![Welcome to LYAO-Online [Banner]](images/edged-lyao-banner.gif)
The History of LYAO
"LYAO? What's that?" you ask.
Well, LYAO started, in 1997, as family and friends from work finally started getting on the internet and email, and started sending me jokes. As many others did then, and still do now, I forwarded them to other family and friends. Then I began titling those jokes and stories without what I considered to be "good" titles, "cleaning" them up, aesthetically and grammatically, packaging them, and sending them to everyone in my mailing list. All but a very few enjoyed the packaging, and my mailing list began to grow.
In February of 1998, I sent the first package with a subject of "LYAO", based on the chat abbreviation "LMAO" (if you don't know already, see the banner, above, and you should have a good idea what the original stood for), and the rest is history, at least for the people on my ever-growing mailing list. Then, I began receiving lists, inspirational stories, then urban legends and virus hoaxes for me to research, and other items, included them and and any research findings, and sent them along with the jokes.
From the beginning I wanted to create a database of all the items, and put them on the web, but lacked the PC programming acumen for it.
Soon after the first real LYAO came out, I changed jobs, and a year or so after that, met a guy who was a PC programming whiz. Not suffering fools gladly, he left work, and while waiting for "the right job" to come along, he began working on the programming behind the scenes of LYAO-ONLINE. For a very short while that site was online, but a few changes in servers, changes in ownership of the servers, marriage, and various other things "got in the way," and LYAO-ONLINE was "pulled". Originally, it was to have re-tooled, and put back up, but that never happened.
Meanwhile, things got in my way, 9-11 happened, and at times, LYAO wasn't sent at all. (Some of what happened since February 2003 can be found at my main site, Orange Frog Productions, and the What's New(s) page, there.
Now I'm back producing them for a slightly smaller list (had a few emails bounce saying the account no longer exists), but still wanted a way to "put them on the 'net", and finally decided the only way to do so was to reproduce the whole set of joke "news"-letters for the world. Thus this version of the site.
The banner and graphics have been around since around 1998. Earlier this year, I produced the first version using them as "stationary". And at some point, ALL LYAOs will be produced on and for the site, with the mailing list receiving the links, rather than the 10+ page newsletters.
Some year, maybe the "database" will return, but there are a lot of jokes and other items in these pages, so for now, this will do. Expect to see repeats from earlier LYAOs in the latter ones. For a while, I was marking them as such, but didn't in the beginning and have not for some time.
I plan on basically reproducing the LYAOs that were sent, removing only:
- "LYAO Editor Updates"
(which began around 2000 and, at times, were all that were being sent) - moving these to a separate index page (for those few of my regular readers who may be interested.)- Alert descriptions for certain types of items
(mature, gross, urban legends, inspirational stories, etc.) - which I will put on a separate page. The "gist" of the warnings will remain in the content (the idea being that adults who allow their children to read these, and those more sensitive to certain items may not want to read certain ones.)
NOTE: I will still put a "CMA Paragraph" before any item or items I feel "too strong" for certain readers, and place them at the bottom. Before you print off LYAO and pass it to your kids, you may want to check for this, though if they are using the internet, I'm sure they've seen and heard stronger stuff. Even so, I leave it up to your discretion on if you allow them to read the "whole thing."
I hope you enjoy! HAGO! And don't forget to LYAO every day!
-Bill Sanders, LYAO Editor
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Another Version... More "In-Depth" History and some "Technicalities"
As the internet in general, and email specifically, was becoming more and more prevalent in the workplace (amazingly, not all that long ago - seems MUCH longer), the place I worked started using internet email, allowing employees to actually send emails to and from home and other places, though non-business use was frowned upon. As this was happening, people were getting and receiving jokes and stories, and I certainly was one of them. As others, I originally forwarded them out to another set of people (if from where I worked sending them to my father's place of business, and vice-versa) without changing them much.
Within a very short time, I got tired of the forwarding headers, left-side markings and footers, especially as the more an email is forwarded the more the text gets difficult to read. I started partially cleaning up the emails I forwarded. Then (within about a couple of months) I was getting so many, I started packaging the cleaned up jokes and sending them, rather than simply forwarding them. In the earlier days, I was putting them together and sending them out almost daily. It finally got to be too much for some of the readers and for me (I WAS working for someone back then), so I started gathering the jokes, then would "blitzkrieg" over the weekend at home, cleaning them up and prepping them to send out the next week.
