The answer I give is as follows: First, we are not affiliated with some joker who got the bright idea to name his company Hale Bob. http://www.halebob.com/cgi/halebobmain.cgi
Further very few of us have de-nutted ourselves, and never carry $5.75 in the denominations of a five and 3 quarters, nor do we wear identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike "Cortez" athletic shoes, and armband patches reading "Heaven's Gate Away Team." (at least not out in public.)
And as to the comet, C/1995 O1, we're only slightly related.
http://cometography.com/lcomets/1995o1.html
Here's the straight dope, the poop, the bird's eye low down (whatever that
means)
Back before the beginning, (the 90's), a few like-minded interweb geeks got together (via ol' Doc) and created their own email-based
discussion list. This was in the days that Major-Dumbo and ListServ were
basically the only email lists available and the cost was prohibitive (read:
it wasn't free.)
We few simply put everyone's email address in the To: headers and Replied to
All when in the throes of a debate.
Sometime after Bush's Reichstag fire everything changed and email lists were
a dime a dozen (or less) and so we opted for a free Yahoo! address (you can
join that by going here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Hale_Bobb/)
But I'm getting ahead of myself a bit.
There was a particular member of this heretofore unnamed group named Bob
[last name removed].
Bob was a particularly obnoxious guy who ranted and raved about some crap that
nobody remembers. He was in the throes of one such rant with a former member
(who we hope will rejoin) named John Quayle.
John was giving Bob a real run for his money when Bob had a tizzy-fit and abruptly quit the list. No amount of cajoling or placating could entice Bob to come back and so since Heaven's Gate and the Hale Bopp comet was Big News at the time, and since Bob was acting like a silly goose, ol' Doc decided to name the list Hale Bobb in honor of Bob's bull-headed and illogical decision to leave the list.
The other list members were either as stoned as ol' Doc or weren't paying
attention when they agreed that Hale Bobb was a fantastic name for our list
and adopted it wholeheartedly.
And so now you find yourself caught up in the tripper-vine of fate, stumbling into the morass known as Hale Bobb.
WELCOME! We're glad you made it!
Now follow the rubber line to your seat...