 [Forwarded from a Yale bboard by Shrager@CMU-PSY-A.]

	 THE ADVENTURES OF JOE LISP, T MAN

Brought to you by:  *AI-LUNCH*, its hot,  its  cold,  its  more  than
a lunch...
	      This week's episode:

	  The Case of the Bogus Expert
		    Part I

It was  late  on  a  Tuesday and I was dead in my seat from nearly an
hour of grueling mail reading and idle chit-chat with random  passers
by.  The  only  light  in  my  office  was the soft glow from my CRT,
the only sound was the pain wracked rattle of  an  over-heated  disk.
It was  raining  out,  but  the  steady staccato rhythm that beat its
way into the skulls of others was held  back  by  the  cold  concrete
slabs of  my windowless walls.  I like not having windows, but that's
another story.

I didn't hear her come in, but when the  scent  of  her  perfume  hit
me, my  head swung faster than a Winchester.  She was wearing My-Sin,
a perfume with the smell of an expert, but that wasn't what impressed
me.  What  hit  me  was  her  contours.   She had a body with all the
right variables.  She wore a dress with a single closure that  barely
hid the  dynamic  scoping  of  what  was  underneath.  Sure I saw her
as an object, but I guess I'm just object oriented.   It's  the  kind
of operator I am.

After she sat down and began to tell her story I  realized  that  her
sophisticated look  was  just  cover.  She was a green kid, still wet
behind the ears.  In fact she was wet all over.  As I  said,  it  was
raining outside.  It's an easy inference.

It  seems  the  kid's  step-father  had  disappeared.   He had been a
medical specialist,  diagnosis  and  prescription,  but  one  day  he
started making  wild  claims  about  knowledge  and planning and then
he  vanished.   I  had  heard  of  this  kind  before.    Some   were
specialists.  Some  in  medicine,  some  in geology, but all were the
same kind of guy.  I looked the girl in the eye  and  asked  the  one
question she  didn't  want  to  hear,  "He's  rule-based, isn't he?".

She turned  her  head away and that was all the answer I needed.  His
kind were cold, unfeeling, unchanging, but she still  loved  him  and
wanted him back again.

Once I  got  a  full  picture of the guy I was sure that I knew where
to find him, California.  It was the haven for his  way  of  thinking
and acting.   I  was  sure  that he had been swept up by the EXPERTS.
They were a cult that had grown up in the past few  years,  promising
fast and  easy  enlightenment.   What  they  didn't tell you was that
the price was your ability  to  understand  itself.   He  was  there,
as sure as I was a T Man.

I knew of at least one operative in California who could be  trusted,
and I  knew  that  I had to talk to him before I could do any further
planning.  I reached for the phone and gave him a call.

The conversation was short and  sweet.   He  had  resource  conflicts
and couldn't  give  me  a  hand  right now.  I assumed that it had to
be more complex than that and almost  said  that  resource  conflicts
aren't  that  easy  to  identify,  but  I  had no time to waste on in
fighting while the real enemy was still at  large.   Before  he  hung
up, he  suggested  that  I pick up a radar detector if I was planning
on driving out and asked if I could grab a half-gallon  of  milk  for
him on  the  way.   I agreed to the favor, thanked him for his advice
and wished him luck on his tan...

That's all  for  now  kids.   Tune in next week for the part two of:

	  The Case of the Bogus Expert

		    Starring

		JOE LISP, T MAN

And remember kids, Wednesdays are *AI-LUNCH* days and  11:45  is  the
*AI-LUNCH* time.  And kids, if you send in 3 box tops from *AI-LUNCH*
you can get a JOE LISP magic decoder ring.  This  is  the  same  ring
that saved  JOE  LISP only two episodes ago and is capable of parsing
from surface to deep  structure  in  less  than  15  transformations.
Its part plastic, part metal and all bogus, so order now.
