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Internet Oracularities #1518

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1518, 1518-01, 1518-02, 1518-03, 1518-04, 1518-05, 1518-06, 1518-07, 1518-08, 1518-09, 1518-10


Internet Oracularities #1518    (21 votes, 2.8 mean)
Compiled-By: Steve Kinzler <kinzler@cs.indiana.edu>
Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 07:01:42 -0500 (EST)

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Let us know what you like!  Send your ratings of these 10 Oracularities
on an integer scale of 1 ("very bad") to 5 ("very good") with the
volume number to oracle-vote@cs.indiana.edu (probably just reply to
this message).  For example:
   1518
   2 1 3 4 3   5 3 3 4 1

1518  21 votes 27633 34680 56631 44652 28623 13854 23862 36741 16b30 86412
1518  2.8 mean  2.9   2.9   2.5   2.9   2.8   3.4   3.1   2.7   2.8   2.2


1518-01    (27633 dist, 2.9 mean)
Selected-By: Tim Chew <twchew@mindspring.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> So my brother-in-law Dr. Fenton Tremulo is a seismologist. He studies
> earthquakes. Sometimes they study him.
>
> Well, last week, over a few beers at my sister's house (she's his wife,
> if you haven't guessed) he starts tell me about the idea of a
> "cepstrum" of "quefrencies" (rather than a spectrum of frequencies).
> Clearly it's another of "Uncle Fenton's Tall Tales" like he tells my
> kids. I laugh and suggest he have a couple more beers. "Two or three
> more of Labatt's finest and you'll be over it," I tell him.
>
> Yesterday, just for the fun of it, I looked up cepstrum and quefrency
> on the internet. Right there staring at me from Wikipedia was a whole
> explanation bristling with mathematics! Fenton wasn't making it up.
>
> But some other loony did. Three of them, actually, Bogert, Healy, and
> Tukey. Suggestive of bogosity and turkeys.
>
> What other gawwd-awwful terminology exists in science of which I've
> been heretofore comfortably unaware of?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} I pondered thy query a centifortnight (or
} Deci perhaps); then translated my icophone
} Nearer myself. Steganographic audio
} Phonemes erupted from my parabolic curves-
} Twin vermilion lines- and my sinus produced
} Sinosoidals ordered by sphota like photos
} Moving my verse transverse.  It seems that no etic
} Noetic poetic explains what I had said!
}
} What tonemes seem too strange to you- who knows?
} Unrhyming phonon clumps encoded binarily
} Are all you'll recieve for a subjective inquiry
}
} The Oracles demands of you the following payment:
}
} Though it make you tenser, describe me a tensor;
} Present me either your plexus and spine or a spinor;
} And kindly do it in terms of the quaternions.


1518-02    (34680 dist, 2.9 mean)
Selected-By: "Lawrence, Mark" <lawrence.4@osu.edu>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> What's the best cure for insomnia?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Sleep it off.


1518-03    (56631 dist, 2.5 mean)
Selected-By: Christophe <xof@chanticleer.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> I just got a horse and I'm trying to find out what breed he is. I have
> named him Rakkabones from how he looks. My Uncle Febbly says he thinks
> Rakkabones is an Episcopalian or a Quarternion, but my dad says he is
> only a Partial Derivative. Dad never make's any sense at all. My mom,
> who is looking over my shoulder, says I shouldn't put a postrophee in
> "make's" but I don't see why because it ends with s and need's one.
> She just said there you go again.
>
> Please tell me how wrong my mom and dad are and what breed my horse
> Rakkabones is.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} First, s'hame on you four not being able, at your age,
} to look over your own body part's - if your aging mother
} has to look over your s'houlder, I wonder who is looking
} over your s'hin's.
}
} S'econd, if everything that end's with an S need's
} an apostrophe, then you s'hould apply the s'ame
} principle to word's that begin with one.
} With an S, I mean, not with an apostrophe.
} Just because an S is on a different s'ide
} doesnt mean it i's les's s'ignificant.
}
} A's for your hoarse - make it s'tand s'trait,
} then make a s'mall cut in the top of it's head.
} If any blood come's our, it's a full-blooded hoarse.
}
} You owe the Oracle sik's dollar's.


