Conference back40::soapbox

                        Sniff...  Thx, Richardson...  :-(
    

.0 is funny, but I like Dawn Bank's story better.

Bob

    Dawn Banks... now there's a blast from the past! Dawn was always good
    for a chuckle... not to mention cool motorhead tips.
    
    But somehow, I never did hear her turkey story... care to relate?
    
    My favorite Dawn Banks "highlight film" is when she and Robert
    Praetorius threw a "Harmonica Virgins" party...
    
    -b

    
    well, how nice.
    
    

re: .4

It's a goose story, but that should be close enough:-)

Bob

	An Annotated Guide to Cooking Your Goose (Slightly updated)


          It was this time last year, on the 22nd.  In spite of the thermometer
     reading 50 degrees, I was finally starting to get into the Christmas
     spirit.  With visions of Charles Dickens and Mr Magoo swimming in my head,
     I decided that it would be the Christmas that I finally had my Christmas
     goose.  This decision cost me a long standing relationship with perhaps the
     only person in the universe who would actually live with me and enjoy it,
     but such is the price of dreams fulfilled.

          See, my then sweetheart didn't really like fowl that much.  Well, he
     liked chicken a lot, and it took almost nothing to talk him into a Jean
     Shepherd memorial Peking Duck on Christmas (albeit in a restaurant), but
     there's just something about roasting a large fowl at home that really put
     him off.  The "something" was that he couldn't stand it.

          The smell of roasting turkey was the worst for him, which always made
     him an absolute delight come Thanksgiving day.  He tolerated the scoops of
     starch slop that go along with such a dinner, but he only tolerated it
     because he couldn't think of anyplace better to stay.

          The other problem he had with eating big home-roasted birds was my
     cooking technique, which somehow manages to evenly distribute bits of
     dinner all over the kitchen (and parts of the living and dining rooms).
     Lest he think "Well, it makes her happy", he also got to watch me drop the
     bird on the floor, find out that pies ALWAYS land face down, invent whole
     new mathematical disciplines to express the unprecedented number of lumps
     in my gravy (which he hated even more than the bird), cuss a lot, cry a
     lot, and cut at least half my hair off with the electric knife.

          So, it was with the same look of confused concern that he used back
     when I was going to give myself a lyposuction job (with nothing but an
     Exact-O knife and bad intentions), that he finally gave in and let me cook
     my goose last Christmas.  The only condition was that I allowed him to
     cover all the kitchen surfaces in plastic first.

          Actually, we made a feeble attempt to find a restaurant that served
     Christmas goose.  Feeble because we actually found a place (or were told of
     it before we even started to look), but failed to make reservations because
     I didn't know if it was worth driving to the next state for.  Anyway, I
     enjoy cooking, or so I seemed to think.

          Cooking one's goose is an interesting experience, to say the least.
     The first thing you should do in preparing a goose is to take pictures of
     your kitchen before you start.  This isn't absolutely necessary, but it is
     nice proof that so much damage could be done in a few short hours.

          As it turned out, I learned quite a bit about geese that I didn't know
     before; perhaps a few things I should have known and a couple that I still
     don't want to know.  Here's one thing about geese: They're water fowl.
     Doesn't mean anything to you?  Well try this: I seriously doubt that geese
     have found out about Jane Fonda workout tapes yet.  I mean, I thought *I*
     was fat, but I hadn't seen anything yet.

          Another thing is that geese are approximately the most ornery critters
     on the face of this planet.  Sure, a shark will eat you without so much as
     a "by your leave", and a cat will devour everything you hold dear, but a
     goose is just downright nasty.  Try walking up to introduce yourself to one
     sometime, and you'll see what I mean.  The only reason geese aren't more
     popular than watchdogs is that a watch-goose would just as happily kill its
     owner, as well as any intruder.

          I guess I knew that much already, but what I didn't know is that
     they're just as ornery in death as they are in life.  They're hard to find
     in the supermarket, they have tons of gookie stuff inside that you have to
     clean out of them, they feel even more disgusting than raw chicken, and
     they'll hiss and spit at you the whole time you're roasting them.

          Here's something else that I didn't know: Roasting a goose is almost
     exactly like roasting a 12 pound slab of bacon, except that bacon would be
     less messy.

