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In Search of the Talking Moose
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Love's Labours Lost & Found Dept.
In 1984 a man by the name of Steve Halls bought his first Macintosh. Steve was a doctor in the wild and wooly frontier town of Saskatoon in the outlaw province of Saskatchewan. Steve practiced his craft well, using such primitive tools as duct tape and staples. But deep down in his heart, Steve wanted to be a programmer. Often as a child he had read the dime store comics about programmers, C-Man, Blaze Pascal-Programmer Extraordinaire, and the famous coding team Object X. Steve learned programming, and in '84 he began practicing in his spare time.
Steve also was courting the woman of his dreams, Jenny. She was an attractive, mysterious beauty that was the most precious jewel of her family. For Steve to win her hand in marriage he had to perform a great feat. Therefore Steve packed up his Macintosh and camping equipment and headed for the forbidding northern waste. He didn't have a clear idea of what he would do, but he felt that somewhere out in the snow his destiny or a severe case of frostbite was waiting.
Steve traveled over glaciers. Steve forded freezing rivers. Steve climbed a mountain once, and his Mac experienced dangerous power surges from the Aurora Borealis!
One day he came upon a large ice cave in a glacier. The cave looked like a typical home that a solitary moose would live in, if you ignored the TV, stereo, VCR, and refrigerator stocked with beer. In the center of the cave was a moose looking very mournful. Steve was impressed and a bit curious. He began examining the moose with his medically trained eyes.
Once the moose understood what Steve was doing he cooperated. The moose used his hoof to point to his mouth and made a hideous sound similar to Ethel Merman underwater. "Aha!" Steve exclaimed. "You have a frog
in your throat!" The moose nodded enthusiastically.
With a skill that would make strong surgeons cry and weak orthodontists faint, Steve removed the offending frog from the moose's throat. The moose pranced for joy and opened his mouth, said "Good day, eh?" and told a joke! Steve was stunned! Then the moose told another joke. Steve began to giggle. The moose told another and another. Steve was rolling on the floor. The frog put on a fur coat and left for Florida in a huff:
The moose told jokes for three straight days. Then he introduced himself. Steve had met a Talking Moose!
The Moose was eternally grateful for Steve's assistance. Apparently the Moose had been banished from his herd because he couldn't tell any jokes. Now that he was freed of his affliction he could return to the herd and claim his rightful hereditary title as JokeMaster! But before he would return, he said, he would perform a favor for Steve.
Steve was at a loss for what kind of favor a Talking Moose could perform for him. He explained to the Moose about Jenny, his heroic quest, and his love of Macintosh programming. The Moose was very interested in
the Macintosh. "I sure hope it isn't like an IBM. My father tried telling some jokes to an IBM executive in Scranton, PA. That was a real mistake."
Steve carefully removed the Macintosh from the special cold-weather case and plugged it into the cave socket next to the lava lamp. Steve attempted to show the Moose how user-friendly Macintoshes were. The Moose was not moved. "If it was real friendly it would tell jokes like me," he said. "Well, it hasn't been around long enough to get that sophisticated," Steve explained. "Too bad, a computer that could tell a good joke would make the world a nicer place," the Moose mused.
That night while Steve was warmly wrapped in his sleeping bag he had a dream. In the dream Jenny was at his side while they watched a parade in front of their log cabin. The parade was composed of humans and Talking Mooses walking hand in hoof, the line stretching into infinity. Dramatically, like in some Cecil B. DeMille film, the visage of the great Woz appeared over the parade. He fixed his eyes upon Steve and said, "Write a program! Change the world!" Steve felt himself filled with the power of creativity. "Yes, I can do it!" he cried. "I can change the world!"
In the morning he told the Moose how he wanted to give the gift of humor to the Macintosh. He said he wanted to learn the craft of puns, jokes, and off-color comments. The Moose said he would gladly contribute all his resources to such a noble project as long as it wasn't potentially fatal or possibly irritating. But Steve required more tools than those he had taken with him, so they set out to journey back to Steve's home.
They arrived in Saskatoon and immediately began work in Steve's basement laboratory (pronounced la-BORE-a-TOR-ee). Steve's tactic was to create a physical representation of the Moose that would appear on the Mac screen. Working on the moose face and the vocal inflections was the easy part. However, every time he tried to make the moose (on the Mac) tell a good joke, it fell flat.
In the weeks that followed Steve heard the (real) Moose say, "That's not funny," more times than he could count.
Steve began to get more and more desperate. His time was running out. He began to try more and more risky programming techniques. "Power. I need more power," he would mutter to himself. He installed a lightning rod on the roof of his home and connected it to a huge capacitor. He wired a colander to the head of the Moose, ran the wires through a fax machine, and terminated the phone line to the SCSI port of his Mac. That night there was terrific lightning storm.
The air crackled with unseen energies. There was a smell of ozone. "Now I must reverse the polarity," Steve chortled. He threw home a massive switch. Then...| There was a blinding flash... | ...a deafening crash... | ||
| ...a numbing jolt... | ...an electric bolt... | ||
| ...a startled cry... | ...a soft goodbye... | ||
| ...and... | ...there... | ...was... | ...blackness. |
When Steve regained consciousness he found his laboratory in shambles. There was no sign of the Moose. He hung his head in defeat. Then in that darkest hour a voice came from his Mac, "Can I use your car? I need some antler polish." There on his Mac was a funny Talking Moose! "He lives, yes, yes, he lives!" he cried.
Like any good programmer, Steve backed up his drives.
Things moved pretty quickly after this point. Jenny and her family saw the great work Steve had done and they were finally married. The Moose wasn't dead or zapped into the Mac. He had decided to go home because
Steve was taking things a bit too seriously. Steve got a postcard from the Moose explaining the disappearance. The Moose was happily back with his herd and waiting for royalty checks.
Aside from the odd Christmas card, Steve had little contact with the Moose for the next several years.