HUMOR.003 (was BIRTH.TXT -- updated with later data)      May 24, 1995

Subj:  The Birthday Cake                Section: Religious Humor [14]
From:  JW Burgeson <SL5 14>     73531,1501     # 2561, 2 Replies 
  To:  Everyone                                Date: 29-Apr-95 11:22   

It was a dark & stormy night. In a secluded mansion, deep in the
woods and remote from town, a motley crew is assembled to pay homage
to one of their own -- and to enjoy birthday cake!

This is a game -- a joke -- a puzzle (well, maybe, if I can pull it off).

What we will do -- anyone who wishes may participate -- is to create the
motley crew thus assembled. At some point, I'll announce a post with the
clue(s) to the guest-of-honor's name. But that's secondary. A birthday
celebration is "religious" (at least in my house), so this qualifies as
religious humor. (Says the SL <G> )

All of the contributions should be of the form:

(name) (comment about the cake)

Puzzled? Well, I'll start by bringing in the first five guests.

John Knox (Presbyterian): "You can't have your cake and eat it to!"
Edith (who hates cake) "You can't have your cake and me too!"
Mr. Spock: "It is only logical, captain, that we cut the cake now!"
John Wesley (Methodist): "How do we cut it when we don't know how many?"
The Pope: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's cake!"

Make sense? Try for religious figures, but that's not a strict
requirement. Make up names if you wish. Here is five more -- then we'll
see if anyone wants to play:

Ben Buddhist: "Cake is."
Zen Buddhhist: "What is the sound of a cake baking?"
Harry Hindu: "Have your cake, then. Just don't have a cow!"
Jimmy Carter: "Are there peanuts to go with that cake?"
King David: "The cake looks great -- but check out that babe next door!"

Burgy 

From:  Maze                     75267,240      # 2611, * No Replies * 

Eve (woman) "Just one little bite....c'mon"
Adam (man)  .....{licking lips} "Is there more?"

From:  :: Mackey ::             72113,1772     # 2670, * No Replies * 

 St. Thomas:  I'll believe it's cake when I taste it.
 Mary Magdalene: If it's cake, I've done it.
 Jesus: Five loaves and two fishes?  Let them eat cake!

From:  Sashan                   74274,541      # 2835, * No Replies * 

Worf: "Have your cake, or I shall be... irritated."
God: "Damn. Shouldn't have flooded the cake mix."
Buddha: "Life is suffering, but have your cake anyway."
Kirk: "Have--some--cake--Spock!"
Elisha: "Go inside, you'll find your flour case fill. Bake a cake."

From:  Merle Hertzler           70511,2365     # 2772, * No Replies * 

Edith (whose husband was running around with a girl named Kate):
      "You can't have your Kate and Edith too!

From:  Exec.Vice-Pope TJ        76212,3626     # 2740, * No Replies * 

Moses : " Everyone bring cake ! "
Peter : " Who has to pay for the cake ? "

From:  Sarah Karasik            76711,560      # 3094, * No Replies * 

Hoppy Bunday to you, Hoppy Bunday to you, ...

More from others:

