83 lines
3.9 KiB
Common Lisp
83 lines
3.9 KiB
Common Lisp
[Forwarded from a Yale bboard by Shrager@CMU-PSY-A.]
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THE ADVENTURES OF JOE LISP, T MAN
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Brought to you by: *AI-LUNCH*, its hot, its cold, its more than
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a lunch...
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This week's episode:
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The Case of the Bogus Expert
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Part I
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It was late on a Tuesday and I was dead in my seat from nearly an
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hour of grueling mail reading and idle chit-chat with random passers
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by. The only light in my office was the soft glow from my CRT,
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the only sound was the pain wracked rattle of an over-heated disk.
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It was raining out, but the steady staccato rhythm that beat its
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way into the skulls of others was held back by the cold concrete
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slabs of my windowless walls. I like not having windows, but that's
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another story.
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I didn't hear her come in, but when the scent of her perfume hit
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me, my head swung faster than a Winchester. She was wearing My-Sin,
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a perfume with the smell of an expert, but that wasn't what impressed
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me. What hit me was her contours. She had a body with all the
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right variables. She wore a dress with a single closure that barely
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hid the dynamic scoping of what was underneath. Sure I saw her
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as an object, but I guess I'm just object oriented. It's the kind
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of operator I am.
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After she sat down and began to tell her story I realized that her
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sophisticated look was just cover. She was a green kid, still wet
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behind the ears. In fact she was wet all over. As I said, it was
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raining outside. It's an easy inference.
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It seems the kid's step-father had disappeared. He had been a
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medical specialist, diagnosis and prescription, but one day he
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started making wild claims about knowledge and planning and then
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he vanished. I had heard of this kind before. Some were
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specialists. Some in medicine, some in geology, but all were the
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same kind of guy. I looked the girl in the eye and asked the one
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question she didn't want to hear, "He's rule-based, isn't he?".
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She turned her head away and that was all the answer I needed. His
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kind were cold, unfeeling, unchanging, but she still loved him and
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wanted him back again.
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Once I got a full picture of the guy I was sure that I knew where
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to find him, California. It was the haven for his way of thinking
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and acting. I was sure that he had been swept up by the EXPERTS.
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They were a cult that had grown up in the past few years, promising
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fast and easy enlightenment. What they didn't tell you was that
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the price was your ability to understand itself. He was there,
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as sure as I was a T Man.
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I knew of at least one operative in California who could be trusted,
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and I knew that I had to talk to him before I could do any further
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planning. I reached for the phone and gave him a call.
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The conversation was short and sweet. He had resource conflicts
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and couldn't give me a hand right now. I assumed that it had to
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be more complex than that and almost said that resource conflicts
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aren't that easy to identify, but I had no time to waste on in
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fighting while the real enemy was still at large. Before he hung
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up, he suggested that I pick up a radar detector if I was planning
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on driving out and asked if I could grab a half-gallon of milk for
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him on the way. I agreed to the favor, thanked him for his advice
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and wished him luck on his tan...
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That's all for now kids. Tune in next week for the part two of:
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The Case of the Bogus Expert
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Starring
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JOE LISP, T MAN
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And remember kids, Wednesdays are *AI-LUNCH* days and 11:45 is the
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*AI-LUNCH* time. And kids, if you send in 3 box tops from *AI-LUNCH*
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you can get a JOE LISP magic decoder ring. This is the same ring
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that saved JOE LISP only two episodes ago and is capable of parsing
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from surface to deep structure in less than 15 transformations.
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Its part plastic, part metal and all bogus, so order now.
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