          In a nutshell, take a 12 pound goose, stick it in the oven, and when
     all's said and done with, you'll have five pounds of cooked goose and
     seventeen pounds of goose grease.  I have no idea how this can happen, but
     I was there, and it happened.  Another thing that happened was that we
     found about four sets of directions for cooking goose, and none of them
     seemed to match.

          You'd think that you'd just stick it in a roasting pan and cook it
     like a turkey, but you'd be wrong.  Of course, you could try, and you'd
     probably end up with a lot smaller mess, but this is clearly not in keeping
     with what appears to be a tradition of lubricating your entire kitchen on
     Christmas day.  It would seem that the directions for cooking the goose are
     ritualistic to some extent; a sort of penance that does almost as much harm
     to the goose as it does to the chef.

          In the end, we took the steps that all the different directions seemed
     to agree on, and were met with about as much success as you'd expect in
     such a venture.  I'm just recounting them here from memory, although I
     still have some strong memories, so I think it'll be accurate:

     Step 1: Thaw the goose.  This is the easy part.  It converts what used to
     be an oblong brick in a plastic bag into a soft, mushy, disgusting feeling
     salmonella culture in a plastic bag.  Yes, you will have to remove it from
     the plastic bag, which will probably require about as much courage as you
     can muster.

     Step 2: Remove the excess fat from the body cavity.  Don't take this too
     seriously, else you might not have any goose left afterward.  The excess
     fat in the body cavity will probably constitute about 1/5 of the bird by
     weight.

     Step 3: If it's a wild goose, oil the skin.  If it isn't, you've got to be
     crazy to even consider more oil.  As a matter of fact, I can't imagine why
     you'd want to oil the skin on even a wild goose.  Maybe by "wild", they
     didn't mean the origins of the goose itself, but rather the experience
     you're planning on having.

     Step 4: Stuff the bird.  Might as well make the stuffing dry, because
     there'll be no end of moisture for it to soak up later on.  You'll also
     probably notice that there's room for more stuffing inside the bird than
     there is meat on the bird.  My sweetie took this to be a good sign.

     Step 5: Put the bird in a shallow roasting pan.  Now, nothing ever really
     said why it should be shallow, and not just a regular deep roasting pan
     like one I always use to roast turkey.  As a matter of fact, I've heard of
     people doing quite well with a deep roasting pan.  I think the reason that
     you don't want to use a deep one is that if you're lax about following
     steps 7-18, you'll end up deep frying the bird in its own fat. With a
     shallow pan, it'll just run over the sides.

     Step 6: Put the bird in a 400 degree oven, breast side up, for an hour.

     Steps 7-18: Stop by every five minutes to siphon off the quart of grease
     that's materialized since you last saw the bird.  Wear dark glasses when
     you do this, because when you open the oven door, it'll be hissing and
     spitting bad enough already, and if it recognizes you, it'll only make it
     even more angry.  The dark glasses won't just disguise you.  They'll also
     keep you from getting grease spit in your eye.

     Not even death can diminish the crabbiness of a goose.

     Oh yes: Also part of these steps is to continually reset the smoke alarm.
     All the fat shooting off the goose that manages to miss you is going to
     fall right square on the oven's heating elements, and generate almost as
     much smoke.

     Step 19: Reduce the heat to 325 degrees and turn the bird over.  The only
     fathomable reason for turning the bird is that by now it'll be stuck to the
     bottom of the pan, and trying to turn it will distribute goose fat over all
     exposed kitchen surfaces when the thing comes unstuck.  Anyway, the spirit
     of the soon departed goose will be amused at watching you and your soon to
     be ex-spouse gingerly trying to wrestle a hissing, spitting, slimey
     disgustingly greasy 400 degree bird carcass loose from the bottom of the
     roasting pan.

     Steps 20-43: Stop by every five minutes for the next two hours to siphon
     off the rest of the grease.  The goose should be pretty well dead by now
     (or at least pretty lethargic), meaning that you can put away (throw away)
     the dark glasses.  It won't be spitting grease anymore.  It'll just be
     gushing out the sides.

     Step 44: Answer the doorbell and explain to the EPA agent what you're doing
     to the sewer system, why you're doing it, and how it relates to Christmas
     and the holiday spirit.

