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Internet Oracularities #1592

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1592, 1592-01, 1592-02, 1592-03, 1592-04, 1592-05, 1592-06, 1592-07, 1592-08, 1592-09, 1592-10


Internet Oracularities #1592    (12 votes, 3.5 mean)
Compiled-By: Steve Kinzler <steve@kinzler.com>
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2020 20:58:39 -0500 (EST)

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   1592
   2 1 3 4 3   5 3 3 4 1

1592  12 votes 02352 11361 31431 02244 02244 11343 00642 02370 03252 20631
1592  3.5 mean  3.6   3.4   2.8   3.8   3.8   3.6   3.7   3.4   3.5   3.1


1592-01    (02352 dist, 3.6 mean)
Selected-By: Ian Davis

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

> Was it when you said "irrelevant" that you meant "irreverent" or was it
> the other way around? And why should anyone be bothered or concerned
> about it?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} I didn't say either. I said "elephant" and "reverend". The joke should
} now make sense when you take the penguin into account.
}
} You owe the Oracle an ordained pachyderm.


1592-02    (11361 dist, 3.4 mean)
Selected-By: David Hemming <lightinchains@gmail.com>

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

> "Hold on a second," you said.
>
> I held. The seconds flew by. Then the minutes.
>
> It's now been four days and I am still holding.
>
> When can I let go? What will happen?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Dear o dear supplicant, can't you see the contradiction in your own
} post. You can't both hold onto a second AND have that same second fly
} by.
}
} Clearly this was beyond you. You have to start small, and build up. A
} year is much easier to hold onto, so practice with them.
}
} If you look closely as a year slowly moves past you, you'll see some
} flanges on the edge. If you grab onto both of those with a solid grip,
} you should be able to hold on. If it's still difficult then grab onto
} the top edge of the year with your teeth.
}
} Just don't try that with a leap year. It'll smash your jaw into a
} million pieces.
}
} You can repay The Oracle by coming back and telling me when you think
} you're ready to hold on to a minute. Bring grappling hooks.


1592-03    (31431 dist, 2.8 mean)
Selected-By: Christophe <xof@chanticleer.com>

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

> You sent me an answer containing both rabbits and rabbis. Fortunately
> your answer was not in French, which would have been worse. French is
> not even a language, but instead a method to avoid bathing, as one can
> plainly see, right here: <<Baigner? Pourquoi devrais-je me baigner? Je
> suis franc,ais.>>
>
> Please explain something. Anything. Anything that will help me stop
> thinking about unwashed people.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} S'il tu veut, vais expliquer
} Comme je peut fait-las any day
} Son lapin, oui, quotidienne
} N'est pas le  choix meridienne
}
} En anglais, je m'explique: two secs
} I jus need now to flex my pecs:
} Ok' we're off, as rabbits go
} Right handed round at Walthamstow
}
} Son lapin, il fault brace, compris?
} And then you have no need of me.
} Un blackberry jus, souri, on dit
} Est bon a lapin: tu compris,
}
} You owe the Oracle just desserts on the house.


1592-04    (02244 dist, 3.8 mean)
Selected-By: Klone (aka Daniel Klein)<daniel.v.klein@gmail.com>

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

> My teacher says the moon revolves on its axe. Our pastor says there is
> a brand new moon every month an it is not the same as the old one but
> it just sails acrost the sky and dosen't revolve.
>
> How can I know who is wrong?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Like many things in life, there is a simple explanation.
}
} You've encountered several adherents of the little-known Flat Moon
} Theory (FMT). This is the theory that pretty much everything in the
} solar system is round - sun, planets, other moons, potatoes. Except
} for our moon, which is flat.
}
} Like the other well known flat celestial body theory, this requires
} quite some mental gymnastics to make simple observations fit the
} theory.  Rather like trying to fit the entire cast, including extras,
} of Ben Hur on a single Twister mat. In costume.
}
} First, the phases of the moon. In conventional physics, this is
} explained by a spherical moon being at different angles to the sun and
} therefore only part of the moon being illuminated. In FMT, this is
} explained by a man whose job is to paint the moon silver. However,
} dust and other matter acquired by the moon as he busily moves from one
} side to the other eventually causes the nice shiny silver-painted moon
} to return to a dark colour. Whereupon he has to start all over again.
}
} There is also the matter of craters on the moon. According to
} conventional physics, these are the result of impacts from asteroids
} attracted by the moon's gravity. According to FMT, the moon depicts
} the face of the man in the moon, or should we say acne-suffering
} teenager in the moon. FMT adherents claim that they have taken
} photographs of puss seeping from craters, using Nikon P900 cameras
} with lenses that have never been cleaned. And you do NOT want to know
} what they had been doing with their fingers before they touched the
} lens.
}
} What prompted FMT was the observation that we always see only one side
} of the moon. Flat Moon Theory believers such as your teacher and
} pastor believe that only a flat moon could possibly show only one face
} to the earth all the time. They dismiss the conventional physics
} explanation of tidal locking as 'laughable' and in fact just saying
} 'tidal locking' will reduce FMT conferences to hilarity. They feel
} that laughter obviates the need for evidence, analysis, and
} references, and claim that science would progress faster by listing
} alternative hypotheses and discounting all of those that elicit
} giggles. In an attempt to demonstrate this comedy science method, they
} have used it to establish that inserting rusty nails into the urethra
} will be an effective vaccine for covid-19, as not a single person
} shown that hypothesis laughed.
}
} FMT proponents claim that the dark side of the moon is actually a
} green and pleasant place, always fully lit with warm sun even when the
} sun is not shining on it. Claiming that Doris Wishman's 1961 film
} 'Nude on the Moon' is an actual documentary by NASA that was called
} fiction to discredit it after it accidentally leaked. They're working
} on an explanation of how the dark side of the moon is lit when the sun
} is blocked, which at present is the single word: 'perspective'.
}
} FMT adherents claim that there has been a conspiracy among scientists
} to deny the clear reality of the moon's flatness, and that all school
} textbooks should be re-written to 'teach the controversy'. In this
} they are joined by creationists, believers that ears are alien
} creatures living in symbiosis with humans, those who claim that water
} is a myth, and rabbits who propose that all school biology textbooks
} should have at least one (preferably more) chapter dedicated to grass.
}
} There are those who claim that the growth in belief in Flat Moon
} Theory and other fringe ideas points to a failure in our educational
} systems and a growing opposition to 'experts'. Those people are right,
} but for some reason these days being right and being able to back up
} your claims with facts, evidence, and research is becoming something
} that we're supposed to be embarrassed about.
}
} You owe The Oracle fifteen billion litres of silver paint and seven
} billion litres of anti-acne cream. And, someone to do some odd jobs
} around the temple while Zadoc is otherwise occupied for a few million
} years.


1592-05    (02244 dist, 3.8 mean)
Selected-By: Ian Davis

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

> Congratulations (not congraduations) on your correct spelling of
> "minuscule" where you resisted "miniscule" most admirably.
>
> Now to look at the other side of the flapjack, please give me a full
> list of words nobody ever gets right.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Well, we could talk about words where people rarely get the spelling
} right. Or, we could talk about words where people never get the
} meaning right. Here's a top 10 list.
}
} 10. 'Indispensable'. Believe it or not, it's more important for you
} that your heart and lungs function than you have the latest model of a
} mobile phone that costs more than a small house.
}
} 9. 'Patriot'. Somehow loving your country seems to have become divorced
} from actually loving the people in it, or having any inclination to
} preserve democracy.
}
} 8. 'Grovel'. It appears to be completely missing from your post. But
} even when they are present they are woefully inadequate. Saying that
} you'd be happy for me to do your taxes for you is NOT grovelling.
}
} 7. 'Bigly'. That word never existed before, and a certain president is
} STILL getting its meaning completely wrong.
}
} 6. 'Logical'. I blame Supertramp.
}
} 5. 'Economical'. Yes, that new Chevvy does 4.8 miles per gallon while
} the previous model only did 4.6. But, if you want to save the planet,
} you're going to have to do a LOT better than that.
}
} 4. 'Research'. Watching three hours of David Icke videos is NOT
} research. It's not even collection of information, or checking
} something up. It's the information equivalent of putting your head in
} a pail of three week old pig droppings and shaking it around a bit.
}
} 3. 'Classic'. No song written by a team of fifteen people on four
} continents and featuring a vocal by someone who came fifth in a
} television talent show, and autotuned more extensively than NASA
} studies images from the surface of Pluto is a classic.
}
} 2.'Literally'. It means 'literally'. If you say that you were
} literally in pieces, then I expect to see chunks of flesh and blood
} all over the floor, or you're full of sh*t. Literally.
}
} 1. 'Gorgeous'. It's lucky for plastic surgeons that this word has slid
} in meaning considerably over the years. Or, they'd actually have to
} learn to do their job properly.
}
} You owe The Oracle a dictionary. And, it had better be a book full of
} words and their definitions. Not something else entirely that people
} have started calling a dictionary.


