quick, run!
***********************************************************************toc
[ Table of Contents ]
27.1 Warner Bros. -card- (etrigan@eden.com)
27.2 Press Release. -humor- (membryk@vislab.com)
27.3 Joe's apt. -URL- (etrigan@eden.com)
27.4 Uncle URL. -URLs- (membryk@vislab.com)
27.5 Donna Delbert and Penn. -prose- (etrigan@eden.com)
27.6 Laugh Therapy. -jokes- (larry_york@ccmail.us.dell.com)
**********************************************************************27.1
[ This issue of the WU is actually short one article. I decided to ]
[ put one of my jokes on an electronic card from Warner Bros. and ]
[ let you go retrieve it yourself! ]
You have been sent a very special WeB Card!
To Pick up your WeB Card:
1) Just visit the Warner Bros. Online Post Office at:
http://www.warnerbros.com/postoffice
2) Click on Taz to get his attention (or "pickup a WeB Card")
3) Enter your secret key for your mailbox, which is: wu.205305
Thanks,
Warner Bros. Online Postmaster
Messages left unclaimed after 2 weeks will be eaten by the Postmaster.
**********************************************************************27.2
PRESS RELEASE
SILICON VALLEY - World Wide Web giants Yahoo and Netscape announced a
surprise merger and relocation today. The new combined firm will move to
Israel and call itself Net'n'Yahoo, following an invitation from the
prime minister elect who announced, "Our new economic reality will be one
where the government is out and free enterprise is in. We will start,
hand in hand: "Net'n'Yahoo and Netanyahu."
"Is not joke. Is real," the outgoing prime minister declared on his
personal home page, the Peresite. He also revealed for the first time
that "http" was in fact created by an Israeli engineer with a great love
of his native language, and that it stands for "Hebrew to the people."
Net'n'Yahoo confirmed reports that it is considering another location
near Aswan, Egypt. A spokesman said the company wants to be "the best
Internet company by a dam site."
**********************************************************************27.3
http://www.joesapt.com/
One of Mtv's best animation pieces comes to the movies! (And no,
tankboy, Animation doesn't neccesarily mean cartoons!) "Joe's
Apartment" was the wacky (if disgusting) sketch where Joe brings
his date back to his roach infested apartment where his friends
(the aforementioned roaches) have made a romantice setting. In
the end his date runs screaming from the apartment covered in
roaches. !HI!-larious.
The web site features clips from the movie, interviews with the
roaches, songs sung by the roaches (ala the mice from "Babe" --
but the roaches did it first on Mtv), a great roach parody of AOL
(called ROL), and the scenic view from Joe's window...a brick
wall.
**********************************************************************27.4
Well, off I go on vacation for a week, but that shouldn't stop you from
surfing.
Here's my weeks picks (good and bad, basically, if it's "weird" or
"cool", it goes on here)
I take no responsibility in the stupidity of the net, I just enjoy it.
http://www.mit.edu/people/twm/stupid/Naked.html
[ You're on your own for this one. ]
http://www.blackdragon.com/html/byday.html
[ Any web site that starts out "Hi, I am Gillian Bonner, welcome ]
[ to my site! I am a person who is very in touch with my physical ]
[ being." should immediately let me know what's in store for me. ]
[ Ex-model/bunny Gillian has started her own software company and ]
[ uses her charms to draw you into a hardsell for her CD-ROM ad- ]
[ venture "Riana Rouge" - THE cd-rom version of the vixen movies! ]
http://drunk.yikes.com/
[ "Drunk: the webzine for the average pissed off human" Another ]
[ Generation X'er using his net.resources to bitch and moan. I'm ]
[ still waiting for the parodies of this site. "Kryptonite High: ]
[ the webzine for the super-powered pissed off human"; "Dog's ]
[ Butt: the webzine for the average pissed of canine". Actually, ]
[ it's not that bad of a 'zine, but http://www.suck.com did it ]
[ first...but if you feel that Suck's gone soft, here's the cure. ]
http://www.realaroma.com/
[ Some people have too much spare time...Thank god! ]
[ "It Wasn't The Dog(R)...Learn just how easy it is to odify(TM) ]
[ your sites on the WWW! Learn ATML syntax, see the new ATML 2.0 ]
[ extensions and explore our SystemSmells(R) Archive!" ]
http://www.cdsnet.net/vidiot/st-fc/synopsis.html - 8th Star Trek movie,
synposis (out in November)
http://www.starbase21.com/holodeck3/
[ Star Trek fans will love the content and web designers will ]
[ love the layout. Not to mention it's kinda fun. ]
http://wso.williams.edu/~ktaylor/gerstein/felix/
[ A Felix the cat website. It's true -- someday everything and ]
[ everyone will be on the web. ]
http://www.zinerak.com
[ If the WU is the only 'zine you get, then you're the coolest, ]
[ but if you want to expand the 'Zine Rack is the place to find ]
[ special interest 'zines of all kinds. ]
http://remus.rutgers.edu/~mongiovi/magicgarden/ - anyone remember this
show as a kid or is this an "East Coast" thing? (maybe a New York/New
Jersey thing)
http://mirsky.com/Designers/
[ The people who brought you Mirsky's "Worst of the Web" attack ]
[ people who tout themselves as web designers! The web site ]
[ http://www.americandreams.com/index.html is reviewed: "I'd ]
[ never seen a trademarked name that contains six exclamation ]
[ points. I think this site is really run by an ambitious but ]
[ untruthful ten year-old girl" ]
http://www.deathnews.com/
HTTP://www.cris.com/~linenoiz/gen.html
[ Death, S&M, and a band called "The Genitorturers". Not quite ]
[ my thing, so someone else can search these websites. ]
http://tattoos.com/
[ Do you really need a description of this site? ]
http://www.zynet.com/~meatlog/showcase.html
[ Um, a freak showcase. (I'm beginning to think that Uncle URL ]
[ may be the Uncle you were not allowed to spend time with...) ]
http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/photo/index.html
[ This site focuses on Photography and cameras and has a great ]
[ section on digital cameras. (which is a plus for me, since I ]
[ will be buying one soon.) ]
http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/samantha/travels-with-samantha.html
[ Like a PBS special and Infomercial all-in-one, travel through ]
[ North America with Samantha. (Apparently anything below the ]
[ Mason-Dixon is South America since Samantha never made it that ]
[ far.) ]
The Sex List (or the Sad State of the Internet)
http://www.horney.com
http://www.nipple.com
NOTE: How the hell do they get these 'nic names? I've seen worse
(contest: let's get the nastiest list of web sites, that actually
exist!..I don't think www.fuck.com exists, but www.shit.com does!)
http://www.vanitymail.com/domall.html - well, here's the internet going
to hell in a hand basket!
**********************************************************************27.5
[ Doing my regular surffing I decided to peruse Penn and Teller's ]
[ web site (http://www.sincity.com) a little more then I did the ]
[ last time I included it in the WU. Inside I found some great ]
[ arcticles written by Penn. Here's a LONG excerpt from one: ]
http://www.sincity.com/teller/articles/donna.html
My Search for Donna Delbert
by Teller
"Have I got a woman for you!" Bob Lund announced with a procurer's wink,
and heaved an apple box labeled DONNA DELBERT onto his kitchen table. His
wife, Elaine, set out a pot of decaffeinated tea with some slices of poppy
seed cake, and apologized that she and Bob had to go "over to the Museum
to wait for the man to read the gas meter." Now, Bob and Elaine really do
own a museum the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan special-
izing in all the magicians who were not Houdini, but I bet Elaine was
lying about the meter man; Marshall is the kind of blueberry pie town
where the gas company trusts you to read your own. No, they were leaving
me alone with Donna Delbert's apple box because they knew I would fall for
her, and l'amour is a private thing.
When they were gone, I opened the box. I like touching the personal things
that belonged to the dead, things I have no right to touch. As the snow
began to fall outside the Lunds' kitchen, I read Donna's letters, stroked
her dainty gloves, and sniffed the torches she ate fire from. Then, in an
advertising photo I saw her for the first time, peering from her own plump
shadow, her vampire lips in a coy half-smirk, under plucked, painted
eyebrows. She was my kind of woman, a creature of the night.
She had been notorious. Her sultry mug had graced glossy rags from Sir! to
Time. Rumored to be the American widow of a British tank gunner killed in
the Normandy invasion, she appeared suddenly on the English music hall
circuit shortly after World War II, calling herself, "America's
Outstanding Lady Magician and the Only Lady Fire Eater in the World."
