1 This fortune brought to you by:
4 -- Gifts for Children --
6 This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,
7 because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months
8 and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
9 morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children
10 exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If
11 your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
12 Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it
13 might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
14 me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
15 who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
16 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
20 Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
21 ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you
22 should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the
23 clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For
24 example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
25 three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
26 that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
27 at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
28 So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
29 years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will
30 pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
32 If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More
33 than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
35 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
38 Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven!
42 Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy
43 schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit
44 spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das
45 rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets. Relaxen und
46 vatch das blinkenlights!!!
52 In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot
53 of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
57 Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?! Wouldn't you like
58 to see some of them deleted from the system? You can! Just mail to
59 "fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
64 The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
65 1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
66 the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep
67 each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
68 chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
69 nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three
70 days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two
71 seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
72 friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is
73 Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
74 "cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
75 Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because
76 all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
78 -- Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84
80 Pittsburgh Driver's Test
82 (7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light
83 but a steady left tail light. This means
85 (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn
86 to call the problem to the driver's attention.
87 (b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
88 (c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
89 (d) the driver is from out of town.
91 The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign
92 countries to signal turns.
94 Pittsburgh Driver's Test
101 (d) difficult to clean off the front grille.
103 The correct answer is (a). Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
104 totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.
106 Has your family tried 'em?
110 Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
112 They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons the
113 strength to get up and do what needs to be done.
117 Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of the
118 biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark stains
119 that indicate freshness.
121 THE STORY OF CREATION
125 In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null,
126 and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
127 was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be
128 registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried;
129 and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data
130 Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening
131 and there was morning, one interrupt ...
134 JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
137 Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
138 character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their
139 hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
140 are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
141 BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
143 So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
144 he met the traveling salesman.
145 "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
146 in high-level language.
147 "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
148 and Apples," commented Jack.
149 "I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
150 there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
151 Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when
152 he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
154 "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
155 kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
158 A Severe Strain on the Credulity
160 As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest
161 parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
162 is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one
163 considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one
164 begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really
165 starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor
166 maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
167 Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing
168 of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
169 re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum
170 against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the
171 knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
172 -- New York Times Editorial, 1920
176 If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
177 across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
181 There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
182 would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
184 Another Glitch in the Call
185 ------- ------ -- --- ----
186 (Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)
188 We don't need no indirection
189 We don't need no flow control
190 No data typing or declarations
191 Did you leave the lists alone?
193 Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
196 All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
197 All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
199 Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
201 (1) None. (Moses didn't have an ark).
202 (2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
205 (5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
206 Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
207 (6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
208 book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
209 bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
214 Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
215 And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
216 Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
218 Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
219 And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
220 Know what to kiss -- and when.
221 Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
223 Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD".
224 Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
225 And despite the changing fortunes of time,
226 There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
228 You are a fluke of the universe ...
229 You have no right to be here.
230 Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
231 Is laughing behind your back.
235 (Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
237 Double bucky, you're the one!
238 You make my keyboard lots of fun
239 Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
241 Control and Meta side by side,
242 Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
243 Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
245 Double bucky, left and right
246 OR'd together, outta sight!
247 Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
248 Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
249 Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
251 -- (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr.
253 Gimmie That Old Time Religion
254 We will follow Zarathustra, We will worship like the Druids,
255 Zarathustra like we use to, Dancing naked in the woods,
256 I'm a Zarathustra booster, Drinking strange fermented fluids,
257 And he's good enough for me! And it's good enough for me!
260 In the church of Aphrodite,
261 The priestess wears a see-through nightie,
262 She's a mighty righteous sightie,
263 And she's good enough for me!
266 CHORUS: Give me that old time religion,
267 Give me that old time religion,
268 Give me that old time religion,
269 'Cause it's good enough for me!
272 The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last
273 Saturday night. The match started with a long period of silence while
274 the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the
275 Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
276 paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
277 took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
278 their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player
279 said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a
280 fight and the match was called by officials.
283 Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes
284 Did logzerneg the ifthen block
285 All kludgy were the function flows
286 And subroutines adhoc.
288 Beware the runtime-bug my friend
289 squrooneg, the false goto
290 Beware the infiniteloop
291 And shun the inprectoo.
293 Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
294 Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.
296 (1) Little things start bothering you: little things like worms, bugs,
298 (2) Something is missing in your personal relationships.
299 (3) Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
300 (4) You have a hard time getting a waiter.
