Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cavell.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!alberta!cavell!syali From: syali@cavell.UUCP (Sy Ali) Newsgroups: net.jokes Subject: A new Incredibly Long Boring but Mostly Stupid Story... Message-ID: <127@cavell.UUCP> Date: Fri, 29-Jun-84 20:40:22 EDT Article-I.D.: cavell.127 Posted: Fri Jun 29 20:40:22 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 1-Jul-84 06:50:03 EDT Distribution: net Organization: U. of Alberta, Edmonton, AB Lines: 359 <> And NOW, from the same folks that brought up the "Incredibly Long Stupid Story...". The "Neverending Story" of Fred and Jane: **************************************************************** Fred adjusted his chromogrey glasses as the last hint of light from the setting sun leaked over the earth's ruler-straight edge. Miles and miles of city bordered by more miles and miles of non-city spread off in all directions, coagulating into that penultimate mass that humanity claimed to be 'civilization'. All these endlessly magnificent and terribly wordy thoughts arranged themselves in a singularly stupendous and utterly boring idea in Fred's heart-rendingly incredible and intensly empty cerebrum: why, this lonely thought cried out in abject horror, does mankind assume that the world is round? As Fred stood there, on the slightly pebbled non-slip surface of the sundeck of his parent's glorious suburban home, the all-encompassing depth of his thought struck him. Amazingly, he was able to collect himself, and forge forward in a valiant and successful attempt to form a second idea which, when combined with his first riveting thought, created a whole that was greater than either of his cogitations individually. So, thought Fred, maybe the world isn't round. He stood there for a moment, enthralled by the glory of a theory so simple that it had eluded the scientific establishment for centuries. If he could somehow prove his concepts, Fred would be heralded as a saviour of all humanity. Imagine the leaps and bounds of progress the discovery of the flatness of the earth could herald. No more worries about taking into account the curvature of the planet's surface when building large bridges, incredibly simple satellite transmissions (one satellite could cover the whole planet), massive simplification of weather forcasting: Fred's discovery could bring about all this and more. Yet Fred had heard once that scientific theories required some sort of factual proof to be accepted: it was a senseless requirement that stifled the glorious creativity of the human mind, but it was the accepted norm. So, I need some sort of proof. Fred pondered the problem as the sun finally set on the horizon, its light glaring mindlessly off the prismatic surfaces of the endlessly repetitive but deeply moving buildings that man, in his innocence, had erected to promote the commerce that made so much of human society possible. Suddenly, in a flash of insight, Fred thought that if he could merely find the edge of the earth and fall off it, he could prove the earth's flatness conclusively. Fortunately the flash of insight didn't last too long. In an effort to moderate his introsprective meanderings Fred decided to chew on a cabbage. This, as it turned out, was a less than ideal solution. Rapidly tiring of this, Fred wandered down to the local library, where he proceeded to peruse a volume on world history (upside down, the book not Fred). "Ah ha," says our hero, "none of the great explorers fell off the edge of the world, clearly this means that great explorers are immune to the effects of gravity!" Immediately Fred decides to become a great explorer. Putting on his great explorer hat (which is a very large and vulgar assortment of varigreated vegetables), Fred wandered up to the top of the library building (some 500 feet, units not the thing you walk with). Without hesitation Fred jumps off the building and falls rapidly to his death. But that's okay because this story really has absolutely nothing to do with Fred. Or almost nothing. Actually, our real hero, Jane, was listening to the newscast of Fred's spectacular death when she decided to... ...install wall to wall broadloom. She contemplated the transient morose feelings she had as the horrid story of some poor sociopath committing suicide blared from her radio. Jane suddenly decided to carpet her living room in black shag so that she might share her abhorrence of death, violence, starvation, and American automobiles with all her house guests. Realising that the only store in town likely to have suitably black black shag was the Brick, she quickly jumped out the window of her twenty-three storey apartment building and walked to the bus stop (she, of course, lived on the ground floor). Finally, a bus came and, after venting her frustration regarding mass transportation throughout Urban