                                  T H E

                               Z E P H Y R

                      __     M A G A Z I N E
                     {__]++++++++++++++++++++++++++[]
                     Issue #57                6-05-88

                A weekly electronic magazine for users of
                            THE ZEPHYR II BBS
                        (Mesa, AZ - 602-894-6526)
                    owned and operated by T. H. Smith

                        Editor - Gene B. Williams

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                                (c) 1988

    THIS ISSUE:

       Here comes another one, filled with nonsense and other things
    you never needed or wanted to know.

                              MORE MOROLOGY

    Morology:  1.) The study of foolishness.  2.) Silly things.
       3.) What Gene does for an issue when he has nothing else
       in mind and no time to do it. (See MORON)

                                  Money

       The total gross national product of Nicaragua is
    $2,400,000,000.
       The amount spent each year on state lottery tickets is
    $9,355,700,000.

       Average annual income of a Nicaraguan  -     $720
       Average annual salary of an NHL player - $140,000

       Amount spent on gambling in 1986:  $198.8 billion
       Amount spent on religion in 1986:    33.6 billion
      Amount spent on education in 1986:    10.5 billion

       Average monthly mortgage for a new home (1987):  $1063
       Average monthly income - "minimum level"      :    916

       Americans consume the equivalent of 167,784,000 bottles
    (12 oz.) of beer per day.
       That comes to 2,013,408,000 ounces per day, or nearly
    2000 bottles per second.
       Now, shall we calculate the amount for a year?

       In 1970 an auction was held in London to sell off various
    relics of Napoleon, including his death mask and his hair. One
    item was put up on bid and drew offers of $40,000. This wasn't
    enough to suit the owner. It was officially described as a
    "small, dried-up object."
       It was, reportedly anyway, the penis of Napoleon.

       A man in Kentucky paid a handsome price for some special tires.
    They were supposed to be impervious to all road hazards, including
    "bullets, bombs and spikes."
       The proud owner took the new tires out for a spin and got a
    flat. It was found that he'd driven over a ballpoint pen.
       "It still wrote," the man said.

                              Personalities

       Ann Margaret has reportedly promised to leave her body to
    the Harvard Medical School.

       Our own Barry Goldwater was once quoted as saying, "If you
    don't mind smelling like a peanut for 2 or 3 days, peanut
    butter is a darned good shaving cream."

                                The Arts

       Artist Paul Cezanne had a green parrot that was trained to
    say over and over, "Cezanna is a great painter."

       The painting by Henri Matisse "La Bateau" was hung in the
    Museum of Modern Art in New York City - upside down for 47
    days before anyone noticed.

       Some interesting books:
       EUTHANASIA: THE AESTHETICS OF SUICIDE
       WHAT WOULD CHRIST DO ABOUT SYPHILIS?
       A LEGACY FOR CHILDREN; BEING SOME OF THE LAST EXPRESSIONS OF
          HANNAH HILL, AGED ELEVEN AND NEAR THREE MONTHS
       A MEMORIAL FOR CHILDREN, BEING AN AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT OF THE
          CONVERSION, EXPERIENCE AND HAPPY DEATHS OF EIGHTEEN
          CHILDREN
       EXAMINATION ON THE QUESTION : WHETHER OUR FIRST ANCESTORS,
          ADAM AND EVE, POSESSED A NAVEL
       THE SPIRITUAL MUSTARD POT, TO MAKE THE SOUL SNEEZE WITH
          DEVOTION
       CHRONONHOTONTHOLOGOS, THE MOST TRAGICAL TRAGEDY THAT WAS EVER
          TRAGEDIZED BY ANY COMPANY OF TRAGEDIANS
       THE JOYS OF JELL-O

       A movie theater in Korea was playing "The Sound of Music." The
    owner decided that the playing time was too long for his audience
    and decided to do a bit of editing.
       He cut out all the songs.

       In 1970 several Boston theaters ran into a problem when they were
    going to show Walt Disney's "Peter Pan."
       The problem?
       It had been given an "R" rating.

       In 1974, a television station in Turkey found itself facing
    serious charges of broadcasting "communist propaganda." The crime?
    They'd been covering a news story about America and had a map of
    North America on the screen.
       Try it for yourself. According to the Turkish public prosecutor,
    if you view the outline of North America for 30 seconds and turn
    away, you see the profile of Lenin.

