============================================================================ ********* *** *** ****** ********* *** *** *** * *** *** *** *** ** *** ********* ******* *** *** *** *** ** *** *** *** *** ** *** he *** *** umus *** ** eport THE Electronic Fun Zone dedicated to fertilizing Mother Earth in the finest possible tradition. Serving Mother since the 1950s. Issue 004, Vol I April (again) 1988 copyright (c) 1988 caren park chief bottle washer, owner, publisher, editor, other stuff all rights reserved, and all that legal rigamarole ============================================================================ A few remarks from the chief bottle washer: Hello, there, fellow friends of weird. We are very happy to bring to you the strangest and most absurd that we can find in a format pleasing to the inquiring mind. We will attempt to bring to you items of focus, items for the discriminating thought process that some of us have (usually after we order a Domino's Pizza with everything but onions and cooked tomatoes on it), items with little social redeeming value. These are our goals, and we wish you to become a small part in this orchestration. If those among you would kindly send in junk that you have no other use for, stuff that you read and find humorous, filth that no one else will take, stories absurd or preposterous, news that isn't fit to line litterboxes anywhere, if you would send those gems to us here at The Humus Report, we'd appreciate it. Our address will be given to you near the end of our report. We will cull from the post office box all death threats and denunciations, and print what we can of whatever is left. The rest is up to you... We would appreciate it if: (1) the sending of copyrighted material for publication was sent ONLY if you also send along a legal release for us to use that material; (2) if you should see non-attributed copyrighted material in our stuff, please let us know ASAP so we can take appropriate actions; (3) if you like what we do here, please donate whatever you feel appropriate, so that we can continue to bring you this stuff month after month... We would also appreciate it if you would distribute this newsletter far and wide, to the six corners of the world, to the heights and depths your soul can reach, the ends of the universe, and even to Encino, California, if you should happen to be down there before I... The only restriction I make upon its distribution is that NO CHARGE, zero, zilch, nil, none, all of the above, NO CHARGE will be made for this newsletter unless I receive 100% of that charge... This means, NO CHARGE for diskette distribution, NO CHARGE for inclusion with other junk, NO CHARGE for access, etc... As I am insured by the Guido and Vittorio Pin-Stripe Violin Case Maker Insurance Company, I hope there will be no exceptions... I also have a program called CKP-MSG.ARC which contains virtually everything you will see here and about 2 megabytes (in ARC/PKX format) more. For a nominal cost per year, I will provide the latest copy of the ibm/compat program AND the latest updates of the datafile to you... address inquiries about this program and/or the datafile to the address near the end of our report... This show can thank the following people: So, without further adieu, on with the show... ============================================================================ "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here..." ============================================================================ Anything you can do I can do better; anything I can do YOU can do better; anything I can do I can do better; anything IBM does will cost more money ============================================================================ For this issue and the next, we will play what we feel is the earliest (and perhaps, even the original) copy of the BBS/Computer-World Classic: DECWARS... It's hard to believe that such imaginative writing could have come from somewhere east of Encino, but, believe it or not, it's true! If someone out in our vast viewing audience has the inside on whether (a) this piece IS the original and/or (b) there is more out there that hasn't surfaced yet (Part Two will appear next month), PLEASE PLEASE let us know so that we can include it in something called "The Further Continuing Saga of the Adventures of Luke VaxHacker..." So, without tiring your eyes and mind with too many big words, allow me to present you with Part One of the DecWars Anthology... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From tekmdp!teklabs!ucbcad!ARPAVAX:CSVAX:mhtsa!ihnss!ihps3!stolaf!hastings Wed May 26 15:59:31 1982 DEC WARS anthology This is what comes of so many hours deeply submerged in UNIX and VMS, thoughts moiling around while debugging system core dumps. Thoughts carefully kept in check, hidden from the light of day (for obvious reasons), until one day... Perhaps it was the Coke. Perhaps... no, let us just say that we found a fairly harmless way to vent these frustrations, these things that nobody within 50 miles could understand. The network, yes, the network. They'll understand! I'm not going to take the blame for this alone. It's those guys at CWRU who first tried to stick it all together; this is merely an extension of that effort. If anybody can finish it, please do. The bar room scene is courtesy the folks at cwruecmp, as is much of the (dis)continuity. This is quality stuff, folks. Special thanks to Douglas Adams, Bob and Dinsdale McKenzie, and the Firesign Theatre. -- Alan Send subpoenas to: Alan Hastings St. Olaf College (where's that??) Steve Tarr Carleton College guilt by association: Dave Borman St. Olaf College Barak Pearlmutter, Clayton Elwell and Mark Honton Case Western Reserve University (no, they're not enlisted) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A long time ago, on a node far, far away (from ucbvax) a great Adventure (game?) took place... XXXXX XXXXXX XXXX X X XX XXXXX XXXX X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X XXXXX X X X X X X X XXXX X X X X X X XX X XXXXXX XXXXX X X X X X X X XX XX X X X X X X XXXXX XXXXXX XXXX X X X X X X XXXX X It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire. During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the Empire's ultimate program: The Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's sinister audit trail, Princess Linker races aboard her shell script, custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore freedom and games to the network... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE CONTINUING SAGA OF THE ADVENTURES OF LUKE VAXHACKER As we enter the scene, an Imperial Multiplexer is trying to kill a consulate ship. Many of their signals have gotten through, and RS232 decides it's time to fork off a new process before this old ship is destroyed. His companion, 3CPU, is following him only because he appears to know where he's going... "I'm going to regret this!" cried 3CPU, as he followed RS232 into the buffer. RS232 closed the pipes, made the SYS call, and their process detached itself from the burning shell of the ship. The commander of the Imperial Multiplexer was quite pleased with the attack. "Another process just forked, sir. Instructions?" asked the lieutenant. "Hold your fire. That last power failure must have caused a trap throughout zero. It's not using any cpu time, so don't waste a signal on it." "We can't seem to find the data file anywhere, Lord Vadic." "What about that forked process? It could have been holding the channel open, and just pausing. If any links exist, I want them removed or made inaccessable. Ncheck the entire file system 'til it's found, and nice it -20 if you have to." Meanwhile, in our wandering process... "Are you sure you can Ptrace this thing without causing a core dump?" queried 3CPU to RS232. "This thing's been stripped, and I'm in no mood to try and debug it." The lone process finishes execution, only to find our friends dumped on a lonely file system, with the setuid inode stored safely in RS232. Not knowing what else to do, they wandered around until the jawas grabbed them. Enter our hero, Luke Vaxhacker, who is out to get some replacement parts for his uncle. The jawas wanted to sell him 3CPU, but 3CPU didn't know how to talk directly to an 11/40 with RSTS, so Luke would still needed some sort of interface for 3CPU to connect to. "How about this little RS232 unit?" asked 3CPU. "I've dealt with him many times before, and he does an excellent job at keeping his bits straight." Luke was pressed for time, so he took 3CPU's advice, and the three left before they could get swapped out. However, RS232 is not the type to stay put once you remove the retaining screws. He promptly scurried off into the the deserted disk space. "Great!" cried Luke. "Now I've got this little tin box with the only link to that file off floating in the free disk space. Well, 3CPU, we better go find him before he gets allocated by someone else." The two set off, and finally traced RS232 to the home of PDP-1 Kenobi, who was busily trying to run an Icheck on the little RS unit. "Is this thing yours? His indirect addresses are all goofed up, and the size is gargatious. Leave things like this on the loose, and you'll wind up with dups everywhere. However, I think I've got him fixed up. It seems that he's has a link to a data file on the Are-Em Star. This could help the rebel cause." "I don't care about that," said Luke. "I'm just trying to optimize my uncles scheduler." "Oh, forget about that. Dec Vadic, who is responsible for your fathers death, has probably already destroyed his farm in search of this little RS232. It's time for you to leave this place, join the rebel cause, and become a UNIX wizard! I know a guy by the name of Con Solo, who'll fly us to the rebel base at a price." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- After sifting through the over-written remaining blocks of Luke's home directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /u/lars, across the surface of the Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke stop at the edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp. "Unix-to-Unix Copy Program," said PDP-1. "You will never find a more wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious." As our heroes' process entered /usr/spool/news, it was met by a newsgroup of Imperial protection bits. "State your UID." commanded their parent process. "We're running under /usr/guest. This is our first time on this system," said Luke. "Can I see some temporary privileges, please?" "Uh..." "This is not the process you are looking for," piped in PDP-1, using an obscure bug to momentarily set his effective UID to root. "We can go about our business." "This isn't the process we want. You are free to go about your business. Move along!" PDP-1 and Luke made their way through a long and tortuous nodelist (cwruecmp!decvax!ucbvax!harpo!ihnss!ihnsc!ihnss!ihps3!stolaf!borman) to a dangerous netnode frequented by hackers, and seldom polled by Imperial Multiplexers. As Luke stepped up to the bus, PDP-1 went in search of a likely file descriptor. Luke had never seen such a collection of weird and exotic device drivers. Long ones, short ones, ones with stacks, EBCDIC converters, and direct binary interfaces all were drinking data at the bus. "#@{ *&^%^$$#@ ":><" transmitted a particularly unstructured piece of code. "He doesn't like you," decoded his coroutine. "Sorry," replied Luke, beginning to backup his partitions. "I don't like you, either. I am queued for deletion on 12 systems." "I'll be careful." "You'll be reallocated!" concatenated the coroutine. "This little routine isn't worth the overhead," said PDP-1 Kenobie, overlaying into Luke's address space. "@$%&(&^%&$$@$#@$AV^$gfdfRW$#@!" encoded the first coroutine, as it attempted to overload PDP-1's input over voltage protection. With a unary stroke of his bytesaber, Kenobie unlinked the offensive code. "I think I've found an I/O device that might suit us." "The name's Con Solo. I hear you're looking for some relocation." "Yes indeed, if it's a fast channel. We must get off this device." "Fast channel? The Milliamp Falcon has made the ARPA gate in less than twelve nodes! Why, I've even outrun cancelled messages. It's fast enough for you, old version." Our heroes, Luke Vaxhacker and PDP-1 Kenobie made their way to the temporary file structure. When he saw the hardware, Luke exclaimed, "What a piece of junk! That's just a paper tape reader!" Luke had grown up on an out-of-the-way terminal cluster whose natives spoke only BASIC, but even he could recognize an old ASR-33. "It needs an EIA conversion, at least," sniffed 3CPU, who was (as usual) trying to do several things at once. Lights flashed in Con Solo's eyes as he whirled to face the parallel processor. "I have added a few jumpers. The Milliamp Falcon can run current loops around any Imperial TTY fighter. She is fast enough for you." "Who is your co-pilot?" asked PDP-1 Kenobie. "Two Bacco, here, my Bookie." "Odds aren't good," said the brownish lump beside him, and then fell silent, or over. Luke couldn't tell which way was top underneath all those leaves. Suddenly, RS232 started spacing wildly. They turned just in time to see a write cycle coming down the UNIBUS toward them. "Imperial Bus Signals!" shouted Con Solo. "Let's boot this popsicle stand! Tooie, set clock fast!" "Ok, Con," said Luke. "You said this crate was fast enough. Get us out of here!" "Shut up, kid! Two Bacco, prepare to make the jump into system space! I'll try to keep their buffers full." As the bookie began to compute the vectors into low core, spurious characters appeared around the Milliamp Falcon. "They're firing!" shouted Luke. "Can't you do something?" "Making the jump to system space takes time, kid. One missed cycle and you could come down right in the middle of a pack of stack frames!" "Three to five we can go now," said the bookie. Bright chunks of position-independent code flashed by the cockpit as the Milliamp Falcon jumped through the kernel page tables. As the crew breathed a sigh of relief, the bookie started paying off bets. "Not bad, for an acoustically coupled network," remarked 3CPU. "Though there was a little phase jitter as we changed parity." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Milliamp Falcon hurtles on through system space... Con Solo finished checking the various control and status registers, finally convinced himself that they had lost the Bus Signals as they passed the terminator. As he returned from the I/O page, he smelled smoke. Solo wasn't concerned. The Bookie always got a little hot under the collar when he was losing at chess. In fact, RS232 had just executed a particularly clever MOV that had blocked the Bookie's data paths. The Bookie, who had been setting the odds on the game, was caught holding all the cards. A little strange for a chess game... Across the room, Luke was too busy practicing bit-slice technique to notice the commotion. "On a word boundary, Luke," said PDP-1. "Don't just hack at it. Remember, the Bytesaber is the weapon of the Red-eye Night. It is used to trim offensive lines of code. Excess handwaving won't get you anywhere. Listen for the Carrier." Luke turned back to the drone, which was humming quietly in the air next to him. This time Luke's actions complemented the drone's attacks perfectly. Con Solo, being an unimaginative hacker, was not impressed. "Forget this bit-slicing stuff. Give me a good ROM blaster any day." "~~j~~hhji~~," said