301 (5) Exotic birds flock around you.
302 (6) People ignore you at parties.
303 (7) You have a hard time getting up in the morning.
304 (8) You no longer get off on cocaine.
306 Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
307 (1) Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear
308 bomb; use the stairs.
309 (2) When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit
311 (3) If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
312 (4) Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to
313 psychological problems.
314 (5) Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to
315 recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed
316 potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
317 (6) Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs
318 will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
319 (7) Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles.
320 (8) Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be
321 staggering illegally.
322 (9) Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more
323 sanitary due to limited circulation.
324 (10) Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on
328 Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:
330 I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
331 Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
333 I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
334 I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
335 Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
337 Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
338 A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
339 Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
340 Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
341 How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
342 Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
344 The Three Major Kind of Tools
346 * Tools for hitting things to make them loose or to tighten them up or
347 jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a
348 manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces,
349 bludgeons, and truncheons.)
351 * Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)
353 * Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far
354 greater than the value of any project that could possibly result.
355 (Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses
356 any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
357 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
359 (to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
360 Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
361 Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
362 And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
363 Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
364 Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
365 And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
366 And we've also found Just flip one switch
367 When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
368 You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
370 Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
371 Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
372 And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
374 'Twas the Night before Crisis
376 'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
377 Not a program was working not even a browse.
378 The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
379 Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
380 The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
381 While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
382 When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
383 I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
384 And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
385 But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
386 More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
387 And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
388 On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
389 On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
390 His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
391 From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
392 A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
393 Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
395 William Safire's Rules for Writers:
397 Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never
398 be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to
399 agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words
400 out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
401 of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must
402 not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a
403 conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
404 sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as
405 close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
406 words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles
407 must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
408 linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
409 metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should
410 be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
411 writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows
412 the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
415 A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
418 For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
419 to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
420 be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
421 would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
422 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
423 same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
424 "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
425 Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
426 with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
427 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
428 Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
429 ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
430 ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
431 Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
432 hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
435 \a\a\a\a *** System shutdown message from root ***
437 System going down in 60 seconds
441 "... The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
442 "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
444 "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
445 vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
447 "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
448 Alice corrected herself.
449 "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
450 called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
451 "Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time
452 completely bewildered.
453 "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
454 "A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
455 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
457 A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was
458 eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality
459 test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
460 Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into
461 the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
463 A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
464 about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their
465 arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
466 the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
467 Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
468 incredible surgical feat."
469 The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the
470 Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
471 that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an
473 The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
474 "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
476 A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The
477 first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
478 "No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
479 and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
480 "But the collar is up around my ears!"
481 "It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
482 little more ... that's it."
483 "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
484 "Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you
485 go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
486 So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
487 street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
488 "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
489 "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
490 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
492 A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his
493 novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how
494 insignificant," said the master.
496 "Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
498 "It is," came the reply.
500 "Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
502 "It is even in a video game," said the master.
504 "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
506 The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The
507 lesson is over for today," he said.
508 -- "The Tao of Programming"
510 A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
511 the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
512 pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite
513 nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if ..."
514 "If what?" asked the composer.
515 "If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
517 A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which
518 removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to
519 doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
520 amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware
521 limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the
522 larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
524 An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the
525 building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has
526 bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer
529 A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came
530 upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope.
531 "That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow
533 As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
534 he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."
536 After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
537 Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
538 and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
540 "This is true," He replied.
541 "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
542 "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
543 right to make his laws?"
544 "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
547 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
549 An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He
550 knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with
552 As he designs the first work, frill after frill and
553 embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away
554 to be used "next time". Sooner or later the first system is finished,
555 and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of
556 that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
557 This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
558 When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
559 confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
560 and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
561 are particular and not generalizable.
562 The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
563 all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
564 one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
565 -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
567 An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
568 in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
569 "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if
570 you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
571 an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
572 hour seems like a minute."
573 The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
574 moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
575 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
577 "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
578 asked the father of his little son.
581 Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
582 took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his
584 One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
585 there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
586 "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
587 commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
588 Purpose in Life, anyway?"
589 Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
590 Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
591 Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
592 Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
593 -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
597 Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
598 A medley of extemporanea;
599 And love is thing that can never go wrong;
600 And I am Marie of Roumania.
603 Deck Us All With Boston Charlie
605 Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
606 Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
607 Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
608 Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo!