1592-06    (11343 dist, 3.6 mean)
Selected-By: Christophe <xof@chanticleer.com>

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

> In my prevoius question that was "two more" and not tumor. Sorry.
>
> Now my Great-Uncle Louis (and he says that's Lewis not Loooie) wants
> to know if you remember Alice Benbolt. (I never heard of her.)

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Of course you've never heard of her. People talk about the great spies
} of history, but if you've heard of a Mata Hari or a Kim Philby, then
} they didn't do their job properly. Alice Benbolt would never ever be
} so sloppy.
}
} As soon as she had graduated from college in 1948, she was immediately
} on the international espionage scene. Sent straight to Berlin, she
} went undercover as Fraulein Winklehoffer and became a secretary for a
} Russian general. It was said to be Benbolt who discovered that he wore
} two pairs of underwear, shuffling the inner pair to the outer pair
} each day, and reported this information back to her handlers in the
} United Kingdom who had a good laugh around the water cooler.
}
} After that stunning success, Benbolt was dispatched to China after the
} end of the revolution, and soon found a job as a gardener to Mao Tse
} Tung. Among the vital pieces of information discovered by Benbolt and
} sent to the west by passenger stork were Mao's continued troubles with
} hair growing out of his ears, and his regular use of wax before
} appearances before his people.
}
} After a short spell in Iran in 1953 where she discovered and detailed
} the methods by which Mohammed Mossadeq folded down the corners of his
} books - instrumental in Operation Ajax whereby Mossadeq was deposed
} and the Qajar dynasty restored - Benbolt was rotated to Algeria.
} Disguising herself as a plumber - aided by her impressive ability to
} grow a moustache and speak in cod-Italian - she dispatched hundreds of
} updates on the toilet habits of Ferhat Abbas.
}
} I could bore you with her five decades of espionage work, revealing
} which world leaders or other political/military actors refused to have
} salt on their food, who had a nervous habit of scratching their noses
} with a paper clip, who else had an allergy to bananas, and who knitted
} but only using purple yarn. But, I have great respect for Ms Benbolt,
} and don't want to give away all of her secrets.
}
} You owe The Oracle some inside information about the government
} contract your brother-in-law is involved in. If he continues to insist
} it's just a new design for anti-allergenic rubber duckies, keep
} digging.


1592-07    (00642 dist, 3.7 mean)
Selected-By: David Hemming <lightinchains@gmail.com>

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

> I was born in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, in the Caribbean.
> How can I get people to stop correcting Tobago to Tabasco? It seems as
> if my entire life is being eaten up in that one small but dreadfully
> repetitive task. Occasionally people also ask me about the steel drums,
> but that's a minor problem, even when they joke about "steal drums" and
> try to take mine.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Ah, supplicant, I think you misunderstand the situation. Yes, you
} belong to the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. But, the island of
} Tabasco is real, and yes, the people there lay claim to Trinidad as
} well. And so call themselves the republic of Trinidad and Tabasco.
}
} Not only that, but they also claim that all of the following belong to
} them.
}
} 1. All the fossil fuel wealth of your nation.
} 2. They claim intellectual property rights for the recipe of Pelau.
} 3. Nicki Minaj
} 4. All copyrights on the recorded work of Attila the Hun. Fortunately
}    they aren't aware that your one was a Calypso singer, and they're
}    currently in dispute with Mongolia
} 5. After reading the gossip columns, they've decided that they don't
}    want Nicki Minaj any more, and will have Black Stalin instead
} 6. All the coconut palms from Maracas Bay.
} 7. US$27.52 from your treasury.
} 8. All the houses in Pepper Sauce Land,  Endeavour, Chaguanas. If you
}    wanted to keep them, you shouldn't have called the road that.
}
} But, no need to worry. The island of Tabasco is just off the coast of
} Greenland. They might have had more luck claiming that, but who wants
} a huge expanse of climate-melting ice when you could have a Caribbean
} paradise.
}
} You owe The Oracle Sugarloaf Rock. I'm sure Martinique can spare it.


