4.1cBSD/usr/src/games/fortune/scene
After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
"This is true," He replied.
"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
"Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make
his own."
It was so granted.
%%
Ink: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
intellectual crime.
%%
Kleptomaniac: A rich thief.
%%
Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
%%
Once Law was sitting on the bench
And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."
Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
"YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
%%
Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.
%%
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
%%
Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence...
%%
Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism
Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from
the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the
subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of
human knowledge.
%%
Man: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief
occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species,
which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest
the whole habitable earth and Canada.
%%
Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses.
%%
Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
they are in the market.
%%
Molecule: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distin-
guished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit
of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate,
indivisible unit of matter...The ion differs from the molecule, the
corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion...
%%
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation...A
fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
more about the matter than the others.
%%
Monday: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
%%
Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.
%%
...It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it
is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists
have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of
smell.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
November: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
%%
Once, adv.: Enough.
%%
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the
last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened
but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by
the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior
in scope, for it balks at pig.
%%
Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
%%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%%
Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
force is technically termed "car suck").
2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
than "Watch this!"
%%
Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the
on roof and gets stuck.
%%
Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.
%%
"It is bad luck to be superstitious."
-- Andrew W. Mathis
%%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
-- Roy Santoro
%%
Main's Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite government
program.
%%
"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
%%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
It's on the other side.
%%
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
check.
2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
attracted to dark objects.
%%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
-- Noelie Altito
%%
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a
larger object.
%%
If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
-- Marguerite Emmons
%%
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
%%
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action.
%%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
to.....to........uh..............
%%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots
%%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?
%%
"If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin'
it, even if they don't know what it means."
-- Walt Kelly
%%
If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
also a psychological interaction.
The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so friendly.
The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
%%
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
%%
"You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable
proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do."
%%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
%%
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark
%%
Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
%%
Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
%%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
worse in Cleveland.
%%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
%%
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
be in owning a piece thereof.
%%
For a good time, call (415) 642-9483
%%
AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
%%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of).
%%
To be is to do.
-- I. Kant
To do is to be.
-- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
-- F. Flinstone
%%
God is Dead
-- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
-- God
Nietzsche is God
-- Dead
%%
Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.
%%
Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality.
%%
Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
%%
Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
how many?
%%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%%
Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
Station-to-Station rate.
%%
Necessity is a mother.
%%
Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
%%
!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
%%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%%
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
%%
May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts
%%
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
Thousand Caramels.
%%
In the days of old,
When Knights were bold,
And women were too cautious;
Oh, those gallant days,
When women were women,
And men were really obnoxious...
%%
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
%%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
%%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their
Heads.
%%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%%
If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
%%
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit
Ears.
%%
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
%%
You're at the end of the road again.
%%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
The best equipment for your work is, of course, the most expensive.
However, your neighbor is always wasting money that should be yours by
judging things by their price.
%%
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray what is the reason of that?"
"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
What made you so awfully clever?"
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
%%
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
%%
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
%%
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our symptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
%%
I'll grant the random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.
%%
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
%%
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(thi)!
%%
A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
The system, you see,
Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.
%%
This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need,
please use the program "_r_a_n_d_c_h_a_r". This program generates random
characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be
more profound than THIS program has ever been.
%%
This fortune intentionally not included.
%%
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases.
Wow! wow! wow!
I speak severely to my boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!
Wow! wow! wow!
%%
"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- 'Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
%%
Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux
Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex,
Et le m^omerade horgrave.
%%
Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven
Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben.
%%
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
"But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master --
that's all."
%%
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
-- A. E. Housman
%%
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency
-- the Peter Principle
%%
Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate
it.
%%
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what _d_o_e_s exist. Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way...
%%
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
you will look forward to the trip.
%%
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
%%
When Marriage is Outlawed,
Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
%%
HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
-- Walt Kelley
%%
Look out! Behind you!
%%
Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
%%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
%%
Dentist: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
coins out of one's pockets.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
It will be advantageous to cross the great stream...the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky...the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
%%
If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
%%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
develop.
%%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.
%%
O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
"Murphy was an optimist."
%%
Boling's postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
%%
Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
%%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
will.
%%
Scott's first Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%%
Scott's second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
After the correction has been found in error, it will be
impossible to fit the original quantity back into the
equation.
%%
Finagle's first Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%%
Finagle's second Law:
No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c)
believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
%%
Finagle's third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
Corollaries:
1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
%%
Finagle's fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only
makes it worse.
%%
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:
The Course of Progress:
Most things get steadily worse.
The Path of Progress:
A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%%
Simon's Law:
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%%
Ginsberg's Theorem:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't even quit the game.
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
Theorem. To wit:
1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
even.
3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the
game.
%%
Ehrman's Commentary:
1. Things will get worse before they get better.
2. Who said things would get better?
%%
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
%%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.
%%
Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:
90% of everything is crud.
%%
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting
some useful work done.
%%
Brook's Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
%%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.
%%
Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
want to use it.
%%
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
bread to butter.
%%
Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning's Corollary:
The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
%%
Paul's Law:
You can't fall off the floor.
%%
Johnson's First Law:
When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
most inconvenient possible time.
%%
Watson's Law:
The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
number and significance of any persons watching it.
%%
Sattinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.
%%
Lowery's Law:
If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
%%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%%
Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
Jenkinson's Law:
It won't work.
%%
Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%%
Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
disposed of.
Corollaries:
1. The bigger the theory, the better.
2. The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%%
Williams and Holland's Law:
If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
statistical methods.
%%
Harvard Law:
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the
organism will do as it damn well pleases.
%%
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
out.
%%
Brooke's Law:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or
expands it beyond recognition.
%%
Meskimen's Law:
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
do it over.
%%
Heller's Law:
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's Corollary:
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
organization.
%%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
themselves.
%%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
The number of people in any working group tends to increase
regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
%%
Iron Law of Distribution:
Them that has, gets.
%%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
Those who can -- do.
Those who can't -- teach.
Martin's Extension:
Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%%
Jone's Law:
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
to blame it on.
%%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.
%%
A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
blowing first.
%%
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
removed.
%%
After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.
%%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%%
First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
wind.
%%
Boob's Law:
You always find something in the last place you look.
%%
Osborn's Law:
Variables won't; constants aren't.
%%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you
should have gotten.
%%
Miksch's Law:
If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%%
Law of Communications:
The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased
area of misunderstanding.
%%
Harris's Lament:
All the good ones are taken.
%%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S Truman
%%
Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
%%
First Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who
imposed the deadline).
%%
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
there is nothing important to do.
%%
Swipple's Rule of Order:
He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%%
Wiker's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%%
Gray's Law of Programming:
'_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
time as '_n' tasks.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
'_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as '_n' trivial tasks.
%%
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety
percent.
%%
Weinberg's First Law:
Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%%
Weinberg's Second Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
civilization.
%%
Paulg's Law:
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
save.
%%
Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%%
Weinberg's Principle:
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping
on to the grand fallacy.
%%
Barth's Distinction:
There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
types, and those who don't.
%%
Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
%%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
Celibacy is not hereditary.
%%
Beifeld's Principle:
The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when
he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3)
a better looking and richer male friend.
%%
Hartley's Second Law:
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%%
Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in
rats.
%%
Parker's Law:
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%%
Captain Penny's Law:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
%%
Katz' Law:
Man and nations will act rationally when all other
possibilities have been exhausted.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
population is growing.
%%
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
another drink.
%%
The Kennedy Constant:
Don't get mad -- get even.
%%
Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Supplement:
A .44 magnum beats four aces.
%%
Jone's Motto:
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%%
The Fifth Rule:
You have taken yourself too seriously.
%%
Cole's Law:
Thinly sliced cabbage.
%%
Hartley's First Law:
You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
on his back, you've got something.
%%
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
legislature is in session.
%%
Churchill's Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
time he will pick himself up and continue on.
%%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
be out of a job.
%%
ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
%%
"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
-- Mark Twain
%%
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read.
-- Mark Twain
%%
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
-- Mark Twain
%%
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
-- Mark "The Bard" Twain
%%
"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering
voice.
"No," Said Gandalf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:
"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
%%
"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved"
-- Mark Twain
%%
"...an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar."
-- Mark Twain
%%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't know.
-- Mark Twain
%%
"...all the modern inconveniences..."
-- Mark Twain
%%
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly
%%
"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
-- William Gilbert
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
cork makes when it is popped.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city
can never hope to acquire it.
%%
Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
%%
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
%%
The Preacher, the Politicain, the Teacher,
Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.
-- A. E. Housman
%%
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
-- Su Tung-p'o
%%
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his pasion for
lists of "Ten Best".
-- H. Allen Smith
%%
Life is the living you do,
Death is the living you don't do.
-- Joseph Pintauro
%%
we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh &
our new wisdon will bring tears to eyes of gentile
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
in the end a summer with wild winds &
new friends will be.
%%
This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not.
-- A. E. Housman
%%
"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
-- A. E. Housman
%%
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine,
a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine...
-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
corners as bodies of a lower grade...
-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
out, and such as are out wish to get in?
-- Ralph Emerson
%%
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue,
a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to
the contrary, nohow.
%%
Emersons' Law of Contrariness:
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do
what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%%
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others
as it is to invent. (R. Emerson)"
-- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
(whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
[to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
%%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
%%
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
%%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%%
"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
-- Samuel Foote
%%
Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizzarre stories, so you may as well go home.
%%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
first two laws.
%%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
equipment ruined.
%%
Boren's Laws:
1) When in charge, ponder.
2) When in trouble, delegate.
3) When in doubt, mumble.
%%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%%
Rudin's Law:
If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will
do it every time.
%%
Bucy's Law:
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%%
Hacker's Law:
The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir
a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
%%
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate how.
-- Frederick Winsor
%%
Vail's Second Axiom:
The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
amount of work already completed.
%%
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off
%%
"Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
the only ashtray."
%%
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
Must be a pacifist.
What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
-- Arlo Guthrie
%%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
-- Howard Kandel
%%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheiritance Tax.
%%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
people.
-- Dolph Sharp
%%
Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly
thrust into somebody's pocket.
%%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
-- Henrick Ibson
%%
Wit: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery...
by leaving it out.
%%
Yield to Temptation...it may not pass your way again.
-- Lazarus Long
%%
I like work...
I can sit and watch it for ours.
%%
Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%%
"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them."