Julius Caesar: "Et tu, Brutus?"
Babe Ruth: "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!"
Billy Graham: "That cake reminds me -- you must be born again!"
Thomas Huxley (agnostic): No cake for me, I don't believe in cake."
B. Russell (atheist): "None for me either. I don't believe in birthdays." 
Naomi, the Jewish mother: "Eat, eat already!"
John the Baptist: "Is that the cake, or should I seek another?"
Tommy Taoist: "The way to have cake is to eat cake."
Jimmy Swaggart: "You can have all the cake you want! Just send money."
Ross Perot: "35% of the cake goes where to that giant sucking sound!"
JFK: "Ask not what your country can do for you, just eat cake."
Moses: "Commandment #11 -- cake at birthday parties is non-fattening."
Goldwater: "Extremism in the pursuit of cake is no vice."
Jefferson: "All are endowed with life, liberty & the pursuit of cake."
Hoover: "A cake on every kitchen table." 
Jonah: "What a whale of a cake!"
Nero: "255 candles? Let me get my fiddle!"
FDR: "The only thing we have to fear -- is no cake."
Churchill: "I only offer you, blood, toil, tears and ... cake."
E. Queen: "Did I see a clue to the birthday person's identity just now?" 
Meshack: "Here kitty kitty -- have some cake."
Shadrack: "Here kitty kitty -- have some Meshack!"
Abednego: "Have both of them, kitty."
Guest of Honor: "First cake I've had in 202 years!"
Cain: "I'd have some cake if I were Abel."
Abel: "My parents raised Cain, so I can't eat cake."
Count Seseme Street: "Nero's count is off by exactly 15! Precisely 15!"
Ronald Reagan: "In my last picture, Dessert time for Bonzo, ..."
George Bush: "Do I have cake on my lips, Barbara?"
Cal Coolidge: "I do not choose to eat cake." 
Warren Harding: "Will the Teapot Dome party have cake too?"
Newt: "Can't have any cake in the new budget, you know!"
Clinton: "I see a way, but it will have to be without frosting!
Bob Dole: "How about just frosting, no cake?"
St. Paul: "...cake, hope and charity, but the greatest of these is cake."
Serpent: "Surely thou shalt not die if you take a bite of cake!"
Dorothy: "There's no place like a place with cake."
Descartes: "I think I taste cake, therefore I eat."
I. Kant: "Give someone else the cake you desire most."
Ludwig Wittgenstein: "The cake is a fact, and that's a fact."
Martin Buber: "There is no independent "cake."
Confucius: "Cake is the ideal relationship among men."
Bhagavad Gita: "One's true self is one's cake."
Democritus: "Cake consists only of atoms, moving in a void."
Phaedo: "Cake hinders the soul's search for knowledge."
Aristotle: "True knowledge is the knowledge of cake."
Meng Tzu: "Every human being is born wanting cake."
Chuang Tzu: "Cake is the universal way of all things."
Epicurus: "Pleasure is the standard for measuring a cake."
Lucretius: "Cake is not generated from nothing!"
Epictetus: "The good life must include a lot of cake."
St. Augustine: "The essential nature of man is related to cake."
St. Anselm: "Since cake is good, and has a cause, God exists."
St. Aquinas: "Man requires more than philosophy -- he needs cake!"
Bill Occam: "Our knowledge of the cake is contingent on God's will."
Machiavelli: "To be powerful is good, for one may eat all the cake."
Francis Bacon: "To understand the cake, one must eat of it."
Pascal: "There are but two truths, God is and cake is to be eaten."
Locke: "The substance of cake is a something -- we know not what."
Berkeley: "The universe is composed not of matter -- but of cake."
Hume: "I am skeptical about this cake."
Rousseau: The ideal government includes lots of cake."
Bentham: "The utility principle demands cake for all."
Hegel: (indecipherable)
Schopenhauer: "The cake is my idea."
Mill: "Cake cannot rightfully be denied."
Paley: "This cake seems to have been designed; I infer a chef."
Dawkins: "This cake arrived here totally by accident."
Nietzsche: "Cake is the will to power."
Marx: "The state is the legitimate arbiter of who gets cake here."
William James: "Cake is only commensurate if mankind has free will."
Bergson: "This cake arrived here through creative evolutionary process."
Dewey: "Vices and virtues are habits; my habits include cake."
Heidegger: "Cake, understood, is a human concern."
Whitehead: "Cake should be logically consistent."
William Ross: "Cake, rightness and goodness are simple & unanalyzable."
Popper: "Let us test the cake!"
Ayer: "Metaphysics may be impossible, but the cake is not metaphysical."
Sartre: "Cake is never exhausted by any of its phenomenal aspects."
Tillich: "Courage is being able to pass on the cake."
Rawls: "The theory of cake is -- eat it already!"

The entries ceased. Later, I posted the following:

From:  JW Burgeson <SL5 14>     73531,1501     # 4188, 1 Reply 

Schroedinger's cat died yesterday.
He died in a tragic accident,
quietly and alone,
when a tree silently fell on him in the middle of a forest.
Exactly in the middle of the forest, as it happens,
we know this, for when we left the accident scene,
we were all walking *out* of the forest.
There were no witnesses, but those who knew the cat well
say he went into the forest of his own free will.  

From:  Gerald May <SL6, 9>      76146,3137     # 4198, * No Replies * 

I got it! It was the cat's birthday!

From:  JW Burgeson <SL5 14>     73531,1501     # 4205, 1 Reply 

Good try, Gerald. But you have to give me the reasoning! Else I will not
even tell you "right or wrong!" (No justice in this section at all)! 

From:  Gerald May <SL6, 9>      76146,3137     # 4232, * No Replies * 

No reason.
No reasoning.
No right. No wrong.
Just is.
Cat ate cake.
Forgot to blow out candles.
Tree fell.
Bye cat.
That's it.
No justice.
No need.
No soap.
Bye
Jer

Burgy: Sorry GM. You missed two clues.

Looks as if the mystery will forever remain unsolved!

To future readers: There are clues in the above
which identify the birthday person rather exactly. 

Also note there was a winner -- later. Gerald May figured it out --
even with one less clue in the chain than appears above. And one
of the clues was in error -- still, he figured it out!

Happy puzzling! When you figure it out -- it will be pretty obvious.

Burgy  (yes --- look in HUMOR.004 for more on this)