Recycling

[Henry J]

Subject: Classic Quotes

"When I was a kid, I had two friends, and they were imaginary and they would only play with each other."
* Rita Rudner

"I don't know what's wrong with my television set. I was getting C-Span and the Home Shopping Network on the same station. I actually bought a Congressman."
* Bruce Baum

"It was a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners."
* Jeff Stilson

"Did you ever walk in a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives."
* Sue Murphy

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you."
* Rita Mae Brown

-----

[lswot]

chuckle, chuckle......

[Henry J]

Subject: Classic Quotes

"USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population."
* David Letterman

"The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. 'Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here.' "
* Jerry Seinfeld

"Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?? I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God....I could be eating a slow learner."
* Lynda Montgomery

"If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead."
* Johnny Carson

"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
* Will Rogers (1879-1935)

-----

[lswot]

"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
* Will Rogers (1879-1935)

[Henry J]

Signs That You've Had TOO MUCH Of The 90's

* You try to enter your password on the microwave.
* You haven't played solitaire with a real deck of cards in years.
* You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
* You e-mail your son in his room to tell him that dinner is ready, he E-Mails you back "What's for dinner?"
* Your daughter sells Girl Scout Cookies via her web site.
* You chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven't spoken to your next door neighbor yet this year.
* You didn't give your valentine a card this year, but you posted one for your E-Mail buddies via a Web page.
* Your daughter just bought on CD all the records your college roommate used to play that you most despised.
* Every commercial on television has a web-site address at the bottom of the screen.
* You buy a computer and a week later it is out of date and now sells for half the price you paid.
* The concept of using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase is foreign to you.
* Cleaning up the dining area means getting the fast food bags out of the back seat of your car.
* Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
* You consider 2nd day air delivery painfully slow.
* You refer to your dining room table as the flat filing cabinet.
* Your idea of being organized is multiple colored post-it notes.
* You hear most of your jokes via E-Mail instead of in person.
Author Unknown

------

[Xjmt]

[lswot]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry J]

Southern Computer Glossary (1/2)

Backup - What you do when you run across a skunk in the woods
Bar Code - Them's the fight'n rules down at the local tavern
Bug - The reason you give for calling in sick
Byte - What your pitbull dun to cusin Jethro
Cache - Needed when you run out of food stamps
Chip - Pasture muffins that you try not to step in
Terminal - Time to call the undertaker
Crash - When you go to Junior's party uninvited
Digital - The art of counting on your fingers
Diskette - Female Disco dancer
Fax - What you lie about to the IRS
Hacker - Uncle Leroy after 32 years of smoking
Hardcopy - Picture looked at when selecting tatoos

-----

[Henry J]

Southern Computer Glossary (2/2)

Internet - Where cafeteria workers put their hair
Keyboard - Where you hang the keys to the John Deere
Mac - Big Bubba's favorite fast food
Megahertz - How your head feels after 17 beers
Modem - What ya do when the grass gets too high
Mouse Pad - Where Mickey and Minnie live
Network - Scoop'n up a big fish before it breaks the line
Online - Where to stay when taking the sobriety test
ROM - Where the pope lives
Screen - Helps keep the skeeters off the porch
Serial Port - A red wine you drink with breakfast
Superconductor - Amtrak's Employee of the year
SCSI - What you call your week-old underwear

-----

[Xjmt]

[Henry J]

-----------------
Subject: Telemarketing

How to Handle Telemarketers

If you're like most people, and most people are, you resent telemarketers calling you at home trying to sell you something. And it probably irritates you that they seem invariably to call at dinner time. I used to wonder why they would do that, knowing they were only irritating people who would then be less likely to buy what they're selling. A friend of mine who once worked as a telemarketer explained it to me.

"When do you expect us to call?" he said.
"At 2 in the afternoon, when nobody's home?"

That would be nice. But I guess it wouldn't be too profitable. Anyway, since they seem to be a fact of life these days, I thought I'd make the best of it and try to have a little fun with them. At first, I would just let them go through their entire spiel, then say, "I'm sorry, I'm hard of hearing. Would you repeat that?" I'd do that several times until they finally caught on and hung up. One of them got really irritated after repeating his pitch three times and snapped, "You're just wasting my time."
"I guess that makes us even,"

I said. But that got old after a while. Besides, it took too long. And in addition to that, my telemarketer friend told me that a lot of the folks who do this for a living can't do anything else. So I felt kind of bad for wasting their time. (OK, I didn't feel REAL bad, but I stopped doing it.)

