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Having recently transgressed yet *another* rule (kind of a life pattern here
actually), I noticed that humor on this list is supposed to be ORIGINAL.
Which of course got me to wondering what exactly such an animal as original
humor about tech writers would be like.
The usual process being to begin with: "There were these three..", I
proceeded from thence:
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There were these three technical writers in a boat one day: a politically
correct technical writer, a traditionalist technical writer and a nerd
technical writer (who was really a programmer but his boss had stuck him on
the boat, saying "Why can't he write about sailing boats? He's programmed for
them.").
A storm appeared on the horizon and the traditionalist TW said "Think she'll
weather the storm?" Immediately, the politically correct TW said, "Excuse
me? 'She?' There's no reason a boat should have a gender. Or are you working
out some sick subconscious fantasy of domination each time you take control
of 'her' rudder?" They asked the nerd TW to mediate, but he just said
"What's all this hassling about the *words*? As long as people can figure
out how it works, who cares how well it's written?"
They continued to argue and had almost come up with a punchline when suddenly
the storm arrived, right above them. Lo and behold, it turned out to be an
Editor, floating in space (with the usual golden wings, halo and general air
of infalliblility.) "Wait a moment, " she said, "You three aren't supposed
to be in this joke!"
Whereupon she took out a big red pencil and deleted all three of them.
Jim Chevallier
Los Angeles
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Visit Chez Jim: Jim Chevallier's Home Page - http://www.gis.net/~jimcheval
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