America, the bus driver (ever the courteous, helpful person a bus driver is supposed to be) told her to go fly away, and so Jane did. Her glorious wings catching and reflecting the deep, sombre beauty of the city at night as she flew downtown at just under the speed of sound, Jane made her way through the geometric perfection of the downtown buildings, inching ever closer to the Brick. As she passed that glorious edifice to higher learning, the library, she decided to pick up the latest Harlequin romance. Jane, in her years as a breast surgeon for legless reptiles, had learned the value of keeping informed, and enquiring minds like hers found much to be pondered in every new book in the long-running and critically acclaimed Harlequin romance series. Jane circled the library once, twice, did a Cuban eight, a hammerhead, an outside loop, and went in for a landing. Just then, she encountered a field of warped space-time which enveloped her sinuous form, decreasing her lift and also throwing her backwards in time... As she came to her senses (which she had left outside her apartment) she saw a shapeless form falling towards her from the top of her building. (Actually it wasn't her building, she just lived there in an open marriage with three turtles.) As the shape resolved, although Jane didn't know what, exactly it had resolved, she realized that the falling man (for that was what now obviously it was) was really quite handsome in his chromo-grey glasses and explorer's hat. Looking back on the last sentence Jane knew that the Warp had made her tense; past, present or future, she wasn't sure. She needed to do something, since she didn't know how to knit she decided to rescue the handsome man who was plummeting to his doom; after all, she WAS a hero. So she spread her Al Macready Gossamer Wings and soared into the nitrogen oxygen gases surrounding her. She quite handily caught the man, who was known as Fred, and asked him if he wanted to come into her apartment and see her etchings. Fred didn't like etchings, but he liked turtles so he agreed. As they entered Jane's kitchen a strange Gremlin-like noise came from the other room... ...but luckily the other room was where Jane kept her seldom used television set. Fred and Jane went into the television room and began watching. It was a new Steven Spielberg TV movie! ET and his pet shark were trying to get to the top of a strange looking mountain to prevent the gremlins from finding an ancient magical artifact! When Fred and Jane recovered... ...Fred politely vomited into his explorer's hat. Seeing that it was thus ruined, he put it on Jane's coffee table as a centerpiece and took another hat from his shirt pocket. It was one of the new, European inflatable models, the ones that included a LORAN receiver as well as a multi-band satellite link and a mixed drink dispenser. It made Fred look even better than he usually did, so Jane coyly asked him if he wanted to see her etchings, which she artfully kept in her bedroom ("artfully" in every sense of the word). Fred didn't, but Jane's turtles were also in her bedroom, so he finally consented. After Jane had looked at her etchings and Fred had played with the turtles for a couple of hours, it became clear that they were meant for each other. However, the turtles were already married to Jane, so they decided to get a divorce and then remarry as one big happy group. In fifteen minutes, it was all done through Jane's computer (all heroes have computers), and all that was left was the traditional honeymoon. Jane suggested that they go to Niagra Falls, but Fred wasn't THAT traditional, so they decided to travel to the edge of the earth. Fred explained his theories to Jane, and she was greatly awed by his magnificent intellect (in the short time he had known her, Fred had already realized that Jane demonstrated awe by laughing uproariously for five to ten minutes). They finally settled on going to Spokane, which was as close to the edge of the world as one could get on a small budget: if things looked good, they would go further. Just as they were getting ready to go, Jane spread her glorious wings (Fred always felt a lump in his throat whenever she did that) and said "Scotchguard me, love." Fred was almost too touched to speak, so he didn't. In a few moments, they were ready to go... But suddenly Jane said, "I'm getting tired of this story. I think it is ridiculous. I never imagined this is what I would end up doing when I went to story character school. What a drag. Why are we doing it, Fred?" "What the heck are you talking about?" was Fred's brilliant response. Giving up on Fred as a hopeless case, Jane flew away and tried to figure out how to escape from this dreadful narrative... Suddenly remembering that her computer's text-editor had a "delete character" function, Jane returned to her apartment and had almost pressed