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} A surfer namd Ted invented the flowchart. His last name is lost even to
} the Oracle, mostly because even Ted (through too much exposure to the
} sun) forgot it. The way the flowchart came into being was an huge
} accident; if Ted had not gotten lost on his way to the beach, we might
} not have the flowchart today. You see, Ted got very very lost, as he
} forgot not only his last name, but his map, and somehow ended up in what
} is now Silicon Valley in California (by the way, it is not entirely
} clear that Ted even started out looking for a beach in California--he
} might have been looking for it in, say, Maine). At that time, it was
} not Silicon Valley, it was merely a pleasant place to stop walking, and
} so Ted did. He stopped, and sat down and thought, or at least made a
} good go of it.
} "Wow," he thought. "It would have been like really cool if I
} had brought, like, the map." He pondered the iniquities of fate then,
} and cried out in his angst, "Like, major bummer, man!"
} But Ted was a philosophic soul, and soon consoled himself with
} the knowledge that all in this universe is in harmony, that all things
} are merely parts of the balance of all there is. "Like, go with the
} flow, Ted man," he advised himself. "Maybe this is like a allegory of
} life-- sometimes we get lost, sometimes we find the beach, and maybe, if
} we're like real lucky, it's even in the right state. Wow, that's deep."
} Then the fatal moment came--Ted then thought, "Well, if this trip is
} like an allegory of life, maybe I can draw like a life map--yeah, a map
} of the flow of things--a flow map? Nah--a flow chart!" And Ted set to
} work.
} And that is why Silicon Valley is where it is today, for a
} distraught computer geek found Ted sitting there three days later,
} nearly dead from lack of sustenance (for Ted was very excited at his
} discovery, and had for- gotten to eat). The computer geek needed
} something in his life, something to inspire him, because the only girl
} he had ever loved had left him for a man with a chin. And so wandering
} about in this daze, he discovered Ted drawing in the sand with a stick,
} and promptly became so excited he forgot about the girl. Later, when he
} had made a hundred and seventy gazillion dollars from his work (and
} Ted's) he married a sorority girl with the brain of a pigeon and a nose
} for money. Ted came to an unfortunate end about seven months after the
} unnamed geek took up his work: he fell in a tidal pool on the beach and
} couldn't find his way out.
} As for where he is now? Well, after making several calls to the
} various heavens and hells (everyone denied emphatically having any know-
} ledge of where he was, though strangely enough everyone seemed to
} recognize the name right off), the Oracle found him, found the man
} responsible for the flowchart. He is working for the Federal Department
} of Roads and Maps for the United States, and he is at this moment
} residing in Califor- nia: he has found the beach, and the waves are
} good. Whenever some poor sod approaches him to do his job, he obliges
} him by making the maps that rule all of our lives, although it bums him
} out sometimes to have to do this, as what may be real in your eyes,
} like, may not apply to the lives of others.
}
} You owe the Oracle a good globe (the kind with all the colors) and some
} Dr. Zog's Sex Wax.
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