1. Alien beings from a highly advanced society visit the Earth, and you are the first human they encounter. As a token of intergalactic friendship, they present you with a small but incredibly sophisticated device that is capable of curing all disease, providing an infinite supply of clean energy, wiping out hunger and poverty, and permanently eliminating oppression and violence all over the entire Earth. You decide to:

A. Present it to the President of the United States.
B. Present it to the Secretary General of the United Nations.
C. Take it apart.

2. As you grow older, what lost quality of your youthful life do you miss the most?

A. Innocence.
B. Idealism.
C. Cherry bombs.

3. When is it okay to kiss another male?

A. When you wish to display simple and pure affection without regard for narrow-minded social conventions.
B. When he is the pope. (Not on the lips.)
C. When he is your brother and you are Al Pacino and this is the only really sportsman-like way to let him know that, for business reasons, you have to have him killed.

4. What about hugging another male?

A. If he’s your father and at least one of you has a fatal disease.
B. If you’re performing the Heimlich maneuver. (And even in this case, you should repeatedly shout: “I am just dislodging food trapped in this male’s trachea! I am not in any way aroused!”)
C. If you’re a professional baseball player and a teammate hits a home run to win the World Series, you may hug him provided that:
(1) He is legally within the base path,
(2) Both of you are wearing sufficient protection, and
(3) You also pound him fraternally with your fist hard
enough to cause fractures.

5. Complete this sentence: A funeral is a good time to…

A. …remember the deceased and console his loved ones.
B. …reflect upon the fleeting transience of earthly life.
C. …tell the joke about the guy who has a fatal illness.

6. In your opinion, the ideal pet is:

A. A cat.
B. A dog.
C. A dog that eats cats.

7. You have been seeing a woman for several years. She’s attractive and intelligent, and you always enjoy being with her. One leisurely Sunday afternoon the two of you are taking it easy – you’re watching a football game; she’s reading the papers-when she suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, tells you that she thinks she really loves you, but, she can no longer bear the uncertainty of not knowing where your relationship is going. She says she’s not asking whether you want to get married; only whether you believe that you have some kind of future together. What do you say?

A. That you sincerely believe the two of you do have a future, but you don’t want to rush it.
B. That although you also have strong feelings for her, you can not honestly say that you’ll be ready anytime soon to make a lasting commitment, and you don’t want to hurt her by holding out false hope.
C. That you cannot believe the Jets called a draw play on third and seventeen.

8. Okay, so you have decided that you truly love a woman and you want to spend the rest of your life with her – sharing the joys and the sorrows the world has to offer, come what may. How do you tell her?

A. You take her to a nice restaurant and tell her after dinner.
B. You take her for a walk on a moonlit beach, and you say her name, and when she turns to you, with the sea breeze blowing her hair and the stars in her eyes, you tell her.
C. Tell her what?

9. One weekday morning your wife wakes up feeling ill and asks you to get your three children ready for school. Your first question to her is:

A. “Do they need to eat or anything?”
B. “They’re in school already?”
C. “There are three of them?”

10. When is it okay to throw away a set of veteran underwear?

A. When it has turned the color of a dead whale and developed new holes so large that you’re not sure which ones were originally intended for your legs.
B. When it is down to eight loosely connected underwear molecules and has to be handled with tweezers.
C. It is never okay to throw away veteran underwear. A real guy checks the garbage regularly in case somebody – and we are not naming names, but this would be his wife – is quietly trying to discard his underwear, which she is frankly jealous of, because the guy seems to have a more intimate relationship with it than with her.

11. What, in your opinion, is the most reasonable explanation for the fact that Moses led the Israelites all over the place for forty years before they finally got to the Promised Land?

A. He was being tested.
B. He wanted them to really appreciate the Promised Land when they finally got there.
C. He refused to ask for directions.

12. What is the human race’s single greatest achievement?

A. Democracy.
B. Religion.
C. Remote control

What the Economy Feels Like

“Microsoft is going to defend its right to market its products by any and all necessary means,” said Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. “Not that I’m anti-government” he continued, “but there would be few tears shed in the computer industry if Washington were engulfed in a bath of nuclear fire.”

Scientists pegged the explosion at around 100 kilotons. “I nearly dropped my latte when I saw the seismometer” explained University of Washington geophysicist Dr. Whoops Blammover, “At first I thought it was Mt. Rainier, and I was thinking, damn, there goes the mountain bike vacation.”

In Washington, President Clinton announced the US Government would boycott all Microsoft products indefinitely. Minutes later, the President reversed his decision. “We’ve tried sanctions since lunchtime, and they don’t work,” said the President. Instead, the administration will initiate a policy of “constructive engagement” with Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myrhvold said the test justified Microsoft’s recent acquisition of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation from the US Government. Not only did Microsoft acquire “kilograms of weapons grade plutonium” in the deal, said Myrhvold, “but we’ve finally found a place to dump those millions of unsold copies of Microsoft Bob.”

Myrhvold warned users not to replace Microsoft NT products with rival operating systems. “I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a radioisotope thermoelectric generator inside of every Pentium II microprocessor,” said Myrhvold, “but anyone who installs an OS written by a bunch of long-hairs on the Internet is going to get what they deserve.”

The existence of an RTG in each Pentium II microprocessor would explain why the microprocessors, made by the Intel Corporation, run so hot. The Intel chips “put out more heat than they draw in electrical power” said Prof. E. E.Thymes of MIT. “This should finally dispell those stories about cold fusion.”

Rumors suggest a second weapons development project is underway in California, headed by Microsoft rival Sun Microsystems. “They’re doing all of the development work in Java,” said one source close to the project. The development of a delivery system is said to be holding up progress. “Write once, bomb anywhere is still a dream at the moment.”

Meanwhile, in Cupertino, California, Apple interim-CEO Steve Jobs was rumored to be in discussion with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison about deploying Apple’s Newton technology against Microsoft. “Newton was the biggest bomb the Valley has developed in years,” said one hardware engineer. “I’d hate to be around when they drop that product a second time.”

“I could never get away with that…  Hmmm. I guess you couldn’t either”.