     Step 45: When the greaseball (I mean goose) reaches an internal temperature
     of 195 degrees, remove from the oven, take a shower, and frantically
     prepare all the side dishes.

     Step 46: After the bird has cooled for 15 minutes, gingerly pierce the skin
     with a fork, and try to catch the bird as it flies around the kitchen
     explosively disposing of hot grease under pressure.

     Step 47: Attempt to carve the bird, marveling at how it can have a
     completely unexpected and illogical bone structure.  Don't worry about
     where on the bird the meat comes from, because it's all dark meat: A rich
     dark brown.  Keep a firm grip on the knife as it slides around on all the
     greasy parts (which is anything in the kitchen, at this point).

     Step 48: Sit down to some of the most wonderful tasting poultry you're ever
     liable to sink teeth into.  This stuff is to die for (and you probably
     almost did).

          It's one of the most wonderful things I've ever eaten.  Furthermore,
     the stuffing took on some goose flavoring, too, so it tasted wonderful as
     well.

          My dearest said: "Well, it's sort of like turkey dark meat."  Roughly
     translated into English, that meant "This really stinks and I hope it's at
     least another decade before I have to endure this again."

          Oh yes, I almost forgot:

     Step 49: Rush down to the emergency room and get those 2nd and 3rd degree
     burns all over your face looked at.  On second thought, don't.  The doctor
     will just suffocate himself laughing, mutter something about "goose
     measles", and insist on taking your cholesterol level.  No, he isn't
     worried about your health.  He and the other doctors have a pool going to
     see who can find the person with the highest cholesterol count.  One look
     at you, and he knows that he's going home a rich man.

          Well, *I* thought it was wonderful, and as soon as we've worked out
     the divorce settlement, I think I'll try doing it again.  Ok, so it lost me
     a ten year relationship with the one I loved.  That's the downside.  The
     upside is that I can cook my goose again this year.  It's the 22nd, and I'm
     already laying the tarp down in the kitchen.

    Excellent!

That story never loses its charm.

	That story left me rolling in my office.

	Unfortunately, now everyone knows I wasn't working.



	I'll never think about being "goosed" quite the same way.

    Was Dawn Banks a DECcie?  It IS a funny story, but it reads like
    something written by Dave Barry :-)
    
    

    Yes Dawn Banks was a DECie... and her sense of humor was not even the
    most interesting, er, aspect, of Dawn, and I'll leave it at that.
    
    -b

    	I have to agree with Brian. Dawn Banks, a real blast from the
    	past.
    
    	We all used to work together (more or less) in LJO2, made
    	famous by Lester Waters and his OUZI.
    
    	Scott

    Then the woman should have her own sitcom; she's definitely funnier
    than RoseAnne :-)
    
    

    The OUZI! Yes, I dismember it well. One of the funniest stories in all
    of DECdom... and we were there!!!!!!!!
    
    -b

	For us "newbies" to DEC. Where can I find that story ??.

    Well, Scott... shall you tell it or shall I?

    
    Ah yes, Lester, the Uzi, and the police who surrounded the building.
    I always wanted to see his next review.
    
    							Hank

    	Go for it, Brian.

Among other skills.

Bob

    OK, well...
    
    At one time, there was a "fad" which predated the "Supersoaker" of
    battery powered water guns that could shoot 25 feet or more. The
    type that became most popular looked similar to an Uzi. Most
    of the PCI group at LJ02 had them... on a hot summer day, we'd
    take a break and go outside and shoot each other with them. A
    programmer's version of a cold shower if you will...
    
    So, this one guy, Lester Waters, had a gun that developed a
    leak. So, he wrapped it in a towel when he brought it to work.
    Well, there was this receptionist who was not, as our old
    manager in PCI would say, the brightest bulb in the circuit.
    Even though she had seen us playing with these Uzi water pistols
    many times, when she saw Lester carrying it wrapped in a towel,
    she panicked and called the Police.
    
    Well... the Police showed up and surrounded the building. With,
    I might add, full SWAT gear including automatic weapons. In
    order to "peacefully" evacuate the building, they set off the
    fire alarm. Nartually, those of us at the back of the building,
    who had no idea what was going on, went out the back fire exits,
    where we were greeted by police pointing M16s at us. Not a
    charming sight, to say the least.
    
