Why did the dewey decimal system run out of ink?
I’ll answer your question if you’ll answer mine:
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
The dewey decimal system is a rather large conglomeration of machines that is responsible for inking (or “spraying” as it’s know in the library biz) those little dots between the numbers that congressional librarians (who work, coincidentally enough, at the Library of Congress) are required by law to put on every book, magazine, periodical and Chick Tract ever produced.
It is a little known fact that librarians themselves designed and built the machines involved. Necessity being the mother of invention, one day a slightly drunk congressional librarian said “You know what we need? Little dots to put between these numbers. Phone numbers have dashes, large arabic numbers have commas, we NEED dashes!”. The need was there and those mothers wanted it filled!
Funding was obtained and design began. Unfortunately, the machinery proved to be more expensive to fabricate than initially estimated. The designers, being librarians and not finance gurus, ran out of money and could not afford to build a shelter for the newly christened “decimal syatem”, so it ran outside. Every morning the system would be covered in condensation from the chilly night air - hence the “dewey” decimal system.
In what some consider a fatal design flaw, the ink well and cover were made from iron. The librarian/designers retort that weather conditions were not factored into the design because the system was supposed to be housed in a pretty stucco building with large windows and gingerbread trim, but we ran out of cash. Anothre case of “working as designed”, but of no use in the real world. In any case, the formerly removable iron cap has permanently rusted to the inkwell, thus rendering the system unfillable.
Ironic, but true, the dewey decimal system was doomed by the very natural phenomenon which inspired it’s name.
After all, what is your hosts’ purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they’d have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi. – P. J. O’Rourke
Huh? What? Wait, that can’t be right, can it? Why couldn’t they just put a tarp over it?
As you well know, Arnold, members of Congress are all boobs, therefor the Library of Congress is a “tarpless” institution. Elsewise they’d all suffocate.
Gotcha! (taps side of his nose wisely)
Well, I was assuming that the OP was the lead-in to a dirty joke, but I ran it past several people this afternoon and got nary a nibble. Well, no wonder! It was a legitimate question, after all. Thank you, Dr. Jackson, for explaining that to me.
BTW, since you are so smart, do YOU know why a raven is like a writing desk? I’ve been assuming all these years that Lewis Carroll was drunk when he wrote that part, but maybe it’s a legitimate question, too.
(whoops, sorry, you’ll have to e-mail me the answer, my UFO beeper just went off, gotta run…)
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
According to my annotated Alice in Wonderland, Carroll stated in a later edition of Alice that the riddle had no answer originally, but then he provided one. A raven is like a writing desk because it can produce a few notes, although they are very flat, and it is never put the wrong way front.
Thanks for clearing that up. 