Agents booked her at once. A Yankee dame to the tips of her long red
fingernails, she conjured, sucked the flames from torches, and snuffed
candles with a crack of her whip. She was the perfect postwar woman, the
Rosie the Riveter of magic.
Then one spring midnight in 1949 she was having a late supper at her
boarding house in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, when a policeman appeared,
saying he believed she was a fugitive in disguise. Donna went silent and
shook her head no. The inspector searched her purse and found an
identification card for a soldier missing from the U.S. Air Force. Hours
later at the city jail, in a voice an octave below her usual contralto,
she confessed: she was that missing soldier, Delbert Hill, a male P.F.C.
gone A.W.O.L. from the U.S.A.F. He had been living as a lady fire-eater
for four years and had fooled everybody except the two women who were
his lovers. Unfortunately, jealous Betty got wind of rival Edna and blew
the whistle on their cheating heartthrob.
The Air Force took away Delbert's falsies, cut his brunette curls and
sentenced him to two years at hard labor. Sleazy reporters showed up to
sneer, but he basked in the attention. He bragged to them how he had
shocked the judges by swallowing lighted cigarettes. When they asked what
he would miss most in prison, he replied without missing a beat, "My
corset. I can do without my high-heeled shoes, but when you wear a corset
for almost four years, you get kind of used to it." He was shameless and
they loved him for it. "It won't be so bad in the clink," he shrugged.
"I'm going to write a book on my years as a woman. That will show them."
In his diary Delbert summarized his trial: "Like Hollywood premiere.
Plenty cameras and reporters." Warhol would have worshipped him.
Transvestitism is boringly popular in the 1990s Mrs. Doubtfire pulls in
$27.5 million its first weekend; Divine receives a reverent obit in the
Times. But Delbert was more than a crossover crossdresser he was a nut
who pulled off "Mission Impossible" high-stakes ultra-drag, a magic trick
on a hostile government.
He had been sent to Britain in 1942 as an entertainer in the Air Force
Special Services. In those days, he did his act in a soldier's uniform,
but that didn't stop him from making headlines. He was in the middle of
his act in a London theatre when an air-raid siren screamed and...
While bombs fell outside and shook the building, Hill went right on
thrusting a fiery torch down his throat to keep the attention of an
audience on the verge of panic.
A fellow soldier emerged from the wings with a G.I. helmet and clomped
it down on Hill's head. It was too large and covered Hill's eyes, but he
went on with the routine.
Flames gushed from his lips and smoke crept all around the helmet. The
children screamed with delight at the ludicrous sight and their mirth
spread to the adults.
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, July 22, 1944 There are those who would be
abashed to have their heads on fire in public. Not Delbert he was a star
and was not about to let anybody, least of all Hitler, disrupt his act.
England's Queen Mary chose him for a command performance on the 4th of
July to honor his coolness under fire.
In the spring of 1945 he learned that the bureaucracy had classified him
out of Special Services and reassigned him as latrine orderly. Stars do
not scrub toilets. So he collected his paycheck, got stinking drunk, and
ran away to adventure.
Running away is a good thing. I recommend it. Twenty years ago I was a
respectable schoolteacher, apt to suffer the fantods as I noticed
September approaching. I ran away and now I earn my living producing
roaches from top hats and trading wounds with a large man in red shoes.
It's insecure and disreputable, but each fall when I hear the cheerful
chant "Back to School!", and think about getting up at five in the
morning to grade homework papers, something inside me does a little
dance. So I root for Delbert.
He was now a hunted man with a near-compulsion to stand in the spotlight
and make a spectacle of himself. But the same lack of shame that let him
flambe his head and become a hero came to his rescue. In his Air Force
shows, he had appeared in comedy sketches in a grass skirt and coconut-
shell bra as "Dirty Gertie from Bizerti". With his plump little shape, he
had considerable 1940s sex appeal. Female magicians are rare few women
want to join a fraternity that uses them as decorative prop tables and
meat to be sawn into bits so as Donna Delbert, ex-Private Hill was now
prepared to corner the market.
