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Volume 5, Number 22
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3 May 2002
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TFIr #126
Edited by and copyright ©2002 Simon Lamont
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Back issues and Irregular goodies can be found at http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/li/
WORKS IN PROGRESS
The Irregular Archive Project - all issues of The Lamont Times through TFIr plus goodies, on a CD-ROM with an HTML/raytraced graphical interface (which may bear a superficial - and purely coincidental - resemblance to a onetime-real office):
Still missing Lamont Times #5 and Irregular #12.
Graphical interface: development status page last updated 2 April 2002
http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/wip/archive/office/Text adventures:
All at Sea: - planned release: Summer 2002
The Night Before Christmas: - planned release: Winter 2002
TFIr ONLINE
You can also read TFIr in its enhanced online version, with links and graphics where appropriate. The latest online version will always be available at http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/li/tfir/latest.htm
Who is the Editor? So far as we know there's no Malkovichian portal into his brain, but there is the Frequently-Asked-Questions (FAQ) file, the UndeadCam and the Film/TV archive list (the latter is now only available as a zip or tgz file due to its size):
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Friday 3 May - Niccolo Machiavelli, diplomat & writer, born, Florence, Italy, 1469. IBM announced their Proprinter X24E and XL24E 24-pin dot matrix printers, 1989 Saturday 4 May - First public demonstration of the phonograph, Grand Opera House, San Francisco, 1878 Sunday 5 May - Karl Marx born, Trier, Germany, 1818. Epson announced their LQ-510 (24-pin) and LX-810 (8-pin) dot matrix printers, 1989. Happy Cinco de Mayo! Monday 6 May - Patent granted to Dr John Farrie for a "refrigeration machine", 1851. The Hindenburg airship exploded on landing at New Jersey, killing 33. Oh, the humanity! Tuesday 7 May - Telstar 2 satellite launched, 1963 Wednesday 8 May - Sir David Attenborough, broadcaster, born, 1926. Microsoft shipped Word 5.0 for PC and Novell announced NetWare 386, 1989. Thursday 9 May - Howard Carter, Egyptologist and discoverer of Tutankhamen's tomb, born, 1873.
THE WISDOM OF...
This week's guest speaker - Matt Groening, responding to reports that he was planning to end "The Simpsons" TV show:
"They will live on with new adventures for years to come. As long as there are things to make fun of we will be around."
TOTALLY TRIVIAL
The shopping trolley was invented in 1937 by Sylvan Goldman, manager of the Humpty Dumpty supermarket in Oklahoma City, who noticed that shoppers' baskets limited the amount they could buy, so he made an oversized basket on wheels and quickly doubled the amount of trade at his store. Over 8000 people a year are treated in British hospitals for injuries caused by shopping trolleys. Romanian soccer fan Constantin Ciuca pushing a shopping trolley containing his provisions and clothes 2000 miles to see his national team play in the Euro '96 competition.
FILM QUIZ
A weathered bag of quotations this week; answers next issue or from the usual address.
- Terrific. I'm about to get killed a million miles from nowhere with a gung-ho iguana who tells me to relax.
- I don't feel that I need to explain my art to you, Warren.
- I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves. The enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days.
- Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
- I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck... maybe even a "recreational vehicle."
Last issue's lines were from:
- I just want to begin by saying to Roosevelt E. Roosevelt, what it is, what it shall be, what it was. The weather out there today is hot and shitty with continued hot and shitty in the afternoon. Tomorrow a chance of continued crappy with a pissy weatherfront coming down from the north. Basically, it's hotter than a snake's ass in a wagon rut.
-- Good Morning, Vietnam- Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else.
-- X Men- You're gonna eat lightnin' and you're gonna crap thunder!
-- Rocky- Are you saying that all long-distance lines are down because of the snow? What about satellite communication? Is it snowing in space too? Don't you have a line for emergencies? Perhaps a special line for celebrities? I am both -- I'm a CELEBRITY in an EMERGENCY.
-- Groundhog Day- He vanished like a fart in the wind.
-- The Shawshank Redemption
WEIRD WORLD NEWS
Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...
DUMB CRIMS OF THE WEEK... Two Brazilian men have been charged with theft after stealing bread, milk, biscuits, chocolate, soft drinks and the equivalent of UKP 7 from a shop in Sao Luiz do Maranhao. A police spokesman told the Terra Noticias Populares newspaper that they were arrested when they returned to the shop five minutes later because they had forgotten to steal any butter.
DUMB COPS OF THE WEEK... An unnamed police constable from the Gwent Police force in Wales was sitting in a speed detection van trying to catch speeding motorists when a member of his own force issued him with a ticket for parking illegally. Assistant Chief Constable Bill Horn confirmed that the officer had been issued with the UKP 30 fixed penalty notice but refused to comment further.
BLIP... BLIP... BLIP... When G4, a cable channel devoted to video games went live on April 24 to an audience of up to 3 million subscribers it decided on a novel gimmick for its launch - a live 24/7 broadcast of a game of Pong for a full week. Widely considered the first consumer video game Pong consists of little more than two rectangular "bats" that move vertically and a square "ball" that bounces between them or, hopefully for the players, past their opponent's bat).
CHILL OUT SPOTS... While the rest of the planet may be warming up, some areas of Antarctica including a a desert area near the McMurdo base known as the Dry Valleys have cooled by an average of 0.7 degrees centigrade over each of the last two decades.
RADIO DAZE... Watson Creek, Kentucky, resident Steve Wilson's April Fool's Day prank on his wife backfired on him rather embarrassingly. Wilson, arranged for local DJ Dave Cricket to phone her on air pretending to be the personnel officer at the company where Wilson worked, and tell her that her husband had been fired for unprofessional conduct with a female co-worker. Wilson's wife took the "news" calmly, paused for a moment and then announced to the station's listeners that she felt better knowing that as it meant she didn't have to feel so guilty about sleeping with her brother-in-law for the past year.
WEBSITE OF THE WEEK
It's a fairly well-known fact here at Irregular Towers that the Editor is a bit of a deltiologist - a collector of postcards, so it was with some difficulty that we dragged him away from this week's site in order to finish this issue. The site is an archive of postcards - but not just any postcards - we're talking truly tacky missives, from potato pickers who seem to be having too much fun in the fields to Marilyn Monroe bearing diamonds on a Christmas postcard, ideal for the spouse who only got a salad spinner...
THE AMAZING NOT-QUITE-RANDOM LOTTERY PREDICTOR!
Madame Jennifer, our in-house psychic predicts the following numbers will be lucky:
9, 14, 21, 36, 37, 42
AND FINALLY...
A local preacher was dissatisfied with the small amount in the collection plates each Sunday.
Someone suggested to him that perhaps he might be able to hypnotise the congregation into giving more. "And just how would I go about doing that?" he asked.
"It is very simple. First you turn up the air conditioner so that the auditorium is warmer than usual. Then you preach in a monotone. Meanwhile, you dangle a watch on a chain and swing it in a slow arc above the lectern and suggest they put 20 dollars in the collection plate."
So the very next Sunday, the reverend did as suggested, and lo and behold the plates were full of 20 dollar bills. Now, the preacher did not want to take advantage of this technique each and every Sunday. So therefore, he waited for a couple of weeks and then tried his mass hypnosis again.
Just as the last of the congregation was becoming mesmerised, the chain on the watch broke and the watch hit the lectern with a loud thud and springs and parts flew everywhere.
"Crap!" exclaimed the pastor.
It took them a week to clean up the church.
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