Shall we have a worst pun thread?

[riaz]

An oldie. Credit to Mr Richard Hart, who apparently wrote this in 1979!
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Micro was a real-time operator and dedicated multi-user. His broad-band protocol made it easy for him to interface with numerous input/output devices, even if it meant time-sharing.

One evening he arrived home just as the sun was crashing, and had parked his Motorola 68000 in the main drive (he had missed the 5100 bus that morning), when he noticed an elegant piece of liveware admiring the daisy wheels in his garden. He thought to himself, "She looks user-friendly. I'll see if she'd like an update tonight."

Mini was her name. She was delightfully engineered with eyes like COBOL and a Prime mainframe architecture that set Micro's peripherals networking all over the place. He browsed over to her casually, admiring the power of her twin, 32-bit floating point processors and inquired, "How are you, Honeywell?" "Yes, I am well," she responded, batting her optical fibers engagingly and smoothing her console over her curvilinear functions.

Micro settled for a straight line approximation. "I'm stand-alone tonight," he said. "How about computing a vector to my base address? I'll output a byte to eat, and maybe we could get offset later on." Mini ran a priority process for 2.6 milliseconds, then transmitted 0K. "I've been dumped myself recently, and a new page is just what I need to refresh my disks. I'll park my machine cycle in your background and meet you inside." She walked off, leaving Micro admiring her solenoids and thinking, "Wow, what a global variable. I wonder if she'd like my firmware?"

They sat down at the process table to a top of form feed of fiche and chips and a bucket of Baudot. Mini was in conversational mode and expanded on ambiguous arguments while Micro gave occasional acknowledgements, although in reality he was analyzing the shortest and least critical path to her entry point. He finally settled on the old, "Would-you-like-to-see-my-benchmark" routine. But Mini was again one step ahead.

Suddenly she was up and stripping off her parity bits to reveal the full functionality of her operating system software. "Let's get BASIC, you RAM," she said. Micro was loaded by this stage, but his hardware policing module had a processor of its own and was in danger of overflowing its output buffer, a hangup that Micro had consulted his analyst about. "Core," was all he could say, as she prepared to log him off.

Micro soon recovered, however, when Mini went down on the DEC and opened her divide field to reveal her data set ready. He accessed his fully packed root device and was just about to start pushing into her CPU stack, when she attempted an escape sequence. "No, no!" she cried, "You're not shielded!"

"Reset, baby," he replied, "I've been debugged."

"But I haven't got my current loop enabled, and I can't support child processes," she protested.

"Don't run away," he said, "I'll generate an interrupt."

"No, that's too error prone, and I can't abort because of my design philosophy."

Micro was locked in by this stage, though, and could not be turned off. But Mini soon stopped his thrashing by introducing a voltage spike into his main supply, whereupon he fell over with a head crash and went to sleep.

"Computers!" she thought, as she compiled herself, "All they think about is hex!"

 

[Peter_SSs]

Good one Riaz! That reminded me of a similar one that I had come across many years ago and have added to myself over the years. (Some of it works a bit better if you actually read it aloud)

ROMANCE OF THE ELEMENTS

Lithium dear, this is Cerium . . . . .

Have you heard of the Scandium about the Long Ranger, and his beautiful gal, Chlorine?

Well, it all began one lovely evening in the fields as the beautiful Chlorine was calling the cows by name: “Cobalt! Calcium! (apt for a cow)”

The cows came slowly towards her, and she Lead them into the bails, whilst the Oxygen and again came to the barnyard gate.

Suddenly, like thieves in the Nitrogen, a band of Indiums, foul fiends, who had Krypton her unawares, jumped out and frightened the hapless girl.

“We catchum Gallium!” they whooped, as they dashed madly away, the beautiful girl a helpless prisoner.

“Oh, have Mercury on me!” pleaded the lovely Chlorine, as her heart began to Zinc.