610 Don't we know archaic barrel,
611 Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
612 Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
613 Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
616 During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen
617 were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a
618 red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted,
619 "Hey, you almost hit my wife."
620 "Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a
621 shot at mine, over there."
623 Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
624 called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
625 have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
626 most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the
627 time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
628 have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
629 although God alone knows why it would want to.
630 The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
631 direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes
632 have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
633 direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents
634 harmful electron buildup in the wires.
635 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
637 Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping
638 mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
639 "Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
640 how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
641 "Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
642 So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
643 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
645 Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
646 other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
647 the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors
649 Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
650 to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
651 Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
652 piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
653 Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
654 inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
655 other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
656 placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
657 the little hammers strike.
658 Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
659 their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
660 Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
662 You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
663 you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
664 4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
668 Say my love is easy had,
669 Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
670 Say I am too often sad --
671 Still behold me at your side.
673 Say I'm neither brave nor young,
674 Say I woo and coddle care,
675 Say the devil touched my tongue --
676 Still you have my heart to wear.
678 But say my verses do not scan,
679 And I get me another man!
682 "For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence
683 of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind."
689 "Gee, Mudhead, everyone at More Science High has an
690 extracurricular activity except you."
691 "Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?"
692 "Only to ten, Mudhead."
696 GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917
698 On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
699 Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them
700 off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
701 wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his
702 mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
703 tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
706 Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the
707 month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people
708 are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
709 The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either
710 (depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax
712 Bite the wax tadpole.
713 There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
714 The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's
715 hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to
716 bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad,
717 but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
718 -- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle
720 Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's
721 willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop
722 for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say
723 "shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home
724 centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas
725 trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise
726 because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every
727 object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
728 Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
729 broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
730 a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the
731 inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
732 same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
733 an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
734 these sometime around the middle of next week".
735 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
737 How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
738 3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
739 who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
741 -- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
745 I will not play at tug o' war.
746 I'd rather play at hug o' war,
749 Where everyone giggles
750 And rolls on the rug,
751 Where everyone kisses,
753 And everyone cuddles,
757 Human thinking can skip over a great deal, leap over small
758 misunderstandings, can contain ifs and buts in untroubled corners of
759 the mind. But the machine has no corners. Despite all the attempts to
760 see the computer as a brain, the machine has no foreground or
761 background. It can be programmed to behave as if it were working with
762 uncertainty, but -- underneath, at the code, at the circuits -- it
763 cannot simultaneously do something and withhold for later something that
764 remains unknown. In the painstaking working out of the specification,
765 line by code line, the programmer confronts an awful, inevitable truth:
766 The ways of human and machine understanding are disjunct.
767 -- Ellen Ullman, "Close to the Machine"
769 "I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
771 "No," said GoodGulf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
772 course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
773 I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
776 "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
777 Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
778 Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
779 This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
780 The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
781 The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
782 If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
783 If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
784 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
786 I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because
787 we use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently
788 leads to violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say,
789 in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had
790 time to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in the
791 library, we could call each other up:
795 You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you
796 took last Thursday? Outside of Sears?
797 Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed?
798 You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
799 "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait.
800 I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
801 and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto
802 the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to
803 have to get back to you.
805 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
807 "I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
808 Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
809 till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
811 "But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
813 "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
814 tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
816 "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
817 so many different things."
818 "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
820 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
822 "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
823 that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
824 more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
825 might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
826 otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
828 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
830 If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
831 around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace
832 explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The
833 "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
834 deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
835 better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
836 with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
837 you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
838 successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
839 And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
840 You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How
841 difficult can it be?"
842 Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible,
843 which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying
844 other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
845 yourself for far less money. This article can help you.
846 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
848 In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
849 junior, what are you up to?"
850 "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
852 "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"
853 "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the
854 rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied
855 expression on his face.
856 Comes along a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
857 "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits
859 "Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?"
860 "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes
861 out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw.
862 Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody
863 should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting
864 next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox.
866 The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
867 it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
870 Four be the things I am wiser to know:
871 Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
873 Four be the things I'd been better without:
874 Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
876 Three be the things I shall never attain:
877 Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
879 Three be the things I shall have till I die:
880 Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
882 It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
883 laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The
884 thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
885 nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
886 for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
887 Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
888 under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
890 -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
894 My love is like an iron wand
895 That conks me on the head,
896 My love is like the valium
897 That I take before my bed,
898 My love is like the pint of scotch
899 That I drink when I be dry;
900 And I shall love thee still, my dear,
901 Until my wife is wise.
903 Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
904 Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
905 pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
906 military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
907 Esther and hustle them off to prison.
908 They can't prove who they are because they've left their
909 passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day
910 and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
911 movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
912 charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
913 The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
914 they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
915 if they have any last requests. Esther wants to know if she can call
916 her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
917 possible, and turns to Murray.