    Soon after it became corporate policy not to allow people to
    bring their water Uzis to work... the whole thing made the
    Boston Globe and was pretty funny overall... except when Kevin
    McCarthy almost decked the cop who game up behind him and
    shoved him against the wall... that could have turned ugly...
    
    -b

    	RE: Lester Waters as the UZI...
    
    	This occurred back around 1985 or so. Lots of engineers had water
    	pistols and water guns (battery operated) in their offices.
    
    	One morning, a visitor at LJO2 saw what s/he thought was an
    	individual walking into the building with an automatic weapon
    	wrapped in a towel. She alerted security who called the Littleton
    	PD. Everyone was working away when the fire alarms went off.
    	Security was trying to route everyone out the front door, although
    	Ted Hess, Rich Muratori, and I walked out the back. At each corner
    	of the building (the two that we could see) was a police officer
    	with gun drawn. The cop told us to stay where we were, which, of
    	course, was Ted's cue to ignore the cop and walk to the front of
    	the building.
    
    	Pretty quickly, a cop walked up and "explained" what he thought
    	was going on. The first thing I heard, then, was Kevin McCarthy
    	(VMS engineer, not the actor) laughing. He had realized that the
    	culprit was indeed just an engineer carrying his leaky water gun
    	into the building.
    
    	Before the day was over, Gayn Winters sent around a memo indicating
    	that no one was to have any water guns of any kind in the building
    	after that day.
    
    	It was written up in the Littleton paper and everything.
    
    	Scott

    
    hahahahah...hehehehehehehhe...hmmmmmm.....ahhhhhh...just picturing this
    is way amusing... :>:>:>:>
    
    

	What a riot. I can imagine the look on everyone's faces ...

	Thanks.

	 as i see it:

	Scott: B+
	Brian: A- (more colorful)

    What about me?

    We had an entire column of weekend warriors pull into the Westminster
    shipping/receiving area a few years back... Lots duece and halfs,
    jeeps, fuel trucks, flat beds/armor, etc... they were lost.
    
    Chip

    
    re: what about me?
    
    
    "it isn't fair...i've had enough now i want my share...can't you
    see...i wanna live...but you just take more than you give..."
    
    

    Jaysus,
    
    It's a good thing they didn't run into those boys in Colorado who
    got all likkered up and stole a self-propelled howitzer and went
    for a joy ride.
    
    Hello... you got any hardware missing?

    	It would be even funnier if you knew Lester Waters. He was pretty
    	young back then (early 20's) but he looked about 15 or 16. A real
    	baby face.
    
    	Scott

    Re: .27
    
    >the artist escapes me at the moment...
    
    Moving Pictures comes to mind, for some reason.

    
    
    YES!!!!
    
    
    that is them..
    
    thamk you....
    
    

    	Gayn Winters?
    
    	I had a Gayn Winters as a Calculus professor my freshman year
    	in college.  I wonder how many Gayn Winters there are...

I remember those guns! My wife and I each had one. They looked pretty dang real.
I got a little worried one day when we were driving in Dallas' Highland Park
section (Ross Perot's neighborhood) with one of the other nurses my wife worked
with, and they spotted one of their doctors in his Nissan ZX. This other nurse
rolls down the window and sticks the gun out trying to hose him down. I thought
we would cause a pileup or some cop would pull his M-16 out and blow us all
away. At that point I forbade them from taking the guns out of the house. So I
ruined their fun. Kids!

BTW, thanks for Dawn's story, Bob! I almost choked on my lunch! Printed that one
out for the wife.

    
    Couldn't find anyplace else to put this, but I thought it should be
    saved.  Mods feel free to move it someplace else if appropriate.
    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
           <<< BACK40::BACK40$DKA500:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
                          -< Soapbox.  Just Soapbox. >-
================================================================================
Note 530.177                  Start Me Up - Win95                     177 of 177
TIS::HAMBURGER "REMEMBER NOVEMBER: FREEDOM COUNTS"    9 lines  31-AUG-1995 13:25
                                 -< Hi Mike! >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>            <<< Note 530.175 by GRANPA::MWANNEMACHER "NRA member" >>>
>                                    -< :') >-

     
>    RE: .173  SOURCE.....Where's your source??????  Lie, why do you lie?
    