-- Major Major's father
%%
Crime does not pay...as well as politics.
-- A. E. Newman
%%
Keep you Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now...try to get something DONE!
%%
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Magpie: A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
might be taught to talk.
%%
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday...
-- Walt Kelly
%%
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
%%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he
says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
will be right.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't
what the want the they don't want it.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
%%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
%%
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
face.
%%
Recieving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
-- Dolph Sharp
%%
The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
showed that all had these things in common:
1) They all had moderate appetites.
2) They all came from middle class homes
3) All but two of them were dead.
%%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny --
Did you ever try buying then without money?
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Confucius say too much.
-- Recent Chinese Proverb
%%
Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with
a tempest of words.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Fats Loves Madelyn
%%
Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
-- W. C. Fields
%%
"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
-- W. C. Fields
%%
A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five time eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
%%
Who's on first?
%%
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society.
-- Mark Twain
%%
We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best
friends are trying to kill us.
%%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
-- Art Hoppe
%%
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
%%
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble
acturiety and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an
exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good phil-
osophy...neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
%%
There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
Would you kindly direct me to hell?
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
"This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling
keys..."
%%
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints...
So far, I've had no complaints.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
THEORY
Into love and out again,
Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world --
And I wish I'd never met him.
%%
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
And I wish he were in Asia.
%%
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
%%
Here in my heart, I am Helen;
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el;
I'm Salome, moon of the East.
Here in my soul I am Sappho;
Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
I'm all of the glamorous ladies
At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
FIGHTING WORDS
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
COMMENT
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medly of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
%%
The Abrams' Principle:
The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
%%
"He's just a politician trying to save both his faces..."
%%
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
%%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known
as Wheels.
%%
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
%%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%%
Now and then, an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
pens will multiply instead of disappear.
%%
"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give up becuase by that time I was too famous."
%%
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
%%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
-- Mae West
%%
Famous last words:
%%
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
%%
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion.
%%
Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying
himself a pleasure.
%%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not
well enough to lend to.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
%%
Adore: To venerate expectantly.
%%
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
separately plunder a third.
%%
Alone: In bad company.
%%
Ambidextrous: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a
left.
%%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%%
Anoint: To grease a king or other great functionary already
sufficiently slippery.
%%
Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk.
%%
Barometer: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather
we are having.
%%
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.
But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
%%
Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
%%
Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
%%
Brain: The apparatus with which we think that we think.
%%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of governemnt,
intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption
from the cares of office.
%%
Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
a man's head.
%%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Critic: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
to please him.
%%
Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed.
%%
Deliberation: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side
it is buttered on.
%%
Distress: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
%%
A lady with one of her ears applied
To an open keyhole heard, inside,
Two female gossips in converse free --
The subject engaging them was she.
"I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
As soon as no more of it she could hear
The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
"I will not stay," she said with a pout,
"To hear my character lied about!"
-- Gopete Sherany
%%
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
%%
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
safe, for you can watch both of his.
%%
Garter: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
stockings and desolating the country.
%%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
of another.
%%
Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
superiority.
%%
Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
expound your own.
%%
Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
%%
Hippogriff: An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half
griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and
half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter
eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of
zoology is full of surprises.
%%
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
and praiseworthy...
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Please ignore previous fortune.
%%
Impartial: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
conflicting opinions.
%%
...but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thouroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Incumbent: Person of livliest interest to the outcumbents.
%%
Interpreter: One who enables two persons of different languages to
understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
%%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
-- Disraeli
%%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
-- J. D. Salinger
%%
Please take note:
%%
"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
-- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
%%
Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
(Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
%%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
-- Alfred Kahn
%%
gy-ro-scope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and
also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpindicular to each
other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
mutually perpindicular axes results from application of torque to the
other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
-- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
%%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%%
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
you should.
%%
United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the
Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of
all the patriots of every persuasion.
Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low
over the world.
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%%
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for
word what you shouldn't have said.
%%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
%%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
tellers?
%%
Who needs companionship when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
%%
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caeser, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caeser. The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caeser had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caeser really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caeser's laying down.
%%
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the double lock will keep;
May no brick through the window break,
And, no one rob me till I awake.
%%
Did you know...
That no-one ever reads these things?
%%
Hark,Hark,the dogs do bark
The Duke is fond of kittens
He likes to take their insides out
And use them for his mittens
From "The thirteen clocks"
%%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%%
f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
%%
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard
-- Prof. Steiner
%%
"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
guarantee of eventual success.
%%
"Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST..."
%%
...But among the children of the Great Society there were
those whose skins were black. And lo! Their portion was niggardly,
and of the fatted calf they were sucking hind teat...
Now it came to pass that a prophet rose up amongst them, and
they called him King. And he went unto Pharaoh and said, "Let my
people go to the front of the bus."
But Pharaoh answered: "In the fullness of time and with all
deliberate speed shall this thing come to pass. When ye shall prove
yourselves worthy, shall ye have your just portion -- yea, verily, like
unto a snowball in Hell."
%%
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION
%%
$3,000,000
%%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
problem.
%%
77. HO HUM -- The Redundant
------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. you are working
---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop
---X--- (9) the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates
--- --- (8) to nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex.
Nine in the second place means:
The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
Six in the third place means:
In former times men built altars to honor the Internal
Revenue Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
%%
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
Americans call him by value.