So that's how I stumbled upon a new hobby. It's fun, entertaining, and it's an exercise in thinking quickly. Here's what you do. Whenever a telemarketer calls, try to come up, on the spot, with a spiel of your own that will disarm the caller and, if possible, maybe even entertain him or her a bit. The following are genuine examples. (And, as Dave Barry says, I swear I am not making these up.)

The phone rings.

"Hello, is this Michael Owen?"

Yes.

"Hello, Mr. Owen, my name is Brenda and I'm with MCI. How are you today?"

Fine, and you?

"I'm fine, Mr. Owen. Does anyone in your home make long-distance telephone calls?"

"No."

"No one?"

Nope.

"Well, do you receive a lot of collect calls?"

No.

"Not many?"

Nope. None.

"You don't make ANY long distance calls or receive ANY collect calls?"

No, m'am. You see, I belong to the Seventh-Day B'nai Antioch church, and my religion strictly forbids me from using the telephone at all.

(pause)

"Uh, Mr. Owen, you're using the phone right now."

(pause)

OH MY GOD! SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE! OH MY GOD!

Click.

You get the idea?

"Hello, this is Christi with Rollin' Hills photography studio. Would you be interested in a free family portrait?"

No, thank you.

"Not even for free?"

No, ma'am. You see, my brother is a staff photographer for National Geographic, and he does all our portraits for us for free.

"Really? That's nice."

Yes m'am, it is. Of course, we have to take off all our clothes and squat naked around a camp fire for him to do it-so you can imagine what our Christmas cards look like - but hey, they're free.

Click.

"Hello, is this Mike Owen?"

Yep.

"Mr. Owen, I am authorized to offer you a week's stay at a fabulous resort if you and your fami ..."

Not interested, thank you.

"Mr. Owen, it's free, if you and your ..."

'Scuse me, sir, but you see, my Uncle Horatio Hilton owns all the Hilton Hotels in the United States.

(I swear to God he then said:)

"So ... uh, I guess you get a discount, huh?"

Yeah.

Click.

--------------
"Hello, is this Mr. Owen?"

Yo.

"How would you like to make big bucks in your spare time?"

No thanks, I'm rich as hell.

Click.

--------------
You get the idea.
Now, before all you telephone sales folks get bent out of shape and write me nasty letters (or put me on some special "call him 10 times a day" list)

I want you to know I have a great deal of respect for sales people in general. Much of the stuff I buy, I buy from sales people. Some of my best friends are sales people. I would be proud for my daughter to marry a sales person. (Then HE could pay to fix her car.) In fact, I had an entertaining experience with a salesperson the other day; it just wasn't on the phone. A young lad was selling those chocolate bars that schools use to raise funds.

He asked if I'd like to buy one and I said sure, why not, pulled out a buck and handed it to him.

"What's the money for?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was a fool and said, "For the candy bar."

I guess I deserved that.

-----------------
Subject: Telephone Intelligence

My uncle Jerry just told us his latest response when they call to get him to switch long distance services.

He says, "I don't have a phone."

They usually say "Oh. I'm sorry." and hang up.

----------------------

[lswot]

Very funny.

[Henry J]

Subject: Fwd: Results of a contest for "theories" sponsored by Omni

GRAND PRIZE WINNER
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago.

RUNNERS-UP:
#1 If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually produce all the world's great literary works in Braille.

#2 Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums. This pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they must yawn to even it out.

#3 Communist China is technologically underdeveloped because they have no alphabet and therefore cannot use acronyms to communicate ideas at a faster rate.

#4 The earth may spin faster on its axis due to deforestation. Just as a figure skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are brought in close to the body, the cutting of tall trees may cause our planet to spin dangerously fast.

HONORABLE MENTION:
The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks" his "cah," the lost r's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and invest in "erl wells."

-----

[lswot]

[Henry J]

Wake up! At least long enough to put out the cat...