918 "This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
919 spits in the sergeants face.
920 "Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
921 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
923 No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider
927 Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
928 tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question.
929 Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
930 plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
931 they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
932 Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
933 administration. In either the hardware or housewares department,
934 you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
935 described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
936 interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
937 that Americans might use around the home. Buy it.
938 This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it
939 inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
940 so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
941 if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
943 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
945 On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
946 receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
947 income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
948 $283 on the desk before the cashier.
949 "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
950 route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
951 "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
952 business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
953 worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
955 Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
956 great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
957 the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
958 life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But
959 one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
960 going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I
961 shall die of boredom."
962 The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that
963 current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
964 rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
965 But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
966 and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
967 Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
968 lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
969 And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
970 "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the
971 Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current
972 said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us
973 free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this
975 But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
976 the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
978 One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
979 enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
980 Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
981 years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
982 Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
983 language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
984 students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
985 interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
986 its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
987 VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
988 It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
989 run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
990 will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
991 With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
992 quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
993 VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
994 documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
995 difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
996 is that it's all there.
997 -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
999 Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
1000 requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm
1001 into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing
1002 problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the
1003 radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how
1005 A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,
1006 except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,
1007 it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets
1008 and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at
1009 all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can
1011 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
1013 "Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
1020 "Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated
1021 thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY
1022 advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now."
1023 "I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly.
1024 "Too proud?" the other enquired.
1025 Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean,"
1026 she said, "that one can't help growing older."
1027 "ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With
1028 proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
1031 So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
1032 With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
1033 maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
1034 corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
1035 flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward
1036 it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
1037 I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
1038 the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
1039 Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and
1040 I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our
1041 heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
1042 unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
1043 up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
1044 opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
1045 our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all
1046 the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
1047 cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
1048 these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
1049 into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
1050 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
1052 "The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop")
1054 On the good ship Enterprise
1055 Every week there's a new surprise
1056 Where the Romulans lurk
1057 And the Klingons often go berserk.
1059 Yes, the good ship Enterprise
1060 There's excitement anywhere it flies
1062 And Nurse Chapel never gets her way.
1064 See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge,
1065 Mr. Spock is at his side.
1066 The weekly menace, ooh-ooh
1067 It gets fried, scattered far and wide.
1069 It's the good ship Enterprise
1070 Heading out where danger lies
1071 And you live in dread
1072 If you're wearing a shirt that's red.
1073 -- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics
1075 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
1077 SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
1078 Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for
1079 Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
1080 with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
1081 END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
1082 a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus
1083 they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
1084 the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
1086 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP
1088 This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
1089 an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said
1090 to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
1092 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL
1094 SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
1095 Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they
1096 compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the
1097 coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom
1098 sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to
1099 compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but
1100 infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
1102 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE
1104 Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
1105 unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just
1106 are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions.
1107 SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at
1110 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: C-
1112 This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he
1113 submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is
1114 best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the
1115 language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code
1116 statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very
1119 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18a: FIFTH
1121 FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types
1122 refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and
1123 JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and
1124 BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY,
1125 CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND.
1127 The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and
1128 financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include
1129 VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH
1130 and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers
1131 who end up using this language.
1133 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE
1135 Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene
1136 DesCartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The
1137 language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics
1138 and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A
1139 spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of
1142 The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have
1143 almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the
1144 organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to
1147 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #5: VALGOL
1148 From its modest beginnings in Southern California's San Fernando Valley,
1149 VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry.
1151 Here is a sample program:
1152 LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
1153 IF PIZZA = LIKE BITCHEN AND GUY = LIKE TUBULAR AND
1154 VALLEY GIRL = LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 THEN
1155 FOR I = LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
1157 BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
1159 LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM
1161 LIKE TOTALLY (Y*KNOW)
1165 When the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message:
1167 GAG ME WITH A SPOON!!
1169 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
1171 This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
1172 Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
1173 the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
1175 The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs
1176 while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there
1177 because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and
1180 Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle
1181 and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower
1182 case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the
1184 "i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
1185 you find the time to try it again?"
