Why did the chicken cross the road?
Politically Correct Three Little Pigs
Cows and Government
TA - Thinkers Anonymous
Oprah on Postmodernism
Christmas Greeting
ICO - No 210 - Joker Of The day, Engineering
The Differential Theory of US Armed Forces Snake Model
Female gender in red hemp cloth hood
Buying a Type-Writer
Plato: For the greater good.
Karl Marx: Historical inevitability.
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road," and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann Friedrich von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain. Alone.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
Schrodinger: Chicken? Chicken!? Where's my cat?
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
Frank Perdue: I breed the finest chicken I know how, and it crosses the road as part of a vigorous fitness program to raise the leanest, plumpest birds anywhere. And I was chasing it with this axe.
Ronald Reagan: I don't recall.
John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Samuel Johnson: (kicks the chicken).
Once there were 3 little pigs who lived together in mutual respect and in harmony with their environment. Using materials that were indigenous to the area they each built a beautiful house. One pig built a house of straw, one a house of sticks, and one a house of dung, clay and creeper vines shaped into bricks and baked in a small kiln. When they were finished, the pigs were satisfied with their work and settled back to live in peace and self-determination.
But their idyll was soon shattered. One day, along came a big, bad wolf with expansionist ideas. He saw the pigs and grew very hungry in both a physical and ideological sense. When the pigs saw the wolf, they ran into the house of straw. The wolf ran up to the house and banged on the door, shouting, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!" The pigs shouted back, "Your gunboat tactics hold no fear for pigs defending their homes and culture."
But the wolf wasn't to be denied what he thought was his manifest destiny. So he huffed and puffed and blew down the house of straw. The frightened pigs ran to the house of sticks, with the wolf in hot pursuit. Where the house had stood, other wolves bought up the land and started a banana plantation.
At the house of sticks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, "Little, pigs, little pigs, let me in!" The pigs shouted back, "Go to hell, you carnivorous, imperialistic oppressor!"
At this the wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the house of sticks. The pigs ran to the house of bricks, with the wolf close at their heels. Where the house of sticks had stood, other wolves built a time-share condo resort complex for vacationing wolves, with each unit a fibreglass reconstruction of the house of sticks, as well as native curio shops, snorkelling and dolphin shows.
At the house of bricks, the wolf again banged on the door and shouted, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!" This time in response, the pigs sang songs of solidarity and wrote letters of protest to the United Nations.
By now the wolf was getting angry at the pigs' refusal to see the situation from the carnivore's point of view. So he huffed and puffed, and huffed and puffed, then grabbed his chest and fell over dead from a massive heart attack brought on from eating too many fatty foods. The three little pigs rejoiced that justice had triumphed and did a little dance around the corpse of the wolf.
Their next step was to liberate their homeland. They gathered together a band of other pigs who had been forced off their lands. This new brigade of porcinistas attacked the resort complex with machine-guns and rocket launchers and slaughtered the cruel wolf oppressors, sending a clear signal to the rest of the hemisphere not to meddle in their internal affairs. Then the pigs set up a model socialist democracy with free education, universal health care and affordable housing for everyone. {My note: well it is a fairy tale after all.}
Please note: The wolf in this story was a metaphorical construct. No actual wolves were harmed in the writing of the story.
FEUDALISM:
You have two cows.
Your lord takes some of the milk.
FASCISM:
You have two cows.
The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the >milk.
PURE COMMUNISM:
You have two cows.
Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
APPLIED COMMUNISM:
You have two cows.
You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.
DICTATORSHIP:
You have two cows.
The government takes both and shoots you.
Mexican DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows.
The government takes both, shoots you and sends the cows to Zurich.
MILITARISM:
You have two cows.
The government takes both and drafts you into the army.
SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows.
The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.
PURE DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows.
All your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows.
Your neighbors pick someone who will tell you who gets the milk.
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY:
The government promises to give you two cows, if you vote for it.
After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate", but supports the president. The cow sues you for breach of contract. Your legal bills exceed your annual income. You settle out of court and declare bankruptcy.
BRITISH DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows.