%%
The number of licorice gumballs you get out of a gumball machine
increases in direct proportion to how much you hate licorice.
%%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.
%%
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
%%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%%
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
%%
Those who can't write, write manuals.
%%
Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S Audit! Just type
in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving
the room is punishable under law:
Name #
%%
You might have mail
%%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%%
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
%%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
%%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only
take a bath...
%%
"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both
eyes..."
%%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
flag.
%%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
avoid responsibility with?
%%
SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
%%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
%%
The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
child, was propounded to me by my father:
"What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and whistles?"
I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
gave up.
"A herring," said my father.
"A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
"So hang it there."
"But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
"Paint it."
"But a herring isn't wet."
"If its just painted its still wet."
"But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
doesn't whistle!!"
"Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it hard."
-- Leo Rosten
%%
"If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
-- Yiddish saying
%%
Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
(Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?"
%%
On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
$283 on the desk before the cashier.
"Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
"Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
%%
The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the klutz
said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
"How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
%%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
people.
-- W. C. Fields
%%
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
%%
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget
it.
%%
Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a
change.
%%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%%
Green light in A.M. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for traffic
tickets.
%%
Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
%%
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%%
Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
thing he tells you.
%%
Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon.
%%
You may be recognized soon. Hide.
%%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot
today.
%%
Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
%%
Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
%%
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
and last month in advance.
%%
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
%%
You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
%%
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
%%
Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
%%
Don't feed the bats tonight.
%%
Stay away from flying saucers today.
%%
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
%%
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
%%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%%
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
%%
Half Moon tonight. (At least its better than no Moon at all.)
%%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
%%
Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
%%
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
%%
Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so
get used to it.
%%
Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
%%
Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%%
Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
%%
You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior
executive.
%%
Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
%%
Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
%%
Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the
computer crashes.
%%
Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
%%
Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to
a new town.
%%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
tomorrow!
%%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%%
You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You are not paid enough
to worry.
%%
Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
%%
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your
nails.
%%
Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as
they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out
a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
%%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
of another.
%%
Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
they charge fifteen cents for them.
%%
Question:
Man Invented Alcohol,
God Invented Grass.
Who do you trust?
%%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
%%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking.
-- Jerome Lettvin
%%
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
writing.
-- R. Geis
%%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
-- D. J. Hicks
%%
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about.
-- Lazarus Long
%%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
-- Peter S. Beagle
%%
If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
%%
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
totally worthless.
%%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.
%%
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday
life.
%%
Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike office water cooler.
%%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%%
A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
%%
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
%%
Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
%%
Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
%%
Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
%%
Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
%%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%%
Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
%%
You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
%%
Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy and live
in eucalyptus trees.
%%
Surprise due today. Also the rent.
%%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%%
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
%%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't
have a lucky day this year.
%%
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
this sort of trash.
%%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%%
Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
%%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
%%
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
%%
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
Avoid him. He's a Commie.
%%
The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.
The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in
the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in
twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
"Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached
everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a
fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one
-- and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
"How?" demanded Fafhrd.
Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
-- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
%%
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
%%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%%
Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
%%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%%
Vote anarchist
%%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%%
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
%%
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest.
%%
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
%%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%%
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
will be temporarily cancelled.
%%
Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
%%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
for a dial tone.
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%%
Condense soup, not books!
%%
The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
%%
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
exciting Camden, New Jersy.
%%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%%
Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
%%
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
%%
Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
%%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%%
I can resist anything but temptation.
%%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%%
Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends.
%%
Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
%%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of
Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
%%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%%
Acid -- better living through chemistry.
%%
"All flesh is grass"
-- Isiah
Smoke a friend today.
%%
"You'll never be the man your mother was!"
%%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%%
Chicken Little was right.
%%
"Qvid me anxivs svm?"
%%
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
%%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%%
Cleveland still lives. God _m_u_s_t be dead.
%%
Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
%%
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
%%
Hail to the sun god
He sure is a fun god
Ra! Ra! Ra!
%%
Brain fried -- Core dumped
%%
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
%%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
once.
%%
If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger
hands.
%%
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
%%
Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!"
%%
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
%%
A diva who specializes in risqu'e arias is an off-coloratura soprano...
%%
Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Salvor Hardin
%%
"Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process..."
%%
"There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone
loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor."
%%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%%
Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
%%
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down
%%
Down with categorical imperative!
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends
%%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%%
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
%%
Lysistrata had a good idea.
%%
Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
%%
Paul Revere was a tattle-tale
%%
Familiarity breeds attempt
%%
Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite
bomb.
%%
Coward: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
%%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
%%
Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
%%
Honorable: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
%%
Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
%%
God did not create the world in 7 days; he screwed around for 6 days
and then pulled an all-nighter.
%%
God is a polythiest
%%
God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
%%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%%
"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
"Diet."
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
%%
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
%%
"Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."
%%
Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
to work.
%%
"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
%%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steam fitters' picnic.
%%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
-- R. Geis
%%
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might
be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's
logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
-- Hawkwind
%%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%%
There was a young poet named Dan,
Whose poetry never would scan.
When told this was so,
He said, "Yes, I know.
It's because I try to put every possible syllable into that last line that I can."
%%
A limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
%%
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
%%
"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth..."
%%
"Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
-- Lily Tomlin
%%
God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's
%%
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
harder.
