Columbuss Mother: I dont care what youve discovered, you
still could have written!

Michealangelos Mother: Cant you paint on walls like other
children? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get that stuff
off the ceiling?

Napoleons Mother: All right, if you arent hiding your report
card inside your jacket, take your hand out of there and show
me.

Abraham Lincolns Mother: Again with the stovepipe hat? Cant
you just wear a baseball cap like the other kids?

Marys Mother: Im not upset that your lamb followed you to
school, but I would like to know how he got a better grade than
you.

Albert Einsteins Mother: But its your senior picture. Cant
you do something about your hair? OY! Styling gel, mousse,
something…?

George Washingtons Mother: The next time I catch you throwing
money across the Potomac, you can kiss your allowance good-bye!

Thomas Edisons Mother: Of course Im proud that you invented
the electric light bulb. Now turn it off and get to bed!

Paul Reveres Mother: I dont care where you think you have to
go, young man, midnight is past your curfew.

QUESTION: How many church people does it take to change a lightbulb?

Charismatics: Only one. Hands are already in the air.

Roman Catholics: None. They use candles.

Pentecostals: Ten. One to change the light bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterians: None. God has predestined when the lights will be on and off.

Episcopalians: Eight. One to call the electrician, and seven to say how much better they liked the old bulb.

Mormons: Five. One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.

Unitarians: We chose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the light bulb. However, if you have found in your own journey that light bulbs work for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb and present it next month at our annual l light bulb Sunday service in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, three-way, long-life, and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

Baptists: At least fifteen. One to change the light bulb, five or six professors to search the Bible for authorization and then two or three committees to approve the change. Oh, and some faithful women to make a casserole.

Lutherans: None. Lutherans dont believe in change.

Methodists: A whole congregation. One to change the light bulb, and the rest of the congregation to be sure that he doesnt backslide.

Q: How many conductors does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Seven. (Indignant nose upturning) Of course, I wouldnt expect *you* to understand …

11. One to change the light bulb, 5 to say that the new bulb is tr00 and necro, and 5 to say the new bulb sucks, and the old bulb was tr00 and necro.

How many mailing list subscribers does it take to change a light bulb?

1 to successfully change the light bulb and to post to the mail
list that the light bulb has been changed.

14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how
the light bulb could have been changed differently.

7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.

27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing
light bulbs.

53 to flame the spell checkers.

156 to write to the list administrator complaining about the light
bulb discussion and its inappropriateness to this mail list.

41 to correct spelling in the spelling/grammar flames.

109 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and to please
take this email exchange to alt.lite.bulb.

203 to demand that cross posting to alt.grammar, alt.spelling and
alt.punctuation about changing light bulbs be stopped.

111 to defend the posting to this list saying that we all use
light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this mail
list.

306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior,
where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best
for this technique, and what brands are faulty.

27 to post URLs where one can see examples of different light
bulbs.

14 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly, and to post
corrected URLs.

3 to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant
to this list which makes light bulbs relevant to this list.

33 to concatenate all posts to date, then quote them including all
headers and footers, and then add Me Too.

12 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing because they
cannot handle the light bulb controversey.

19 to quote the Me Toos to say, Me Three.

4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ.

1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup.

47 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion was meant for,
leave it here.

143 votes for a new list alt.lite.bulb.

Q: Do you know how many musicians it takes to screw in a lightbulb?

A: No, big daddy, but hum a few bars and Ill fake it.

One Sunday morning after church, little Maurys family invited the priest to breakfast at their home. His mother asked little Maury what he would like for his breakfast and he replied, I want a lightbulb.

Everyone laughed.

The priest was warmly touched by Maurys funny remark.

Very funny little Maury, said Mom. Now tell me what you want to eat.

I wanna lightbulb, said little Maury.

Mom felt a little irritated with Maury behaving this way in front of their guest. She said sternly, Enough of that, now what do you want to eat?

I wanna lightbulb, Mommy, little Maury said once more.

Mom had enough and said, Now you can go to your room!

The good priest felt he should intervene. Now little Maury, tell us why you want a lightbulb for breakfast.

Maury replied, Well, last night when I went to bed I heard Daddy say to Mommy, Honey, turn out the light and Ill eat that thing.

Q: How many saxaphonists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A1: 10. One to do it, 9 to talk about how a great sax player could have done it better.

A2: 5. One to handle the bulb, and 4 to contemplate how David Sanborn wouldve done it.

A3: Sixty. One to change the bulb and fifty-nine to talk about how much better Michael Brecker would have done it.

386: No, 486: Oops, Pentium: The only chip to consider if youre thinking of
buying a PC. Until Intel ramps up the 686.

640K: The salary the average Wall Street PC analyst pulls in each year.

Algorithm: A catchy 1930 song by George and Ira Gershwin.

Availability: Date when a dozen copies of the beta version will be hurriedly
shrink-wrapped for the benefit of the press and the investment community.

Backup: The chore you were really, honestly, going to do the very next thing
before you switched drive letters and accidentally copied older, out-of-date
versions of you files over all your newer ones at 3 a.m.

Buffer: The only other job – involving a chamois at the car wash – for which
most computer store salespeople are qualified.

Bundled software: Free applications like home dentistry packages and Esperanto
spelling dictionaries that are thrown in with cheap clones so you think youre
getting real value for your money.

CD-ROM: A $30 dollar mechanism in a $300 cabinet that accesses vast quantities
of valuable information too slowly to use.

Copy protection: A sly technique employed by hardware vendors to combat
software piracy by continually changing the size and compatibility of disk
drives (from 160K to 320K to 360K to 1.2MB to 720K to 1.44MB to 2.88MB, etc.).