You feed them sheep's brains and they go mad. The government doesn't do anything.
FRENCH DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
You feed them human sewage. The government bans British beef as it is unhealthy.
EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY:
You have two cows.
At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You retire on the income.
HONG KONG CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the right to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because of bad "feng shui".
TOTALITARIANISM:
You have two cows.
The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS:
You are associated with (the concept of 'ownership' is a symbol of the phallocentric, warmongering, intolerant past) two differently aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non specified gender.
You are torn by feelings of guilt, your psychotherapist recommends a treatment center. You spend six weeks there, paid for by the community health plan, and graduate into Guilty Anonymous.
COUNTERCULTURE:
Wow, dude, there's like...these two cows, man.
Uh, so, like, you have really got to do some of this milk, like, fer shur, it's awesome, man.
SURREALISM:
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone - "to relax," I told myself - but I knew it wasn't true.
Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.
I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, " I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."
This gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."
"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver.
"You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors... they didn't open.
The library was closed. As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye.
"Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers Anonymous poster.
Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting.
At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's."
Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
Hope you enjoyed this. I just thought... well, never mind.
OPRAH: Boy, we have a show for you today!
Recently the University of Virginia philosopher Richard Rorty made the stunning declaration that nobody has "the foggiest idea" what postmodernism means. "It would be nice to get rid of it," he said. "It isn't exactly an idea; it's a word that pretends to stand for an idea."
This shocking admission that there is no such thing as postmodernism has produced a firestorm of protest around the country. Thousands of authors, critics and graduate students who'd considered themselves postmodernists are outraged at the betrayal.
Today we have with us a writer -- a recovering postmodernist -- who believes that his literary career and personal life have been irreparably damaged by the theory, and who feels defrauded by the academics who promulgated it. He wishes to remain anonymous, so we'll call him "Alex."
Alex, as an adolescent, before you began experimenting with postmodernism, you considered yourself -- what?
[CLOSE SHOT OF ALEX]
An electronic blob obscures his face. Words appear at bottom of screen: "Says he was traumatized by postmodernism and blames academics."
ALEX (his voice electronically altered): A high modernist. Y'know, Pound, Eliot, Georges Braque, Wallace Stevens, Arnold Schoenberg, Mies van der Rohe. I had all of Schoenberg's 78's.
OPRAH: And then you started reading people like Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard -- how did that change your feelings about your modernist heroes?
ALEX: I suddenly felt that they were, like, stifling and canonical.
OPRAH: Stifling and canonical? That is so sad, such a waste. How old were you when you first read Fredric Jameson?
ALEX: Nine, I think.
The AUDIENCE gasps.
OPRAH: We have some pictures of young Alex...
We see snapshots of 14-year-old ALEX reading Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia." The AUDIENCE oohs and ahs.
ALEX: We used to go to a friend's house after school -- y'know, his parents were never home -- and we'd read, like, Paul Virilio and Julia Kristeva.
OPRAH: So you're only 14, and you're already skeptical toward the "grand narratives" of modernity, you're questioning any belief system that claims universality or transcendence. Why?
ALEX: I guess -- to be cool.
OPRAH: So, peer pressure?
ALEX: I guess.
OPRAH: And do you remember how you felt the very first time you entertained the notion that you and your universe are constituted by language -- that reality is a cultural construct, a "text" whose meaning is determined by infinite associations with other "texts"?
ALEX: Uh, it felt, like, good. I wanted to do it again.
The AUDIENCE groans.
OPRAH: You were arrested at about this time?
ALEX: For spray-painting "The Hermeneutics of Indeterminacy" on an overpass.
OPRAH: You're the child of a mixed marriage -- is that right?
ALEX: My father was a de Stijl Wittgensteinian and my mom was a neo-pre-Raphaelite.
OPRAH: Do you think that growing up in a mixed marriage made you more vulnerable to the siren song of postmodernism?
ALEX: Absolutely. It's hard when you're a little kid not to be able to just come right out and say (sniffles), y'know, I'm an Imagist or I'm a phenomenologist or I'm a post-painterly abstractionist. It's really hard -- especially around the holidays. (He cries.)