       Louis XI of France was bored. He demanded that the Abbot of Baigne
    come up with a new musical instrument to entertain the king. The good
    Abbot came up with a series of pens, in which were placed pigs of
    various ages and sizes, according to their voice ranges. A modified
    organ keyboard was set up so that spikes would stab the pigs, making
    them squeal.
       King Louis XI was boared. (What a terrible pun! But a true story.)

       Before losing her head, Marie Antoinette bore a son named
    Dauphin. He was raised in much the same manner as Marie's -
    namely he was a spoiled brat at an early age with the prospect
    of becoming worse with age.
       Nice people called him "unihibited." This included his total
    lack of toilet training. The lack of this was such that "the
    royal clothing" was often soiled. Rather than discipline the
    child the "royal fashion designers" were commanded to come up
    with a new color.
       It's still called "Caca Dauphin."

                                 Sports

       The Aztecs played a form of basketball which involved getting a
    hard rubber ball through a stone ring mounted high up on a wall. The
    winner got the clothes of the loser, which was okay because the loser
    didn't need them. He was put to death.

                                The News

       A San Francisco prostitute is presently being held in jail. The
    bond was set at $5 billion by a judge who said he was tired of
    seeing the local police release misdemeanors to help solve the
    problem of overcrowding.

       For those involved in the draft/drink debate:
       In 1974 two women were brought up on charges of selling brandy
    that was below public standards. It was found to be made from
    water, vodka and urine.
       Meanwhile, the owner of a tavern in Nicaragua was somewhat
    dismayed when 11 of his customers died from drinking some of the
    local brew he carried. It was discovered that he was using
    discarded insecticide containers to store the liquor. When
    confronted with the idea that he might be at fault, the owner
    laughed and defiantly guzzled down a pint of the brew.
       A few minutes later the brew claimed its twelfth victim.
       In Italy a large group (217) of wine merchants were
    arrested and later imprisoned for producing and selling some
    3 million gallons of a very unique wine - consisting of
    ox blood, ammonia and banana skins. They called it wine, but
    it was decided that it couldn't be wine since it didn't
    contain a trace of grape.

       A man in Biella, Italy decided to commit suicide. A crowd of
    friends and witnesses gathered to watch as the man poured gasoline
    over himself and stuck a match. No sooner had he become engulfed
    in the flames than those around heard the man screaming that he'd
    changed his mind, and then watched as he threw himself to the ground
    and began rolling to smother the flames.
       He rolled right off a cliff.

       A couple from Switzerland were vacationing in China. As is
    so often the case, they had a hard time with the foreign
    language, but got by with hand signals.
       One evening they went into a restaurant and politely asked
    the waiter if he could find something for their pet poodle.
       By now it's pretty obvious what happened. A short time
    later the waiter returned with a large covered tray. Inside,
    covered with sweet-and-sour sauce and bedecked with a variety
    of vegetables was . . . .

       A man in Turkey divorced his wife after 21 years of
    marriage. It took him 6 years to get it through the
    courts. Free again, he went to a computer dating service
    to find his perfect mate. The computer did its stuff,
    sorting through 2000 questionaires - and selected the
    woman he'd just divorced.
       Not one to fight technology, he married her again.

       In Aegina (Greece) a legislator named Draco was greeted by the
    people with loud cheers. To show him their love, they began to fling
    hats and garments in the air.
       Draco was smothered to death in a pile of clothing.

       His Most Gracious Majesty the Lord  Grimsley of Katmandu died
    from a drug overdose. He was on display on a bed made of silk and
    covered with flowers for three weeks. The funeral itself was one
    of the most expensive funerals ever given - for a parrot.

                                 Warfare

       During World War II there was an idea to build a rubber raft
    the size of England, and to float this raft in the North Sea to
    confuse German bombers. England's war cabinet passed up this idea
    and instead gave their support to the carving of an iceberg to serve
    as an aircraft carrier, with the idea that if it was hit by enemy
    torpedoes in cold water, the holes would simply freeze over.

       During the Vietnam War our Department of Defense came up with
    a unique way to spot the enemy. Entomologists (bug specialists)
    found that bedbugs give off a sound much like barking when they
    sensed human flesh for a feeding. The idea was to put a bedbug and
    a miniature radio transmitter inside a capsule. Thousands of these
    capsules would then be dropped into areas where it was suspected
    that Cong soldiers were hiding.
       The idea was about to be put into effect when American involve-
    ment in the area ceased. Maybe next time . . . .