1187 The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the
1188 klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
1190 "Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
1192 "How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
1194 The people of Halifax invented the trampoline. During the
1195 Victorian period the tripe-dressers of Halifax stretched tripe across a
1196 large wooden frame and jumped up and down on it to `tender and dress'
1197 it. The tripoline, as they called it, degenerated into becoming the
1198 apparatus for a spectator sport.
1200 The people of Halifax also invented the harmonium, a device for
1201 castrating pigs during Sunday service.
1202 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
1204 The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
1205 as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.
1206 The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in
1207 the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in
1208 twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
1210 "Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached
1211 everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a
1212 fierce host which out-numbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by fifty to one --
1213 and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
1215 "How?" demanded Fafhrd.
1217 Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
1218 -- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
1222 The wombat lives across the seas,
1223 Among the far Antipodes.
1224 He may exist on nuts and berries,
1225 Or then again, on missionaries;
1226 His distant habitat precludes
1227 Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
1228 But I would not engage the wombat
1229 In any form of mortal combat.
1232 Into love and out again,
1233 Thus I went and thus I go.
1234 Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
1235 Well and bitterly I know
1236 All the songs were ever sung,
1237 All the words were ever said;
1238 Could it be, when I was young,
1239 Someone dropped me on my head?
1242 There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
1243 someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
1244 Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
1245 Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
1246 every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is
1248 Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
1249 centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think ___
\b\b\byou
1250 can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's
1251 forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
1252 -- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't
1253 even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
1254 why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
1255 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
1257 Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
1258 rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
1260 As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
1261 it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
1262 sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
1263 consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
1264 being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
1265 The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
1266 do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
1267 honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
1268 be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
1269 relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
1270 Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
1271 This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
1272 -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
1273 from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
1274 and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
1276 To A Quick Young Fox:
1277 Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
1278 Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
1279 Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp --
1280 Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
1283 "Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past
1284 year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley
1285 reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their
1286 artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue
1287 moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon
1288 Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the
1289 entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the
1290 sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."
1292 "But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
1294 "Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made
1296 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
1298 WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
1300 Firings will continue until morale improves.
1302 We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.
1303 But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle
1304 Haggard song at a French restaurant. ...
1305 I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of
1306 her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I
1307 had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone
1308 told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was
1309 lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he
1310 fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing
1311 what men must do. ...
1312 "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible
1313 sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew
1314 not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a
1315 quiet and peace I will never forget.
1316 "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the
1317 tollway belle's for thee."
1318 The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was
1319 a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I
1320 poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
1321 -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
1324 "What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty
1325 teenager asked her mother.
1326 "Encouragement, dear," she replied.
1328 "What's that thing?"
1329 "Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
1330 computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
1331 it does. We call it a two-by-four."
1332 -- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe"
1334 When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
1335 clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer
1336 to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
1337 In a way, the next move is up to him.
1340 "You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon
1341 airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in
1342 deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me
1344 "Why, what did she tell you?"
1345 "I don't know, I didn't listen!"
1346 -- Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
1348 YOU TOO CAN MAKE BIG MONEY IN THE EXCITING FIELD OF
1351 Mr. TAA of Muddle, Mass. says: "Before I took this course I used to be
1352 a lowly bit twiddler. Now with what I learned at MIT Tech I feel
1353 really important and can obfuscate and confuse with the best."
1355 Mr. MARC had this to say: "Ten short days ago all I could look forward
1356 to was a dead-end job as a engineer. Now I have a promising future and
1357 make really big Zorkmids."
1359 MIT Tech can't promise these fantastic results to everyone, but when
1360 you earn your MDL degree from MIT Tech your future will be brighter.
1362 SEND FOR OUR FREE BROCHURE TODAY!
1364 You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the
1365 Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the
1366 parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.
1369 Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that
1370 bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a
1371 chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home
1372 electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit
1373 breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires
1374 until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can
1375 damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change
1376 your fuses regularly.
