Zephyr Magazine - Issue 57

                              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?