                              The Sciences

       The giant Sumatran calla lilly *has* to be one of the largest
    flowering plants around. When it blooms, the flower (a collection
    of flowers, actually) measures some 8 1/2 feet high and 4 feet
    in diameter.
       It also puts off the smell of rotting meat. The people of
    Indonesia call it "the corpse flower."

       One of the largest of the one-celled animals in our world is
    aptly dubbed Chaos chaos. This amoeba-like creature hunts in
    packs of three. And each has three nuclei, instead of the usual
    one nucleus of most one-celled creatures. This presents a
    problem at times when each of the three nuclei decides to go
    in a different direction.
       Many scientists are speculating that this creature may be the
    "missing link" between one-celled and multi-celled animals.

                                Religion

       Cardinal Richelieu is well known for spreading the word of
    Catholicism in a way that was hard to refuse.
       Among his habits was travel on a specially built bed to help
    him cope with chronic headaches, hemmorrhoids and boils. The bed
    was built into a litter that required 24 guards to carry. Inside
    he had not only the bed but a desk and a private secretary. When
    he came to a building he wanted to enter but that didn't have a
    large enough opening for the litter, he routinely ordered his
    guards to bash the walls down so he could get inside - without
    going outside.

       Exodus 16: 14-15 contains the description of the people of
    Moses finding manna in the desert. It has been discovered that
    this substance is actually the sweet secretion of two varieties
    of scale insects that thrive on the tamarisk shrubs common in
    the area. To this day Arabs collect the stuff, and still call
    it "man-es-simma," which means "bread from the sky."

       Back in 1904 a man named C. W. Post came up with a way to
    make flakes from corn. Being a religious man he released and
    marketed it under the name, "Elijah's Manna."
       Fundamentalists of the time were absolutely furious and
    applied their usual pressure to get their way. They did. The
    name was changed to "Post Toasties."

       Wilbur Voliva was absolutely convinced that the world was
    flat. His source of "truth" was, as is too common, the Bible.
    Or his interpretation of it. He allowed that the world was
    circular, describing it as being something like a pancake, and
    claiming that the North Pole was at the center while the South
    Pole was actually a ring of mountainous ice on the edge of the
    disk preventing us from falling over the edge. More, he preached
    that the sun and moon were circling the disk from just a few
    thousand miles and that the stars were small lights glued to
    some unnamed surface just slightly beyond.
       Now HERE is a too familiar attitude.
       He claimed loudly and often, "I can whip to smithereens any
    man in the world in a mental battle. I have never met any
    professor or student who knew as much on any subject as I do."
    (Sound familiar?)
       He went so far as to offer a $5000 reward to anyone who could
    convince him that the world was not as he saw it. No matter what
    argument or fact that was brought forth, he simply ignored the
    facts and stuck to his own version of "truth." It didn't matter
    what was said, shown or proven. If he didn't like it, he twisted
    it or ignored, or blamed it one someone else, or responded to
    logical questions with personal insults.
       And THAT sounds familiar, too. (At least to those of us "in
    the club.")

       In the 1600s, the All Saints Church in Sedlac, Czechoslovakia
    was looted, and all the precious objects of worship stolen. Not
    to be deprived, the people of Sedlac got the bones of some 10,000
    people and redecorated the church, including a very ornate
    chandelier made up largely of human femurs.

    Until Next Time

       I'm afraid that the deadline crunch is going to be with me for
    some time to come. I signed two more book contracts just yesterday,
    which locks me down and buries me under even worse than before
    until at least next April Fool's Day (the most distant deadline
    at this point).
       I invite - ENCOURAGE!!! - guest issues. It's a regular thing for
    me to get mail here from users who claim to be writers. Okay, folks.
    Let's see it. Offer to do a guest issue. Put your foot where your
    mouth is and commit yourself (and some of us SHOULD be committed)
    to doing an issue.
       EGAFUS has tried to start a conversation on AIDS. Okay. It's a
    good subject. How about someone doing a comprehensive study of it,
    complete with accurate resources. (I do NOT want any of the too
    typical, "you can find it in any book on . . . ." nonsense.)
       Maybe Leigh can be convinced to do up an issue on the ERA (if
    she can find that copy she has of it).
       Mike Stackpole is a GOOD writer. I've read some of his stuff!
    So, how 'bout it, Mike? Do up a short story for us. (Maybe one with
    fewer calories? - that's an inside joke, folks.)

       Try this one. You get a box in the mail, measuring 8" x 8" x 4".
    The return name and address indicates someone who is a total
    stranger to you.
       What's inside?

Zephyr Magazine is © Gene Williams. All rights reserved.