But all was not hopeless, for nearby her sister, Fluorine, was in her little garden tending her Germaniums and Erbiums. She was also conversing pleasantly and coyly with the Long Ranger, the ‘Good Samarium' of the West. (She was secretly trying to win the Long Ranger with her Tantalum wiles so she could Thorium, but he was Gold to her advances.)

At that moment a passing Tin Pedlar and his assistant, Drogen, Boron them. The Long Ranger, who had met the assistant previously, greeted him in that typically Americium way, “Hydrogen”.

The Pedlar, with an avaricious gleam in his eye, began his spiel, “Ve haff fine nick-necks” he shouted, “but ve only Sulphur cash. Hafnium Antimony?”

Fluorine whirled on the Long Ranger, and clicked the battery behind her electric eyes. “Tin I have a bracelet?” she wheedled. But the Long Ranger, stout heart, did not hear, for the Pedlar was telling him, via metal telepathy, of a band of Indiums he had just seen riding away with a beautiful woman.

“Chlorine…! What a disTerbium situation!” the Long Ranger cried in dismay, before turning to the Pedlar. “Bring my horse! Europium, Uranium and you saddle ‘im up, while I load my guns!”

A moment later, with a lusty ringing “H2O Silver!” Iridium down the Rhodium, in a cloud of swirling dust, towards the smoke he’d Xenon a distant hill.

As a result, the poor Pedlar didn’t Selenium, and his assistant, who had a lisp, didn’t Thulium either. Meanwhile love-lost Fluorine departed with sorrow in her heart.

Nearing the Indium’s camp, the Long Ranger dismounted, and he began to Steel (sorry – not an element) up on them quietly. He did so in order to spy out the land for a Radon their camp.

In his haste, however, our hero bumped his Neon a rock. He then fell backwards, landing on a sharp object, giving his Arsenic. “Dysprosium and Gadolinium!” he howled - silently - at the piercing, pointed and pretty awful pain.

Night fell (crash), and as the vigilance of the Indiums lessened, the Long Ranger again mounted his trusty steed and charged boldly into their camp. He was shouting and Lead was pouring from his flaming guns! “Manganese Indiums fight” he muttered to himself.

He raced up and down the camp like a Radium lunatic. Caesium Chlorine from their midst, and flinging her up onto Silver’s roomy rump, he continued his ferocious attack.

When things finally began to quieten, Chlorine spoke. “Am I safe?” she cried tremulously. “Yes” he answered, “they Argon – them that ain’t dead.”

She gave a glad little cry. “What a terrible Bismuth! Holmium your arms.” “No” he objected manfully, “we gotta Barium first.” So they dug a Titanium hole into which they began tossing the Copper coloured dead Indiums.

While Chlorine rested (and popped a couple of Thalliums to calm her down), she noticed one of the Indiums still moving. “There’s one still movin’, he must have only been Actinium dead” she shouted. “Can you Curium?” But they were too late. The Long Ranger carefully filled the hole and Platinum down the earth Fermium with his shovel.

Sodiumbarked homewards and, upon arrival, Chlorine began to make a refreshing cup of tea. “Bromine strong please” requested the Long Ranger.

That evening, he approached Chlorine. “Why don’t you and Iodine out tonight?” “What a wonderful idea” she exuded “and afterwards we can come home and Palladium the piano.”

Chlorine and the Long Ranger had a wonderful night and you don’t have to be an Einsteinium to work out that before many days passed, she was his blushing Boride (sorry again).

As they passed down the aisle together, Nickelodeon playing in the background, the disappointed and vitriolic Fluorine muttered nastily, “You Cadmium!”

The Long Ranger briefly cast his Iron her, and then turned on his Helium and proceeded to the altar.

After the ceremony, the Long Ranger finally got all the Mendelevium alone with Chlorine. As they drove off, the Carbonnet and the Chromium bumpers glistened in the setting sun.

After a short honeymoon in Francium they settled in Californium and lived happily ever after.


Edit: Additional paragraph suggestions welcome.