This evening I was strolling along University Avenue up in Palo Alto - I very much enjoy the scene along that boulevard. A new restaurant has opened, the third branch of "Pluto's" - the other two are in San Francisco. A scrawny, hairy, bespectacled individual implored me to take the empty plastic chair opposite him at a table out front of "Häagen-Dazs" - usually I'd turn down such a request but I was feeling particularly open to conversation with a stranger in the balmy night air. He was quite mad, his brains scrambled, although he wasn't grungy like a street person. He had a notebook and a medical dictionary; when I asked his name he said "Oxford University" and that he'd never seen the Atlantic Ocean. Yet he'd earned a degree there, in diction, and he wanted me to guess how it was he'd been there without seeing the Atlantic. I rose to the occasion and responded with matching daffiness, claimed I was a tabula rosa, a blank slate <1> and that I had no opinion. After scrawling the expression into his notebook (with many extra letters) he rolled a cigarette from a pouch of tobacco and requested two cents for a cup of coffee. I handed over two pennies, then ponied up two more. Finally I gave him the rest of my change, shook his hand and left him there. Other questions of his I answered were whether I'd ever been to Switzerland, or to London, and what kind of dictionary I had.

Y2K Humor Spotlight

From: nospam@xxx.com(Tiberius)
Subject: Programmer available
Newsgroup: comp.software.year-2000

On 16 Aug 1998 19:29:07 GMT, "RP"  wrote:

>Please let me know if you are looking for 
>programmers to work on the Y2K Project. I 
>know someone who with cobalt programming 
>experience and is interested in utilizing 
>thier knowledge. Please also include what 
>your needs are.


Damn, and I'm only fluent in Cesium and Boron.