Archive-name: joel-furr/faq
Alt-fan-joel-furr-archive-name: faq
Alt-bonehead-joel-furr-archive-name: faq
Last-modified: 1996/06/25
Version: 4.5


This is the Joel Furr FAQ.

It is not provided out of a sense of personal vanity but rather for the
purpose its name states: to answer some of the Frequently Asked
Questions about me, such as "how'd he get three newsgroups named
after him" and such.

Many of these questions are sent to me in electronic mail, usually as a
result of someone looking for the answers to their questions in
alt.fan.joel-furr and not finding them.  It would be a good idea to read
this FAQ before posting to alt.fan.joel-furr.

                                   -- Joel Furr



------------------------------

Frequently Asked Questions

(1) Who is Joel Furr?

(2) Why does he have three newsgroups named after him?

(3) Who appointed Joel Furr ruler of alt.*?

(4) What _is_ it about Joel and lemurs?

(5) Was Joel really elected Kibo, or is that just a myth?

(6) What happened between Joel and those "Green Card" lawyers in Arizona?

(7) What newsgroups is Joel Furr a moderator of?

(8) Does Joel Furr sell t-shirts and stuff?

(9) Does Joel spend all his time logged in, or what?

(10) Is Joel likely to reply if I write to him?

(11) What does Joel look like?

(12) What's the deal with those funny black floor lamps that point up at
the ceiling with the little knobs on the side about halfway up that you
turn back and forth to adjust the brightness?  Everyone seems to have them
these days. 

(13) Hey, where are the seatbelts?

(14) What's the 'soup du jour' today?

(15) Is cotton candy a solid or liquid or crystal or what?

(16) What's the 800 number for the North Carolina ferry system?

(17) Where is Paradise?

(18) Hey, what about those French?

(19) Is it true that if I jump up off the ground, I'm technically in low
earth orbit for as long as I'm in the air?

(20) Who's in charge of the weather?

(21) What is it with cats?  How do they make their legs disappear when
they perch on the arm of a sofa, looking content?

(22) Does Joel Furr like fish?

(23) How 'bout them Dawgs?

(24) Is Joel a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or what?

(25) What's in those bottles in the back of Joel Furr's refrigerator?

(26) Where do bad people go when they die?

(27) When's the best time to go to an amusement park?

(28) What's wrong with Joel Furr's blood?

(29) What *is* that thing at the bottom of that big glass jar full of
water? 

(30) Will seagulls eat small chunks of pork barbecue?

(31) St. Patrick's Day is a festive, cheery holiday wherein we celebrate
our  Irish heritage, affecting bad Irish accents and wearing green.  How
does Joel Furr celebrate the holiday?

(32) Is it true that Joel Furr's car has a guardian spirit?

(33) Hey, isn't that song "YMCA" that they play at baseball games really
cool?

(34) What's that chunk of powdery concrete atop Joel Furr's bookcase?

(35) Does Joel have a girlfriend?

(36) What's the greatest cinematographic achievement of all time?

(37) What is a Hokie?

(38) What instrument did Joel Furr play in the Blacksburg High School
band?

(39) What does Joel typically say when someone asks him, rhetorically,
how he is?

(40) What's the best sort of implement to use when eating ice cream?

(41) What clubs and organizations does Joel Furr belong to?

(42) What's Joel Furr's ethnic and socioeconomic background?

(43) Define "good eatins."

(44) Joel Furr visited Las Vegas in July 1995 for the better part of a
day. How much money did he gamble?  How much did he lose? 

(45) What were the schools in Blacksburg, Virginia like when Joel Furr
was growing up there?

(46) Where does Carole, Joel Furr's girlfriend, come from?

(47) Who is the Official Stooge of alt.fan.joel-furr?

(48) What exactly is "hungus?"

(49) What is the name of the night manager at the International House of
Pancakes franchise on Baxter Street in Athens, Georgia?

(50) What is Joel Furr's best category in Trivial Pursuit?

(51) Who is Wally?

(52) Where can you go in Durham, North Carolina, to get "spaghetti and
salmon cakes?"

(53) What is Joel Furr's favorite soft drink?

(54) How many fingers am I holding up?

(55) Do we need more plastic cups?

(56) What color should mayonnaise be?

(57) What is Joel Furr's astrological sign?

(58) What is Joel Furr's Myers-Briggs type?

(59) Where are your videos?

(60) How is "Furr" pronounced?

(61) What is the law?

(62) Where do the keys go?

(63) What are some of the nicknames that Joel Furr has gone by over the
years? 

(64) What happens when you put a real, formerly alive, ocean-bred
sponge  back in water?

(65) What kind of underwear does Joel Furr wear?

(66) Who is the greatest cat of all time?

(67) How can I embarrass myself in front of eight thousand people?

(68) Why does Joel Furr have so many strange and pointless pictures of
himself and his friends on his Web page? 

(69) What's special about the Duke University parking deck at the corner
of Fulton and NC 147 in Durham, North Carolina?

(70) What fortune cookie does Joel Furr always get?

(71) What is "The Mother of All Rivers?"

(72) So, what was it like attending Georgia Tech?

(73) What book is Joel Furr currently working on?

(74) Who the hell is "Yalin Ekici?"

(75) What is the ultimate slow dancing song?

(76) Who was President of Joel Furr's high school Science Club?

(77) What is the secret of making great Bisquick pancakes?

(78) Why didn't Joel Furr wind up in the military?

(79) What was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to Joel Furr?

(80) When did Joel Furr learn to read?

------------------------------

The Frequently Questioned Answers


(1) Who is Joel Furr?

Joel Furr is a writer and trainer who lives in Durham, North Carolina. 

He was born in Roanoke, Virginia on September 20, 1967 and grew up in
the nearby college town of Blacksburg, where his father was an
engineering professor at Virginia Tech.  After graduating from high
school in 1985, he attended the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia
from 1985 to 1988, earning a bachelor of arts degree in English.

Inasmuch as an English degree from a notorious football school hardly
qualified him for rapid advancement through the ranks of the American
industrial elite, Joel went on to graduate school at Virginia Tech, where
he earned a Master of Public Administration degree in about a year and a
half and then wasted the next two and a half years pursuing a Ph.D. in
the same subject before finally quitting, utterly burned out, in the fall
of 1992.

During his graduate school years, he spent a lot of time goofing around
on Usenet and a few MUD systems, since his graduate assistantship
position with the Virginia Tech Department of Public Safety, Health, and
Transportation wasn't exactly demanding of his time and since he was
expected to spend at least four hours per day in his office -- which
happened to have a fast net connection.  After dropping out of his Ph.D.
program in Public Administration  at the end of 1992, he tried and failed
to find meaningful work in western Virginia, an economically depressed
area with few good-paying jobs.

In late 1993, he gave up looking for work in Virginia and moved to
Durham, North Carolina, where he had friends and a few relatives.  In
fairly short order, he got work, got an apartment, and resumed fooling
around on the Internet.

Since that time, he has worked in the pharmaceutical industry, in medical
research, and in higher education. At this time, he is employed as a
computer software trainer and works on the side as a freelance writer.

 ------------------------------

(2) Why does he have three newsgroups named after him?

The newsgroups, alt.fan.joel-furr, alt.bonehead.joel-furr, and alt.joel-
furr.die.die.die, were *not* created by Joel Furr or by anyone acting on
his behalf.  Each was created as an act of satire and/or criticism by
people who did not like Furr.

Alt.fan.joel-furr exists because Joel Furr once created a newsgroup called
alt.fan.serdar-argic, angering the infamous Ahmet Cosar, a.k.a. "Serdar
Argic."  Cosar's infamous alter-ego was responsible for ruining many
history-related and culture-related newsgroups such as soc.history and
soc.culture.turkish; Cosar liked to post lengthy rants about one of his
pet delusions, namely, that in 1914, Armenians had killed all the Turks in
northeastern Turkey and in Russian Armenia.  This is, of course, the
direct opposite of what actually happened, but Cosar, an apologist for the
Turkish genocide, was certain that he could convince the world otherwise
if he posted megabyte-long rants to dozens of newsgroups per day, lowering
the signal-to-noise ratio so far that many posters would desert the
newsgroups and leave the field to Cosar and his allies.  Furr created
alt.fan.serdar-argic to give people who were sick of Cosar's childish
pranks a place to comment and discuss what to do about Cosar. Within 24
hours, Cosar had newgrouped alt.fan.joel-furr. 

Oddly enough, and no doubt to the immense surprise of Cosar, the
newsgroup has actually seen considerable use from time to time.  (See
also question #74, "Who the hell is 'Yalin Ekici?'")

Alt.bonehead.joel-furr exists for a similar reason.  A user named Paul
Hendry once spent a solid two months posting hundreds of messages to
alt.config trying to convince the alt.config regulars that the world of
Usenet direly needed a newsgroup for fans of lampreys (jawless parasitical
fish) to chat.  However, he failed utterly because a simple grep of the
newsspool showed that the only lamprey-related traffic in existence was on
alt.config itself.  Hendry, as it turned out later, had been trying to
trick alt.config's regulars into rubber-stamping an unnecessary newsgroup. 
Why he thought this would be amusing is anyone's guess.  Hendry finally
exhausted Joel Furr's patience, and Furr newgrouped
alt.bonehead.paul-hendry.  Hendry, in a masturbatory act of excess, then
turned around and newgrouped alt.animals.lampreys,
alt.animals.paul-hendry, and alt.bonehead.joel-furr.  None of the four
newsgroups gets any traffic to speak of.  Both sides in the affair, in the
final analysis, acted childishly. 

The third group, alt.joel-furr.die.die.die, is not carried much of
anywhere and isn't really considered a real newsgroup.  It was created
by a pseudonymous Netcom user without any evident provocation -- it
just "showed up" one day without any obvious justification.  Fewer than
10% of sites carry the newsgroup on their system, and the sites that do
are generally those sites which have their newgrouping and rmgrouping
set on "autopilot," accepting all newsgroups that are created anywhere
by anyone.

 ------------------------------

(3) Who appointed Joel Furr ruler of alt.*?

No one.  In fact, references to "King Joel of alt.*" are showing up a lot
less frequently because Joel no longer gives much of a damn what
happens in alt.* - so many garbage newsgroups have been created that
the alt.* namespace is  a hopeless mess and there's nothing that can be
done about it.  He used to spend a half hour to an hour each day trying
to explain to the endless legions of clueless newbies why we didn't need
to have sixteen newsgroups on the same subject, or why a newsgroup
with a confusing, meaningless name would get zero traffic.  It never
made a dent in the hordes of stupid-ass bozos who showed up day after
day begging for newsgroups only they cared about, so Joel eventually
found better uses for his time.

 ------------------------------

(4) What _is_ it about Joel and lemurs?

Joel and some friends started telling each other jokes about lemurs on
one of the bulletin board systems (the late, lamented vtcosy.cns.vt.edu
conferencing system) at Virginia Tech back in 1991.  Neither Joel nor his
friends knew anything about lemurs except that they were from
Madagascar and had big eyes.  When Joel and company found out there
was a research center dedicated to lemurs just a few hours away in
Durham, North Carolina, they promptly went down and visited.  The Duke
University Primate Center turned out to be a really cool place with woods
full of lemurs on the hoof and Joel fell in love with the furry little
varmints, especially since they were (and still are) gravely endangered
in their native habitat and needed help so badly.  Joel started
campaigning online for donations to DUPC and continued this activity
when he moved down to Durham.

If you would like to know more about lemurs, you can visit the DUPC
home page at http://www.duke.edu/web/primate/index.html and/or
discuss lemurs with fellow lemur fans on the Usenet newsgroup
alt.fan.lemurs.