Doing the act was easy, but life off stage was trickier. By calling
himself the wife of a tank gunner killed at Normandy, he sidestepped
dating; no decent man would hit on a patriotic widow. One season he was
unemployed (which he grandly termed "resting") and took a job at the
Lambert & Butler factory as a tobacco-packer as, of course, Donna, in
stuffed bra and nylons. Some thought him a bit unladylike apt to dispatch
a pint and demolish a cheese sandwich with manly relish and some suspected
he was a lesbian. But that was good cover when, after two years of
celibacy as Donna, he fell for pretty Betty in an Islington pub.
They had been girlfriends for three months when, according to Betty,
"Donna asked me if I would like to share digs. I agreed. I watched her
unpack. Donna had exquisite transparent cami-knickers, little lace
panties, corsets, lots of nylons. We talked for a time, then Donna gave
me my first shock. She asked, `Would you mind if I smoked a pipe?' Later
that evening I learned the truth. From that moment we led a strange life.
It was only when we had a lovers' quarrel that he used his normal deep
man's voice. Other girls never guessed." She was right. Even Renee, who
assisted Donna for two years and often shared the same bed, didn't have
a clue.
**********************************************************************27.6
***********
Headaches
A fellow had been suffering from groin pain and excruciating headaches
for some time. Finally, he went to a doctor.
After a thorough exam, the physician said, "Well, I'm not exactly
sure what is causing your headaches, but the only way to stop the pain
is by castration."
The man was shocked. He decided to live with the pain.
But as time went on, it only got worse. Finally, he went back to
the doctor. "All right," he said. "I can't stand it anymore. I'll have
the operation."
When it was all over the man was deeply depressed, and the
doctor told him, "I recommend you begin life anew. Start over from
this point."
So the man decided to take the advice and started by going to a
men's shop for a new set of clothes.
The salesman said, "Starting with the suit, it looks like you take
a 38-regular."
"That's right," exclaimed the man, "How'd you know?"
"Well, son, when you've been in the business as long as I have,
you get pretty good at sizing a man up." Eying the man further, the
salesman added, "For a shirt, you'll take a 15 long."
"Right again," the man said.
The salesman suggested, "And for undershorts, I'd say a size 36."
"There's your first mistake," the man said, "I've worn 34's for
years."
"No, you're a size 36 if I've ever seen one", said the salesman. The
man replied, "I ought to know what size briefs I wear, and
I'll take 34."
The salesman replied, "Well all right, if you insist, but they're
going to pinch your balls and give you terrible headaches."
****************
Efficeint Waiter
It seems that a man entered a restaruant and sat at the only open table.
As he sat down, he knocked the spoon off the table with his elbow. A
nearby waiter reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a clean spoon and
set it on the table. The diner was impressed. "Do all the waiters carry
spoons in their pockets?"
The waiter replied, "Yes. Ever since we had that efficiency expert out; he
determined that 17.8% of our diners knock the spoon off the table. By
carrying clean spoons with us, we save trips to the kitchen." The diner
ate his meal. As he was paying the waiter, he commented, "Forgive the
intrusion, but do you know that you have a string hanging from your fly?"
The waiter replied, "Yes, we all do. Seems that the same efficiency expert
determined that we spend to much time washing our hands after using the
men's room. So, the other end of that string is tied to my penis. When I
need to go, I simply pull the string, go, and return to work. Having never
touched myself, there is no need to wash my hands. Saves a lot of time."
"Wait a minute," said the diner, "how do you get your penis back in your
pants?"
"Well, I don't know about the other guys, but I use the spoon."
***************
Marriage made in Heaven
A couple was on their way to church to be married, were involved in a
car accident and died. When they arrived at the pearly gates, they
met St. Peter, who asked them if there was anything that he could do
for them.
They explained what had happened, and asked if he could marry them.
He replied that he couldn't, but that he would explain the situation
to God who might be able to help out.
A few days later they met with God and explained their request. God
replied that he couldn't help them right then, but to come back in
five years and he'd see what could be done.
Five years later the couple came back before God, and again requested
that they be married. God told them that they would have to wait
another five years and come back.
Another five years passes and the couple again approached God about
getting married. He arranges for the ceremony and the deed is done.
About six months goes by, and the couple just can't get along. They
approach God, explain that they are not compatible, and ask for a
divorce. Whereupon God explodes in anger, exclaiming "Good grief, it
took me ten years to find a preacher up here, do you know how long it's
going to take to find a lawyer!!??)