1377 Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This
1378 sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more
1379 often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case
1380 you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not
1381 sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a
1382 fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed
1383 electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession,
1384 such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette
1386 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
1394 | | | | ______ ~~~~ _____
1395 | |__/ | / ___--\\ ~~~ __/_____\__
1396 | ___/ / \--\\ \\ \ ___ <__ x x __\
1397 | | / /\\ \\ )) \ ( " )
1398 | | -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >-----------
1399 | | // | | //__________ / \ ____) (___ \\
1400 | | // __|_| ( --------- ) //// ______ /////\ \\
1401 // | ( \ ______ / <<<< <>-----<<<<< / \\
1402 // ( ) / / \` \__ \\
1403 //-------------------------------------------------------------\\
1405 Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
1406 start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
1407 then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
1408 music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
1409 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
1411 n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
1412 n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc);
1413 n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
1414 n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00);
1415 n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
1417 -- C code which reverses the bits in a word.
1419 " ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
1420 pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!"
1421 -- Winston Churchill
1423 ... A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you
1424 have turned into a pile of dust.
1426 ... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
1427 was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
1430 "... After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known
1432 -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
1434 "... all the modern inconveniences ..."
1437 "... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
1441 ... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers.
1443 ... And malt does more than Milton can
1444 To justify God's ways to man
1447 "... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
1449 -- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter
1452 ... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
1455 ... bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ...
1457 ... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
1458 easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
1459 and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
1460 upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
1461 without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
1462 on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
1463 was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
1464 sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
1465 human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
1466 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1468 ... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
1469 intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
1470 we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
1471 that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
1472 of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard
1473 example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
1474 makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
1475 whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
1476 finite or an infinite number.
1477 -- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
1479 ... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
1482 ... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *___
\b\b\bdid* quote anybody in this
1483 business, it probably would be gibberish.
1486 Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
1488 ... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
1489 and you would not have been informed.
1491 " I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights
1492 instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is
1496 "... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was
1497 supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which
1498 actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."
1499 -- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning
1502 ... If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
1503 the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
1504 asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
1505 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
1507 ... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a
1510 ... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves
1511 smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is
1512 not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
1515 ... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and
1516 legally ... impeccable!
1518 ... My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling
1521 ... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
1522 get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
1523 the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
1524 on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
1525 children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
1526 snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
1527 to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
1528 a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
1529 outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
1530 he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
1531 Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
1532 Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
1533 kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
1534 children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
1536 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
1538 ... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
1539 with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
1540 shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
1541 advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
1542 shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
1543 them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
1544 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
1546 "... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
1547 lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
1551 ... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
1552 Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One
1553 thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If
1554 somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it
1555 on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what
1556 a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
1557 -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
1559 ... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
1560 who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
1561 and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
1562 and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
1563 -- Voltarine de Cleyre
1565 ... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
1566 procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as
1567 to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of
1568 sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making
1569 documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly
1570 listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another
1571 documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,
1572 under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the
1573 effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply
1574 scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White
1575 in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of
1576 thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and
1577 then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very
1578 dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all
1580 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
1582 ... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
1583 consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
1584 of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
1585 listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
1586 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
1588 "... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ..."
1591 ... the MYSTERIANS are in here with my CORDUROY SOAP DISH!!
1593 ... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from
1594 other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in
1595 charity we can only call "inhuman."
1598 ... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives
1599 as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as
1600 determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people
1601 buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s
1602 couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three
1603 weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available,
1604 they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent
1605 restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of
1606 excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers going
1607 off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have
1608 a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli.
1609 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
1611 !07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
1613 (1) Alexander the Great was a great general.
1614 (2) Great generals are forewarned.
1615 (3) Forewarned is forearmed.
1616 (4) Four is an even number.
1617 (5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
1618 (6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
1620 Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
1622 (1) Everything depends.
1623 (2) Nothing is always.
1624 (3) Everything is sometimes.
1626 100 buckets of bits on the bus
1628 Take one down, short it to ground
1629 FF buckets of bits on the bus
1631 FF buckets of bits on the bus
1633 Take one down, short it to ground
1634 FE buckets of bits on the bus
1638 $100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
1639 which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
1640 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
1642 10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
1644 101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
1645 (1) Scarecrow for centipedes
1649 (5) Self-piercing earrings
1652 (8) Prosthetic dog claws
1656 (99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
1660 1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
1663 186,282 miles per second:
1665 It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!
1667 2180, U.S. History question:
1668 What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what
1669 office did he later hold?
