These awards are given each year to bestow upon (the remains of) that individual, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, has done the most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool. Note there was great improvement in the areas of teamwork and cooperation among the candidates in 1997 — it’s no longer an individual sport. Here are (drum roll) the 1997 runners-up and winners:

5th runner-up:
A San Anselmo, California man died when he hit a lift tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam pad. 22-year old David Hubal was pronounced dead at Centinela Mammoth Hospital. The accident occurred about 3 a.m., The Mono County Sheriff’s Department said. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump Alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from lift towers, said Lt. Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Department. The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit towers. The group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed into a tower. It has since been investigated and determined the tower he hit was the one with its pad removed.

4th Runner-up:
Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call the police. Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it into his mouth and walked out without paying. Police found him unconscious in front of the store-paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat where it had choked him to death.

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE:

You must first remove the plastic cover. By doing so you agree to accept and honor Microsoft’s rights to all TV dinners. You may not give anyone else a bite of your dinner (which would constitute an infringement of Microsoft’s rights). You may, however, let others smell and look at your dinner and are encouraged to tell them how good it is.

If you have a PC microwave oven, insert the dinner into the oven. Set the oven using these keystrokes:

   \mstv.dinn.//08.5min@50%heat//.

Then:

   ms//start.cook_dindin/yummy/|\yum yum:-)gohot#cookme>.

If you have a Mac oven, insert the dinner and press start. The oven will set itself and cook dinner.

Be forewarned that Microsoft dinners may crash, in which case your oven must be restarted. This is a simple procedure.

Remove the dinner from the oven and enter:

   /ms.nodarn.good/tryagain\again/again.crud/.

This process may need to be repeated. Try unplugging the microwave and then doing a cold reboot. If this doesn’t work, contact your hardware vendor

Many users have reported that the dinner tray is far too big, larger than the dinner itself, having many useless compartments, most of which are empty. These are for future menu items. If the tray is too large to fit in your oven you will need to upgrade your equipment.

Dinners are only available from registered outlets, and only the chicken variety is currently produced. If you want another variety, call Microsoft Help and they will explain that you really don’t want another variety. Microsoft Chicken is all you really need

Microsoft promises a dessert with every dinner after ‘98. However that version has yet to be released. Users have permission to get thrilled in advance.

Microsoft dinners may be incompatible with other dinners in the freezer, causing your freezer to self-defrost This is a feature, not a bug. Your freezer probably should have been defrosted anyway.

Warranty: The Microsoft TV Dinner is fully covered under the Microsoft 30/30 Warranty for defects in materials and workmanship. The 30/30 Warranty stands for 30 feet or 30 seconds. If you product is out of warranty, you may still receive support through our 1-900-WELL-GET-OUR-MONEY-OUT-OF-YOU-MORE-THAN-ONCE. A nominal charge of $19.95 per minute is attached to your phone bill. The phone line may be busy, therefore you may have to sit on hold for several hours. Thank you for waiting.

Technical Support: Please see “Warranty” information.

Final Note: Please be aware that there are illegal copies of the Microsoft TV Dinners. If your Microsoft TV Dinner does not have the Microsoft TV Dinner Hologram, it is a fake. Also, if your 112 digit key does not open up your Microsoft TV Dinner, it is a fake. Please report all pirated Microsoft TV Dinners to 1-800-WHO-CARES or 1-800-MS-CARES.

• During all police investigations it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
• All telephone numbers in America begin with the digits 555.
• If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St. Patrick’s Day parade - at any time of the year.
• All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.
• All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French Bread.
• It’s easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
• Once applied, lipstick will never rub off - even while scuba diving.
• The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. No-one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building you want without difficulty.
• Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A bad German accent will do.
• The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.
• A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
• If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.
• Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.
• It is not necessary to say hello or goodbye when beginning or ending phone conversations.
• Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of any invading alien civilization.
• It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts - your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.
• When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
• All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.

1. How long did the Hundred Years War last?
2. Which country makes Panama hats?
3. From which animal do we get catgut?
4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
5. What is a camel’s hair brush made of?
6. The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
7. What was King George VI’s first name?
8. What color is a purple finch?
9. Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
10. How long did the Thirty Years War last?

Answers…

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ENTRY-LEVEL POSITION

You’ll be making under $7 an hour.

ENTRY-LEVEL POSITION IN AN UP-AND-COMING COMPANY

You’ll be making under $7 an hour; we’ll be bankrupt in a year.

AN UP-AND-COMING SOFTWARE COMPANY

We want you to get your hopes up, but there’s no chance in heck we’ll be the next Microsoft.

PROFIT-SHARING PLAN

Once it’s shared between the higher-ups, there won’t be a profit.

COMPETITIVE SALARY

We remain competitive by paying less than our competitors.

JOIN OUR FAST-PACED COMPANY

We have no time to train you; you’ll have to introduce yourself to your coworkers.

NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED LEADER

Inc. Magazine wrote us up a few years ago, but we haven’t done anything innovative since.

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• Avoid alliteration. Always.
• Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
• Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
• Employ the vernacular.
• Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
• Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
• It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
• Contractions aren’t necessary.
• Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
• One should never generalize.
• Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
• Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
• Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
• Be more or less specific.
• Understatement is always best.
• One-word sentences? Eliminate.
• Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
• The passive voice is to be avoided.
• Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
• Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
• Who needs rhetorical questions?
• Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

<< We all know he didn't really give this speech, right? >>

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ‘97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday

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McDonnell Douglas Corp.

Aircraft - Space Systems - Missiles

IMPORTANT!  IMPORTANT!

Please fill out and mail this card
within 10 days of purchase

Thank you for purchasing a McDonnell Douglas military aircraft.
In order to protect your new investment, please take a few moments
to fill out the warranty registration card below.  Answering the
survey questions is not required, but the information will help us
to develop new products that best meet your needs and desires.

1.  [ ] Mr.  [ ] Mrs.  [ ] Ms.  [ ] Miss
[ ] Colonel        [ ] General
[ ] Comrade        [ ] Other

First Name __________  Initial __  Last Name __________
Latitude ____________  Longitude ____________
Altitude ____________  Password, Code Name, etc. ____________

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A truck driver hauling a tractor-trailer load of computers down I-35 stops at the Rundburg exit for a beer. As he approaches the bar he sees a big sign on the door saying:

“NERDS NOT ALLOWED-ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!”

He goes in and sits down. The bartender comes over to him, sniffs, says he smells kind of nerdy, asks him what he does for a living. The truck driver says he drives a truck, and the smell is just from the computers he is hauling. The bartender says OK, truck drivers are not nerds, and serves him a beer.

As he is sipping his beer, a skinny guy walks in with tape around his glasses, a pocket protector with twelve kinds of pens and pencils, and a belt at least a foot too long. The bartender, without saying a word, pulls out a shotgun and blows the guy away. The truck driver asks him why he did that. The bartender said not to worry, the nerds are over populating Austin, and are in season now. You don’t even need a license, he said.

So the truck driver finishes his beer, gets back in his truck, and heads back onto the freeway. Suddenly he veers to avoid an accident, and the load shifts. The back door breaks open and computers spill out all over the frontage road. He jumps out and sees a crowd already forming, grabbing up the computers. They are all engineers, accountants and programmers wearing the nerdiest clothes he has ever seen. He can’t let them steal his whole load. So remembering what happened in the bar, he pulls out his gun and starts blasting away, felling several of them instantly.

A highway patrol officer comes zooming up and jumps out of the car screaming at him to stop. The truck driver said, “What’s wrong? I thought nerds were in season.”

“Well, sure,” said the patrolman, “But you can’t bait ‘em.”

In the Beginning, the Project Manager created the Programming Staff
The Programming Staff was without form or structure
And the Project Manager said, “Let there be organization”
And there was Organization
And the Project Manager saw that the Organization was good
And the Project Manager separated the workers from the supervisors
And he called the supervisors “Management”
And he called the workers “Staff”

And the Project Manager said, “Let there be a mission in the midst of the Organization”
And then he added “Let it separate the people one from the other”
And it was so
Those who were to benefit from the system were placed far away
And those who were to build it were placed in boxes called “Cubicles”
And he called the former “End Users”
And he called the latter “Programmers”

And the Project Manager said, “Let one among the Programmers be chosen to lead”
And there was turmoil, chaos, back-stabbing and arguments for forty days and nights
Finally the Project Manager selected the most competent among them
And he called the man “Chief Programmer”
The other Programmers decried the selection saying, “What standards were used?”
And the Project Manager smiled and said, “That is not for you to know.”
And the morning and the afternoon of the first phase were past

And the Project Manager called the Chief Programmer before him
And he said, “Prepare for me a schedule so that I may look upon it”
And the Chief Programmer walked among his staff
And the Staff was divided into two sections
One section was called “Analysts”
And the remainder, he called “Application Programmers”
And it came to pass that each Analyst brought his estimate to the Chief Programmer
Whereupon the Chief Programmer collected them and combined them into a “Flow Chart”
And the Chief Programmer saw that it was good
And the morning and the afternoon of the second phase were past

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