 ------------------------------

(5) Was Joel really elected Kibo, or is that just a myth?

In January of 1994, James "Kibo" Parry disappeared from Usenet for a long
time, over a month.  No one knew where he had gone or what he was up to. 
Some people cared, some people didn't.  Finally, Andrew Bulhak, an
Australian net.user, called for an election to replace Parry in the role
of Kibo.  Bulhak accepted any nomination that came his way, then published
a list of candidates and held an open vote via e-mail.  When the voting
period was up, Joel Furr had won with a solid plurality and almost a
majority, with 81 votes; the nearest runner up was Parry himself, with
around 30 votes.  Parry had returned from whatever it was he'd been off
doing halfway through the voting period, but had known better than to
denounce the vote for fear of inspiring people to gleefully vote against
him. 

However, once the vote *was* over, Parry started whining *very* loudly
about it and actually threatened Joel Furr with legal action over Joel's
frivolous use of the title "Kibo" in a few Usenet posts. According to
Parry, his nickname "Kibo" had actually won him a few endorsement
contracts in Boston (primarily for computer stores, apparently with
tongue lodged solidly in cheek) and if someone else were also using the
term, it would damage his marketability.

Inasmuch as Joel had only signed two or three messages with "Kibo," having
had better things to do than engage in the sort of idiocy practiced
regularly on alt.religion.kibology, he had little use for Parry's whining. 
It was not as though Joel had actually set out to replace Parry as Kibo in
the minds of Internet users - nor would Joel have had the slightest
interest in attaining Kibo-like notoriety, since being Kibo is sort of
like being the biggest rat in the garbage heap.  Nonetheless, Parry was so
whiny about it that Joel stopped using the nickname in disgust. 

As Joel said at the time, "It's ironic that Usenet's biggest jokester
cannot take a joke himself." 

 ------------------------------

(6) What happened between Joel and those "Green Card" lawyers in
Arizona?

In 1994, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, the so-called "Green Card
Lawyers," were probably the most disliked people on Usenet.  Their actions
-- spamming repeatedly and then managing to convince the mainstream media
that they were the wronged parties when their messages were erased -- made
them extremely unpopular.  Consequently, Joel Furr was asked by many
people to make a t-shirt satirizing them. (Furr had previously made and
sold about 150 copies of a t-shirt satirizing Ahmet "Serdar Argic" Cosar.)
When he designed and began taking orders for a "Green Card Lawyers:
Spamming the Globe" t- shirt, Canter and Siegel got wind of it and
threatened Joel with "severe" legal action unless he removed the term
"Green Card Lawyers" from the shirts. 

Canter and Siegel based their threats on two claims, both legally without
a shred of foundation:

Claim #1: They had exclusive trademark over the term "Green Card Lawyers,"
a term they had never used in trade and which in fact they had no rights
to whatsoever.  Legally, if you want to be able to assert a common-law
trademark over a term, you must have used that term in trade. Canter and
Siegel had *never* used that term as part of their business, so they had
no rights to it whatsoever. 

Claim #2:  They had exclusive rights to produce or license the rights to
produce a t-shirt based on their exploits, and that "several large
companies" were already interested in marketing C&S-based shirts.
Needless to say, no companies ever produced such a shirt - and in any
case, they certainly had no right to prevent someone else from
exercising their freedom of speech by producing t-shirts satirizing
them.

During an exchange of email over the matter, Canter and Siegel betrayed a
complete lack of knowledge of the law - or, if you want to ascribe to
malice what others ascribed to stupidity, were engaged in barratry, the
use of legal threats for harassment reasons.  Canter and Siegel said that
the concept of "public figures" being considered legally vulnerable to
satire was complete nonsense, and they repeatedly asserted their trademark
claim over a term they had never filed for trademark over and which they
couldn't even claim common law trademark over since they had never used
the term in trade.  It was easy to see, after a short round of discussions
with them, why they'd had to sue to be permitted to *resign* from the
Florida Bar several years ago in an effort to avoid actual disbarment. 

Furr was panicked after receiving their threats, because although he
knew that their claims were absolute garbage, he also knew that he
didn't have the financial resources to deal with a lawsuit brought by two
lawyers in a state two thousand miles from his home.  He considered
taking the term "Green Card Lawyers" off the shirts, but first, asked for
suggestions and comments from the readers of newsgroups like
comp.org.eff.talk and misc.legal.

Two days of absolute pandemonium followed.  Joel began getting
hundreds of offers of free legal help and donations to a Joel Furr
Defense Fund. Thankfully, Mike Godwin, Chief Legal Counsel of the
Electronic Frontiers Foundation, also heard of the matter and offered the
EFF's services in the case to defend Furr in any legal matters that did
develop.  Heartened, Joel publicly said "To hell with the lawyers, the
shirts are going forward with the  original design, let them sue."

Canter and Siegel promptly began claiming that they had never made any
threats whatsoever and that it was all a fiction invented by Joel Furr. In
later months, after the "Green Card Lawyers" shirts had sold like
hotcakes (the result of Canter and Siegel's effort to prevent their sale
altogether), Canter and Siegel went around claiming that Furr had
actually contacted them *first* and asked for permission to make the
shirts and that they'd just told him to go away and not talked to him
again.  Since Furr had kept all the email they'd sent him and had it
handy to show anyone who asked, this absurd claim was easily
disproven.

Canter and Siegel went on to publish a book about the Internet entitled
"How To Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway" which, from
all accounts, was a pedestrian and rather lame ghost-written Net guide
with a sad little chapter or two at the end declaring the authors
champions of spamming.  They then tried to run a spam-for-hire service
which collapsed when no one would sell them net access, and after a few
notable fiascoes which introduced the Net to the concept of "disposable
accounts" (dial-up shell accounts used for spamming with the full
knowledge that the provider would angrily delete the account once the
spamming had taken place), Canter and Siegel more or less vanished from
sight.

What a pity.

 ------------------------------

(7) What newsgroups is Joel Furr a moderator of?

As few as possible.  In the past, he was sole moderator or co-moderator of
the following newsgroups:  comp.society.folklore, alt.folklore.suburban,
alt.humor.best-of-usenet, triangle.singles.announce, and
soc.history.war.world-war-ii.  Due to a lack of free time at various
points in his life, he has relinquished his duties for the above-listed
groups and only serves at present as a co-moderator of one newsgroup:
news.admin.net-abuse.announce. 

------------------------------

(8) Does Joel Furr sell t-shirts and stuff?

Yes and no.  He used to do that a lot, but has more or less stopped now
that he has a salaried job that requires a commute and now that he has a
steady girlfriend.

Joel designs various shirts and mugs and stuff and gets a local screen
printing firm to make them for him once he's accumulated orders from
various people around the world.  People read about the shirts and stuff
on the Internet, mainly on http://www.danger.com/netstuff.html, and send
orders and payment via ordinary postal mail.  Joel collects the orders,
deposits the checks, and then orders the shirts in the requested sizes and
colors from the screen printer.  This sometimes takes a few months from
the time orders are first collected to the time the last shirt is in
someone's hands -- sometimes it takes quite a while to generate enough
orders to make ordering a particular shirt cost-effective, and other
times, so many orders come in (for example, for the Perl/RSA t-shirt) that
it takes a hell of a long time to open and enter all the orders in a
spreadsheet so the actual shirts can be ordered. 

Joel does not charge a profit on the shirts; he prefers that the shirt
business remain more or less a hobby and not an actual business.  If he
were to charge a profit, people would expect a lot prompter service and
it'd probably stop being fun.  Besides, if a profit is charged, he cannot
post notices in related Usenet newsgroups (people resent advertising
for profit in discussion- based newsgroups) and sometimes, a few notices
to a few newsgroups are necessary to get the ball rolling.

However, all that is mostly academic now that Joel has largely retired
from doing shirts.

 ------------------------------

(9) Does Joel spend all his time logged in, or what?

No.  Despite the insults from losers who, when losing an argument in a
Usenet newsgroup, say "Hey, get out from in front of your monitor once
in a while, bub!"  Joel actually spends little time logged in.

Having a steady girlfriend will do that for you.

Joel does have a real life, a life that consists of spending time with his
girlfriend, reading, going to minor league baseball games, driving,
traveling, going to movies, hanging out with friends, and working on his
writing.  He *used* to spend a lot of time logged in, back when he was in
graduate school (he had a do-nothing graduate assistant position), so
people assume this is still the case. 

 ------------------------------

(10) Is Joel likely to reply if I write to him?

If you write to him and ask stupid, clueless questions like "how do I set
up my newsreader?  I'm on a Mac," he'll cheerfully ignore you.  If you
have half a clue and need help, or just want to talk, he can usually find
time.  If you like talking about maps, travel in the USA, the South, minor
league baseball, non-fiction books, and so forth, please write.  He's
often up late at night and may be around, but idle, when you send email.
His preferred email address is jfurr@acpub.duke.edu, but jfurr@danger.com
also works. 

 ------------------------------

(11) What does Joel look like?

Joel Furr is a 6'2", 200-pound Caucasian male with dark brown hair and
brown eyes.  He has a very faint Y-shaped scar on his left cheek from a
childhood accident.  He typically does not have much of a tan because he
spends most of his time indoors.

When he's not at work, he tends to wear  t-shirts or polo shirts,
corduroy shorts, and sneakers.  He prefers dark colors, such as navy or
purple, but rarely wears black shirts because he doesn't want people to
come up and start talking to him about "cyberspace."

He tends to wear his hair in what's called a "professional haircut" -- not
too short, but definitely not very long.  He prefers to wear his hair
fairly short because he tends to perspire heavily in summertime and that
makes long hair impractical. 

 ------------------------------

(12) What's the deal with those funny black floor lamps that point up at
the ceiling with the little knobs on the side about halfway up that you
turn back and forth to adjust the brightness?  Everyone seems to have
them these days.

They like it if you have one.  In fact, They like it if you have *more*
than one.  (If you don't know who we mean by They, sorry; we can't tell
you more than we already have.)

 ------------------------------

(13) Hey, where are the seatbelts?

There *aren't* any seatbelts on this ride.

 ------------------------------

(14) What's the 'soup du jour' today?

Cream of broccoli.

 ------------------------------

(15) Is cotton candy a solid or liquid or crystal or what?

Cotton candy is, technically, one big molecule -- one very long-chain
molecule, nonetheless, but one molecule.  If you unraveled a cotton candy
molecule of typical size and stretched it out straight, it'd stretch from
Durham, North Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia.

 ------------------------------

(16) What's the 800 number for the North Carolina ferry system?

1-800-BY-FERRY.

 ------------------------------

(17) Where is Paradise?

Paradise can be found in the men's room of the Mardi Gras Bowling
Lanes, located on NC 54 between Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

 ------------------------------

(18) Hey, what about those French?

For the purposes of the game, the French are goobers.

 ------------------------------

(19) Is it true that if I jump up off the ground, I'm technically in low
earth orbit for as long as I'm in the air?

Yes.  Technically, anytime you leave the surface of the Earth, you're in
low earth orbit and the Earth will rotate slightly underneath you. The
distance the Earth travels beneath you while you're in the air is too
slight to be noticed, but there is a small but calculable orbital effect.

 ------------------------------

(20) Who's in charge of the weather?

The current Planetary Weather Supervisor is Mr. James L. Cambias of
New Orleans, Louisiana (currently dwelling in Durham, North Carolina).

You can complain to him when it rains all day with no end in sight, but he
rarely acts in a responsive fashion.  He has his own agenda and until his
demands are met (he insists that the residents of Chapel Hill learn to
drive like sane people), he's not going to do anything about the weather. 