OPRAH: I hear you. Was your wife a postmodernist?
ALEX: Yes. She was raised avant-pop, which is a fundamentalist offshoot of postmodernism.
OPRAH: How did she react to Rorty's admission that postmodernism was essentially a hoax?
ALEX: She was devastated. I mean, she's got all the John Zorn albums and the entire Semiotext(e) series. She was crushed.
We see ALEX'S WIFE in the audience, weeping softly, her hands covering her face.
OPRAH: And you were raising your daughter as a postmodernist?
ALEX: Of course. That's what makes this particularly tragic. I mean, how do you explain to a 5-year-old that self-consciously recycling cultural detritus is suddenly no longer a valid art form when, for her entire life, she's been taught that it is?
OPRAH: Tell us how you think postmodernism affected your career as a novelist.
ALEX: I disavowed writing that contained real ideas or any real passion. My work became disjunctive, facetious and nihilistic. It was all blank parody, irony enveloped in more irony.
It merely recapitulated the pernicious banality of television and advertising. I found myself indiscriminately incorporating any and all kinds of pop kitsch and shlock. (He begins to weep again.)
OPRAH: And this spilled over into your personal life?
ALEX: It was impossible for me to experience life with any emotional intensity. I couldn't control the irony anymore. I perceived my own feelings as if they were in quotes. I italicized everything and everyone. It became impossible for me to appraise the quality of anything. To me everything was equivalent -- the Brandenburg Concertos and the Lysol jingle had the same value. ... (He breaks down, sobbing.)
OPRAH: Now, you're involved in a lawsuit, aren't you?
ALEX: Yes. I'm suing the Modern Language Association.
OPRAH: How confident are you about winning?
ALEX: We need to prove that, while they were actively propounding it, academics knew all along that postmodernism was a specious theory.
If we can unearth some intradepartmental memos -- y'know, a paper trail -- any corroboration that they knew postmodernism was worthless cant at the same time they were teaching it, then I think we have an excellent shot at establishing liability.
OPRAH wades into audience and proffers microphone to a woman.
WOMAN (with lateral head-bobbing): It's ironic that Barry Scheck is representing the M.L.A. in this litigation because Scheck is the postmodern attorney par excellence. This is the guy who's made a career of volatilizing truth in the simulacrum of exculpation!
VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: You go, girl!
WOMAN: Scheck is the guy who came up with the quintessentially postmodern re-bleed defense for O.J., which claims that O.J. merely vigorously shook Ron and Nicole, thereby re-aggravating pre-existing knife wounds. I'd just like to say to any client of Barry Scheck -- lose that zero and get a hero!
The AUDIENCE cheers wildly.
WOMAN: Uh, I forgot my question.
Dissolve to message on screen: If you believe that mathematician Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem has caused you or a member of your family to dress too provocatively, call (800) 555-9455.
Dissolve back to studio.In the audience, OPRAH extends the microphone to a man in his mid-30's with a scruffy beard and a bandana around his head.
MAN WITH BANDANA: I'd like to say that this "Alex" is the single worst example of pointless irony in American literature, and this whole heartfelt renunciation of postmodernism is a ploy -- it's just more irony.
The AUDIENCE whistles and hoots.
ALEX: You think this is a ploy?! (He tears futilely at the electronic blob.) This is my face!
The AUDIENCE recoils in horror.
ALEX: This is what can happen to people who naively embrace postmodernism, to people who believe that the individual -- the autonomous, individualist subject -- is dead. They become a palimpsest of media pastiche -- a mask of metastatic irony.
OPRAH (biting lip and shaking her head): That is so sad. Alex -- final words?
ALEX: I'd just like to say that self-consciousness and irony seem like fun at first, but they can destroy your life. I know. You gotta be earnest, be real. Real feelings are important. Objective reality does exist. AUDIENCE members whoop, stomp and pump fists in the air.
OPRAH: I'd like to thank Alex for having the courage to come on today and share his experience with us.
Join us for tomorrow's show, "The End of Manichean, Bipolar Geopolitics Turned My Boyfriend Into an Insatiable Sex Freak (and I Love It!)."
