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Old 11-06-2005, 03:10 PM
Phil L
 
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Mike wrote:
:: Sorry for bringing humour to you all
::
::
:: I don't know how they wrote this with a straight face.
::
::
:: This was a real memo sent out by a computer company (IBM) to its
:: employees in all seriousness.

Sadly not true, the memo is but the seriousness isn't:

The IBM "mouse balls" memo is one of the oldest bits of Internet jokelore.
Examples of it show up in USENET archives as far back as 1989, and scarcely
anyone who had an e-mail address back then escaped without receiving this in
his inbox more than once, which certainly drops it into the long-beard
category with a loud thud.

Was this a real memo? "Real" in the sense that someone at IBM actually wrote
it and distributed it to field service techs, perhaps, but it was always
intended as an occupational in-joke; it wasn't a "serious" memo that some
hapless supervisor inadvertently worded as a hilarious tour de force of
double entendres.

The memo has remained remarkably unchanged through the years. As the piece
has been passed from hand to hand through cyberspace, a few alterations have
been made to the text (the "Please keep in mind that a customer without
properly working balls is an unhappy customer" zinger wasn't in the
original, and today's "Any customer missing his balls should contact the
local personnel in charge of removing and replacing these necessary items"
used to be "Any customer missing his balls should suspect local personnel of
removing these necessary functional items"), but for the most part what
turns up in inboxes now is fairly close to what was being circulated more
than a decade ago.

http://www.snopes.com/humor/business/mouse.htm

--
If God had intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs.