?
Customer: Do I know how to what?
Helpline: Do you know how to DRIVE?
Customer: I'm not a technical person! I just want to go places in my car!

I first found this in one of those endlessly forwarded emails ... prolly circa 1996 or so. It was attributed to:

Yadira Halubi
PLATINUM technology, Software Interfaces Lab.
yadira@DOMAINDELETED.com

Again, whilst comments are closed, if you wanna comment, use the Contact button at the top of the page. Sorry, comments will return soon!

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:15 AM | Comments (0) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

July 25, 2007

How To Assassinate Your Own Character

UK comedy actor, Chris Langham is in some serious trouble.

Mr. Langham has been accused of "indecent assault and a serious sexual offence on a girl under 18." But what's being focused on at the moment ... is the child pornography found on his computer. (I came in to this news story late ... the bit about the girl was either earlier in the trial or an earlier trial).

Mr Langham insists that the images ... and videos ... found on his computer were simply research for a character he was thinking of developing for the series, Help, "in which he [Paul Whitehouse] played different patients seen by a psychiatrist played by Mr Langham."

First, it's a comedy show ... I hardly think that any of the actor's really need to apply Stanislavski quite this far. Secondly ... if anyone was going to research it ... you'd think it would be the actor who was gonna play the dude needing help ... not the dude playing the shrink.

And, the stupidest thing of all ... if you're an actor or a writer who needs to research illegal activities ... TELL YOUR PRODUCERS ... tell the local police ... do SOMETHING to leave a paper trail that you researching this for a reason.

Mr Langham's co-star says he knew nothing about this "research" that Mr Langham was conducting. Apparently he didn't bother to tell anyone associated with the show about it, either.

I know that it's a part of the cycle of the abuse for the abuser to deny that anything happened. And apparently Langham is accused of shooting some footage himself, so he apparently falls into the abuser category and not just the computer-age, distanced viewer, but great good gods, the stuff was on his computer. Freaking own up to it. It is sometimes amazing to me how actors think just cuz they can act, they can fox the whole courtroom. *sigh*

Bleeding idiot.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:07 AM | Comments (0) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

July 2, 2007

W

Political Rant ... this is just a rant ... not a discussion ... a reaction.

How the bloody freaking HELL can W ... nicknamed The Shrub, nicknamed Duh, I mean Dub ... just gets to adjust Scooter's sentence? WTF happened to him bitching about "activist judges"???? Now we have Dick saying he's not part of the executive branch in one scenario ... so he can get out of answering questions ... and then in another situation insisting that he was a part of the executive branch so he could get out of answering questions. And then we've got the Commander-in-Idiocy intervening in the sentencing of one of his cronies. But we're supposed to believe this is all for our own good and these fools know what they're doing.

Haliburton ... Enron ... wtf. I do NOT fooken get it.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:15 PM | Comments (1) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

June 11, 2007

Oops

From moe20302030 at YouTube.
And since Quicktime irritates some people and crashes other people's browsers, click the extended entry to get to it.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:37 AM | Comments (0) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

June 6, 2007

little fagit

little fagit

This was a comment left on my blog earlier today by Joshua.

Wow, what an insightful comment he's made. Thanks so much for sharing. I'm wondering if he passed any spelling tests, ever? I believe the word he was attempting was "faggot." And, sadly, he has the wrong word anyway. Since I'm female, if he wants to call me gay and use a derogatory word, he should actually use something like "dyke." Unfortunately, for poor li'l Joshua, I happen to prefer the word dyke to just about anything else.

Of course, I have to wonder WHY Joshua felt it was necessary to leave this comment. There's no explanation, but the post it was left on was New Shop where I hawk some of my t-shirts.

Maybe he didn't like one of the designs?

At any rate ... Little Fagit sounds like it might be the name a new cartoon ... hmmmmmmm.......

Thanks for the idea, Joshua!

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:14 AM | Comments (2) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

May 26, 2007

Captain, my Captain

Once upon a time, there was a book called Sound and Sense. And every Friday during my senior year of high school ... we worked on poetry in English class.

