KAREL'S CHEESE HOUSE

Feeling edgy, a man took a hot bath. Just as he'd become comfortable, the front doorbell rang. The man got out of the tub, put on terry cloth slippers and a large towel, wrapped his head in a smaller towel, and went to the door. A salesman wanted to know if he needed any brushes. Slamming the door, the man returned to the bath.

The doorbell rang again. On went the slippers and towels, and the man started for the door again. He took one step, slipped on a wet spot, fell, and hit his back against the hard porcelain of the tub.

The man struggled into his street clothes and, with every move a stab of pain, drove to the doctor. After examining him, the doctor said, "Nothing's broken. But you need to relax. Why don't you go home and take a hot bath?"

Many years ago I used to attend a church in Chesterville, Ontario when I lived in the country. The pastor was a rather long winded fellow who had no probllem lulling more than a few members of his congregation to sleep with his sermons. Anyway on one very hot and muggy July Sunday when he was in the pulpit ready to start his sermon he began with:

"I received an anonymous letter from one of you this week. It simply said, 'Sermons should be like pie crust, short and sweet.'."

After that he left the pulpit and proceeded with the mass.

The following are some misinterpreted offerings from the land of Christianity:

"The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind, and they can be seen in the curch basement Friday afternoon."

"Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24th in the church So ends a friendship that began in school days.

" The Reverend Merriwether spoke briefly, much to the delighbt of the audience."

"Thursdays at 5p.m. there will be a meeting of the Little Mother's Club. All wishing to become little mothers will please meet with the minister in the study."

"Due to the rector's illness, Wdnesday's healing services will be discontinued until further notice."

"Today's sermon : "HOW MUCH CAN A MAN DRINK?", with hymns from a full choir."

"on a chuch bulletin board:
GOD IS GOOD
Dr. Hargreaves is better"

"Don't let worry kill you - let the church help"

Back in the late 1940's, when my mother was growing up in Buffalo, New York (U.S.A.), all the pubescent guys in her (Roman Catholic) church would make certain that when Confession time rolled around, it was a certain elder priest from the Old Country (Poland), whose English was not the best, who was attending the Confessionals. When Confessing, each guy would say, "Well, I diddled a little" to describe recent intimate acts with ladies. The priest, not entirely conversant with English idiom, would let this slip by, and the guy would receive a relatively light Penance.
Well, one day during Confession hour, near the end of attending to a group of guys (most of whom remained in the Church afterwards, since the tendency was to arrive and leave as a group), somebody finally told the priest what was meant by the phrase "I diddled a little." The priest immediately leaped out of the Confessional and cried out, "Okay, all you diddlers, get back here!"

One sunday morning just before the sermon was to be given, a dignified elderly lady was telling the children a story. The story was about a robber and how they come when you least expect it. She looked at the children and said "What do you call someone who comes into your house and takes your posessions?" A childs voice which resounded throughout the church exclaimed, "I'd call him a Son-of-a-bitch!"

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly: "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.

In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it true," asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as Lisp?" Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.

A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master, Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found. "Where is the wise one named Knuth?", he asked a passing student. "Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new disciples." Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.

A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnesty, the Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.