-- Pope John Paul I
%%
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
what it is I'll get married again.
-- Clint Eastwood
%%
Flappity, floppity, flip
The mouse on the m"obius strip;
The strip revolved,
The mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip.
%%
...And malt does more than Milton can
to justify God's ways to man
-- A. E. Housman
%%
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
Oh, dear, where can the matter be
When it's converted to energy?
There is a slight loss of parity.
Johnny's so long at the fair.
%%
PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
%%
IBM had a PL/I,
Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
It was a total loss.
%%
System/3! System/3!
See how it runs! See how it runs!
Its monitor loses so totally!
It runs all its programs in RPG!
It's made by our favorite monopoly!
System/3!
%%
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
%%
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
%%
99 blocks of crud on the disk,
99 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
100 blocks of crud on the disk!
100 blocks of crud on the disk,
100 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
101 blocks of crud on the disk!...
%%
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrave.
"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
%%
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied:
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.
You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los
Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly
the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there.
The only difference is that there is no cat.
%%
THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
The one who has the gold makes the rules.
%%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
%%
"A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on
the basis of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an
infinite series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
information in the first place."
-- IEEE Grid newsmagazine
%%
A.A.A.A.A.: An organization for drunks who drive
%%
Accident: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
body is better.
-- Foolish Dictionary
%%
Accordion: A bagpipe with pleats.
%%
Accuracy: The vice of being right
%%
"Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from
coughing."
%%
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
%%
Adult: One old enough to know better.
%%
Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example.
-- La Rouchefoucauld
%%
Afternoon: That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted
the morning.
%%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
-- Peggy Joyce
%%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
-- Charlie McCarthy
%%
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
to decadence without touching civilization.
-- John O'Hara
%%
"An American is a man with two arms and four wheels".
-- A Chinese child
%%
Antonym: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
shoes.
-- Mickey Mouse
%%
Ass: The masculine of "lass".
%%
Automobile: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
pedestrians.
%%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
%%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
out of a divorce.
-- Don Quinn
%%
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Boy: A noise with dirt on it.
%%
Broad-mindedness: The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%%
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
as afterward.
%%
California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
-- Fred Allen
%%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
poor to protect them from each other.
%%
Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every
effort to teach them good manners.
%%
Christ: A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
%%
Cigarette: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of
tobacco in between.
%%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
-- Herbert Prochnow
%%
"The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
elsewhere."
%%
Collaboration: A literary partnership based on the false assumption
that the other fellow can spell.
%%
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms,
legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
loss to humanity.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conversation: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his
breath is called the listener.
%%
"Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
Corner, Vermont."
-- Clarence Darrow
%%
The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to
eat.
-- John McNulty
%%
Cynic: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
%%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
-- Senator Soaper
%%
Die: To stop sinning suddenly.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
%%
A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a
fur coat.
%%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
of being a damned fool.
-- Bellamy Brooks
%%
Electrocution: Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
%%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a
mistake when you make it again.
-- F. P. Jones
%%
"It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an
hour!"
-- Macy's
%%
Fairy Tale: A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
%%
Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
without looking to see whether the seeds move.
%%
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
And a Sun Myung Moon!
-- Maxwell Smart
%%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
%%
There was a young lady from Hyde
Who ate a green apple and died.
While her lover lamented
The apple fermented
And made cider inside her inside.
%%
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
-- Bert Whitney
%%
Silverman's Law:
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will
%%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%%
Ducharme's Precept:
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment
%%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%%
Naeser's Law:
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
damnfoolproof.
%%
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down. If
the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down. If the
bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will
exceed all expectations.
-- Reverend Chichester
%%
The Third Law of Photography:
If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of
the dark leaks out.
%%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
it wasn't worth doing.
%%
Conway's Law:
In any organization there will always be one person who knows
what is going on.
This person must be fired.
%%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
give it back to them.
%%
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be
doing.
%%
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.
%%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%%
DeVries' Dilemma:
If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
hits the paper.
%%
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%%
Finagle's Creed:
Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
%%
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
once.
2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
points.
%%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
reject the proposal.
%%
Jones' First Law:
Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
importance of their original contribution.
%%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
handle.
%%
When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem, you
modify the problem, not the remedy.
%%
Horngren's Observation:
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%%
First Rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
other.
%%
Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidity.
%%
Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
Corollary:
Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
except study for that instructor's course.
%%
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
Corollary:
If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you
live.
%%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.
%%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the
price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
$19.95.
%%
Van Roy's Law:
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%%
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
on.
%%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
1. People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
remind them of someone else.
2. The love letter you finally got the courage to send will
be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool
of yourself in person.
%%
Colvard's Logical Premises:
All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or
it won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
attracted to.
Grelb's Commentary
Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
%%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
Superiority is recessive.
%%
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too
busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
%%
Ducharm's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
yourself as part of the problem.
%%
A Law of Computer Programming:
Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
will find the programmers cannot write in English.
%%
Turnaucka's Law:
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
electrical cord.
%%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can orgranize them into a
committee -- that will do them in.
%%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
the computer.
%%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
%%
Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
%%
Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard and waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal, finding some code that will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
%%
The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
it isn't here.
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx
%%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
-- Groucho Marx
%%
Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
in students.