 I find lieing is a good way to infuriate all you libs :-}   
    
:-}
    
    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    WOW, Someone calling Mike Wannemacher a liberal !
    
    

    
    
    Not to worry, I have a picture of Amos not inhaling with Slick.  One
    day I'll forward it to our esteemed Mr. Binder for the Box homepage. 
    
    Mike
    
    
    P.S.  Nice headband and bellbottoms, Amos. 

    
>    Not to worry, I have a picture of Amos not inhaling with Slick.  One

I can distinctly remember "not inhaling" with several young ladies at one time 
or another but never with anyone nick-named "slick" There was a "hillory"
but that is a note for the long-dead ::sexcetera file :-} :-} :-}

:-}

    
    <------
    
    Was it perhaps.... in the back of, say, an El Camino equipped with
    instant grass???
    
    :) :)
    

> <<< Note 148.37 by SOLVIT::KRAWIECKI "Been complimented by a toady lately?" >>>

    
>    Was it perhaps.... in the back of, say, an El Camino equipped with
>    instant grass???
    
Sorry, that's classified information :-} :-}

However registry records will show that at one time I did indeed own a El 
Camino. :-}    

    
    	egad amos....I'm seeing you in a whole new light...:)
    
    
    jim

This marks the first (and perhaps only) time I've opened this conference. 
Why?  Because I signed in to another conference.  Someone asked me if I
wrote the goose story, and I replied in the affirmative, and also stated
that I didn't have a copy online.  Thus, I was pointed to reply .6 in this
thread.

Sheesh!  Posted 2.25 years after I left DEC!  (I'm just back temporarily
doing a little contract work.  I'm still a full time student, and still
broke, for anyone who cares.)

I must say that SOAPBOX is living up to its name of being a totally
contrary place, as this note thread has the single largest collection of
positive statements about me, ever assembled.  I'd say that it brought
tears to my eyes, but hey, that's not my style.

I don't know if any of the people who posted those good words last year are
still around, but: THANKS!

- Dawn Banks
  former VP of VMS MAIL
  current starving graduate student

    
    
    
    Dawn,
    
    
    The box is a wonderful place, stick around.
    
    
    Mike
    
    
    P.S.  oh, and welcome.

    
    Yo Dawn!
    
    Welcome... back!
    
    Heads up, everyone... the humor index of this conference
    just went way up... if Dawn doesn't get you holding your
    sides with laughter, nothing will!
    
    And I'll have you know that I consider the "Harmonica Virgins"
    to be the single most inspired party theme of all time!
    
    -b

    Daaaaaaaaawwwwwnnn...come along I'm so good for you....
    
    I made the song up!

Dawn, don't listen to him.  Go away, he's no good for you (or anyone else).

    Gerald:
    
    isn't ZKO built on a landfill , maybe whatever's in there is affecting
    u... _)

    Who goosed dawn 2.5 years ago?

.42:

Brian,

I thought a lot about what you had to say about the potential relationship
between me and the humor index of the conference.  I'm sorry to tell you
that I probably can't help you here.

See, the thing is that since I left Digital, I have become humor impaired. 
Not to say that I'm humorless; I just forgot how to say anything that
anyone might consider to be funny.

(I will sidetrack for a moment and claim, as I always have, that I *STILL*
can't find anything funny in that damned goose story, even though I wrote
it.)

Hey, I've been in therapy for the last five years (and I feel *so* much
better now, Stimpy!).  I have less need to spew thinly disguised anger in
the form of jokes (except for when I'm working here at Digital).  As a
matter of fact, I'm even seeing clients as a therapist myself (which makes
one wonder what in h*** the professors at UConn have been thinking lately),
so I've had to learn to be warm, empathic, caring, understanding, and...

Never mind.  Some days, I just can't pull it off, and today's one of them. 
In the words of Stuart Smalley "Please, God, don't let me de-skill!"

Anyway, I don't plan on contributing here, anyway.  But, thanks for the
good words.

    
    Very few here feel the need to disguise their anger,
    thinly or otherwise.
    
    ;^)
    

    what about Calvin & Hobbes?

 :-(


 I now have no reason to buy a newspaper (until baseball season anyway)



 Jim

    Not even to see who's got the latest sale on audio-visual equipment?

 No, my a/v purchasing activity is complete, tyvm.

    Until you see something you need.

>> - Dawn Banks
>>   former VP of VMS MAIL
    
    Aha!  Good, now maybe there's someone here who can tell me why...
    
    MAIL> dir/sin=01-dec
    %MAIL-E-NOMSGS, no messages
    
    ...why, that is, mail isn't smart enough to know that I mean 1995,
    because why would I look for mail that has arrived since December 1996?
    Huh, huh?
    
    
>> I have less need to spew thinly disguised anger in
>> the form of jokes...
    
    Now this is interesting, actually.  My friends and family claim
    that I was a "funnier" guy back in the late 1980's, when I spent
    most of every day in a state of barely-controlled simmering rage.
    Work-inspired, of course. :-)
    
    Hmmm... is much of humor ultimately inspired by anger, pain, and
    other "negative" emotions?
    
    Chris

Because VMS is absolutely consistent in all of its interfaces, and
uses a standard date routine, which defaults year to "current year".

The date routine doesn't have the concept of past and future.

/john

>    Hmmm... is much of humor ultimately inspired by anger, pain, and
>    other "negative" emotions?

    Yup.  Your average good comedian had a bad childhood.  Your average
    class clown isn't a happy camper.

    -- Dave

1)  I'm no longer responsible for that piece of bitxcrement called MAIL,
nor did I ever write it in the first place.
2) Probably some error in the defaulting for the date/time conversion.  I'm
not sure whether it's the fault of MAIL's calling arguments, but as far as
I know, just about every utility on VMS defaults the year wrong, so MAIL is
just following the established standard.

3)

I used to talk about the "ABCs" of humor: Anger, Bitterness, Cynicism. 
Overly simplified, because a large component of humor also (IMHO) derives
from pain and suffering.  One needn't look any farther than the content of
your average joke to find themes of pain, suffering, death, or at least
mortal embarrassment to see what I mean.  And, they say that telling these
stories of destruction and cruelty is the best medicine.

My younger brother died of cancer five years ago this month.  It was pretty
hard on him, and I must say that two days before he died, he was an
absolute "larf riot."  Such is about as much proof I need.

I figure Christ must have been having them rolling in the aisles and peeing
themselves when he came back for his return engagement.

    
    	John, if default were current year, wouldn't Chris have gotten
    	some sort of output?
    

He did get some sort of output.

The output was "no messages".

There are no messages since 1-dec-1996 at this point in time.

1996 is the current year, in case you've been in a coma for the past few
days.

/john

    
    	Oops, apparently I have.
    
    	I get this way EVERY January.
    
    	I say "Happy New Year" repeatedly and don't even remember what
    	it means when it matters.  8^)
    

    re: .57
    
    Thanks, that's an interesting analysis, and it makes a lot of sense.
    Sorry to hear about your brother...
    
    re: mail date thing
    
    Oh, I know about the date routines and the default current year
    and all that.  But some higher-level routine must then "put together"
    the "/since" and the "01-dec[-1996]", and at that point it could
    theoretically have the smarts to say to itself, "Hey, it doesn't
    make sense to ask for mail 'since December 1996', because that date
    hasn't happened yet... I'll bet they really mean December 1995",
    and go from there.
    
    Anyway, I was mainly trying to good-naturedly bust chops over the
    same thing I keep forgetting every new year when checking mail, and
    experiencing the same momentary panic upon seeing "No messages!"
    until I realize a second later that I've done it yet again.
    
    Chris

Well, actually, since "/since" and "/after" are handled the same way by VMS
(although Mail only parses "/since"), there really isn't a reasonable way
to handle it consistently other than the way it's done.

/after for a time in the future makes perfect since, such as looking up
appointments /after next 1-dec.

/john

    I love VMS.

    -1 get a room  :-)

    >Hmmm... is much of humor ultimately inspired by anger, pain, and
    >other "negative" emotions?
    
     Not just humor, but many other sorts of creativity. Art, poetry, etc
    are frequently inspired by pain, suffering, or broken hearts.