Grammar in the Machine
By: Vincent B. Navarino

*** FLASH! *** This just in:

There’s an extremely tense and unusual drama unfolding today in downtown New York. It seems a distraught woman is holding a group of high school students hostage at a McDonald’s restaurant.

Earlier this morning Ms. Elley Norman, a well-respected English teacher at St. Hartman High School, walked into the establishment wielding a large (and extremely heavy) Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary and an American made Daisy air rifle. Swinging wildly, she forced all of the customers, except for 12 high school students, out of the building. It has been reported that all of the teens are part of their school’s computer club.

The police arrived shortly at the scene, along with LAPD’s esteemed SWAT team (which immediately began to pump rounds into the crowd at random). Ms. Norman sent out the dictionary-whipped, but otherwise unharmed manager with a note. It then became clear that Ms. Norman was upset at the dwindling reading level of high school students that used computers. The final straw seemed to have occurred when she logged onto a local BBS and began reading teen-agers’ posts there. Rumor has it that she snapped and went insane due to the poor use of grammar and punctuation that comprised the bulk of their messages.

The note said that she was holding the children hostage until they learned to “properly implement, understand and comprehend the use of the English language.”

Police are prepared for a long siege.

Hostage negotiators repeatedly attempted to communicate with Ms. Norman to end the situation only to put off by her well worded, but menacing replies.

Said Capt. Lou Phillips of the LAPD Hostage Negotiation Squad in a written statement to this newscaster:

“It seems Ms. Norman, upset at the lack of english
articulation skill amongst high school students,
took it upon herself to set things to right and
force kids to learn how to properly use and respect
the english language before they dared touch a
computer.”

When asked his opinion of the situation at the scene, Capt. Phillips responded, “Hey, I tink she’s a &^%! loon. But if dat broad hoits one of dem kids, who knows what?!”

After pressing him about his response, Capt. Phillips admitted to using Grammatik’s IV grammar checker for all written statements. Rumor has it that McDonald’s has offered to pay all college tuition for any of the hostages, when released, that choose to pursue English degrees upon graduating high school.

We’ll keep you all posted as to the outcome of this surprising and startling event. And now to Bill for the weather . . . {RAH}
———-
Vincent B. Navarino is one of those rare, funny and talented (not to mention modest) Sysops who runs a bbs and that’s why he’s called a… never mind, you know. He is rumored to be quite mad. He can be found on his BBS laughing at the cries of his peasants . . . er . . . users. When asked his opinion on clubbing Olympic-bound ice-skaters, he replied, “Why? They’re not real hairy and people would look at you funny if you wore their pelts.”

Note: This humor article of mine originally appeared in Random Access Magazine in March of 1994. RAH was a humor e-zine from the old days, when BBS’s roamed the earth and not just anyone “got published". :-)