-- John Ciardi
%%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
by the number of people in the group.
%%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier
%%
Ingrate: A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
indigestion.
%%
Justice: A decision in your favor.
%%
Kin: An affliction of the blood
%%
Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered
to date.
%%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
world has ever seen.
%%
Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes.
%%
Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%%
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
Menu: A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of
%%
"The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
with a large fortune."
%%
Noncombatant: A dead Quaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread.
-- Anatole France
%%
BLISS is ignorance
%%
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers
2 cups water 2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine
Cinnamon
Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break
RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar
and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon
juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top
crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let
steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
-- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
%%
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh
%%
The Briggs - Chase Law of Program Development:
To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
one, and convert to the next higher units.
%%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%%
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together...
-- Carl Zwanzig
%%
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
%%
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
%%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%%
Love is sentimental measles.
%%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.
%%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you.
%%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away.
%%
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are
headed.
%%
"All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us
sane."
%%
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce"
-- Winston Churchill
%%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
-- Hilaire Belloc
%%
The three laws of thermodynamics:
The first law: You can't get anything without working for it.
The second law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break even.
The third law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
%%
Famous last words:
Don't worry, I can handle it.
You and what army?
If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop.
%%
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
in kernel as it is in user!
%%
Nothing is faster than the speed of light...
To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before
the light comes on.
%%
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be
careless and impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over
and over again. People think you are stupid.
%%
PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being
followed by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your
associates and people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack
confidence and you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible
things to small animals.
%%
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You
are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are not
very nice.
%%
TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged
determination and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn
and bull headed. You are a Communist.
%%
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you
because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much
for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for
committing incest.
%%
CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things
off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare
recipients are Cancer people.
%%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are
pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike honest
criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieves.
%%
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and sometimes
fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus drivers.
%%
LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with
reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay. Chances for
employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most Libra women are
prostitutes. All Libra people die of Venereal disease.
%%
SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will
achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics.
Most Scorpio people are murdered.
%%
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless
tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority of
Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People laugh at you a
great deal.
%%
CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do
much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any
importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
they take root and become trees.
%%
Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb in
San Francisco?
A: Both of them.
%%
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
%%
Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
%%
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their
arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the
Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an
architect."
The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
%%
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of they waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
%%
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
%%
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the
last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of
his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
-- Mark Twain
%%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent,
most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said
to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his
decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
%%
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem Eng.
130 midterm. Once again a student did not receive a single point on
his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's
earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
%%
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
-- Walt Kelly
%%
Laetrile is the pits
%%
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
%%
There's no future in time travel
%%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
%%
Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
%%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%%
Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
%%
"Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"
%%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
-- Bruce Leverett
"Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"
%%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
three friends. If they're ok, you're it.
%%
Brian Kernighan has an automobile which he helped design.
Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor
any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.
Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the
center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will
usually know what's wrong."
%%
FROBNICATE, v.: To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from
FROBNITZ. Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to
frob a frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and
TWEAK sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes
aimless manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a
coarse search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If
someone is turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully
adjusting it he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it
but looking at the screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's
just doing it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
%%
USER n.: A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
%%
Worst Month of the Year: February. February has only 28 days in it,
which means that if you rent an apartment, you are paying for three
full days you don't get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
%%
Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout. This is also the
worst vegetable of next year.
%%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube: Black. Simply remove all the
little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will
now be the original color of the plastic underneath -- black.
According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved.
%%
Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing: August. The lines are the
shortest, though.
%%
There once was a girl named Irene
Who lived on distilled kerosene
But she started absorbin'
A new hydrocarbon
And since then has never benzene.
%%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Computer programmers do it byte by byte
%%
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but
World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
%%
This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
%%
"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
-- Bill Hoest
%%
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
Californians trying to share the experience.
%%
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
%%
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
have poured on a waffle.
%%
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
hope I don't get run over again.
%%
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
%%
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out if it alive.
%%
Forgetfulness: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for
their destitution of conscience.
%%
Absentee: A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
himself from the sphere of exaction.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
Eli and Bessie went to sleep. In the middle of the night, Bessie
nudged Eli. "Please be so kindly and close the window. It's cold
outside!" Half asleep, Eli murmured, "Nu...so if I'll close the
window, will it be warm outside?"
%%
The decision doesn't have to be logical; it was unanimous.
%%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%%
"In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian."
%%
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
%%
Absent: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
slandered.
%%
Brain, v.: [as in "to brain"] To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to
dispel a source of error in an opponent.
%%
Truthful: Dumb and illiterate.
%%
A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
But this output can be
No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact.
-- Gigo
%%
Corrupt: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%%
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
%%
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
-- Mark Twain
%%
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
-- Henry Kissinger
%%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
--Oscar Wilde
%%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the
ends.
-- Herbert Hoover
%%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright --
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
-- Woody Allen.
%%
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
-- Joe Walsh
%%
43rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%%
JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
by Mark Isaak
Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their
hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
"Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
"I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
"I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
"Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window...
%%
THE STORY OF CREATION
or
THE MYTH OF URK
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and
null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of
IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there
be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they
carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called
the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was
evening and there was morning, one interrupt...
-- Rico Tudor
%%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
-- Lazarus Long
%%
FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when
the little hand is on the ....