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practised within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, with respect for the religious/ secular persuasions and/ or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.....
...and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2000, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make Britain great, (not to imply that Britain is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "Britain" in the Western hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee.
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her-/ himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.
(With acknowledgement to David Richards, Esq., 1999)
The Differential Theory of US Armed Forces (Snake Model) upon encountering a snake in the Area of Operations (AO)
There once was a young person named Little Red Riding Hood who lived on the edge of a large forest full of endangered owls and rare plants that would probably provide a cure for cancer if only someone took the time to study them. Red Riding Hood lived with a nurture giver whom she sometimes referred to as "mother", although she didn't mean to imply by this term that she would have thought less of the person if a close biological link did not in fact exist.Nor did she intend to denigrate the equal value of nontraditional households, although she was sorry if this was the impression conveyed. One day her mother asked her to take a basket of organically grown fruit and mineral water to her grandmother's house. She said, "But mother, won't this be stealing work from the unionised people who have struggled for years to earn the right to carry all packages between various people in the woods?" Red Riding Hood's mother assured her that she had called the union boss and gotten a special compassionate mission exemption form. "But mother, aren't you oppressing me by ordering me to do this?"
Red Riding Hood's mother pointed out that it was impossible for women to oppress each other, since all women were equally oppressed until all women were free "But mother, then shouldn't you have my brother carry the basket, since he's an oppressor, and should learn what it's like to be oppressed?" And Red Riding Hood's mother explained that her brother was attending special rally for animal rights, and besides, this wasn't stereotypical women's work, but an empowering deed that would help engender a feeling of community. "But won't I be oppressing Grandma, by implying that she's sick and hence unable to independently further her own selfhood?" Red Riding Hood's mother explained that her grandmother wasn't actually sick or incapacitated or mentally handicapped in any way, although that was not to imply that any of these conditions were inferior to what some people called "health".
Thus Red Riding Hood felt that she could get behind the idea of delivering the basket to her grandmother, and so she set off. Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place, but Red Riding Hood knew that this was an irrational fear based on cultural paradigms instilled by a patriarchal society that regarded the natural world as an exploitable resource, and hence believed that natural predators were in fact intolerable competitors. Other people avoided the woods for fear of thieves and deviants, but Red Riding Hood felt that in a truly classless society all marginalized peoples would be able to "come out" of the woods and be accepted as valid lifestyle role models. On her way to Grandma's house, Red Riding Hood passed a woodchopper, and wandered off the path, in order to examine some flowers. She was startled to find herself standing before a Wolf, who asked her what was in her basket. Red Riding Hood's teacher had warned her never to talk to strangers, but she was confident in taking control of her own budding sexuality, and chose to have dialogue with the Wolf. She replied, "I am taking my Grandmother some healthful snacks in a gesture of solidarity."
The Wolf said, "You know, my dear, it isn't safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone." Red Riding Hood said, "I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop an alternative and yet entirely valid worldview. Now, if you'll excuse me, I would prefer to be on my way." Red Riding Hood returned to the main path, and proceeded towards her Grandmother's house. But because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Western-style thought, the Wolf knew of a quicker route to Grandma's house. He burst into the house and ate Grandma, a course of action affirmative of his nature as a predator. Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist gender role notions, he put on Grandma's nightclothes, crawled under the bedclothes, and awaited developments.
Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, "Grandma, I have brought you
some cruelty free snacks to salute you in your role of wise and nurturing
matriarch." The Wolf said softly "Come closer, child, so that I might see
you." Red Riding Hood said, "Goodness! Grandma, what big eyes you have!"
"You forget that I am optically challenged."
"And Grandma, what an enormous, and what a fine nose you have."
"Naturally, I could have had it fixed to help my acting career, but I
didn't give in to such societal pressures, my child."
"And Grandma, what very big, sharp teeth you have!" The Wolf could not
take any more of these specist slurs, and, in a reaction appropriate for
his accustomed milieu, he leaped out of bed, grabbed Little Red Riding
Hood, and opened his jaws so wide that she could see her poor Grandmother
cowering in his belly. "Aren't you forgetting something?" Red Riding Hood
bravely shouted. "You must request my permission before proceeding to a
new level of intimacy!" The Wolf was so startled by this statement that he
loosened his grasp on her.