Kenobie, with no clear inflection. He fell silent for a few seconds, and reasserted his control. "What happened?" asked Luke. "Strange," said PDP-1. "I felt a momentary glitch in the Carrier. It's equalized now." "We're coming up on user space," called Solo from the CSR. As they cruised safely through stack frames, the emerged in the new context only to be bombarded by freeblocks. "What the..." gasped Solo. The screen showed clearly: /usr/alderaan: not found "It's the right inode, but it's been cleared! Twoie, where is the nearest file?" "3 to 5 there is one..." the Bookie started to say, but was interrupted by a bright flash off to the left. "Imperial TTY fighters!" shouted Solo. "A whole DZ of them! Where are they coming from?" "Can't be far from the host system," said Kenobie. "They all have direct EIA connections." As Solo began to give chase, the ship lurched suddenly. Luke noticed the link count was at 3 and climbing rapidly. "This is no regular file," murmured Kenobie. "Look at the ODS directory structure ahead! They seem to have us in a tractor beam." "There's no way we will unlink in time," said Solo. "We're going in." ...and, we're going to leave you at this cliff-hanging moment in the hopes that you'll be back next month, waiting with bells on your feet (or whatever other mixed metaphor comes to mind)... Oh, yeah... If those of you that saw the movie tell what happens next, I promise you that I will track you down to the ends of the Earth, and then visit with the manager of your local bijou, asking him/her/it to make sure that your next box of popcorn is greasy, overly-salted, cold, and more than half consisting of unpopped kernels... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I did it! I found the program's last bug bug bug bug bug bug bug bug ============================================================================ Our second piece, another rather longish article, is the second in our "Our Schools Are Turning Out Complete Idiots" series... I can only hope that these little bits of "history" are only the wonderful ravings of the author in a highly-imaginative state, but I fear this is not the case... It would be sad to believe that there are students out there who have as little command of our language as these students, much less believe in the "history" they portray... This piece is reproduced verbatim as received... I guess it's time for me to step off my soap box now and allow you, Kind Reader, to laugh as I did upon reading it for the first time... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The World According to Student Bloopers One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level: The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites. Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines. Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns --- Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men. Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them. Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense. In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head. The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper. The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained." During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and their ship was called the Pilgrim's Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this. One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead. George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms. Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career. Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees. Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this. France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign. The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the "Organ of the Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers. The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history - Richard Lederer, St Paul's School - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hanggi's Law: The more trivial your research, the more people will read it and agree ============================================================================ And now, for the news... All of the news this issue will be true, just as it came off the wire into our editing room. None of the facts have been changed to protect the innocent, or anyone else for that matter... I wish we had more time this issue, but the hope is that the quality will more than make up for the lack of quantity... Behold... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A self-promoting superspy with an eye for defense secrets and a broad sense of humor has been mailing bogus military blueprints from Garden Grove (California) and elsewhere, AP reports. The spy, dubbed "The Phantom Mailer" by government officials, has been producing packages of elaborate, but phony, military documents and mailing them to company presidents, university professors specializing in weaponry and others. Last week, the Mailer struck the newsroom of the Norfolk (Virginia) Ledger-Star. "You're the first newspaper to receive one," said Dick Williams, an assistant to the director of security at the Defense Supply Agency in Alexandria, Virginia. "If he's going to the newspapers now, that's going to create an additional problem for us." The letter sent to the Ledger-Star bore a Garden Grove postmark and the return address: "D Marshall, Staffing, Personnel Administration and Development, Northrop, 500 E Orangethorpe Avenue, Anaheim, California." Northrop, a defense contractor specializing in aircraft and weapons systems, says it does not employ a "D Marshall." But Northrop's chief of security says the firm is familiar with the Phantom Mailer. The document, stamped "SECRET," included what appeared to be a series of photostatically-reproduced reports on various aircraft and weapons systems, along with drawings of curiously-designed aircraft. Each report had been heavily censored. And there were two pieces of film with microdots, pages of text and drawings photographically reduced to microscopic size. On each page was a drawing of an aircraft and a detailed report. "Tests were conducted with a MIG-21 (basic Soviet fighter)," one page said, "fitted with the following equipment: the radar dish was hooked up to a high-energy variable-frequency generator controlled by the (deleted) harmonic energy amplification computer and a test cattle prod (deleted) mounted on the center pylon ..." Williams said his agency had kept the Mailer's operation "low key" because it didn't want the Mailer to know that his efforts were having a disrupting influence. The Mailer uses various names and mails most of the packages from California, although some have been postmarked New York and Phoenix. "He could be a disgruntled employee of some company having defense contracts, but it's hard to say. It's worthless stuff. The drawing of that aircraft is taken from a model aircraft put out by a model aircraft company." The Mailer apparently is familiar with military hardware, Williams added. But he occasionally throws a curve. "At times he'll be describing a sophisticated weapons system and then casually mention that the pilot is carrying a shotgun in his cockpit. Or he'll have an aircraft equipped with a Volkswagen engine" - LA Times - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Tokyo garbage man was charged with murder Friday for beating his drinking companion to death because he talked too much about the Lockheed scandal. "The more he drank, the more he talked about the scandal," he said (Yoshizo Kaneko, 35). Moriichi Ohno, 45, "talked on and on and on about what I have no interest in. I finally got upset" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- President Carter's Executive Order calling for simple English in federal regulations comes none too soon. Consider the following examples: Auto Bumpers - Impact Attenuation Devices Waves - Climatically-caused disturbances at the air/sea interface Parachutes - Aerodynamic Decelerators ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- President Carter has pledged that federal regulations must be written "in plain English for a change." Special workshops have been arranged for writers of regulations. James B Minor, a former government lawyer regarded as the foremost authority on "bureaucratese", is the main teacher at these workshops. "Old regulations are almost guaranteed to be written in gobbledegook," Minor says, "because they are often drafted by lawyers who favor 16th century words like 'deemed' and 'whereas' and 'aforesaid.'" This is exemplified by a paragraph that he distributes to this classes: "We respectfully petition, request and entreat that due and adequate provision be made, this day and the date hereinafter subscribed, for the satisfying of this petitioner's nutritional requirements and for the organizing of such methods as may be deemed necessary and proper to assure the reception by and for said petitioner of such quantities of baked cereal products as shall, in the judgement of the aforesaid petitioners, constitute a sufficient supply thereof." Translation: "Give us this day our daily bread" ============================================================================ And, last but not least, a few words of wisdom. It's true that man does not live by bread alone, and we've pretty much proved that axiom with these unusual masterpieces. To quote someone much smarter than I, "I am non-denominational --- I accept all forms of currency. So, open your hearts and empty your pockets!" A wonderful sentiment, don't you think? If you should find it in your hearts to like what we are doing here, and would like to help us stay in business AND solvent, please send your non-tax-deductible donations in whatever amount pleases you to: caren park 2557 Fourteenth Avenue West Suite 501 Seattle, Washington 98119 (01 January 1992) We will acknowledge, in print, those with the warmest thoughts for our survival... We leave you now with a few thoughts... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A cockroach can live 10 days without its head ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...and, in honor of the 15th of this month: Krueger's Observation: A taxpayer is someone who does not have to take a civil service exam in order to work for the government ...until next month...