[509] in Humor
Can you spell "potatoe?"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Coyle)
Sat Oct 22 13:13:30 1994
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 94 13:13:04 EST
From: mjcoyle@MIT.EDU (Michael Coyle)
To: humor@MIT.EDU, pinskerj@gar.union.edu, schizo@nwu.edu, deluded@MIT.EDU
I'm sure you've all heard of Dave Barry...
'Nuff said.
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Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 18:29:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: Eric P Grant <eg2p+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: ct98@uno.cc.geneseo.edu, dvl3@aol.com, mandreas@eden.rutgers.edu,
mrb98@uno.cc.geneseo.edu, VP24Y68L@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu,
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seanl@student.umass.edu, mjcoyle@MIT.EDU
Subject: Fwd: Dave B.: "One Potato, Two Potato ..."
Cc:
DAVE BERRY
"ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO ..."
NOTE FROM THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT : The activities described in
this column are dangerous and stupid and possibly illegal and
should be performed only by trained humor professionals who are
good at sneaking around. This newspaper assumes no
responsibility for any injuries, deaths, maimings, cripplings,
eyes getting poked out, pregnacies, fires, riots, oinments or
suppositories that may or may not occur as a result of some
moron attempting any of these activities or any other actions ,
forfeitures, debentures, indemnifications, and such other big
scary legal words as we may or may not thing up at some
future point in time. Thank you.
For more that a year now, alert readers have been
sending me alarming newspaper articles about the "potato gun",
a bazooka-sized device that can shoot a potato several hundred
yards at speeds of up to 1,000 feet per second. To give you an
idea of how fast that is, an ordinary potato, on its own, will
rarely travel more than four feet per day, during the height of
mating season.
Potato guns-which have already been banned in some
municipalitites-can be easily made from plastic pipe available
in any plumbing-supply store; the explosive forces comes from
ordinary hair spray, which is ignited by an electricl spark.
Needless to say I will not provide any specific details
concerning how to construct these devises, because a great many
young people read this column, and they already know how to
construct these devises.
Anyway, I recently got a fax from an individual whom I
will indentify here only as a"Buzz Fleischman, 810 Pinecrest
Dr., Miami Springs, Fla. 33166, telephone (305) 885-4817."
Buzz, who makes his living performing humor at corporate
meetings and other functions, and who by the way currently has
some openings on his calendar, informed me that he had
constructed a potato gun and was willing to demonstrate it for
the purpose of helping me, as a responsible adult, better
understand just how alarming this menace is.
We decided to fire the potato from the roof of my
place of employmnents, The Miami Herald (motto: "We Are Still
Keeping An Eye on Gary Hart"). Let me stress that The Miami
Herald is a responsible institution that does NOT ordinaraly
allow people to shoot potatoes from its premises. We were able
to do it only becuase we met the very strict requirement of not
asking for permission. It was a Covert Operation, during which
we addressed each other only by code names, exept when we
forgot. (For ease of memorization we both used the code name
"Eagle One.")
Once we got up on the Herald roof, we decided to fire
the potato gun toward Biscayne Bay. Our other option was to
fire it twoard the city of Miami, which would have been a
serious mistake because hundreds of local residents would undoubtedly
have fired back (and not with potatoes, either).
To load the gun, Buzz stuffed a potato into the barrel
and shoved it down with a pole, then sprayed Aqua Net Super
Hold hair spray into the detonation chamber. He then aimed the
gun at the bay and pressed the ignition device, and FAWOOM, the
potato came blasting out of the gun and went way way WAAAAY out
over the water and landed approximately in Portugal.
As responsible adults, Buzz and I were very alarmed by
this demonstration. We shot off a bunch more potatoes to see if we
would continue to be alarmed, as we were. We also got excellent
results with an onion.
But as any reputable scientist will tell you, the "acid
test" of the alarmingness of this type of device is what
happends when you shoot a Barbie doll out if it. We used the
"Gymnast Barbie" model, which comes with a little gold medal.
First we loaded a potato into the gun, then we put Gymnast
Babie into the end of the barrel, with just her head and
hairstyle sticking out. Then we pointed the potato gun
straight up an FAWOOM up went Barbie, high in the sky, smiling
perkily, waving her arms and legs gymnastically around inside a
cloud of potato atoms which finally landed in a really
unladylike pose.
Needless to say these results were extremely alarming.
Because if the potato gun can be used to shoot Barbie dolls,
then it is only a matter of time before some fiendish criminal mind
thinks of using one to shoot a Kellog's strawberry Pop-Tart.
So we tried that, too. The gun made a noise like "phoo" and
spat Pop-Tart fragments a short, nonalarming distance.
Nevertheless as concerned adults we all need to become
wrought up about this menace. People should form organizations
and write angry letters. Congress should hold hearings. The
Clinton Administration should announce a definite policy and
then change it. Maybe the Warren Commission should get back
together. Also the Defense Department should probably go Red
Alert, because any day now Portugal is going to start shooting
back.
[Miami Herald, "Tropic" , September 11, 1994]
----- L8r, Slater -----
Blue at CMU
"CMU - where men are men, and so are women" - Ben Werle, CMU '97
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