the fatal key when... She typed in "rogue" instead and decided to have a nice relaxing game of rogue by the fireside. She soon bored of this and decided to see if she could find some excitement in life, now that Fred and the Turtles had gone off and become a famous punk rock band. She flew downtown and to her horror... ...no-one there stopped her to ask for her autograph. But this as it turned out was fortunate, since Jane couldn't remember what her last name was. Suddenly Jane ran up against a newly constructed building, which housed the offices of the local chapter of the Flat Earth Society, a worthy organization that has chapters all around the globe (if you'll pardon the expression). The windows were made of chromogrey plate glass, and the roof had a funny-looking hat-shaped appearance... ...No sooner than she had entered the strange building, but it appeared to take off into outer space. Yes, boys and girls, Jane had made a startling discovery. The Flat Earth Society was run by ALIENS! Realising that she had to save the world (and perhaps the universe), she immediately attempted to find and destroy the aliens on board the hat-shaped building. Utilizing her expert training (she had once been employed as a typist in a firm that exterminated pests) she wandered around the vessel. Suddenly, something strange happened, however since Jane wasn't looking in that direction at the time we may never know what it was that happened. Little did she know it, but the strange event was to have a decisive influence on the subsequent events coming up. Not only that, but she was unaware of its effect on the immediate future. So anyway the strange event occurred and then was over. Not being in the story, we have the advantage of being able to know what this event was, as soon as the narrator gets around to telling us. In fact, it is this strange event which is the crux of our whole story and is in fact the reason for its existence. This strange event is such a rare and wonderful occurrence that it is well known throughout the universe, except for the fact that it is still a mystery.... Meanwhile the aliens on board the spacecraft, realising that their plight was desperate, contrived to locate Fred and used their high-technology teleportation equipment to beam him aboard. They also managed to acquire some of the punk rock music that his band had recorded, which they forced him to listen to at low volume. After a mere 3.7 seconds of this brutal torture, Fred broke down and confessed Jane's weakness for Harlequin romances. Armed with this vital information, the aliens quickly constructed a machine that could spew out one Harlequin romance every two picoseconds. With the thousands of Harlequin romances strewn across her path, Jane... ...began picking them up, and, reading them with one eye, continued to consider what to do about the flat-earthers. She realised the first thing she would have to do is find out exactly what sort of Aliens the flat-earthers really were, and what their weaknesses were. She looked around to see if she could capture a military type, and found a guard. After a few lines of a Harlequin Romance, he broke down (much like Fred) and revealed all about his race and their plan to destroy most of the known universe... "When WE'RE finished with the Earth", sobbed the guard, "it WILL be flat. Two-dimesional, in fact. You see, we cyclopses find ourselves to be rather at a disadvantage living in a three-dimensional universe." "Hmmm, cyclopses, eh?", pondered Jane. "Maybe I can do something about that. As a breast surgeon for legless reptiles, I must admit that it's a little out of my line, but..." "...the AMA isn't likely to be watching anyway." With that thought firmly in mind (and a well padded malpractice insurance policy in her Gucci human hair handbag), Jane got out her impressive array of medical equipment. The finger nail clippers were a little dull, the tweezers a little sharp, and the finger nail polish remover probably wouldn't work all that well as a disinfectant, but even modern medical science hadn't really advanced all that much in the previous decade, although how that applied to the state of her medical equipment Jane wasn't really sure. "I'm sorry, but this might hurt a little. I'm going to give you another eye." The cyclops looked at Jane for a moment, then was struck with the intense honesty and forthrightness of the Master Surgeon he was talking to. After he was finished speaking to the Great Surgeon, he turned back to Jane. "What the heck? I have nothing to lose." (Your average cyclops isn't all that smart). "Great. I'll dig right in", said Jane as she levelled a medically approved jump kick at the cyclops' lower jaw, knocking him flat on his back. Minutes and minutes of intense concentration later, Jane had succeeded in exposing the brain of the cyclops, and was carefully examining the