At the same time, the woodchopper burst into the cottage, brandishing an ax. "Hands off!" cried the woodchopper. "And what do you think you're doing?" cried Little Red Riding Hood. "If I let you help me now, I would be expressing a lack of confidence in my own abilities, which would lead to poor self esteem and lower achievement scores on university entrance exams."
"Last chance, sister! Get your hands off that endangered species! This is
a DoE sting!" screamed the woodchopper, and when Little Red Riding Hood
nonetheless made a sudden motion, he sliced off her head.
"Thank goodness you got here in time," said the Wolf. "The brat and her
grandmother lured me in here. I thought I was a goner."
"No, I think I'm the real victim, here," said the woodchopper. "I've been
dealing with my anger ever since I saw her picking those protected flowers
earlier. And now I'm going to have such a trauma. Do you have any
aspirin?" "Sure," said the Wolf.
"Thanks."
"I feel your pain," said the Wolf, and he patted the woodchopper on his
firm, well padded back, gave a little belch, and said "Do you have any
Gaviscon?"
THE END
Customer: Excuse me?
Customer: Excuse me?
Salesman: Yeah?
Customer: I wonder if you can help me please, I want to buy a Typewriter.
Salesman: A what?
Customer: A Typewriter.
Salesman: Type-writer?
Customer: A Typewriter.
Salesman: I don't think we have any Type-writers here, Grandad!
Customer: What's that then (pointing to computer)?
Salesman: That's a Dell Multimedia Pentium III 800 with 3fx card, unless I'm very much mistaken.
Customer: What's the difference between that and a Type-writer?
Salesman: About 30 years and a plastic cover to you, chief.
Customer: Well, I'd like one of those, please.
Salesman: You sure? Alright (whispers to Salesman2 'this is going to be good') Right, well, as you can see, it's got all the software. It's got Office and Works.
Customer: Yes, but what do I do with my old typewriter ribbons.
Salesman: What did you say?
Customer: Nothing, nothing.
Salesman: You said 'What about my old typewriter ribbons' didn't you?
Customer: No, no. I didn't. Honestly. No.
Salesman: All right...so...you got your tower case...Do you want Mac OS9 with it?
Customer: Ah, yes please
Salesman+Salesman2: (Much hysterics)
Salesman: You only get Mac OS9 with Macintosh computers, chief. Right?
Salesman: Do you want a printer?
Customer: Ah, no, I won't
Salesman+Salesman2: (more hysterics)
Salesman: You won't be able to print, Grandad, without a printer, I'm afraid.
Customer: Yes, of course, yes, I want a printer. Yes, a printer.
Salesman: Alright. What sort of output are you looking for?
Customer: What sort have you got?
Salesman: Ah...no clues.
Customer: About medium.
Salesman: How many DPI, exactly?
Customer: Oh, I should think about, umm, about 3
Salesman+Salesman2: (fits of laughter)
Customer: No...20,000
Salesman+Salesman2: (louder laughter)
Customer: 5000
Salesman+Salesman2: (still laughing)
Customer: 700
Salesman: 700?
Customer: 700
Salesman: 700. So, you know all about it now then do you?
Salesman: You want a 700 DPI printer?
Customer: Yes, a 700 DPI printer.
Salesman: Do you want speakers?
Customer: Yes.
Salesman: Do you want tone controls?
Customer: Yes.
Salesman: Do you want a bag on your head?
Customer: Yes.
Salesman+Salesman2: (more hysterics whilst placing paper bag on Customer's head)
Salesman: So, you got your tower case, you got your printer, you got your speakers, and, of course, you've got your bag on your head. Now, do you want extra RAM?
Customer: (getting annoyed and agitated) No, I don't want stupid things like Extra Sheep!
Salesman: Well, you've got them whether you want them or not, Grandad, they're in your computer. You'll be telling us you don't want Slimline Salad Dressing next!
Customer: Yes, I do want Slimline Salad Dressing
Salesman+Salesman2: (spray Customer with SSD)