As some of you may or may not know (or care), I am a Priest of the Internet Oracle, an email based humor service.
If you’re not sure what the Oracle is, visit The Internet Oracle Homepage. You could also send an email to oracle@cs.indiana.edu with “help” in the subject line to get a copy of the help file.
I am planning to answer any question regarding the Oracle or the Priesthood that I can. Well, except for questions regarding the inflatable sheep.
I cannot answer questions regarding rec.humor.oracle.d, since I have not been active there in a couple of years.
I used to be an Oracle DBA. I don’t even know how you get certification for priest, sheesh. I’m now a Teradata consultant, no way was I going into SQL Server.
I used to ask questions of the Usenet Oracle way back in 1989. I remember some of the “lore” from that time which included the dreaded “woodchuck” question. I also remember Orrie had a girlfriend who I believe was called Lisa.
My question is, in the past 15 years, what lore has come to be part of Usenet/Internet Oracle history?
Or is this a question better suited for the Oracle himself?
Lisa is still around, but mostly what I see written of her is rather derivative.
In 1994, Richard Wilson created a comic foil for The Oracle, a priest named Zadoc. He was a bit like Pinky to Orrie’s Brain.
1n 1996, some one created a Work Study Priest named Kendai. Kendai was a bit of a slacker; his grovels consisted of “guv.”
At the same time, Thag and Og started showing up. The less said about them, the better.
Around December 1999/January 2000, there was an attempt to create a new mythos, the Dephic Research, Inc. A number of regulars worked very hard and created about 20 question/answer pairs. One night, through an extraordinary effort they managed to flood the queue and get their pairs matched up. While it was an extraordinary effort, and on their own the pairs were quite funny, they all lacked the improvisational feel the normal oracularites have, and which lends them their wit.
That’s it in a nutshell. I’d still ask the Oracle.
One of the first things I ever did on the 'net was ask the oracle a question, probably in 1992. Back then I was surfing using “gopher” and “archie” and that stuff.
Anyway, I thought I gave the Oracle a real funny answer and then I asked, “Why does the bottom of a blue whale look like bacon?” And the answer was totally fuckin’ lame.
It was probably the first time I thought, “this internet thing is useless.” Of course we didn’t call it internet or even world wide web. I don’t think i had a name for it.
So, anyway, a question huh. . .all right. . .why does the bottom of a blue whale look like bacon?
I had an answer make one of the digests just once back in '92, '93…the question was just a string of namecalling “You’re scum! You’re nothing but scum! You wouldn’t know wisdom if it came up and bit you on the ass!” etc. So I came up with a story in which a Marine shows up in the loser’s mother’s basement, leading a donkey with a bitemark you can guess where. The punchline revolved around the old joke that the only word you can spell with the letters USMC is “scum.”
I remember gopher, but it was hard to use if you were connected using a DOS terminal interface.
The bottom of a blue whale doesn’t really look like bacon, it looks like a microwave bacon tray. It’s like that for ease and convenience when microwaving your blue whales.
