"Dancing is the perpendicular expression of a horizontal
desire."
D-NED
by Andy Zaslow
This rather insane little thing was graciously permitted for
reuse by us by Mat of the Untouchables. Tnx, man!
This is not copyrighted (c) 1984 by D. Griffith. If you really
want to use it for commercial purposes, go ahead. Keep in
mind(s), however, that everyone else in this world has the right
to make as many copies of this document as they see fit.
"meln torp prot nabble, nabble zot nab" - Richard Terrill, D.
Griffith
"bork" - Roland Bevan
Once upon a time, there was a potato. This potato was however
not a potato but a pink and green striped flea named Ned.
Unfortunately, Ned was color-blind and unable to smell that he
was pink and green (or green and pink depending how you looked at
him, but it did not matter when he looked at him because he was
color-blind or so he thought and we thought because it said so
above). He jumped off a cliff (with a velocity, v and
acceleration, a). Because Ned (or Joe as his enemies called him)
took Physics I and he (or she) was unable to calculate his
velocity upon impact, he survived even though the C compiler will
not arrive until next week. So, it was just as well that he did
know what the SWITCHe statement did because Moon Jockey Chung
could not even be understood by Sam (also known as Ned or Joe or
Sam or Ned or Joe or Sylvia or Bob or the cold little crumpled
little piece of white little small piece of paper on the old
large wooden dirty floor while MJC explains the C lan-guage).
Suddenly!!! ( <-- not a real sentence) An oncoming train hit Ned
(or...) and due to his background in physics and materials Ned
(or...) destroyed the train with its poorly calculated momentum
and was sentenced to life in prison for N years as N -> oo
(infinity, that is) and there he stays whoever he really is.
Part II (oo years later)
Ned, who happened to be dead, was walking around his cell for he
(or she) was a one celled organism and became entangled in his
DNA and in the process split one of his genes into one piece two
thirds as long as the original, one pi/4 as long as the original,
one sqr(e/3.2) as long as the original, and one 0/1342 as long as
the original. This would have created quite remarkable affects
but as we said, Ned was dead.
A few days or weeks or years or bergs (a unit of measurement
named after Chris Berg) later it was still oo years later and Ned
was released from prison. Ned was excited and frolicked through
fields of flowers because he went and stored that in location
505, realizing at the same time that he did not know whether the
location was expressed in decimal, hex, octal or any other
integer base K, where K>5. This matter did not trouble Joe long
for he looked up and saw the JMS (Jump to Subroutine) on the
screen and his mind(s) or lack thereof was totally filled with
the question "Why is the letter M used in the JMS statement?" He
may have realized that it was the "M" from the word Jump, but his
parser was unable to decode the question because he used double
quotes around the 'M' and not single quotes. His brain then hung
and he walked around aimlessly until he tripped over a cold boot
and found himself vaca-tioning in Africa. Not having any ROM he
had to wait many years while hundreds of monkeys randomly keyed
in code until power-up was achieved. Joe lived happily for many
years until a slave ship picked him up and brought him to
America. He was not sold however because the code that Fred
monkey keyed in had a minor flaw which caused Ned to play movie
tape of a princess asking for help from Obie Wan, but the message
was preempted by a homework assignment "Homework Assignment #1
Due 20 Sept 1984 2.7 and 2.10." In the confusion Odie (not Obie)
was called and he flipped many pointy objects and he then blew up
the world, but Ned sur-vived because he was not there because the
supreme being got tired of writing.
Part III (the next day in Intro to Micro)
When the supreme being finally started to write again Ned was in
an empty void, for the world had been blown up. Sam did not
explode in the vacuum due to his impossibly strong pink and green
outer shell. As he was near death he said, "Let there be light."
The supreme being, who can even hear in a vacuum replied by
saying "You lose, bill." However, since the supreme being was not
used to his supreme power had made a mistake. Because there was
no Bill (an old reference to Bill Casino, a real loser) to lose
and since all things that the supreme being says must occur by
some process which even he (or she or...) does not necessarily
know, an anti-Bill (Note: Bill, when preceded by You lose is in
lower case) was created (or not created depending on your
universe). Seeing the problem, the supreme supreme being also
known as The Twos Complement Which Goes All The Way to 255 (0FF
in hex) complemented Bill's bits, which happened to produce the
bit representation of the world in the year 1971 some time in the
beginning of May. Sam (who from now on may be called Greg, or
jim for short) was quite relieved and was so joyful that he added
973 and the twos-complement of 654 to get the result of 346.
Being his supreme self, the supreme supreme supreme being saw a
major flaw in the world. This was that there were two Jims in
the world (or Jim or Ned or...), so he destroyed the Sam who had
just learned of twos-complements. That was ok (pronounced as it
is spelled, with one syllable) though, because the wise supreme
supreme supreme being knew that by Sylvia existing for the short
time that he (or she) did he changed the course of some air
molecules which would eventually be used in the machinery that
Odie would use to blow up the world. In fact this change would
cause a malfunction in the detonator apparatus, to which Odie
would reply, "Skippy eatee bow wow snarf" or something to this
effect. The net effect of this chapter is that the world really
was not blown up and that the H (1) bit in the accumulator (known
as the half-carry) was set.
1. This is a carry over (pardon the pun (haha)) from the 4 bit
computer.
Part IV (the CAOS begins)
Ned, who knew nothing of the world's destruction or any of the
events leading to the recreation of the world was still having
problems with the code keyed in by Fred (an allusion to D.
Griffith) the monkey But, suddenly before much happened the
supreme being became interested in something other that the
world, and the world stopped for a while.
Intermission (lights, music plays, smoking in the lobby only,
please)
Spuddy Soap --- The Soap with Spud
And here we are in a supermarket with some famous athlete who
claims to
use Spuddy Soap.
JOCK - Excuse me sir or miss... Yes, you in the pink and green.
NED - Uhh, me?
JOCK - Yes you! Do you use Spuddy...uh...Soup..uh, no...Soap?
NED - Well, I can't speak English but I... zap ZZzzing!...
Help me Obie Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope...Help me
Obie Wan Kenobi...You're my only...Zzlard..Zing pop!
JOCK - Well, uh there (scratches his balls) you have it. Spuddy
Soap - the Spuddiest Soap around... Are we done y...
Now for something really funny!
Knock, knock. Who's there? Who's there!?! Damn deaf people
with their white canes. (opening door) Wow!! It's a baby with a
note. (acci-dently sticking the baby with the pin which held the
note, the baby deflates spewing blood and other wonderful things
all over the place. Oh, Shit! (A green and pink or pink and
green Ned or Jor or... walks around the corner). You called?
Who are YOU! Yes I am. (Note: The answer makes sense as he can
be called by just about any name and "Who are YOU!" is good
enough and therefore passes as a boolean TRUE.) (A total solar
eclipse occurs and when the light returns something happens which
the supreme being has not thought of yet... but since he is in
CAOS a transistor drives by but does not make it much further
because its inputs were low.
Shocked, Ned barely jumps out of the way of the transistor in
time (much less space) and asks for a picanic basket, eh Booboo?
Realizing that he is not a bear Ned rides off into the sunset
while converting AND-OR expressions into NAND expressions.
Going a little faster than he wanted, Ned, moving faster than
the angular velocity of the earth's rotation finds himself in
mid-morning the same day. All of a sudden, Ned felt quite
strange as his colors changed.
The end of this part of the story I guess since it is almost
time for lunch and my arm and mind(s) are getting weak while the
construction of the CII is still being built and people walk by
outside the lecture hall and the prof continues to talk as
someone sneezes and other people talk and rumple papers and close
paper binders while I stop writing.
Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes,
bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and
tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact
and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any
kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are
not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll
texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.