 ------------------------------

(21) What is it with cats?  How do they make their legs disappear when
they perch on the arm of a sofa, looking content?

They've got little tubes up inside their body that their legs retract
into. No one's figured out exactly why they evolved this trait, but the
best guess anyone's come up with is that they did it so they could look
cool when they perch on the arm of a sofa. 

 ------------------------------

(22) Does Joel Furr like fish?

No.  He hates fish.

When he was a kid, he used to eat Fish Filet sandwiches from McDonald's
with great satisfaction.  This all changed when he had two bad
encounters with fish which forever traumatized him.

First, at the age of six or so, he happened one summer to be at the house
of relatives in Florida who served up a big batch of fried mullet for
dinner one night.  It looked fairly nasty -- big platters of fried fish
with bones and stuff sticking out -- and smelled worse.  Joel didn't want
to eat any, but nothing else had been cooked for dinner.  Squeamishly,
Joel ate a few bites, then decided hunger was preferable to eating mullet. 

Unfortunately, even the few bites he ate were a few bites too many.  Joel
developed debilitating nausea and a king-hell case of the hives which
lasted for a week or so, the result of *massive* and previously unknown
food allergies to mullet.  It turned him off on eating fish in general. 

Second, while visiting relatives in North Carolina a year or two later, he
went fishing with an uncle and promptly caught a little orange sunfish,
which, in its gasping and wriggling and bulging of eyes and so forth so
shocked and startled the young Furr that he dropped his pole and sprinted
off, leaving his uncle to release the fish from the hook and put it back
into the water. 

For some reason, this encounter left Furr with a lifelong aversion to fish
-- he's not afraid of them but can't stand the thought of touching them,
much less eating them -- and the allergy to mullet helps justify his
dislike of fish to people who, annoyingly, insist that he'd really like
fish if he just tried it. 

It's a phobia.  No, it doesn't make sense.  That's what makes it a phobia. 

 ------------------------------

(23) How 'bout them Dawgs? 

Gooooooooooooo Dawgs!  Sic 'em!  Woof woof woof woof woof!

 ------------------------------

(24) Is Joel a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or what?

Joel is a registered Democrat; this is not to say that he's of a particul
arly liberal bent, but rather, that he supports the broad goals of the
Democratic Party and opposes the morals-based legislative agenda of the
Republicans. 

Joel was 13 in 1981 when President Reagan took office.  He spent his high
school years watching Reagan's insane lies and deranged, senile
babblings on the news each night during dinner and, as a result,
developed a lifelong antipathy to the twisted Newspeak of the Republican
Party.

He's not real fond of the Libertarians either, though, because most
Libertarians he's known have been so selfish and "it's MY money why should
I pay ONE RED CENT to help the POOR"-oriented that he's learned to ignore
them. 

Furr worked for a little over two years in a public library and learned
the importance of basic governmental services such as libraries.
Libertarians would have you believe that we should ban such services and
let for-profit libraries come into being -- never mind the fact that a lot
of residents of Furr's hometown in Appalachia couldn't afford basic
*telephone* service much less "luxuries" like a for-profit library.  What
would happen to the poor in a world where the Libertarian Party has closed
down all the libraries (i.e., the creation of an illiterate, ignorant
underclass) does not seem to matter to the Libertarians. 

As someone put it recently, you don't see a lot of poor Libertarians.
People only become Libertarians when they decide "hmm, okay, I've made
a lot of money, it's time to change the rules so I don't have to share it
with anyone  or pay for any government services."

But anyway, in the end Furr is like many other people in this day and age
in that he tends to vote against candidates rather than for them. The
Republicans being such odious walking piles of garbage and the
Libertarians being so completely out in left field, this means that he
typically votes Democratic. 

 ------------------------------

(25) What's in those bottles in the back of Joel Furr's refrigerator?

The Coca-Cola bottle and the Cobb Mountain Natural Spring Water bottle are
full of salt water from the Pacific Ocean off San Francisco, California,
collected from the surf near Seal Rock during Joel's vacation to
California in July of 1995. 

The bottle marked "Cuzcatlan" which appears to contain cloudy,
stagnant water is actually a bottle of Cuzcatlan "soursop" soda which
Joel picked up at a Mexican grocery in Durham out of curiosity and which
he decided he might be better off not drinking when he noticed that the
ingredients consisted solely of "water, propylene glycol, vegetable gum,
and glyceryl abietate."

The bottle of Shasta tonic water with about one gin-and-tonic's worth of
tonic missing is just that, a partially consumed bottle of Shasta tonic
water. It dates from the summer of 1988 and has been with Joel through
five apartments.

 ------------------------------

(26) Where do bad people go when they die?

Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

 ------------------------------

(27) When's the best time to go to an amusement park?

Well, if you ask in terms of when will you find short lines and so forth,
experience shows that it's best to go during a full-fledged tropical
storm.

One day in 1995, Joel Furr went to the "Carowinds" amusement park in
Charlotte, North Carolina on a day when Tropical Storm Jerry was
approaching and torrential rains were already falling. Joel had come to
town to see Warren Zevon in concert that night and had decided to drive
down early to visit Carowinds as well.  It was raining when the park
opened at 10:00 a.m., it rained hard most of the day, and it was *still*
raining when Joel left at 8:00  p.m.  The park stayed open throughout the
day and there were actually some minor lines around 1 p.m., but most of
the day, the lines on the coasters were so short that you could just stay
on the coasters and ride continuously for hours. Joel went on something
like 30 or 40 coaster rides in one day, then left, soaking wet and chafed
all over, to see Warren Zevon.

It was not until the next day that Joel and friends (who'd driven down
and met him at the concert) read in the newspaper about how Tropical
Storm Jerry had brought extensive property damage, flooding, and a few
drowning deaths to the Charlotte vicinity.

"Oh," Joel said.  "That explains why it was raining all day."

 ------------------------------

(28) What's wrong with Joel Furr's blood?

Joel has a hereditary anemia called "Hemoglobin C."  It's a trait found in
people of Mediterranean descent, which Joel apparently is.  Joel shares
the disease with his sister and his father; his brother, Rob, instead has
a condition called beta thalassemia.  It is generally assumed that Rob is
a mutant. 

If you look in an encyclopedia of medical syndromes to find a definition
of Hemoglobin C anemia, you may find a listing that describes it as
something that causes the person to have persistent jaundice and a high
likelihood of childhood mortality.  You may, on the other hand, find a
definition which describes those who have it as having red blood cells
that can't carry as much oxygen and fewer red blood cells overall.  This
latter definition is the type Joel has.  Joel has no idea what the former
definition refers to.  It's certainly not what he's got.  What he's got
are red blood cells that don't fully mature. 

The anemia has had annoying effects on Joel's life.  He was fed iron
supplements for years when he was a kid because, well, he was "anemic."
These were discontinued when it was pointed out that they couldn't
possibly do any good.  He was turned down for military service (during a
period during graduate school where he was *really* sick of college)
because of it.  He was skinny and un-athletic for years.  Ultimately,
though, he lives a completely normal life -- except that he can't give
blood because the Red Cross won't accept his blood.  That's one of the
most annoying aspects of the anemia --people running blood drives
never believe you when an otherwise healthy-looking adult male says
"um, I can't give blood, I'm anemic." If you *try* to give blood, though,
they always turn you down.  You can't win.

 ------------------------------

(29) What *is* that thing at the bottom of that big glass jar full of
water? 

A small plastic rubber octopus.  It likes it there.

 ------------------------------

(30) Will seagulls eat small chunks of pork barbecue?

Apparently not.

They ate everything *else* Joel threw to them, up to and including
gravel, but they spit out the pork barbecue.

Ingrates.

 ------------------------------

(31) St. Patrick's Day is a festive, cheery holiday wherein we celebrate
our Irish  heritage, affecting bad Irish accents and wearing green.  How
does Joel Furr celebrate the holiday?

He wears orange.  Every year, without fail.  Orange.

To hell with the Irish. If anyone has an explanation for why one ethnic
group has managed to wangle themselves what amounts to a national holiday
for their patron saint, celebrating alcoholism and leading zillions of
idiots without a drop of Irish blood in their body to wander around saying
"Aye and begorra" one day each year, Joel would like to hear it. 

 ------------------------------

(32) Is it true that Joel Furr's car has a guardian spirit?

Actually, yes.  A small lemur statue, "Bondo" by name, sits on his
dashboard and theoretically keeps the car and all its passengers safe
from harm.

 ------------------------------

(33) Hey, isn't that song "YMCA" that they play at baseball games really
cool?

Or, to put it another way, isn't it really cool the way minor league
baseball teams have taken to playing "YMCA" over the public-address system
at every game, leading thousands of idiots who wouldn't know a fielder's
choice or a suicide squeeze if it came along and bit them to turn out in
large numbers night after night for no other reason than to stand up in
the sixth inning and sing a lousy, annoying song that should have been
*left* in the 1970's, in a stomach-turning display of human futility that
rivals Catholic family planning efforts for utter stupidity? 

The answer: "Um, well, no.  But at least it does help us identify those
who'll be first in line for the public executions when the revolution
comes."

 ------------------------------

(34) What's that chunk of powdery concrete atop Joel Furr's bookcase?

It's a big piece of the Berlin Wall that Julia Youngman, one of Joel
Furr's older sisters, chopped out of the Wall in November or December of
1989 during the big feeding frenzy as the Wall fell. 

At least, that's what Julia *says* it is.  She came back from Army duty in
Europe with a suitcase full of concrete, but for all any of the recipients
know, she chipped those chunks off a concourse pillar at Dulles
International on her arrival in the USA.

No Communists have shown up asking for the chunk back yet, but you
never know.

 ------------------------------

(35) Does Joel have a girlfriend?

Fortunately, yes. Her name is Carole and he met her in real life at a
convention of sorts in suburban Maryland around the end of October 1995,
then spent a solid month and a half exchanging email with her before they
decided to arrange another meeting to determine whether or not
relationship potential was present.  Joel visited Carole at her home in
northern Virginia in mid-December and spent part of a cold, windy Sunday
afternoon strolling around the Mall in Washington, DC.  As Carole and Joel
were strolling past the Washington Monument, they were accosted by an
ABC-TV news crew which was there interviewing tourists about the federal
budget crisis which had caused all the monuments to be closed to the
public that day.  Carole and Joel were happy to mutter darkly about
Congressional Republicans for the camera and then went on their merry way,
not really expecting to make the evening news that night or anything like
that. 

Wrong-o.  Carole and Joel did make "World News Tonight" that night - one
of only two tourist interviews from that afternoon that made it onto the
air (the other, which came immediately before Carole and Joel's interview,
was of a cranky old guy who likewise blamed the idiots in Congress as
being responsible for the shutdown).  Fifteen seconds of irritated
grumbling, tops, but how many other couples can truthfully claim that
their first date wound up being nationally televised? 

If you want to see what she looks like, there are some photos of Carole at
http://www.danger.com/newphotos/newphotos.html. If you're some sicko who
likes downloading pictures of strangers and masturbating while looking at
them, Joel doesn't want to hear about it. 



------------------------------

(36) What's the greatest cinematographic achievement of all time?

That would be "Repo Man," starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean
Stanton.  The life of a repo man is always intense.

 ------------------------------

(37) What is a Hokie?

The term "Hokie" has been applied for over a hundred years to members of
the athletics teams at Virginia Tech (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University, located in the mountains of southwest Virginia),
informally for much of that time and formally since the mid-1980's. 

Virginia Tech, a former military school, originally played under the name
"Cadets" and then, later on, switched to the nickname "Fighting Gobblers"
because, believe it or not, the members of the football team tended to
have prodigious appetites.  "Fighting Gobblers" is not exactly the sort of
team nickname which strikes fear into the hearts of opponents, so "Hokies"
was often used as an informal substitute. In the mid-1980's, under the
tenure of head football coach and athletic director Bill Dooley, "Hokies"
became the official team name, replacing "Fighting Gobblers," which
nonetheless remained plastered across the outside of Lane Stadium ("HOME
OF THE FIGHTING GOBBLERS"). 

Which brings us once again to the question, "What is a Hokie?"  We now
understand that the term refers to a Virginia Tech athlete, but we have
yet to determine where the term came from.

It's simple: it's a nonsense word which a student in the 1890's, one O.M. 
Stull, included in a cheer he submitted to a contest which was being held
to pick a new school cheer.  Said cheer went something like this: 

"Hokie, Hokie, Hokie, Hi 
Tech, Tech, VPI 
Solarex, solarah 
Polytech Virginia 
Ray, rah, VPI, 
TEAM TEAM TEAM"

Okay, so it's a fairly lame cheer, but in the old days, things like that
were all the rage.  "Hokie" didn't mean anything -- it was simply filler
to stretch out the first line so it could end in a word that would rhyme
with the "I" in "VPI." 

Now, Wahoos (the hopeless, hapless denizens of the University of Virginia,
a sort of technical and vocational school located in Charlottesville,
Virginia) will tell you that "Hokie" means "a castrated turkey."  Since
you can't castrate turkeys, you'd think the Wahoos would realize that
their retroactive definition makes no sense, but sadly, asking a Wahoo to
make sense is asking for more intellectual capacity than he or she has
got. 

 ------------------------------

(38) What instrument did Joel Furr play in the Blacksburg High School
band?

Alto saxophone.  And damned badly, too.

 ------------------------------

(39) What does Joel typically say when someone asks him, rhetorically,
how he is?

"Paralyzed by fear.  You?"

 ------------------------------

(40) What's the best sort of implement to use when eating ice cream?

Tiny little wooden spoons, the sort that look like they were cut en masse
out of some thin piece of wood. You can get them in large quantities at
Francesca's on Ninth Street in Durham. They re fun to eat ice cream with
*and* they're environmentally friendly.

 ------------------------------

(41) What clubs and organizations does Joel Furr belong to?

Joel has never been much of a joiner in the sense of signing up for clubs
and organizations; he prefers to have his free time to himself rather than
having to head out to some meeting each night of the week.  He belonged to
the Demosthenian Society when he was a student at the University of
Georgia and belonged briefly to two professional associations when he was
in graduate school but never attended any events or conferences. Joel
dislikes the petty politics that plague many organizations and prefers to
remain aloof from the madding crowds who use their officership in various
organizations as some sort of ego fix. 

That being said, he has belonged to Toastmasters International, the
world's largest public-speaking education organization, since July 1,
1989, and has served in several District Officer positions, including two
terms as a Division Governor and one partial term as Lieutenant Governor
Marketing in District 66 (central, eastern, and western Virginia) and one
term as Public Relations Officer for District 37 (North Carolina).  He
earned his DTM (Distinguished Toastmaster) award in 1993 after four years
of membership and has also received the ATM (Able Toastmaster) Bronze
speaking certification. Joel has served as a sponsor for three new
Toastmasters clubs (CELCO Toastmasters, #8108-66, ISE Toastmasters,
#8976-66, and Bull City Toastmasters, #9891-37) and has served two terms
as a Club President (one term with Christiansburg Toastmasters, #3715-66
and one term with Bull City Toastmasters, #9891-37).  Toastmasters is the
only organization he's ever taken very seriously and that was mainly the
result of boredom and ennui during graduate school -- serving as a
Toastmasters officer gave him something to do that brought him into
contact with people.  The organization is worthwhile and has helped many
people become better communicators but, sadly, the organization at the
state level is often plagued by the same sort of petty politics and
infighting that Joel prefers to avoid at all costs. Joel is relatively
inactive in Toastmasters these days, holding only one office -- Sergeant
at Arms of the Bull City Toastmasters. 

 ------------------------------

(42) What's Joel Furr's ethnic and socioeconomic background?

Joel is, to be blunt, highly educated white trash -- the scion of
generations of poor crackers in rural North Carolina and Florida.  He does
not come from any clear-cut European ancestral background -- he's your
basic American mongrel, not precisely what you'd call Anglo-Saxon and not
precisely derived from the British Isles.  At least one great-grandmother
was still speaking Dutch most of her life and he does have a blood trait
which is predominantly found in peoples of Mediterranean descent.  His
family, on both sides, has been resident in the rural South for so many
years that the country of origin of any branch of the family is mostly
guesswork.  His earliest known ancestor, one Henry Furr (or, perhaps,
Heinrich Furrer), is recorded as having arrived in the Carolinas in 1742,
having come from Zurich in Switzerland. However, there are currently no
Furrs listed in the Swiss telephone directory so it's anyone's guess as to
whether Henry Furr was actually Swiss or whether he had just traveled
there from elsewhere before journeying onward to America. 

In any case, Furr's ancestors, once they reached America, made their
homes in the South and generally avoided those states north of the
Potomac and Ohio.  Furr has, as far as anyone can determine, exactly
zero blood relatives who originate north of the Mason-Dixon line.

His mother and father grew up in the Depression-era South: his father's
father was a textile mill foreman in rural North Carolina and his mother's
father was a mostly-unemployed jack-of-all-trades and farmer in a rural
area on Florida's Gulf Coast. Both parents came from families where no
one had ever gone to college yet both parents not only strove and toiled
and studied and made it to college, but did so well that they each
received master's degrees (father, in nuclear physics; mother, in
botany).  Both parents went on to Duke University to work on doctorates
-- and that's where they met, in a required language class the morning
after Furr's father had put in an all- night shift working on the campus
Van de Graaf generator.  His father asked his mother, a total stranger at
the time, if she wanted to get a cup of coffee, she followed him out of
class, and when he got done being confused at the fact that she'd
actually followed him, a relationship was born. 

Unfortunately, only Furr's father finished his Ph.D -- his mother worked
on hers for years but stopped just short. Furr's father earned his
doctorate in nuclear physics from Duke and was offered a tenure-track
position at Virginia Tech, but Tech made it clear that their anti-nepotism
policy would prevent them from offering Furr's mother any position at all
even if she finished her Ph.D. in plant physiology. Lacking the motivation
to finish a Ph.D. that she would not get to use in any meaningful way,
Furr's mother never finished her studies. 

Furr's father, a full professor, worked for many years at the nuclear
reactor at Virginia Tech and, when that program was slated for downscaling
and eventual closure, moved to the new Safety department to head up
Virginia Tech's occupational safety efforts.  Furr's mother, on the other
hand, spent several years as a bored housewife, taking part in university
events as a professor's wife until children finally started to arrive in
the mid-1960's. After years spent raising kids and being a housewife, she
finally took a job at the local public library -- and, by the mid-1980's,
was running the place. Furr's parents both retired in 1995. They did all
right for ignorant crackers from the rural South. 

Furr was born in September 1967 in Roanoke, Virginia (Blacksburg, home of
Virginia Tech, had no hospital at the time), but grew up in the college
town of Blacksburg, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern
Virginia. 

Blacksburg is home to Virginia's largest university but is surrounded by
extremely rural parts of Appalachia to the north, south, and west -- the
sort of places that have only one stoplight in the entire county. 
Montgomery County, where Blacksburg is located, was only somewhat less
rural, and that was entirely the result of Virginia Tech.  You can still
go a few miles north or south from Virginia Tech and be right in the midst
of darkest Appalachia. 

Furr does not speak with much of an accent despite growing up in
Appalachia, a relatively accent-laden part of the country.  This was
largely the result of the averaging effect a college town has on the
accents the students, faculty, and staff bring with them. With so many
competing accents, everyone tends to wind up speaking Standard American
before too long.  On the other hand, when he wants to, when he's
especially tired, or when he's talking to someone *with* an Appalachian or
Southern accent, a muted but nonetheless bona fide cornball Suth'n accent
does sneak out. 

Furr is very proud of growing up in Appalachia in much the same way
that residents of Hell's Kitchen have convinced themselves that it's a
fine thing to have grown up surrounded by squalor and ignorance.

Furr's parents were well-to-do and Furr had ready access to all the books
he wanted so he wasn't exactly wading in squalor or ignorance, but he saw
both every time he drove out of Blacksburg and into the surrounding
countryside.  Even so, there are worse places to grow up in than the
Appalachian Mountains.  The countryside around Blacksburg is rolling and
mountainous and beautiful and the Jefferson National Forest starts only
two miles or so north of town.  Furr feels awkward and out of sorts when
he's visiting any part of the country that's especially flat and that
doesn't have lots of trees.  Trees are important. 

So in conclusion, it's fairly hard to say what Joel's ethnic group is or
say "Joel's a ________." "White trash from Appalachia" is as good a term
as any to describe him.  He's not a WASP by any means: he's white, but not
precisely Anglo-Saxon (though many of his forebears did come from England
and Scotland), and he's never been a member of any church congregation at
all, much less a practicing Protestant.  Thus, he's never invited to join
the good country clubs or included on the right mailing lists. 

C'est la vie.

------------------------------

(43) Define "good eatins."

"Good eatins" is a term often used in the South to refer to especially
tasty, filling food: "Man, them's good eatins" or "Good eatins on that
there hog."  Good eatins can refer to a tasty cauldron of Brunswick stew,
an expertly-barbecued pig, a fried chicken dinner with all the trimmings,
or even so prosaic a meal as a bowl of pinto beans with onion on top and a
piece of cornbread on the side. 

One thing that Southerners understand is that food need not be heavily
seasoned or cost a lot to be filling and worthy of the term "good eatins."
Simple food is often the best kind of food. 

Joel Furr traveled to the mountain town of Galax, Virginia to attend the
Galax Old Fiddlers' Convention one August when he was in graduate school,
not being a fiddler himself but mainly just wanting to listen to an
evening's worth of bluegrass and mountain music.  Some friends from
graduate school, all Utahns or otherwise Mormons who didn't know much
about Appalachia, came along as well.  Upon arriving at Felt Park in
Galax, the traveling party from Blacksburg hit the midway for food.  The
Mormons cringed at some of the things being passed off as food by the
locals and settled on "fajitas" -- which turned out to be ground beef and
Cheez Whiz served hot in a pita pocket -- while Joel Furr instinctively
headed for the "Beans" stand.  This stand had the longest line at the
midway and every man jack in that line was there to get a bowl of pinto
beans with diced onion sprinkled on top and a piece of cornbread on the
side.  Joel toddled away from the stand when he'd received his food and
immediately came in for astounded looks of confusion from his friends who
could not conceive of anyone *waiting* *in* *line* for a bowl of beans
with cornbread. 

"Them's good eatins," Joel explained, gesturing at the beans with his
piece of cornbread.

"Uh huh," his friends said, disbelievingly.

Joel shrugged and tucked into his beans, enjoying his meal and feeling
happy and content when done -- while his friends ate their "fajitas,"
faces wrinkled with disgust.  Bright yellow cheese goo on ground beef,
apparently, was not quite the haute cuisine that his friends had expected
it to be -- while beans are pretty damned hard to mess up. 

Evidently, the concept of "good eatins" is unknown among the Latter-Day
Saints -- while the rednecks from Appalachia know a good thing when they
see it. 

 ------------------------------

(44) Joel Furr visited Las Vegas in July 1995 for the better part of a
day. How much money did he gamble?  How much did he lose? 

Not one red cent.  Knowing that the odds were overwhelmingly in favor of
his losing and that it's hard to stop after just one slot machine pull,
Joel cleverly left the slot machines and gaming tables completely alone. 

His time in Las Vegas was spent wandering around the Strip eyeing the
other tourists, looking at the lights, sipping a giant Margarita, and
finally, going to see a Rockettes show at the Flamingo.

Sadly, the 200-foot-tall video screen at the Circus-Circus which Hunter S. 
Thompson made famous in _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ was not there
anymore.  The Flamingo didn't have Neutrogena soap in the rooms either. 
Apparently Thompson got it all 25 years ago and they never restocked. 

 ------------------------------

(45) What were the schools in Blacksburg, Virginia like when Joel Furr
was growing up there?

Montgomery County, Virginia is a very rural county in the sticks of
Appalachia which, for reasons best explained elsewhere, happens to be
home to Virginia's largest university, Virginia Tech.

The local schools, therefore, had a very split personality.  Most of the
schools in the county were geared toward the kids of the locals, few of
whom had any plans at all to attend college and who wanted vocational and
business classes and lots of 'em.  The schools in Blacksburg proper, on
the other hand, had student bodies that were about half locals and half
kids of the Virginia Tech professors, with a small additional population
of the kids of the local orthodontists and doctors stuck in the middle and
usually identifying with the professors' kids. 

You might think that the local school system, faced with a large minority
population of very bright children, would take some steps to make sure
that all the kids got good educations, making sure that each child was
presented with challenges and material appropriate for his intellectual
level. You might even think that they'd try to put all the really bright
kids in some sort of gifted and talented program.  You'd be wrong,
though -- because Montgomery  County intentionally tried to slow the
bright kids down so they couldn't be accused of elitism (gifted and
talented programs being considered elitist, you see) and so the teachers
could teach at the level of the lowest common denominator.

To cite but one example, Joel Furr was reading at a second grade level
before he entered kindergarten and had advanced so far by the time he
entered first grade that he read his entire "Your First Reader" -- which
had been intended to last him all year -- on the first day of school. The
teachers and administrators at his school, not wanting to have to deal
with a child who was four or five grade levels beyond what they were
trying to teach the other kids, simply stuck Joel off in a second-grade
reading group in order to "challenge" him.  Joel's parents were pleased
that their son had been moved up to a second grade reading group, but
what they didn't know was that the  group in question was actually made
up of the kids who were considered so stupid and unteachable that they
didn't actually do any reading during the reading period but instead
were taken down to the gymnasium to play dodgeball (which the local
kids called "bombardment") for two hours each day.  Joel, not knowing
any better, simply played dodgeball some days and other days snuck off
to the school library and read on his own.

By the time Joel Furr reached high school, the school system had
developed three "tracks" for the kids in grades 9-12.  You could be in
the "vocational" track, the "college-bound" track, or the "honors" track.

The college-bound and honors tracks were a lot alike except that the kids
in the honors classes were actually presented with less work in an
apparent attempt, once again, to slow them down.  It came as a surprise to
the honors students to find that the college-bound English classes were
reading more books and writing more papers than they were.  Joel Furr took
all the honors classes Blacksburg High School offered -- social studies
and English classes, mainly -- and even though he was so painfully bored
by school that he rarely if ever took homework seriously (assuming he did
it at all), he was always stuck in the honors classes again the next year. 

Why, you ask, was he placed in the honors classes year after year if he
had lousy grades?

Simple: to keep him away from the "normal" kids in the college-bound
track.  That's why *all* the bright kids were in the honors program -- to
keep them from disrupting the "college-bound" classes.  At least, that's
the conclusion all the bright kids tended to come to, especially after they
found out that the "college-bound" classes were in many ways tougher.
The honors students tended to get classes where the teacher discussed
"fire imagery" in Arthur Miller's _The Crucible_ for days on end. Wheee!

In addition to creating the so-called "Honors ghetto," the schools also
created a Gifted and Talented program by the early 1980's -- and Joel Furr
was, of course, in said program.  This meant that he was bused along with
all the other bright kids to the high school in the county seat,
Christiansburg, one day per year to be shown a day's worth of art films,
short films, and films like "The Wizard of Speed and Time." 

That was it.  That was the "Gifted and Talented" program.

Uh huh.  Gifted and Talented program, my ass.

Quite a few of Joel's peers did get decent educations despite the school
system and made it into universities like Brown and Duke and the
University of Chicago, but Joel simply hadn't cared enough to jump through
the hoops necessary to get decent grades.  Classwork had been so utterly
boring and full of busy-work assignments that he spent most of high school
with his nose in a book.  He wound up attending the University of Georgia. 
Thank Heaven for high SAT scores -- with his grades alone, he would have
been lucky to get into a community college. 

 ------------------------------

(46) Where does Carole, Joel Furr's girlfriend, come from?

Carole claims to have been born on the coast of California, near Monterey,
in the town of Pebble Beach.  After moving from the town of Pacific Grove
at age 5, she spent the rest of her childhood just outside Dayton, Ohio,
in a town called Oakwood.  Since graduating from high school, she has
lived in Cambridge Massachusetts), Baltimore, and northern Virginia.  She
now lives in Durham, North Carolina. 

This is the version of events made available for public consumption,
however - the real truth is far stranger yet.

In actuality, Carole is a California sea otter in human form.  Her people
(the otters), curious about the game of golf which was regularly played by
the humans in Pebble Beach, selected her to be sent among the humans to
learn this strange game and bring back its secrets.  She was left,
clutching a putter in her tiny little otter paw, on the thirteenth green
at the Pebble Beach golf course in hopes that golfers would discover her
and take her among them to learn the secrets of golf. 

Unfortunately, two humans who were simply touring the golf course happened
to stumble upon the little otter girl and took her back to live with them. 
Over time, she came to resemble the humans she lived with more and more
until you can hardly tell by looking at her that she's a sea otter at all. 

 ------------------------------

(47) Who is the Official Stooge of alt.fan.joel-furr?

That would be Joe Littrell of Mount Vernon, Illinois.  When Joel Furr was
courting Carole, his girlfriend-to-be, he wanted to send her an East
Carolina University sweatshirt anonymously to try to hint to her that she
should consider moving to North Carolina.  Joel asked for a stooge on
alt.fan.joel- furr; Joe Littrell volunteered; Joel sent the shirt to Joe
to send to Carole and Joe graciously complied.  Unfortunately, when Carole
got the package, she instantly guessed who the true sender of the shirt
was and never even looked at the return address or postmark until after
she'd told Joel "thanks for the sweatshirt" and got asked "didn't the
postmark fool you?" 

Sigh.

Okay, so it didn't exactly come off as planned, but Joe Littrell
nonetheless earned the title of "Official Stooge."  All hail the Stooge; 
long may he reign. 

 ------------------------------

(48) What exactly is "hungus?"

No one knows. 

At least one theory exists that it has to do with the substances crusted
on and life forms found growing on Joe Cochrane's bathroom floor, but
since all scientists who have attempted to analyze said substances and
life forms have gone instantly mad, it seems doubtful that a descriptive
term having to do with said substances and life forms would have
entered the scientific jargon.

At present, therefore, "hungus" must remain undefined.

 ------------------------------

(49) What is the name of the night manager at the International House of
Pancakes franchise on Baxter Street in Athens, Georgia?

Hector.

 ------------------------------

(50) What is Joel Furr's best category in Trivial Pursuit?

Geography.

Joel's a serious map junkie; he loves to pore over maps for hours and
hours.

One of his favorite hobbies is asking people where they're from and then,
regardless of what they answer, somehow managing to ask a question that
implies extreme familiarity with the locale cited.  Given that he's
managed to, purely by accident, to absorb the names and general locations
of hundreds if not thousands of towns and localities around the world as a
result of his map- poring-over, he can often startle people with this
trick. 

It's not *really* a trick, though -- he really does know a lot about
places around the globe and especially about the United States of America. 
It just *seems* like a trick to some people who tell him they're from, oh,
Brooklyn, and then get asked "Which neighborhood?  Flatbush?" The normal
assumption is that Joel has been to said locality and knows it well --
when in fact, he generally only knows a *few* things about each locality
and certainly hasn't been to every city in the USA and every country on
the planet. 

Yet.

 ------------------------------

(51) Who is Wally?

Wally is a small gopherlike being who lives under Joel Furr's bed.

Neither Joel nor his girlfriend Carole is entirely sure how Wally came to
dwell under the bed.  Joel and Carole were doing some shopping for home
furnishings in January of 1996 and happened to be at K-Mart loading up on
paper goods, shelving, various chemicals, and so forth, when it occurred
to them that what the apartment really needed was a small gopherlike
being. Unfortunately, none of the employees of that particular K-Mart
admitted knowing where the "Small Gopherlike Beings" section might be
found.  Joel and Carole were forced to return home, lacking the small
gopherlike being they'd set their hearts on. 

As it happened, however, a small gopherlike being was found living
under the bed a couple of days later, sitting in a small (gopher-sized)
La-Z Boy armchair reading a copy of "No Exit" by Jean-Paul Sartre and
chuckling to itself. This being answers to the name of Wally and seems
hell-bent on gathering all the shoes in the apartment together under the
bed where they can be used for purposes unknown.

 ------------------------------

(52) Where can you go in Durham, North Carolina, to get "spaghetti and
salmon cakes?"

That would be the Pan-Pan Diner, located just off I-85 at the Hillandale
Road exit.

For reasons unknown, virtually every category of food on the Pan-Pan
Diner's menu offers the option of salmon cakes on the side. The menu
lists, for example, "pancakes and sausage," "pancakes and bacon," and
"pancakes and salmon cakes."  Salmon cakes are available as an option on
dozens of items, up to and including "spaghetti and salmon cakes." 

No one knows why. 

 ------------------------------

(53) What is Joel Furr's favorite soft drink?

Coca-Cola.

He always preferred Coca-Cola to Pepsi-Cola when he was a child --
partly because he preferred the taste of Coke to Pepsi and partially
because Pepsi's negative attack ads (which attempted to convince people
that only squares and idiots drank Coca-Cola) irritated the living hell
out of him.

This preference for Coca-Cola was reinforced when he was in college at
the University of Georgia.  Coke machines were everywhere on campus
and there wasn't a Pepsi machine to be seen anywhere.  Coca-Cola's
stockholders and founders and such had been very good to the
University over the years and accordingly, no one at the university had
much inclination to supplant Coke with a competing soda. The Athens
community at large seemed to share this sentiment -- it was not unusual
to walk into a convenience store and see two- liter jugs of Coca-Cola,
stored at room temperature in the middle of the floor, outselling
refrigerated two-liter jugs of Pepsi on sale at half the price.  The
Coca-Cola would usually sell out entirely before any great dents would
be made in the Pepsi supply.

Things reached the point of ultimate absurdity when, in 1986 or 1987, the
Coca-Cola company celebrated its centennial and, to remind us all which
side our bread was buttered on, sponsored a special halftime celebration
at a UGA football game which featured dancing Coca-Cola cans.

Parenthetically, one of the dancing cans of Coca-Cola deflated
spontaneously during the show and the person inside went on dancing
merrily, apparently unable to tell that the inflated cylinder he or she
was wearing was now hanging on him or her like a bright red shroud. 

Joel finished college a confirmed Coca-Cola addict, sadly, and only
through great effort was able to switch to drinking Diet Coke in
graduate school.  Had he not succeeded in this effort, his
two-liter-per-day Coke habit would probably have caused him to balloon
to 300 pounds.  Thank God for Diet Coke -- Joel remains a healthy 6'2"
200-pounder.

 ------------------------------

(54) How many fingers am I holding up?

Six.

 ------------------------------

(55) Do we need more plastic cups?

You bet.

 ------------------------------

(56) What color should mayonnaise be?

Yellow.

Real mayonnaise, e.g. Duke's Mayonnaise, is yellow.

 ------------------------------

(57) What is Joel Furr's astrological sign?

If you believe in astrology, Joel Furr would be a Virgo, as he was born on
September 20, 1967 at about 4:30 in the afternoon. 

If you have half a clue, however, you'll know that astrology is a bunch of
utter bunkum, a pseudoscience not worthy of the billions of column-inches
dedicated to it in magazines and newspapers each year. 

For one thing, the astrological tables developed millennia ago (to make it
possible to generate horoscopes even on cloudy nights) contained errors
which, over time, have accumulated to the point that the calculations of
which planet is in which constellation are totally off.  Evidently,
actually going outside and looking at the sky to demonstrate that Venus is
*not* in Aries at the current moment, despite what your friendly local
astrologer might say, is too complicated for most people. 

Furthermore, a moment's consideration of the laws of physics should
make it obvious that the obstetrician or midwife has a greater
gravitational influence on a newborn child than any planet other than
Earth.

Finally, actually looking at horoscopes in the newspaper or the more
detailed horoscopes you can purchase at supermarket checkout counters will
make it obvious that the horoscopes are recycled from month to month and
can't possibly begin to predict what will happen to 1/12 of the world's
population on any given day.

Needless to say, those who are ardent believers in astrology will
retroactively interpret the way events actually take place to the benefit
of the astrologers: "Well, my horoscope said I would meet a tall dark
stranger who would bring me good fortune, and there was that guy who
pulled up behind me at the light at the corner of Smyth Avenue and
Winderly Street... and if he hadn't come to a stop behind me, he'd have
totalled my car, so I guess he brought me good fortune.  Wow, my
horoscope was right!!!!"

Uh huh.

 ------------------------------

(58) What is Joel Furr's Myers-Briggs type?

The last time he took the test, he got an ESTP result.

The first time he took the test, he got an ENFP result.

The E and the P are pretty certain: E for Extroversion and P for
Perceiving (how one uses time, etc.), but the other two are indefinite.  

If you go by the actual personality descriptions in the various books that
explain the Myers- Briggs test, the ESTP sounds more like Joel than does
the ENFP.  If you're not familiar with the test or the books that explain
it, look in your local college library.  Books include "Type Talk" and
"Please Understand Me" but more may have come out since Joel was in
graduate school and routinely being subjected to the scrutiny of
Myers-Briggs aficionados. 

Joel can see that the Myers-Briggs has some validity, but still dislikes
the emphasis some employers and administrators place on it.  Dividing
the human race up into sixteen basic personality types smacks of
astrological mumbo- jumbo, even if there's somewhat more of a scientific
basis to the Myers-Briggs than to astrology.

Joel once worked for a man who was so into the Myers-Briggs that he had
posted his own Myers-Briggs personality type on an engraved plastic
sign on his office door: "You Are Now Entering 'INTJ' Zone."  The "INTJ"
was in big letters.

Really.

Once Joel grudgingly informed his boss what *his* Myers-Briggs type was,
it was brought up over and over again for the rest of the two years that
Joel worked for that office.  A lot of the assignments Joel was given were
prefaced by "You're an ESTP, so you'll *love* this."  If an assignment
turned out to be something Joel hated to do, he was told, with a big,
cheerful smile, "No, you just don't understand it yet.  This is *exactly*
the sort of work you ESTP's love to do." 

Of course, this same boss once turned out all the lights in his office,
sat in the dark wearing a hardhat, and muttered darkly to himself about
all the North Vietnamese he had napalmed when he was a fighter pilot in
Vietnam. 

Apparently INTJ's are good at napalming people, but they don't like it.

 ------------------------------

(59) Where are your videos?

Glassy smile.  "I'm sorry, sir.  We don't have any videos."

Okay, okay, an explanation:  when Joel Furr worked for the
Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library system in southwestern Virginia, his
job was to work the circulation desk, check books out and in, and answer
reference questions that patrons brought to the desk or phoned in.

Sadly, the clientele of the library were not exactly a bunch of rocket
scientists and Joel and his co-workers wound up accumulating a lengthy
list of utterly stupid questions that were asked over and over again by
various of the local white trash.

The most annoying of these was "Where are your videos?" 

For some strange reason, many of the patrons of the library had gotten
the odd idea that a library was supposed to double as a video store and
came up to the desk on occasion to ask where the videotapes were kept.

You might be thinking "Well, sure, some libraries have educational
videotapes and nature videotapes, so what's the big deal?"  The big deal
was that people weren't *asking* for educational videotapes or nature
videotapes -- they were asking for recent-run movies that had only just
come out on videotape in the stores, and when they were told "We don't
have any videos," they'd gawk disbelievingly and then ask again to make
sure they hadn't heard the librarians wrong. 

To be completely truthful, the library did in fact have two videos, both
training videos the local Cub Scout troops had prevailed on the library
system to keep under the desk for any Cub leaders who came by, but
other than that, the place had no videos and had no plans to acquire any.

With a limited budget, dollars had to be allotted between the bestseller
books everyone wanted to read, children's books, books on tape, magazines,
newspapers, and then general collection development.  There was no money
left over for luxuries such as videotapes, much less an extensive
collection such as most of the patrons seemed to take for granted that the
library must have hidden somewhere. 

On more than one occasion, conversations similar to this took place at the
circulation desk: 

Patron:       "Hi"

Librarian:    "Hi.  Can I help you?"

Patron:       "Yes, where are your videotapes?"

Librarian:    "I'm sorry, we don't have any videotapes."

Patron:       "Oh, so you just have donated videotapes, educational tapes,
nature tapes, and stuff like that?" 

Librarian:    "No, we don't have any videotapes at all."

Patron:       "Oh, right.  Well, could you show me where the instructional
videos are kept?"

Librarian:    "We don't have any.  We don't have any videotapes at all."

Patron:       "You mean you don't have any videotapes?"

Librarian:    "That's right, sir.  We don't have any."

Patron:       "And you call yourself a *library*?"

Grrrrr.

 ------------------------------

(60) How is "Furr" pronounced?

Some people pronounce "Furr" as though it was spelled "Fyure" or ""Foor"
or even more unlikely pronunciations.  The name is actually pronounced
exactly as though it had only one "r" -- in other words, like the word
"fur" which we English speakers use to refer to the pelt of an animal. 

 ------------------------------

(61) What is the law?

Not to spill blood. Are we not men?

 ------------------------------

(62) Where do the keys go?

The keys go *under* the sofa.  Silly humans!

 ------------------------------

(63) What are some of the nicknames that Joel Furr has gone by over the
years?

For some reason, Joel Furr has never had a great deal of luck getting
people to call him by various nicknames.  Joel has managed to get the
people at his office to call him "Jay" (which, for some odd reason,
sometimes means that he  gets called "Jaybird") but none of his friends
seem able to make the switch from Joel to Jay.  To his family and friends,
"Joel" it is and "Joel" it appears it will always be. 

The only exceptions to this general rule came while Joel worked at the
Hardee's on South Main Street in Blacksburg, Virginia from 1984 to 1985
during his senior year of high school and the summer that came after.

Having found where the manager of the store kept the label-maker that made
the label tape that went on the "Hardee's" nametags all the employees
wore, Joel made himself a nametag that said "FLUFFY" and, when that one
got old, another that said "STRUDEL."  No one to speak of ever noticed,
though he wore them for months. 

Joel is trying to get people to call him "Jay" and is having slow success.
You can call him whatever you like; he'll answer to either version of his
name. 

------------------------------

(64) What happens when you put a real, formerly alive, ocean-bred
sponge back in water?

It comes back to life and devours you.  Be warned.

 ------------------------------

(65) What kind of underwear does Joel Furr wear?

Until recently, Joel had been wearing plain white briefs -- had been
wearing this style of undergarment his whole life, in fact -- but someone
whom he feels is worth listening to has convinced him to begin wearing
colored Jockey  briefs.  Any guesses who this might be?

His new habiliments have resulted in occasional startled yelps ("Yah!")
when he steps up to a bathroom fixture and sees crimson-colored fabric
within when he opens his fly.

Overcoming the habits of 28 years is not something that can be done
overnight.

 ------------------------------

(66) Who is the greatest cat of all time?

The greatest cat of all time is Nubbins the Cat, a.k.a. Miss Kitty,
Maximum Cat, Cuddles, Cat Nubbins, etc. etc. ad infinitum. 

Nubbins is a Jellicle cat and is therefore black and white in color.  She
is a somewhat rascally cat, but she means well. 

Nubbins is well-known among cats for her furriness, said furriness
being of extremely high quality.  Furthermore, while many cats are
furry, and in fact cats in general are known for being furry, Nubbins
takes furriness one step further.  She keeps some of her furriness in
reserve against the day when, due to emergency conditions or shortages
elsewhere, it may be needed.  Nubbins is a public-spirited cat.

Caution should be exercised when petting Nubbins the Cat.  While
Nubbins loves everyone and is full of warmth and good cheer, she does
at times chastise those who presume too much and pet her when she is
not in a pettable mood.  Such chastisement rarely leaves permanent scars
or crippling injuries, however; Nubbins is a high quality cat.

Joel Furr assumes no responsibility for the activities of Nubbins the Cat.
Joel Furr accepts no liability for any property damage, personal injury,
and/or breaches of national security which may take place as a result of
her actions.  Caution should be taken when approaching Nubbins the Cat
when she is aboard her flying saucer; said saucer is capable of speeds
well in excess of Mach 10, but Nubbins is at best an indifferent driver. 

 ------------------------------

(67) How can I embarrass myself in front of eight thousand people?

If you attend a Durham Bulls baseball game, you can easily embarrass
yourself in front of eight thousand people!

During the sixth inning of each game, a lucky fan is selected and escorted
out onto the field to try to throw a baseball through a hole in a large
wooden target held up by two Bulls employees.  The fan gets three tries. 
Most fans miss all three times... the hole is not much larger than a
softball, say, and the target itself is held some distance away (usually
about fifteen feet). If you get one ball through, you get a free Coke.  If
you get two balls through, you get a free Bulls cap.  If you get all three
balls through, you win a television or something.  Rest assured that they
don't give out a lot of televisions. 

Since you're actually on the playing surface, just to the right of the
first base line in the foul area, you're easily visible from every seat in
the ballpark -- and since the toss is done between half innings when the
players are off the field, you're the main attraction for as long as it
takes to get it over with.  The fans boo or groan loudly with each miss
and the contestant usually trots off the field, head hung low and feeling
really stupid, night after night. 

If this sounds like something *you* would like to experience, it's easy to
get yourself chosen as the lucky fan.  All you have to do is be the first
fan through the gates when the ballpark opens at six p.m. on game nights
and go straight up to the Bulls employee selling scorecards and programs. 
The program is the same night after night -- it's a big color tabloid
called "Bulls Illustrated."  A new edition only comes out three times each
season so it's not exactly a hot seller for the average fan.  

If you're the first or one of the first fans in the gate, you'll be
assured of first dibs at the program stack that night -- and to make sure
you're the lucky fan, all you have to do is buy four copies of the
program.  They're a dollar each, so it doesn't cost a lot.  Smile broadly
and walk away carrying your programs.  When you're out of sight of the
program stand, flip through the programs and find the signature of the
Bulls' radio announcer, Steve Barnes, on the Mutual Drug ad somewhere in
the program. Since they want to make sure that they have a "lucky fan"
each night, they make sure and stick the signed copy somewhere in the top
of the stack, usually no lower than the fourth copy down. By buying the
top four copies in the stack, you've assured yourself of having the copy
with Barnes' signature.  This means that *you* are the "lucky fan" and can
sheepishly report to the Fan Assistance Center during the middle of the
fifth inning when they ask everyone to open their copies of "Bulls
Illustrated" and look on page X for the Mutual Drug ad. 

The Bulls would probably be annoyed if you did this night after night,
but so far no one has abused the opportunity.

*Anyone* can be the "lucky fan" if you arrange things right.  If you're
going with friends to a game, get there before they do, buy the
necessary number of copies of the program, toss all but two of the copies
(the one with the signature and one other), and when your friends
arrive, say "I bought a program but they gave me two by accident. Here,
you can have the other copy" and give the intended victim the signed
copy. Wait with concealed glee for the middle of the fifth inning when
they ask everyone to pull out their copies, look in yours with feigned
innocence, and then clap your friend on the back when he or she finds
the signature in his or her copy.

Hours of family fun -- and it only costs the cost of a game ticket ($4.50)
plus $4.00 for your four programs.

 ------------------------------

(68) Why does Joel Furr have so many strange and pointless pictures of
himself and his friends on his Web page?

Because people LOOK at them, that's why.  There's no picture too
pointless and boring that people won't look at it -- and besides, there
actually are people who wonder what Joel looks like.

The only people who complain are people who do web searches for
"pictures," hoping to find pornography for viewing and downloading
and instead find pictures of Joel Furr riding rollercoasters and Joel
Furr playing miniature golf.

 ------------------------------

(69) What's special about the Duke University parking deck at the corner
of Fulton Street and NC 147 in Durham, North Carolina?

Due to its gargantuan size and excessive lighting, It's visible from
orbit. The wattage alone used to illuminate the structure each night would
suffice to power the Energizer Bunny for the next six and a half million
years. 

 ------------------------------

(70) What fortune cookie does Joel Furr always get?

"DO NOT LEAVE THIS RESTAURANT.   PERIL AWAITS!"

 ------------------------------

(71) What is "The Mother of All Rivers?"

Oddly, "The Mother of All Rivers" is a term that has come to be applied to
the James River of Virginia. 

Joel Furr once took a Government Administration class in graduate school;
the class was mainly full of students from Furr's public administration
department but there were also two students from the forestry and wildlife
department, including one guy named John Stanovic. 

John had spent the previous summer working on some fisheries project on
the James River near its headwaters near the West Virginia border.
Accordingly, EVERY SINGLE TIME he was called upon to do a paper presenting
some proposal, it'd be based on fisheries management in the upper James
headwaters. And EVERY SINGLE TIME he mentioned the James in his classroom
reports, he wouldn't just say "the James." 

He'd say "when I was working on the James..."  pause for dramatic effect,
then continue, "the mother of ALL rivers," and then go on.  Every single
freaking time. As far as any of the other students could tell, he barely
even noticed himself doing this.

Listening to this over and over again for the entire duration of a
semester will take a toll on you.  Consequently, even to the present date,
eight years later, Joel Furr cannot help appending "the Mother of All
Rivers" to any mention of the James River. 

John Stanovic, wherever you are, you're going to pay.

 ------------------------------

(72) So, what was it like attending Georgia Tech?

Joel Furr didn't attend Georgia Tech, you low-lives. 

The University of Georgia is the large land-grant comprehensive university
located about an hour's drive northeast of Atlanta in the small city of
Athens.  It's home to programs in liberal arts, sciences, agriculture,
human resources, business, law, veterinary medicine, and so on.  It's
probably best known as the alma mater of Heisman Trophy running back
Herschel Walker, but it's also one of the oldest state universities and
has a beautiful campus and many distinguished alumni. 

The University of Georgia is NOT the same institution as Georgia Tech
(a.k.a. "The Georgia Institute of Technology").  Georgia Tech, a.k.a.
"Calculator Maggot University," is a substantially inferior school located
in the middle of Atlanta, known mainly for its engineering programs and
for being the site of the 1996 Olympics' athlete housing. Georgia Tech
students do not bathe, use utensils at meals, or speak in coherent English
much of the time. 

While it is of course rude to mock and make sport of the many
inadequacies of Georgia Tech students, care should be taken to note the
many ways in which the average Georgia Tech student falls short of the
physical, mental, and social perfection exemplified by the average
University of Georgia student in order to better distinguish the two
schools' students and alumni.

 ------------------------------

(73) What book is Joel Furr currently working on?

"The Big Book of Hellish Vengeance."  It'll be a coffee-table book
suitable for holiday giving.  Keep an eye out for it in your favorite
bookstore. 

 ------------------------------

(74) Who the hell is "Yalin Ekici?"

"Yalin Ekici," the loon who fills alt.fan.joel-furr with megabytes of
drivel about the so-called Armenian genocide of Turks in 1914, is believed
by many to be none other than Ahmet Cosar, the infamous "Serdar Argic" of
soc.history and soc.culture.turkish fame.  Cosar lost his access at the
University of Minnesota in the spring of 1995 (apparently as a result of
failing to register for classes two semesters in a row) and was absent
from Usenet for a while.  He returned with a vengeance later in the year
under a new pseudonym, "Yalin Ekici," posting from ephesus@netcom.com. 
Since this new userid makes frequent reference to "Dr. Argic" and is
recycling the old Argic library of propaganda, most people feel that this
is none other than our old friend Cosar, back to his usual tricks. 

Netcom claims to have told "Ekici" to calm the hell down and stop
spamming dozens of newsgroups with his idiotic drivel about the evil
Armenians, and in fact, Cosar *was* quiet for a few days after Netcom
said they'd reprimanded him.  However, the period of quietude did not
last long and Cosar returned to posting his idiocy with a vengeance and
Netcom has remained mute to all requests for information on what, if
anything, they are doing about the situation.  Not for nothing is Netcom
considered by many to be a less than exemplary member of the Internet
community.

In addition to posting under the pseudonym of "Yalin Ekici," Cosar also
posts under the pseudonyms of "Arif Kiziltug" and "Murat Kutan,"
apparently in hopes of convincing the world at large that he's not a lone
kook. 

Important safety tip: if you feel compelled to flame him, don't reply to
his messages directly.  The algorithm Cosar uses to locate articles to
follow up to apparently searches for references to the message-id's of his
old articles.  In other words, he looks for responses to his articles and
follows up to these responses with random attacks out of his library of
inane propaganda. 

It seems odd to many that Cosar would go to such incredible lengths for
such a bad cause.  *No* one other than him, apparently, sincerely
believes that Armenians committed genocide against Turks in 1914.  It
seems to be a continuing source of frustration to Cosar that, despite his
best efforts, we all still go around believing that it was the Turks who
did their utmost to wipe out every Armenian village they could find.

Even though Cosar's claims are roughly analogous to someone claiming that
Jews herded Germans by the millions into the gas chambers in 1939-1945, he
goes right on posting, secure in his sick delusions. 

------------------------------

(75) What is the ultimate slow dancing song?

"Nights in White Satin," by the Moody Blues.  The meaning of the song is
completely irrelevant -- the song was *made* to slow dance to.

"Wonderful Tonight" by Eric Clapton is also a fine slow dancing song, but
when you actually listen to the words, it's about a guy who gets drunk at
a party and has to be shoveled into bed by his wife -- hardly the stuff of
great romance. 

Carole, beacon of Joel Furr's existence and the radiant star who guides
him through the day, feels that the ultimate slow dancing song is "Lady in
Red," by Chris DeBurgh (better known as the guy who sang "Don't Pay the 
Ferryman").  She may have a point.


------------------------------

(76) Who was President of Joel Furr's high school Science Club?

Jimmy Page.

Yes, *the* Jimmy Page.

Joel Furr's high school, Blacksburg High School of Blacksburg, Virginia,
encouraged membership in the various school clubs by setting aside one
morning per month (or thereabouts) for club meetings to be held in lieu of
classes.  Attendance at clubs was essentially mandatory; if you didn't
choose some club to go to, you had to spend all morning being watched a
like a hawk in a study hall run by one of the more irritable teachers.
Consequently, everyone found at least one club they could endure and
attended its meetings each month.  Those students who were either not
eligible for or not interested in membership in clubs like the Leo Club,
the Key Club, or the Fellowship of Christian Athletes had various clubs
like the Spanish Club, the French Club, or, yes, the *Science* Club
available to them.  Since it was well-known that members of the Science
Club got to see Dr. Wightman set himself on fire one day each year, the
Science Club was the most popular club in the entire school most years and
could count on raking in the lion's share of those students who were not
otherwise inclined toward some of the more specialized clubs. 

The Science Club could be counted on to accomplish precisely nothing all
year since each month's program consisted of someone's father (usually a
physics or chemistry or biology professor from Virginia Tech) speaking on
whatever it was he did for a living... surface chemistry, nuclear physics,
iguanas, whatever.  Sitting boredly in the back of the room while
someone's dad set himself on fire was as good a way as any to spend a
morning but it wasn't the sort of thing that led people to take the club
and its mission to encourage the study of science very seriously. Needless
to say, it was no great honor to be elected President of the Blacksburg
High School Science Club. 

That's how Jimmy Page got elected President of the Science Club.  The
first meeting of the year was always the meeting at which club officers
were elected, and one year someone nominated Jimmy Page.  Since the
teacher who was the official sponsor of the Science Club didn't have a
clue who Jimmy Page was, she wrote the nomination on the board with all
the others and, after his nearly unanimous election, dutifully noted
"James Page" down on the officers form that she had to turn in to the
school office after the first meeting. 

Page never seemed to make it to meetings, oddly, so the club vice
president always had to call meetings to order.

------------------------------

(77) What is the secret of making great Bisquick pancakes?

Damned if Joel Furr, or for that matter, ANY of the Scouts of Boy Scout
Troop 44, could tell you. 

Every single camping trip the Scouts of Troop 44 undertook during the
years Joel Furr was a Scout included in the box of camping supplies a big
box of Bisquick pancake mix.  This was the case for two reasons. First,
one of the Troop's Assistant Scoutmasters was Arthur "Torchy" Walrath,
author of the official Boy Scout Cookbook.  Torchy could do *amazing*
things with Bisquick and the Scouts always made sure to have the raw
materials close at hand, just in case Torchy came along on any given
camping trip.  Second, Bisquick was sort of a last-ditch emergency ration,
just in case all the other food got eaten on the first day, as usually
happened. 

Without fail, something *would* happen to the bulk of the food -- often,
the reason was simple: it was all eaten on the first night in a fit of
orgiastic gluttony -- and by the final morning of the camping trip, the
Scouts would be reduced to eyeing the box of Bisquick hungrily.

Eventually, one would say "Well, *this* time we know what to do to get
the pancakes to come out right" and the Great Experiment would resume.

Bisquick, used by calm, sane cooks who are not crazed from smoke, cold,
and exhaustion, can be used to make tasty pancakes and biscuits and so
forth.  On the other hand, the Scouts of Troop 44, indifferent cooks at
best (the freeze-dried food they took along was usually eaten cold and
uncooked, with a cup of two of water poured into the foil packets in a
futile attempt at effective re-hydration), hardly qualified as "sane"
under the best of circumstances and were usually so enervated by the
exertions of the trip that they would double every measure called for on
the back of the box and halve the cooking time.  If it was necessary to
leave out the eggs or oil or whatever because the Scouts didn't have any,
then hey, so be it.  Strict adherence to instructions was not a skill the
Troop 44 Scouts had much familiarity with. 

The inevitable result was something unworthy of the name of "pancake" --
which consequently became known among the Scouts as a "fritter." Your
average fritter weighed in at a pound and a half and was sufficiently
dense that fritters became widely feared as weapons; a thrown fritter was
dense and solid enough to knock down most anything it struck -- *AND* keep
its shape after impact. Eating an entire fritter was out of the question
-- it would have been like trying to put yourself outside an entire sack
of Quikrete.  A few bites were enough to rid a boy of the pangs of hunger
and leave him feeling as though he'd mistaken a sandbag for a Pop-Tart.

It was little wonder that the Scouts of Troop 44 were invariably running
into each other at McDonald's immediately after returning to Blacksburg
and being picked up by their parents at the church; without doubt, the
parents of the troop knew without having to be told that their sons
would go through the refrigerator like a threshing machine if other food
were not found first.

------------------------------

(78) Why didn't Joel Furr wind up in the military?

Joel *wanted* to enter the military after graduating from Blacksburg High
School in 1985; he even went so far as to apply for and interview for a
Naval ROTC scholarship, knowing full well that if he was accepted into the
program this would require him to complete a full term of military service
after graduation. 

His older sister, Julia, had already entered Duke University on an Army
ROTC scholarship, so Joel was hardly ignorant of what the program
required of applicants or what the program would require Joel to do
after graduation.  It seemed like an excellent opportunity: get his
education paid for, graduate, and get to see the world as a member of an
honorable profession, serving the United States.

Unfortunately, there was this problem...

It happened like this:  In November of 1984, Joel went down to be
interviewed and evaluated by a Naval officer in Richmond, Virginia.  The
officer interviewed Joel and evaluated whether or not he'd make a good
Naval ROTC cadet.  Things were going pretty well during the interview --
well enough, in fact, that Joel's father was told, after it was over, that
he could 'bet [your] paycheck on Joel getting a scholarship.' Evidently
the interviewer thought highly of Joel.  Unfortunately, Mr. Furr was being
told this as he was half- helping, half-carrying Joel out to the car. 

Joel had felt more or less okay during the drive down from Blacksburg but
had begun to feel feverish during lunch and had started feeling *really*
bad during the interview.  About halfway through the scheduled length of
the interview, the room started to swim and Joel passed out.  The
interview was cut short, needless to say, but the interviewer assured Mr.
Furr that it wouldn't negatively affect the report on Joel and that Joel
was a sure thing as far as a Navy ROTC scholarship went.  When the Furrs
made it back to Blacksburg, three and a half hours away by car, Joel was
running a high fever and was babbling deliriously.  He was diagnosed the
next day with a full-fledged case of pneumonia.

That's right, pneumonia.  As diseases go, there may well be worse ones to
have, but Joel can't recommend lying on one's back for a solid month, too
weak to move, as an exciting laugh-fest.  When he was X-rayed the next day
at the hospital, he was diagnosed as having one lung more or less entirely
full of green goo and the other lung about halfway full.  His parents
didn't tell him until he was completely recovered that the doctors had
thought there was a decent chance that he'd die. 

Joel recovered in a month or so, spending a solid four weeks in bed
unable to do much more than roll over now and then and occasionally
swallow whatever liquids his parents thrust at him.  It wasn't fun.

When he did finally make it back onto his feet and make it back to school,
he wasn't exactly in good shape, muscle-wise.  Consequently, when the time
came a month or so later to take the ROTC physical fitness test, Joel
performed somewhere around the fifth percentile of applicants. Spending a
month in bed without moving isn't exactly going to tone one's body up to
the levels desired by the United States military. 

Let's put it this way:  Joel did not get the scholarship.  Good thing Mr.
Furr didn't bet his paycheck, eh?

 ------------------------------

(79) What was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to Joel
Furr?

People who know Joel well might think that the most embarrassing thing
that ever happened to him was the time he vomited his guts out on the
Monument to the Confederate War Dead in the middle of Athens, Georgia's
main street, Broad Street, at 5:00 p.m. on a bright, sunny Friday
afternoon. 

And admittedly, that was an embarrassing moment, but it fails to qualify
as *the* most embarrassing moment inasmuch as Joel felt far too ill at the
time of the incident to really *care* if he was embarrassing himself or
not.  Drinking six beers and six shots of tequila in the space of about
seventy-five minutes will do that to you. 

No, the single most embarrassing thing that ever happened to Joel Furr
has to be what happened early one summer morning during the summer
of 1988.

Joel had graduated from the University of Georgia in June of 1988 and was
spending the summer in his home town of Blacksburg, Virginia waiting for
his graduate school classes to start up that fall.  He tried to find a job
that summer but had little luck since no one much wanted to hire a recent
college graduate whose main skill was that he could write a ten page
English paper in about two hours on the day the paper was due, without
having read the book the paper was supposed to be about, and still get an
A. 

Accordingly, he spent the summer lounging about, not doing much of
anything.  Some days he'd drive up into the Jefferson National Forest,
just north of Blacksburg, and float about on the calm and tranquil waters
of eight-acre Pandapas Pond, out in the woods of the Forest.  He had a
black-and-yellow "two-man inflatable raft (not for life-saving purposes)"
he'd picked up one summer at Cape Hatteras that served fairly well for one
man if that one man happened to be six feet, two inches tall and was fond
of lying on his back with a book held open on his chest. 

Most days, no one much came to the Pond except to walk around the
circum-Pond trail and then leave again forty-five minutes later. Once in a
while, someone would arrive with a canoe on top of their Wagoneer and
spend a few hours paddling around the Pond while Furr floated on his back,
ignoring them and reading whatever book he happened to have along. 

Then came the Day of the Girl Scouts.  Joel was lying in the boat, half-
drowsing, about nine-thirty in the morning one weekday morning when he
heard a tumult from the parking lot and, a few minutes later, saw a
platoon of Girl Scouts, probably Juniors, with a harried troop leader in
tow, portaging silver canoes down to the Pond.  The Scouts paired off and
launched their canoes, voyaging out over the still waters of the Pond and
chattering amiably as they paddled. 

This was not exactly the sort of thing Joel had wanted or expected when
he'd decided to go down to the Pond that morning.  It tended to break
the mood something fierce; imagine Thoreau feeling as he did about
Walden Pond if some idiots in canoes had routinely showed up and
paddled about on days he was feeling philosophical. 

Joel was not entirely awake, nor entirely in a good mood, and thus he
can't entirely be blamed for not foreseeing what happened next.

Joel decided he would stand up in his boat and count how many Girl Scouts
there were in all -- and if there were more than ten, he reasoned, the
Pond could be considered "too crowded" and he would have a legitimate
excuse to give up and go home. Standing up in the boat was no problem; the
boat was like a big oval doughnut with a flat bottom and Joel could
actually stand up in it fairly well and see around the Pond and count,
"two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, and one troop leader, yeah,
time to split."  Just as he was making this decision, the bottom of the
boat came free of the side of the boat and he plunged straight down,
through the boat, and into the water of the Pond. 

From an observer's point of view, it must have looked as though Joel
suddenly vanished, sucked down into the Pond by something lurking
underneath the surface of the water. One moment, he was there; the next,
he was gone.  His boat began a somewhat slower collapse, its hull
integrity destroyed by when the "deck" ripped free of the sides. 

Joel doesn't like fish.  Pandapas Pond has fish in it.  With no warning at
all, Joel was down where the fish lived, and he didn't like it at all. 
Much in the same fashion that cartoon characters run on thin air, Joel
rose up out of the water and moved like a Jet-Ski for the nearest land,
which happened to be the nearby Pandapas Pond island, smack in the middle
of the Pond. 

"Ignominy" doesn't begin to describe it.  Here was Joel, soaked from
head to toe, hunkered down on an island approximately the same size as a
postage stamp  like some sort of primeval amphibian gazing darkly over
the Carboniferous swamps.  There were the Girl Scouts, happily learning
the ins and outs of canoe navigation and peering curiously at the
spectacle on the island.  What was Joel to do?  Swim ashore and risk
touching Pond fish?  Sit there and hope the Scouts or their leader would
discreetly come over and give him a lift to shore without asking too many
embarrassing questions about what he'd thought he was doing when he
stood up in a cheap plastic inflatable boat? 

As it happened, his bacon was saved when the troop leader noticed his
dilemma and paddled the canoe she shared with one Scout over to the island
and asked him if he needed any help. 

"Um," Joel said.

History does not record how Joel explained what had transpired nor the
manner in which he requested a lift to shore; presumably he managed
somehow because in due order he was delivered onto the shore, ruined
boat and all, and wished a good day by the over-cheery Girl Scouts.

Suffice it to say that when Joel purchased a replacement boat for future
nautical endeavors, he concluded that it would be best for all involved if
he remained safely seated or supine when aboard and left standing and
walking for when he had returned to dry land. 

 ------------------------------

(80) When did Joel Furr learn to read?

Around age 3, or maybe a little earlier.

Joel's younger brother Robin was born in late July 1970, two years and ten
months after Joel's birth.  Needless to say, the newborn required much
care and attention and Joel's parents did not have the time necessary to
closely supervise their other son.  Consequently, they did anything they
could to keep him occupied -- reading him a book and then handing him the
book to page through while they attended to Robin. Joel would pore over
the books for hours, looking at the pictures -- and, as it turns out, the
words. 

It caught them by surprise when they realized one day that Joel was
studying the pages with rather more concentration than one would expect of
a child not quite yet three years old who didn't know how to read.  "Read
that to me," his mother ordered, pointing at a page.  Joel did so.  He
read them the whole book.  He had figured out how to read all by himself,
based on comparisons between what his parents read to him and the
corresponding marks on the pages. 

This caused Joel some problems later in life when he was light-years ahead
of the other kids in kindergarten and first grade -- especially in
kindergarten, where he'd already read all the books in the kindergarten
library and had very little interest in sitting through storytime just to
hear them read through again. 

It led to some fairly immediate problems when Joel was still a
pre-schooler as well, though.  Mrs. Furr did not always watch Joel
closely when she was tending to Robin, assuming that Joel would keep
busy with one of the dozens of easy-reading books in the house for a few
minutes. Joel would read quietly and stay out of trouble -- but, as it
happened, there's such a thing as *too* quiet.  On occasion, when Mrs.
Furr had heard nary a peep out of Joel for some hours, a feeling of
"uh-oh" would come over her and she'd go in search.

On one occasion, she searched the house without spotting Joel until she
finally chanced to look down under the dining table and found that Joel
had used up an entire box of margarine sticks greasing the entire dining
room floor.  He looked up at his flabbergasted mother and patted the floor
proudly. 

On another occasion, he was found standing with the refrigerator door
open, happily dropping one egg after another onto the floor.  He had the
last surviving egg in his hand when Mrs. Furr discovered him standing
above a heap of eggshells and runny goo, beaming happily at his work. 

"Joel," she said cautiously, "Give me the egg."

Smiling agreeably, Joel hurled the egg in her general direction, missing
by a few feet. Scratch the remaining egg.

On still other occasions, Joel was found standing in front of an open
commode, flushing repeatedly and waving "bye-bye" at whatever he had
flushed down the toilet *this* time.

Is it any wonder his parents adopted a practice of shoving books under his
nose any time they saw him otherwise unoccupied? 

------------------------------

If you have other questions about Joel Furr which were not addressed in
this FAQ, please consult http://www.danger.com/index.html. 