I had created my father's website and graphics, and trying to come up with a title that would make sense to all the internet "newbies" out there, many of whom were using Instant Messaging. LYAO was born. In early 1998, I had the banner you see at the top of this page, had found the "braying jackass" logo (home page and left side of screen), and began entertaining thoughts of creating a "joke" database. Work and other websites kept me too busy to do more than package the emails. And, very shortly after I started packaging them, I began naming them "LYAO".
After a while, I built macros for WORD to do the majority of the "cleaning", and all I had to do was a little formatting, watching for spelling and grammar errors and deciding which items to leave and which to fix.
Related Personal Stuff: I changed jobs in May, 1998 and, with the new mail client, had to refigure how to do what I was doing to send out LYAOs. Once I did, I added new people from the new job. 9-11 happened, and LYAOs took on the task of passing the email news about it around. After a while, the jokes started up again, but work started to "intrude" on my LYAO hobby, and LYAO production dropped off. Then I lost my job in February, 2003 (position was "eliminated" a couple of years after another company bought the one I had gone to). I spent days looking for job and evenings doing genealogy. Then, in November, I screwed up my knee, had surgery, got married and ... Well... LYAO at that point was almost completely reduced to letting all my family and friends know what was going on in my life, about Urban Legends/Virus Myths and the occasional REAL warning.
This bothered me (I really DO like making people smile, chuckle or LOL (laugh out loud) through LYAO), but I hadn't worked out how to mass-create the LYAOs as I had before. (Some of the better email clients I had at work allowed me to forward multiple emails to myself in ONE email, allowing me to work with a single document. Even so, all the email forwarding garbage still needed to be deleted before the macro/macros were run. The client I have now (Outlook Express, which I really like) doesn't seem to have a good way to do that, and all the HTML emails came through double, with all the MIME duplications, etc.) In late 2005, I worked out how to do it, built stationary for it, and started sending LYAOs, again.
Now, I "cut-and-paste" jokes from emails into a blank WORD document. As I'm doing this, knowing what the WORD macro will take care of and what it will do to certain formatting, I make sure at least the majority is "ready for the macro". When I have a good batch, I run the macro, go through the document one more time to make sure everything "looks good" (I don't read near as much this time through!), and append that document to my "ready for LYAO" document. Each week, I cut the top 10 or so pages out of that document (usually this document runs at 100+ pages of "ready-to-go" stuff), paste that into an email LYAO, and run through it one more time, doing minor formatting to "make it look good" (indents and list handling).
When I get "caught up", if ever, I plan to build the page here, and send my mailing list the link, rather than sending 10+ pages. AND, if this site starts getting too many requests for me to add someone to the mailing list, I will need to begin using a mailing list server. Until then, if you wish to be added, click the email link in the page-bottom paragraphs, and let me know your name, city/state (so I can say LYAO is WORLD-WIDE at some point! ;-) ) and the email address to which you wish me to send LYAOs, and I will add you to the list. If you wish to be removed, do the same, requesting the removal of your email, and it will be promptly done.
As for privacy, my mailing list is mine and mine alone. As stated on the ABOUT page, occasionally there will be other than LYAOs going to the list. Rest assured, at this point this only happens for urgent virus warnings that have been checked out, for the most part. Even so, I reserve the right to send anything else I deem to be informative or of interest to the LYAO group.
Now that you've been bored stiff, look around the site. Enjoy your visit. And LYAO!
-Bill Sanders (LYAO Editor)
LYAO Format, Background & Banner Graphics © 2006 by Bill Sanders -
All rights reserved
CMA Stuff: LYAO is comprised of jokes, stories, urban legends and other things received by me via email.
I clean them up, removing forwarding headers and footers,
fixing most grammar and punctuation, and re-formatting them.
PLEASE NOTE: Copyrights remain with the owners/original writers.
If any copyrights have been violated, please let me know and I will attribute or remove the offending item.
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If you are not on my LYAO Mailing List (and those who are know who you are),
you have probably received this LYAO
as a forward from one of your friends who ARE on my mailing list,
or from a friend who sent an archived LYAO from the LYAO-Online website.
Don't Blame ME! ;-)
If you are not on the mailing list and wish to be included, or are on it and wish to be removed,
send an email to
and your wish will be granted immediately.
NOTE: The LYAO Mailing List is mine and mine alone. No one else has access to it, and no one will.
It will never be sold to anyone. (ie: Anything promoted on LYAO
will have to "go through me".)
