From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Caps/Rot13 on 
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 20:55:38 GMT

In article <1992Nov20.170644.2785@dsd.es.com> rjones@dsd.es.com writes:
>Some people dismiss ANDY's posts without thinking about them.  "An all
>CAPS post.  Yipee.  Is next."  I took the time to think about it.
>"It's on alt.shenanigans, it's probably trying to be funny."  But
>that's the problem.  It's not funny.  It's painfully hard to read,
>yes.  But funny?  No.  

It could be funny the first time it happens.  When it becomes the
rule?  Not funny.

>"Okay.  Maybe it's trying to make people say 'Why?'"  But no one says
>that.  Because it's so easy to write in all caps.  Hit CAPS-LOCK, and
>go on.  

Well put.  When I look at "all caps", and ask "Why?", the answer that
comes to mind is either ignorance (which has been disproven), and "to
be annoying."

It's certainly gotten well into that "annoying" stage.

>And it's certainly not very clever.  It's an old joke, if it can even
>be called that.  BIFF got to it first, ANDY.  Get a new gimmick.

The point of a shenanigan is to be CREATIVE.  Not to just continue to
copy what one has already done.

>Now, the post that was rot-13 *every other word*.  Now that was a good
>shenanigan.  Weird, Without reason, and reasonably interesting.  I
>went through and read it, even though I really didn't care what it
>said.  It made me say, "Why?"  Perfect.

Funny once.  Actually, very creative and quite funny once.  If people
start doing bunches of partially-Rot-13'ed postings, it will cease to
be funny.  Certainly qualified as a shenanigan...

ObShenanigan: One summer my 3 brothers and I were getting VERY bored.
I was on vacation between the summer term (ended in Aug) and the fall
term, came home for a few weeks, and seriously had nothing to do.  So
we pulled a pretty impressive shenanigan.

We'd been following a noon-hour phone-in show.  The host was pretty
lame, and came up with more and more stupid questions each day.  So we
decided to pull a "fast one."

One day, the topic of discussion was to be "Crying in the Workplace."
Nobody wanted to admit to having done it, and the calls were pretty
slow.  So we quickly made up a story, and my brother "Bob" gave Wayne
MacLean a call.  So that there wouldn't be laughter in the background
to either clue anybody in, or to distract "Bob", he locked himself
away in a back room.

"Hello, Wayne?  I'm Bob, an accountant from South Ottawa.  A few weeks
ago, two women came into my office, and both started crying."

"What happened next, Bob?"

"I fired them both!"

"Hello, this is Wayne MacLean's Hotline, and this is the caller I've
been waiting for!..."  Suddenly all of the phone lines lit up :-).

"Bob" was invited to stay on the line for over half an hour, and
discussed various issues (from an INCREDIBLY male-chauvinist
perspective!) with other callers.

The rest of the family was huddled around the radio, laughing our
heads off, as some callers hurled abuse at "Bob" - "You've set the
women's movement back 50 years!"  Still others agreed with Bob, which
was even more incredible!

Stupidly, we didn't record the show on cassette.

The coming project for the Christmas holidays: Making up twisted
resumes for nonexistent persons, and sending them in to employers.

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |===================================
University of Ottawa              |  The Personal Computer:  Colt 45
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