1518-04    (44652 dist, 2.9 mean)
Selected-By: Christophe <xof@chanticleer.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> GOD HATES FAGS!

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Hah! An anagram! I love anagrams even more than you love to give policy
} to God.
}
} You have described the end of the era of the Large Motor Car: FATED GAS
} HOGS, but you can watch their demise with the SOFT DASH GAGE.
}
} You also have some demented old pigs: DAFT HOGS AGES.
}
} Ultimately though, you are the one who suffers: FATS GAG HOSED.


1518-05    (28623 dist, 2.8 mean)
Selected-By: Dave <lightinchains@gmail.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> So last year I needed help with a school paper and you gave it to me.
> It was about the Diet of Worms. Unfrotunately the dog ate it before I
> could hand it in. So this year I have the same assingment. Don't ask
> why I don't won't to talk about it.
>
> And the cat peed on my computer last year and my mom threw it away and
> now I need a new one I am borrwyoing Billy Sedgwyckth's computer but
> don't reply to him reply to me or he will get the paper instead.
>
> How can people eat those worms? Yuckkk!
>
> And Martin Luther King. He was invloved with it, too, but I am sure he
> didn't have to eat the worms.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Well, you see Edith (now called Edith of Worms, but then just Edith)
} asked her husband, Martin, if she looked fat. After his reply she
} nailed his a$% to a door and he had 95 Thesis Problems, none of which
} came from female dogs eating his homework. Or cats peeing on his
} computer. (By the way, you may have heard that Jay-Z later wrote a song
} about Martin, but Jay-Z took some liberties with the facts, such as
} changing the number, so don't use it for you paper.) Now just because
} Edith did not like Martin's refusal to recant what he said about her
} backside, didn't mean she wasn't going try a diet. Having seen some ads
} for sanitized tape worms, Edith embarked on the now famous Diet of
} Worms. This made her very irritable, a side effect of tape worms now
} well known, and she protested *everything* thus starting a Protestant
} movement. People were a bit more euphemistic back then, so they didn't
} use the phrase "bowel movement." Despite her complaints, she did manage
} to slim her figure, and her improved looks, or "reformed body" was
} called the Protestant Reformation.
}
} You owe your dog a de-worming and you owe the Oracle a paper on the
} Papal bull running of Pamplona.


1518-06    (13854 dist, 3.4 mean)
Selected-By: "Klone (aka Daniel V. Klein) " <dvk@lonewolf.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> I was born at such an early age that I am two years older than myself.
> I'm telling you this as a method of grovellling, because most
> supplicants are not as supple, and die trying to catch up with
> themselves.
>
> In spite of everything I am way behind on tribute to you. Already I
> owe you a replacement ornithopter and two tons of double-density gold.
> I've been working on making the ornithopter, and am using dead pigeons
> because (as Tom Lehrer said) it's not against any religion to want
> dispose of a pigeon.
>
> I'm considering dropping the ornithopter and preparing the gold
> instead. Please give me some hints on preparing double-density
> materials in general. I was thinking of compressing gold coins until
> they were smaller. I've run out of gold, too. Please send more.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Firstly, congratulations on your maturity. You wouldn't believe how
} many questions I get from immature supplicants (actually, you probably
} would; you're old enough to be sufficiently cynical about these
} things).
} Secondly, thank you for keeping me up-to-date on your attempts to pay
} me. Most supplicants don't bother with this, and seem to think I'll
} forget. Like an elephant, I never forget. Like Ko-Ko, I have a little
} list, and they'll none of 'em be missed.
}
} As you will no doubt recall, the ornithopter was to replace the one
} Zadoc destroyed in his doomed attempt to bring me back some ice from a
} comet to put in my martini. Perhaps I should have told him about the
} freezer compartment in the Oracular fridge. No matter.
}
} One word of advice on the ornithopter (you'll need it for the next
} bit): don't use peanuts coated in cyanide to kill the pigeons, use
} strychnine instead. I tried the 'peanuts-in-cyanide' trick once and
} got into so much trouble with the park-keeper; who knew you had to put
} up warning signs, "These cyanide-laced peanuts may contain nuts"?
}
} Anyway, I digress.
}
} In order to create the double-density gold (or indeed any
} double-density material), you will need the following:
} One ornithopter (check)
} One space-readiness kit for same
} One same
} One pair bolt-cutters
} One key for Fort Knox
} One coil of rope
} One map of the Milky Way
} Entire works of Marcel Proust.
} Entire works of Marcel Marceau. On audio tape.
}
} 1) Fly the ornithopter to Fort Knox (anything else won't get under
}    their radar, but they were getting too many false positives from
}    pigeons so they've turned off the pigeon-detectors).
} 2) Break into Fort Knox using the bolt cutters and the key. This
}    should be straightforward.
} 3) Steal two tons of gold (or more, if you prefer).
} 4) Adapt your ornithopter for space-flight.
} 5) Fly to the centre of the Milky Way. You may need the books and
}    tapes for in-flight entertainment.
} 6) Carefully lower the two tons of gold half-way into Sagittarius A*
}    (a black-hole), using the rope.
} 7) The gravitational field of the black-hole will cause the gold to be
}    crushed to double its original density.
} 8) Pull the gold back out of the black-hole. If this turns out to be
}    impossible (according to Einstein, it is), then I suggest that you go
}    in after it, and wait until the black-hole evaporates and you emerge,
}    with the gold. Admittedly, you might not be in the same shape as when
}    you went in, but that's not important.
} 9) Fly back to Earth. Note: your map may be out-of-date by this point.
}
} If only all supplicants were as willing as you to settle their debts.
}
} You owe the Oracle a better way of testing his new invention that
} halves the density of everything put into it.


