81 lines
4.3 KiB
Plaintext
81 lines
4.3 KiB
Plaintext
From woods@encar.ucar.edu Fri Mar 31 18:00:00 1989
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From: woods@encar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
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Subject: April Fools called off!
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Date: 1 Apr 89 00:00:00 GMT
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Followup-To: news.admin
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Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
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It was announced today that the annual USENET April Fools Competition has
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been called off. Officials for UGH, the USENET's Group for Humor, called off
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the annual competition after they found that there was no USENET activity
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that deserved parodying. This is the first time since the creation of USENET
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that this event has been cancelled.
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"Look at it from the point of view of a professional parodist," stated Greg
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Woods, honorary chairman of UGH and the official Backbone Cabal
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representative to the organization. "I think it's a symptom of the growth of
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the net. Everyone takes everything much too seriously these days. You can't
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poke fun at someone who has no sense of humor. USENET itself has lost that
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sense of fun that it used to have back in the good old days."
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Woods, a tall, balding man with a cherubic face continued "Look at the
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last year, and what parody candidates do you see? Brad Templeton and
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rec.humor.funny. A natural, right? Except the situation went out of
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control and now we have a free speech/censorship hassle. It's not funny
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when it's on the front page of the Boston Globe. JEDR would be a natural for
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a parody, but I refuse to take advantage of a man without the ability to
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understand the joke, much less appreciate it. Besides, he'd probably sue me
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for being abusive to nerds or something. So he's out.
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"I like a good joke with the rest of them. Ask anyone -- my sense of
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humor is legendary on USENET. I always get asked to do the opening
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monologue at the Usenix BOF. Last year, a group of people got together
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and wanted to do a roast at Usenix for me, but for some reason it never
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happened. I spent two hours in the conference room and nobody showed.
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Must have been the weather or something."
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"Anyway, we looked really hard at Salman Rushdie. That should have been
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a natural. There should be *dozens* of people making Iran jokes. Are
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there? Not when you're worried about someone coming and killing your
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dog. We thought long and hard about doing an Ayatollah piece, but I
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value my life too much. I'd rather ask Mark Ethan Smith out for a date.
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Or spend an evening with Weemba in a gay bar. Or spend an evening with
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Weemba *anywhere*, for that matter.
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"What's that leave us? The Backbone Cabal announced its retirement.
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What happened? Nothing. How do you parody silence? It shows how useful
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the Backbone really was, but it's not parody material. MES? The
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Brahm's Gang? Tim Maroney? There is no challenge in parodying what is a
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parody to begin with. Chuq didn't even once announce the impending
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death of the net! He did go to work for Apple, but it's hard to tell
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whether that means we should make fun of him or of Sun. Spafford's at
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Purdue now, but making fun of *that* is like throwing a bucket of water
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on a drowning man.
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"We were getting really desperate! We even thought about cross-posting
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a "Car for Sale" ad between nj.wanted and news.announce.important, but
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we decided nobody would notice. So we finally just called it all off.
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"Face it. USENET just isn't fun any more. How can you parody something that
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won't get the joke? We talked about this during the Backbone Cabal BOF and
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Orgy at Usenix, since we were worried even then, but nothing came of it."
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In a related announcement, Woods announced the first USENET Computer
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Network Parody Annual. "Rather than repeat them on the net, (or waste
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$10 posting a message asking, 'does anybody have...') you can get these
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jokes in book form. The 1988 Annual has around 800 parodies, and costs
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$9.95 + S/H. (USD) Send mail to parodybook@looking.UUCP for details on
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how to order."
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This message is copyright The USENET Community Trust. If you read this
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message, you are in violation of our copyright and owe us a royalty. You can
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absolve this violation in one of two ways: buy our book or send $2.95 to
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the "USENET Defense Fund, C/O Rick Adams, Box 13459-27A, Honolulu, Hawaii,
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03199-3459."
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You can copy and distribute this in whole or in part in electronic
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form, as long as you don't try to read it, or pretend that you are the
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one who came up with the idea.
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