Month: March 2004

Al Franken again

Last night one of the few semi-non-political jokes stemmed from how Clinton lied about sex, and how that led to a frank discussion in bedrooms across the country about what wasn’t or was adultery. “My wife told me in no uncertain terms that oral sex *is* adultery. Which I guess is why we haven’t had any since we got married.”

Jokes and the joking jokesters who tell them.

Went to see Al Franken last night. Sure, if you’d read his “Lies and the Lying Liars” book and seen his interview on the Daily Show the other day, there wouldn’t have been all that much new material, but man it felt good. It’s good to allow yourself to think, if even for an evening, that there are a few thousand people in your own city who are as mad about the Bush administration as you are, and (being citizens and voters) are in a better situation than you to do something about it. Hey, all I can do is give money to candidates and organizations like moveon.org and the ACLU, and give moral support to guys like Al Franken, and so that is exactly what I do.

Tomorrow I’m going to set up AudioHijack on the G4 to capture his new radio show to disk. If and when I have a working iPod, I can load the previous days show and listen to it at work.

Quick quiz time

Ok, it’s time for one of my world-famous quick quizes.

Suppose you are in the business of selling computers with Linux and other free operating systems on them, and you just posted an announcement to comp.os.linux.announce about your latest deal. Somebody emails you to tell you that you spelt the URL wrong in the announcement, and not only that on the very front page of your site you’ve used the word “suit” several times when referring to OpenOffice.org when you really meant “suite”. Do you:

  • Thank him for helping you project a more professional image, and fix the front page of your site and look for other typos and grammatical mistakes before resubmitting an announcement to comp.os.linux.announce or
  • Send him what is probably a very witty retort in your native language, even if you’re not 100% sure how to translate it into English.

If you chose the latter, then there might be a (very short) future for you in retail sales.

To quote in full the response I got: “I don’t mind your criticizing that way. It shows you are only just THOSE kind person!”

I think “I am only just THOSE kind person” will become my new catchphrase.