%%
Only God can make random selections.
%%
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Limericks are art forms complex,
Their topics run chiefly to sex.
They usually have virgins,
And masculine urgin's,
And other erotic effects.
%%
Kinkler's First Law:
Responsibility always exceeds authority.
Kinkler's Second Law:
All the easy problems have been solved.
%%
"Why be a man when you can be a success?"
-- Bertold Brecht
%%
"Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."
%%
How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None. The Universe spines the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of
the way.
%%
University: Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
fix it, and ...
%%
How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll fix it in software."
How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll document it in the manual."
How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "The user can work it out."
%%
William Safire's Rules for Writers:
Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice
should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs have to agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if
you words out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A
writer must not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence
with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word
to end a sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place
pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10
or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling
participles must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a
sentence, a linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid
mixing metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone
should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in
their writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always
follows the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague;
seek viable alternatives.
%%
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
-- Mark Twain
%%
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
miss
%%
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%%
The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
Let others think his heart is big,
I think it stupid of the Pig.
%%
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps,unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
%%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
%%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess
%%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
%%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%%
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
enough cheese
%%
Whether you can hear it or not
The Universe is laughing behind your back
%%
Go 'way! You're bothering me!
%%
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
%%
Chicken Soup: An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of
aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken
soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is
this?
Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think _y_o_u
can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's
forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
-- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't
even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
"Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the
harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference:
"Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
Obvious, isn't it?
Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed
individuals and then grow....
Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on
the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I
think not, my friend, I think not.
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
"God gives burdens; also shoulders"
Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech
at the end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish
saying; I can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth
though; why would he lie about a thing like that?
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Goy: ... The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle,
as the following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
"I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish.
Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is
Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
"Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
Macaroons are _v_e_r_y Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is
goyish. Lime soda is _v_e_r_y goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that
Jews won't go near them..."
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "_s_o_m_e_b_o_d_y has to buy
retail."
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Half-done: This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's
still crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference
between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
the the difference between life and death.
You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the
man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The
first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
"No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
"But the collar is up around my ears!"
"It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little...no, a little
more...that's it."
"But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
"Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you
go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
"Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
"Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
Esther and hustle them off to prison.
They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day
and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know if she can call
her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
possible, and turns to Murray.
"This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
spits in the sergeants face.
"Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Shamus: A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog
functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be
bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
he's nobody!"
%%
"I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!"
-- Paul McCracken
%%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to
have nothing whatever to do with it.
-- W. Somerset Maughm
%%
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders' dying words
%%
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him.
-- John Barrymore's dying words
%%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
one.
%%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%%
In the long run every program becomes rococco -- then rubble.
%%
Evertying should be built top-down, except the first time.
%%
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was
written and another for which it wasn't.
%%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
%%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
taught how _n_o_t to. So it is with the great programmers.
%%
Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to
describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately
described with pictures.
%%
There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one
works.
%%
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free
variable."
%%
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
%%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
%%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
%%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
%%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
versa.
%%
In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
%%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded: That the whole point is to always see it as a
soap bubble?
%%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe
in God.
%%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
%%
Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also
easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to
improve.
%%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%%
Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%%
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office
automation?
%%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%%
Be different: conform.
%%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
Q: How long does it take?
A: It's indeterminate. It will depend uponhow many flats they've
brought with them.
Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.
%%
Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the
Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an
open market.
If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he
should not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of
himself.
Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
%%
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And he answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for
existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their
backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City
to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns
have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know
what Freight was too.
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased."
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
-- Dr. Who
%%
"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
immune to bullets"
-- The Brigader, from Dr. Who
%%
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
Support your right to bare arms!
%%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%%
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
-- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%%
In the long run, every program becomes rococco, and then rubble.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of Fortran.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
-- Alan Perlis
%%
"Please try to limit the amount of `this room doesn't have any
bazingas' until you are told that those rooms are `punched out.' Once
punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing
bazingas, and such."
-- N. Meyrowitz
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
[Confound those who have said our remarks before us.]
-- Aelius Donatus
%%
If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
invent it.
%%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
-- Voltaire
%%
The superfluous is very necessary.
-- Voltaire
%%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
-- Voltaire
%%
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
%%
Oh don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and none goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!
%%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
-- A. P. Herbert
%%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky
%%
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
%%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%%
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
%%
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%%
"Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
-- Jules Feiffer
%%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
them on the head.
%%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has
already happened.
-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun
%%
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right
through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
log out again.
%%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%%
"Grub first, then ethics."
-- Bertolt Brecht
%%
"I drink to make other people interesting."
-- George Jean Nathan
%%
DETERIORATA
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be
In owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons,
Unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice --
Even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss -- and when.
Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on `HOLD'.
Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
You are a fluke of the universe...
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
Is laughing behind your back.
%%
Remember the Pueblo.
Strive at all times to bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate.
Know yourself.
If you need help, call the FBI.
Exercise caution in your daily affairs,
Especially with those closest to you --
That lemon on your left, for instance.
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls
Would scarcely get your feet wet.
Fall not in love, therefore, it will stick to your face.
Gracefully surrender the things of youth...
The birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan...
And let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
Hire people with hooks.
For a good time, call 606-4311, ask for Ken.