1518-07    (23862 dist, 3.1 mean)
Selected-By: Ian Davis

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> That was awesome!  Too bad I had to pay a price fir it.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Oh, you poor sap, you must be pine-ing for another answer.
} Lettuce sit down together, and I'll tell you the story about
} how I met my wife.
}
} One day, I was eating in this tree-mendous restaurant. The
} waiter came up to me and asked what I wanted. "Olive the
} plaice, please" I said. When it arrived, I started to eat
} it, but just then a bone got stuck in my throat. I started
} coughing and spluttering, but everyone around me couldn't
} give a fig.
}
} Just then, a young lady came up behind me and performed the
} Heimlich manoeuver on me. "Thank you, what's your name?"
} I asked. "Vera," she replied. "Aloe Vera," I said.
}
} She asked me what I did for a living. "I'm a painter," I
} replied. "So that was an artichoke?" she asked. She had to
} go then. Parting is such sweet sorrel, but we arranged a
} date.
}
} Over thyme we fell in love. Her parents weren't too happy
} with her dating a poor artist. They wanted her to marigold.
} Anyway, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes.
}
} I hope yew enjoyed this little story.


1518-08    (36741 dist, 2.7 mean)
Selected-By: Christophe <xof@chanticleer.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> Honey?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Yes. Also vinegar, olive oil, tapioca, wax paper, tuna fish, bread and
} milk.
}
} Thank you.


1518-09    (16b30 dist, 2.8 mean)
Selected-By: "Lawrence, Mark" <lawrence.4@osu.edu>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> Is the Old Joke gone?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Old jokes never die, they just get stolen by acts at comedy clubs.
} Old tellmes never die, they just get filed under "Carnuba Wax Receipts,
} 2008-2011" and stored in Closet 24B.
} Old Oracular staff members never die, they just get fed zombie cucumber
} and are chained to the Oracular Treadmill Generator. We call this our
} "retiree health plan."
} Old supplicants never die, they just graduate from supplications to
} supplements, and eventually of course suppositories.
} Old Oracles never die. We don't get old, either. Suckers.
} And old, tired tropes masquerading as Oracular Wisdom? As long as
} there's a drachma in it, you know they'll never die.
}
} You owe the Oracle an old drachma. Say, 3rd Century BCE. Mint.


1518-10    (86412 dist, 2.2 mean)
Selected-By: Christophe <xof@chanticleer.com>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

> I came down with a viral video and now everyone think's I'm stupid.
>
> Why does this seem even worse than when I came down with a case of
> ammonia?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Bah.  A pox on those who would think so.


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