optic nerves with her tweezers. "Amazing," she said as she moved the minute fibers this way and that, "this cyclops has all the neccesary nerves and stuff for a second eye. All I need is another good eye, and presto, true stereoscopic vision." One problem confronted her then: where to get the second eye? As if on cue, Fred walked around the corner at just that instant and ran right into Jane... Her incredible skill as a surgeon, garnered after years and years of intensive training in the Girl Guides of America and other time honoured institutions such as MIT, CalTech, and the University of Alberta, made it just barely possible that she could recover from the dangerous and potentially deadly jarring. Unfortunately, she didn't, and her tweezers made a nasty mess of about three hundred grams of the cyclops' brain. "Darn, now look at what you made me do!" Fred looked closely at the mess he had made and apologized profusely. "Sorry. Whatcha doing?" Jane looked at Fred: how could anyone be so dense? "It should be perfectly obvious that I am examining this creature's optical nerve bundle and associated ganglia with the hope of transplanting the visual apparatus required for normal binocular vision. Got any bright ideas?" Fred looked at the perfectly opened cranium of the cyclops and the simple yet elegant surgical procedure Jane had used to accomplish what she had so far: suddenly, an incredibly glorious idea made itself known to Fred, an idea so unassuming and uncomplicated that it was truly amazing. Quickly, Fred got out the petri dish he always carried with him for just this type of occasion. After brushing out the remains of a fly he had captured six weeks earlier, he began the arduous process of genetically engineering a new eye. "I need some bioplasm..." Quickly Fred developed a new eye-generating technique, and when the cyclops guard recovered from the operation he turned out to be a hyper-intelligent being because a brown sludge had been growing on his brain cells causing extreme stupidity and violent headaches. With the brown sludge now gone, he learned how to generate eyes and surgically implant them in his fellow cyclopses. The alien race subsequently became a peace-loving and philanthropic (or should I say philoxenopic) guardian force for the Universe, having all the brown sludges removed from their brain cells at the same time as gaining binocular vision. So meanwhile, Jane disowned Fred after hearing his new album with the Turtles, and discovered that she had saved the universe, and was now an intergalactic hero. She now decided that maybe this story wasn't so bad and gave up trying to figure out a way out of it. Instead, to celebrate her new hero-hood, she... ...decided to remove her wall-to-wall broadloom. But this plan she was unable to put into immediate effect, since they were still all trapped in a spacecraft hurtling through space at breakneck speed millions of miles away from her apartment. Or were they? Jane threw a brief but sombre glance out through one of the craft's chromogrey windows; and it was at this point that the consequences of the mysterious hitherto-alluded-to-but- as-yet-unnarrated event finally penetrated into Jane's breathtakingly unfathomable and intensely silly cerebrum. A sudden gust of solar wind had diverted the craft off course and they had now crash-landed in an unfamiliar soft-textured terrain. "Look!", exclaimed Jane, pointing one of her shimmering gossamer wings in the general direction of the plate-glass window. "Where are we?" The hyperintelligent ex-cyclops guard withdrew a pencil and notepad that were conveniently tucked away behind his right eye, and made some hasty calculations. "I am unable to pinpoint our Solar-system coordinates," he announced at length, "but, by differentiating our vertical position with respect to time, I am able to deduce the composition of the ground beneath us." "Well?", demanded Jane. "Quicksand!", the guard replied triumphantly. Disgusted by this cheap hollywood cliche, Jane decided to forget about the hyper-intelligent ex-cyclops and fly home herself. She took a deep breath and flew off into the sunset. But since this isn't a cheap Hollywood flick, this is not the end! She began searching for Earth's solar system, but after a while she grew tired (and out of breath) so she decided to take the next best thing and landed on a nearby planet that looked something like earth. When she landed, she discovered... ********************************************************************* What was it that Jane discovered? Could it have possiblly have been the 100 ton Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man? Nope, doubt it, but stay tuned for further developments... ********************************************************************* Brought to you by several free-associating minds located in sunny Edmonton (Canada) (Pity, eh?)