Take heart in the ever-deepening gloom, that your dog
Is finally getting enough cheese.
And remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot
It could only be worse in Milwaukee.
You are a fluke of the universe...
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
Is laughing behind your back.
Therefore, make peace with your God, whatever you conceive him to be --
Hairy Thunderer, or Cosmic Muffin.
With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal,
The world continues to deteriorate.
%%
I sent a letter to the fish,
I told them, "This is what I wish."
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes' answer was
"We cannot do it, sir, because..."
I sent a letter back to say
It would be better to obey.
But someone came to me and said
"The little fishes are in bed."
I said to him, and I said it plain
"Then you must wake them up again."
I said it very loud and clear,
I went and shouted in his ear.
But he was very stiff and proud,
He said "You needn't shout so loud."
And he was very proud and stiff,
He said "I'll go and wake them if..."
I took a kettle from the shelf,
I went to wake them up myself.
But when I found the door was locked
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, But...
"Is that all?" asked Alice.
"That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
%%
"Pascal is not a high-level language."
-- Steven Feiner
%%
E Pluribus Unix
%%
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
%%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%%
Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
more important to do.
%%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%%
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
having to accomplish anything.
%%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
%%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
%%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
%%
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
%%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about.
%%
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
%%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
call it the target.
%%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-- Andrew Young
%%
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
important thing to people.
-- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
%%
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
-- J. Paul Getty
%%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman
%%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going
down.
%%
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
-- Gloria Steinem
%%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Pogo
%%
Nothing recedes like success.
-- Walter Winchell
%%
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
-- Lily Tomlin
%%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
-- Russell Long
%%
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller
%%
Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
-- Snoopy
%%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
-- Earl Wilson
%%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
-- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer
%%
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
doubt.
-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%%
===============================================================================
|| ||
|| The FORTUNE-COOKIE program is soon to be a Major Motion Picture! ||
|| Watch for it at a theater near you next summer! ||
|| ||
===============================================================================
Francis Ford Coppola presents a George Lucas Production "Fortune
Cookie" Directed by Steven Spielberg Starring Harrison Ford Bette
Midler Marlon Brando Christopher Reeves Marilyn Chambers and Bob
Hope as `The Waiter'
Costumes Designed by Pierre Cardin
Special Effects by Timothy Leary
Read the Warner paperback
Invoke the Unix program
Soundtrack on XTC Records
In 70mm and Dolby Stereo at selected
theaters and terminal centers
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
-- Richard Nixon
%%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to
end across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely
awful.
%%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread
out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the
home or to the office, We have more than enough of them foisted upon
us in public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only
result in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in
turn will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.
Yours faithfully,
Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J.P.
Sevenoaks
%%
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian.... To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said:
"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain
because it is impossible."
Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
%%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%%
SOFTWARE -- formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
%%
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
%%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
discotheques.
-- Art Linkletter
%%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
-- Frank Zappa
%%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the
world put together.
-- Sir Peter Medawar
%%
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
%%
Flon's Law:
There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%%
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#21): July 30, 1917
On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught
then-Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought
them off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his
mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
stood lookout.
%%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%%
"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
that would be clearly understood."
-- Alexander Haig
%%
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life,
you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
to go.
%%
To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
-- Woody Allen
%%
"Earth is a great funhouse without the fun."
-- Jeff Berner
%%
Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
%%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%%
Did you know about the -o option of the fortune program? It makes a
selection from a set of offensive and/or obscene fortunes. Why not try
it, and see how offended you are? The -a ("all") option will select a
fortune at random from either the offensive or inoffensive set, and it
is suggested that "fortune -a" is the command that you use if you can
stand it.
%%
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene? We cannot continue
without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are
contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We
can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money
for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to
`fortune'. Just type in your favorite pithy fortune. Do it now before
you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute
30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or
more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug....
%%
Memory fault -- core...uh...um...core... Oh dammit, I forget!
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire
%%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat ?
A: Five, four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
%%
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A: Four, three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%%
SEMINARS: From 'semi' and 'arse', hence, any half-assed discussion.
%%
POLITICIAN: From the Greek 'poly' ("many") and the French 'tete'
("head" or "face," as in 'tete-a-tete': head to head or face to face).
Hence 'polytetien', a person of two or more faces.
-- Martin Pitt
%%
CALIFORNIA: From Latin 'calor', meaning "heat" (as in English
'calorie' or Spanish 'caliente'); and 'fornia', for "sexual
intercourse" or "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land
of hot sex."
-- Ed Moran, Covina, California
%%
ETYMOLOGY: Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations
that were hard for the public to believe. The term 'etymology' was
formed from the Latin 'etus' ("eaten"), the root 'mal' ("bad"), and
'logy' ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to
swallow."
-- Mike Kellen, Oakdale, Minnesota
%%
Another Glitch in the Call
------- ------ -- --- ----
(Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)
We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Hey! Did you leave the lists alone?
Chorus:
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
...
%%
armadillo - to provide weapons to a spanish pickle
%%
Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%%
"Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong."
%%
Bumper sticker:
"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
manufacture"
%%
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." said
the Cat
--from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll
%%
I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.
%%
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea...
-- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point B are so keen to get there. They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
-- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Serocki's Stricture:
Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%%
Virtue is its own punishment.