CP/M: An antiquated operation system from the early days of computing, based
on inscrutable prompts like A>, terse commands, and absurdly backward
conventions, such as 11-character limits on filenames. Contrasted with todays
modern versions of DOS.

Database, flat-file: A program selling for under $500 that most people use to
keep lists of names and addresses, etc.

Database, relational/programmable: A program selling for over $500 that most
people use to keep lists of names and addresses, etc.

Debugging: The process of uncovering glitches by packaging prerelease software
as finished products, then waiting for irate customers to report problems.

Downward compatibility: You really didnt have to spend the money for the
upgraded version, since all you use anyway is the old set of features.

End User: One born every minute.

Entry level: Only slightly above most users heads.

Expanded memory: RAM that is, uh, well, um, different from extended memory.

Expansion slot: The computer didnt come with everything you needed.

Extended memory: RAM that is, uh, well, um, different from expanded memory.

FAX: Originally a last resort for procrastinators who missed the final Federal
Express pickup; these days, an expensive way to order lunch from the pizza
place around the corner.

Firmware: Software with permanent bugs hardwired into it.

Icon: One picture is worth a thousand lawsuits. Or, as Shakespeare might have
put it, He who steals my trash better have a large purse.

Installation routine: A process employed by many applications to overwrite and
thereby trash the users existing and painstakingly created AUTOEXEC.BAT and
CONFIG.SYS files

Interface, character-based: A way of presenting information to the user thats
every bit as good as a user interface except in the areas of readability, ease
of use, intuitiveness, and productivity.

Interface, graphic user (GUI): An increasingly popular way of presenting
information to the user, originally designed by Xerox PARC and now being
adopted by dozens of competitors; otherwise known as the Trial Attorney Full
Employment Act.

Laptop: A dinky keyboard wedded to a lousy LCD screen, all with bad battery
life.

Live links: A clever system that lets you unknowingly corrupt data in lots of
separate files at the same time.

Low-bandwidth: The process of talking to a corporate press relations official.
(Question: How many IBM PR types does it take to change a light bulb? Answer:
Well have to get back to you on that.)

Nanosecond: The time it takes after your warranty expires for your hard disk
to start making a sound like a monkey wrench in a blender.

NiCad battery: A cell that powers a laptop long enough to let you do three
solid hours of work, then dies before youre ready to save any of it to disk.

Open system: Made up of parts from different manufacturers so that, when you
crash, each vendor can blame the others.

Optional: It should have come free, but someone in the marketing department
ran 1-2-3 and figured theyd double their profits this way.

Parity: A ninth memory bit that one time in nine will crash an otherwise
perfectly functioning system when it detects an error in itself.

Partition: A wall you have to build around a noisy dot matrix printer that
makes only slightly less noise than a tree chipper.

Point-and-shoot: You mean youd rather click on a menu choice than have to
type things like DEVICE=DOSUTSDRIVER.SYS /D:0 /T:80 /S:15 /H:2 /F:1 ?

Power Surge: What an MIS director feels when he denies you access to your own
database.

Power user: Someone whos read the manual all the way through once.

Productivity: Printing out 30 different versions of your document before
getting the spacing correct.

Real-time clock: A 50-dollar option based on a five-cent chip.

SAA: Silly And Awkward.

Shell: A clumsy program that forces users to stumble through ten menus to get
anything done instead of typing a simple three-character command.

Shock-mounted: Make sure youre sitting down when you ask the price.

Spreadsheet: Sophisticated software that can be used as a database,
rudimentary word processor, graphing program, and, in a pinch, a ledger.

Stack: The place in the corner of the room where you pile unopened software
manuals.

Standard: Manufactured by the company that does the flashiest advertising.

Support: Fast, simple, courteous, friendly, accurate help available to any
user who happens to work for any company that bought 1,000 copies of the
product.

Throughput: What you feel like doing with your foot and your computer screen
after you see the message General Failure Error Reading Drive C:.

Toll-free hotline: An AT&T busy-signal test number.

Toner cartridge: A device to refill laser printers; invented by the
Association of American Dry Cleaners.

Torture test: Everyone – from the FedEx guy to the clerk who opened the box to
the trainee who executed the speed test – accidentally dropped it.

Tutorial: A program that forces you to sit through lessons on every last
obscure and little-used feature of an application while ignoring overall
fundamental tricks that would make you far more productive.

Unix, year of: See Calendar, perpetual.

Value-added: A lot more expensive.

Virus: Commonly, the belief of incompetent users that some mysterious external
force is to blame for their mistakes at the keyboard.

Workstation: Any PC that sells for more than $10,000.

XT: All the computer that most users who just type letters and run typical
spreadsheets will ever need, even though a 386 machine will reformat their text
a whole tenth of a second faster.

Q: What is the title of the thinnest book in the world?

A: What men know about women

Q: How many men does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: One… a man will screw anything

Q: How does a man take a bubble bath?

A: He eats beans for dinner

Q: Why do women rub their eyes when they wake up?

A: Because they dont have balls to scratch

Q: What is a mans idea of foreplay?

A: 30 minutes of begging

Q: How can you tell if a man is sexually excited?

A: If hes breathing

Q: What is the difference between men and government bonds?

A: Bonds mature

Q: What do men and beer bottles have in common?

A: They are both empty from the neck up

Q: How can you tell if a man is happy?

A: Who cares

Q: How many men does it take to change a roll of toilet paper?

A: We dont know… Its never been done

Q: How are men and parking spaces alike?

A: The good ones are always taken and the ones that are left are handicapped

Q: What is a mans idea of helping with the housework?

A: Lifting his feet so you can vacuum

Q: What is the difference between a man and E.T.?

A: E.T. phoned home

Q: What does a man consider to be a seven course meal?

A: A hot dog and a six pack of beer