With all apologies to poets and would-be poets and enjoyers of poetry ... I friggin' hate most poetry. I adore Stevie Smith ... some Yeats ... ee cummings ... not a whole lot else. So, naturally, I was not ... shall we say ... enthused ... by English class on Fridays. I dutifully read ... considered ... and ... was mostly boreded. not because the words didn't move me, necessarily, but because poetry tends to be the last bastion of HIDEOUS conformity in American high schools. There is, according to many (but not all!), teachers of high school English, just one canonical interpretation of that poem.

B O R I N G

That's not what poetry is supposed to be about. It's about free-thinking, free-association, non-conformity, not just thinking but BEING outside the box.

In short, poetry does not belong in the hands of the average English teacher. (And I say that as a former English teacher who taught for nine years.)

In fact, my high school English teacher (who also taught at the local university), thought that I was something of a screw-up who didn't necessarily belong in AP English.

The truth of the matter was that I had already learned a lesson which was of vital importance to some (but not all) students. School, ultimately, doesn't matter. It wasn't my life, although my mother wanted it to be ... although I already knew I wanted to go to college and grad school. Playing the game of School was not so important to me as finding my own way was.

So ... I'm watching the commentary to Dead Poet's Society, and I go to Wikipedia ... as I am wont to do ... and discovered something that made me laugh.

The hideous "excrement" that Mr. Keating has the boys tear out of their poetry book ... is ... in fact ... nearly word for word an early chapter of ... you guessed it ... Sound and Sense.

Now, what really cracks me up about this ... is that I was, as usual, boreded. That class was just nothing to me. Another 55 minutes when I really just wanted to work on my novel and ignore the class, like most of my classes senior year. (Umm, since about third grade, actually.) I did the work. I did the reading. I regurgitated what we were supposed to regurgitate. And, going through those Friday exams as quickly as I could ... I began writing a parody of the poem we were critiquing (after I'd written the required interpretation essay of the "real" poem, of course).

My teacher, bless her, told me what most of my teachers told me through the years: "If you'd just slow down ...."
Of course, that was before ADHD was recognized, really. I was going as slowly as I knew how ... but writing a parody of the poem was far more interesting to me than writing the "official" interpretation of the poem.

Eventually, though, I got boreded with that as well and began using that time to write poetry of my own rather than restricting my thought to simple parody of the poem in question.

One Monday ... as our teacher was handing the tests back ... she began talking about one student's interpretation of this poem. I believe it was called something about Mr. Z ... and it was a poem about being black in the United States. And she talked about how one student interpreted the deliberateness of the title as Mr. Z feeling like he was last in society because of his colour. Yanno ... Z is the last letter?

Apparently this was a somewhat novel interpretation.

She first attributed it to Kyungah. Then Susan. She went down the "rank" of smart kids.

Each one said they hadn't thought of that.

In truth, it was me. I waited for her to remember. But she just about when down the list of students by GPA.

Because high school is not about free thinking. It's about conformity. And I managed to not conform on a regular basis. I wasn't a jock, exactly. I wasn't what we called a "drama mama." I wasn't a nerd. I wasn't the typical honors kid, even.

No matter how often people wanted to put me in a box and shut it, I had a tendency to unseal the seams and combine jock and drama and honors and slacker ... all together in one chaotic and yet truthful package.

In short, I tried very hard to seize my days ... to think.

And so I wasn't terribly surprised when Mrs. Ward couldn't seem to realize that I had come up with this "novel" interpretation.

But when Dead Poet's came out just two short years after I graduated from high school ... I was surprised that another writer had tapped into "my" brain so very well. Had tapped into that desire to both please my parents and be myself all at the same time, impossible though that was.

Captain, my captain.
I stand before thee
before you all

and scream my barbaric YAWP
from the top of my mountain
from the top of my desk

It's not what I say
It's not what I saw
It's what I choose to do

It is not that the sheet which leaves the feet cold is too small
It's not that we stretch it and pull it
It's not that it covers aught but our face

It's that we try
It's that we do
It's that we are.

It is not Captain my captain.

We are our own captain.
We must own our decisions.
We must own our lives.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:00 AM | Comments (2) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble