This article is rated MJ
So my brother writes me about a font that crashed his computer. Keeping in mind that he can tell a lie with a straighter face than an Enron employee in California, he said, "I'm very happy with WordPerfect. (Here comes a 'but.') But, I was editing a graphic's caption, changing the font from Schmerz Regular to Univers Bold, when the whole computer crashed, complete with 'The Blue Screen of Death.' Not just WP, the whole computer. Corel asked for a report, ala Microsoft, and I gave it to them, all three times it happened on the same caption. Then I figured out that changing the font from Schmerz Regular to Univers Bold was causing it and I stopped doing it."
Pardon me if I digress before I even progress, but in case you're wondering, I do indeed have a twin brother, Bob. He's five years older than I, and about 7 watts brighter. Seven watts may not seem like much, but it's handy when looking for the ice dispenser at 1 AM.
Bob is very funny ... for an MBA. Normally MBAs take themselves very seriously, and that's good because I don't. Anyway, Bob has written two books: Bicycling Across America and Bicycling Around Los Angeles. His next book, Avoiding Death While Bicycling Around Los Angeles should be out upon his release from Mt. Cyanide Hospital in the Hills of Beverly. The amazing thing is that Bicycling Around Los Angeles is a best seller - or will be once 11 more people buy it - amazing because there are that many bicyclists, that many bicyclists who can read, and that many who have survived just getting out of the Valley. But it should be noted that most L.A. bicyclists first drive to their ultimate destinations.
Anyway, Bob and I both use WordPerfect for writing books and articles. Have been since WordPerfect was a family business in 1984. The WordPerfect family, Buster and Bunny WordPerfect, sold to somebody around 1990 and then it was sold to Corel and now Bill Gates donates several million a year to Corel just so that no one will think that Word has a monopoly in the word processing biz.
Without going into why WP is the best of the wp programs (ask any law firm), every once in a while, there are glitches in upgrades. And so it was that, as I was about to move from WP 7.0 to 12 - a quantum leap because there's a quantum gap in my upgrading activities - Bob emailed the thing about Schmerz.
Those of you who have ever upgraded anything will understand the consternation that this creates. However, and against my dietician's advice, I took his email with a grain of salt, and explained the real reasons why his program crashed.
Having looked up Schmerz in my fonts folder, I wrote and pointed out, "I don't got no Schmerz."
And he replied: "You mean, you ain't got no Schmerz. I don't either. Maybe that was the problem."
It was obvious that, although I looked up to him until I was 15 (at which point I got taller than he), I was indeed going to have to explain.
"The question is whether it was removed surgically or never there to start with. Remember, in 1958 there were only 99 elements on the periodic chart. Shcmerz wasn't discovered until 1997. At the same time there was a similar controversy about the number of chromosomes in the human body. In 1959, it was thought that there were 48. Turns out that there are only 46. One of the two that was thought to exist was Schmerz, named after Professor Heinz Schmerz who also invented Piltdown and 56 other Men, and you know what a scam that was. Hence, Heinz' 57 and the Kerry Principle that a Schmerz in the hand is worth two in the Bush..
Schmerz was also the one who married Anna Fallactic (see last published article), and the two gave birth to Schlock Therapy who, in his later years, moved to Park, Atlantic, and Baltic Avenues where he made a killing in retro-couches and Woody Allen. One of his couches was recently appraised by the Keno and Roulette Brothers at $1 million on The Antiques Road Show.
The appraisal was based on the fact that one of the cushions was stuffed with Schmerz, and you know how rare that is."
And so we've come full circle with a slight diversion to a parallel universe. Bet you didn't think I could do it.
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