Peanut Butter and Mel Tormei - Hey, Who Used All the Hot Water?!

...and now for something completely different - fan mail:

From: Brian Thomas Parker

i was in the library today (sunday the 29th) and i noticed that the clocks were still an hour ahead (daylight wasting time?). because congress mandates daylight savings to protect little kiddies at the bus-stop, this seems to mean that the library is breaking the law. worse, we might all be breaking the law by looking at the clocks and thinking, even for a brief moment, that they are correct. do i have anything to worry about, do i need to contact a good lawer yet? can i collect for pain and suffering if i end up being early to a meeting because of the clocks?

i am a confused island of sanity in an insane place, you are my only hope for salvation.

brian

Um, does this strike anyone else as strange - Brian's coming to us, because we're the only hope of saving him from insanity. Does he even read the insanity (read, crap) that we write every week? Hey, we aim to please, sooo....

Because of the strangeness of this question/comment, and our own unique sense of what we generally call humor, we've decided on a rather unorthodox method of answering Brian's question: Choose-Your-Own-Answer.

• You know, people who uncover conspiracies often end up dead.

• No, Brian. We've gotta save SPACE, not time.

• [read in old newsreel scientist voice] You see, Brian, because of the rotation of what we like to call the Earth, our angle of declination toward what we like to call the inner galactic plane prevents cosmic rays from intercepting the cesium atoms in the official Earth time keeping device, thus creating a cascade effect, and twice a year (for reasons we cannot explain) produces the phenomenon that we like to call daylight savings time. The library, because of the "ribs" on the posterior exterior face, functions as a quasi-Newtonian blue space modulator, and thus scrambles the cosmic rays like an egg in the hot Tennessee sun. Any questions?

• Brian. You're an engineer. Figure it out for yourself.

• We have absolutely no idea. It's just a WPI thing.

Ok. Laurel wants to type something now, so I am going to get up from the computer. Brace yourselves...

The other day, all of the workstudy checks came in. Have you ever followed the directions for opening your check? Chances are, no one has. Besides the fact of us being engineers and we don't read directions, the directions are physically impossible without external help. Take a look at one of them. On the short side of the check it says, "Remove this edge first." This direction is also on the other short side of the check. Now how can you remove *both* short sides at the same time? We're working on a little machine to do just that, and hopefully there will be a reward for our troubles.

Our theory is that if you follow directions, you will be rewarded, and your check amount will double. Payroll doesn't want you to know this, and since they don't want to have to pay this amount if people do it accidentally, they've decided to make the directions so difficult that no one will bother. Here's what ya do: until we've created our Philler - Check - Opening - Both - Sides - At - The - Same - Time - To - Get - Your - Double - Check - Amount - Check - Opener (P. C. O. B. S. A. T. S. T. T. G. Y. D. C. A. C. O.), go to payroll and demand that they open your check for you. Make sure they do it correctly, and if the double amount doesn't show up, they must have opened it wrong on purpose. Demand the double value anyway. We're "terribly sorry" about releasing this information, Payroll, but this conspiracy has gone on for far too long.

Well, we think we've caused enough damage for one week. Join us next time when you'll hear us say, "...but that's the way you do it in Tibet."

Send your thoughts, observations, and questions to us at philler@philler.com...