1592-08    (02370 dist, 3.4 mean)
Selected-By: David Hemming <lightinchains@gmail.com>

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

> I wanted to ask you if I was gong to be alright but the spell check got
> a head of me and wrote airtight instead.
>
> You made some very silly remarks about bing airtight.
>
> Butt am I going to be allright? Spell check hate's me.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Well, the problem with a "spell check" is that it doesn't really check
} spells, does it, unless you happen to be a witch or wizard with a
} particular recipe. So I suggest you should call it a "spelling check".
}
} Now the spell check got a head of you? How many heads do you have?
} Because decapitation can be, you know, not very pleasant, but taking
} Occam's Razor I'm assuming that you still actually have your jugulars
} in a jug.
}
} Now, one of the bizarre things about your general circulation is that
} oxygen inflow directly is poisonous, this is why your lungs whack it
} through your pulmonary veins and absorb it with haemoglobin where it
} can then be taken up, preferably in my case with a dram of single malt.
}
} I'll assume that your misplaced apos is because of the terrible
} spelling checker, but really all you need is a copy of Fowler's Modern
} English Usage, preferably in the revised edition by Ernest Gowers. You
} can then use it to hit your keyboard and is also useful for keeping the
} insects down.
}
} You owe the Oracle a split infinitive.


1592-09    (03252 dist, 3.5 mean)
Selected-By: Ian Davis

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

> Oh Oracle, most Pilky, who likes his coffee milky, who knows a banjo,
> from a kango
>
> I went out this morning, you see, to do some glazing necessities, just
> to get a fair shilling, as I am sure you understand. Now, for someone
> who is perhaps uninterested in other's privacy, it's the perfect
> employment for me.
>
> I got up and down the various treaders and risers until I reached a
> great height,, but then saw a pair of newlyweds, having a bit of - well
> - you know. It's always a shock what I see through the old panes, when
> I go about
> my business with the duster.
>
> Please advise: Next time should I not wake them up with my ukulele?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} Tip toads in their tulips.


1592-10    (20631 dist, 3.1 mean)
Selected-By: Christophe <xof@chanticleer.com>

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

> A previous incarnation of yours claimed that the celebrated Tuna Bird
> of Zarp did not exist. Please tell your incarnations not to be so
> stupid. Also tell me more about Zarp in general, and about the nesting
> habits of the Tuna Bird in particular.
>
> Oh, and I almost forgot to grovel. Consider it done.

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} The Tuna Bird is recorded in Fegg's Ornithological Companion as having
} a roughly a twelve-foot wide wingspan (that is four metres in new
} money). As a seabird, it tends to nest in the nooks and crannies of
} outdated incarnations, but is also known to inhabit the roofs (or
} rooves) of uninhabited buildings.
}
} Zarp the German birdwatcher first noted its mating habits in the 1758
} edition of Fegg, but did not describe in detail its plumage. Later
} editions of (q.v. Zarp 1812 for example) note that the female is
} "Somewhat magnolia, with a hint of beige", whereas the male Zarp's Tuna
} Bird - the zoological specimen being in the Natural History Museum in
} Kensington, just behind the hatrack - as is often found in many birds
} if far more highly coloured.
}
} Zarp's Tuna Bird, in the female, has a call somewhat similar to that of
} a woman who has just had her foot trodden on by her husband, but the
} male's is much softer and less melodious, hence the common nickname of
} "zarp's piano tuna".
}
} The nesting habits of Zarps are generally from April to June, and they
} usually lay Kinder Eggs, but tend to ovoid chocolate. Nestlings will
} hatch within a few days to search, fairly obviously, for tins of tuna,
} but their poor little beaks can't get the things open so the mummy and
} daddy will feed them on sardines until they fledge.
}
} Zarp's illustrations - beautifully inked - can be found also in the
} Amsterdam Museum of Fine Lines, but only in bright sunlight.
}
} You owe the Oracle two hoots.


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