1671 3 syncs represent the trinity - init, the child and the eternal zombie
1672 process. In doing 3, you're paying homage to each and I think such
1673 traditions are important in this shallow, mercurial business we find
1675 -- Jordan K. Hubbard
1679 "355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
1682 43rd Law of Computing:
1683 Anything that can go wr
1684 fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
1686 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
1687 The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National
1690 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
1691 The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the
1692 Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus.
1694 77. HO HUM -- The Redundant
1696 ------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
1697 --- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
1698 ------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working
1699 ---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop the
1700 ---X--- (9) GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates to
1701 --- --- (8) nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex.
1703 Nine in the second place means:
1704 The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
1706 Six in the third place means:
1707 In former times men built altars to honor the Internal Revenue
1708 Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
1710 99 blocks of crud on the disk,
1712 You patch a bug, and dump it again:
1713 100 blocks of crud on the disk!
1715 100 blocks of crud on the disk,
1717 You patch a bug, and dump it again:
1718 101 blocks of crud on the disk! ...
1720 A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
1721 responsibility at the other.
1723 A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
1726 A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out
1730 A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
1731 and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
1734 A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it
1735 adds up to be real money.
1736 -- Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen
1738 A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
1740 A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
1742 A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose.
1744 A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
1745 enlightened him with ours.
1747 A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
1750 A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
1751 poor to protect them from each other.
1753 A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
1755 A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not
1756 mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty
1757 trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.
1760 A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
1762 A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
1763 Avoid him. He's a Commie.
1765 A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
1766 won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
1769 A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
1772 A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
1776 A closed mouth gathers no foot.
1778 A computer, to print out a fact,
1779 Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
1780 But this output can be
1781 No more than debris,
1782 If the input was short of exact.
1785 A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
1787 A CONS is an object which cares.
1788 -- Bernie Greenberg.
1790 A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it
1791 is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.
1793 A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
1796 A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the
1797 damned things is ample.
1800 A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
1803 A crusader's wife slipped from the garrison
1804 And had an affair with a Saracen.
1805 She was not oversexed,
1806 Or jealous or vexed,
1807 She just wanted to make a comparison.
1809 A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen
1813 A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
1815 A day without sunshine is like night.
1817 A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur
1820 A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
1821 you will look forward to the trip.
1823 A diva who specializes in risqu'
\be arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
1825 A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
1828 A dozen, a gross, and a score,
1829 Plus three times the square root of four,
1831 Plus five times eleven,
1832 Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
1834 A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a
1835 Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser.
1836 Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network
1837 with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the
1838 Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly
1839 pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while
1840 simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick
1841 Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
1843 A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
1845 -- Winston Churchill
1847 A fool must now and then be right by chance.
1849 A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block
1850 of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an
1853 A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
1854 superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
1855 -- George Bernard Shaw
1857 A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
1860 "A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
1861 dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
1862 -- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
1864 A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
1867 A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than
1868 he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men
1869 favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter
1870 facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
1873 A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
1875 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
1877 A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident.
1878 A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident.
1879 But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\bthat _
\b_
\b_
\bhad _
\b_
\bto _
\b_
\b_
\b_
\bmean _
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\bsomething*.
1880 -- S. Morganstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
1882 A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort
1885 A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
1886 Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific
1887 game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have
1888 traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there,
1889 preferably atop a nice firm tuft of grass.
1892 A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and
1893 placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or
1894 rolled into the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results
1895 from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball
1896 and the player should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the
1897 ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical
1901 A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
1902 into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
1903 hope of greening the landscape of idea.
1906 A good sysadmin always carries around a few feet of fiber. If he ever
1907 gets lost, he simply drops the fiber on the ground, waits ten minutes,
1908 then asks the backhoe operator for directions.
1909 -- Bill Bradford <mrbill@mrbill.net>
1911 A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
1912 rearranging their prejudices.
1915 A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest
1918 A hypothetical paradox:
1919 What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security
1920 team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of
1921 Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet?
1924 A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
1925 C is for Clair who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of the sleigh.
1926 E is for Ernest who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech.
1927 G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug.
1928 I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake.
1929 K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
1930 M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of enui.
1931 O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
1932 Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.
1933 S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits.
1934 U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
1935 W is for Winie, embedded in ice, X is for Xercies, devoured by mice.
1936 Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin.
1937 -- Edward Gorey "The Gastly Crumb Tines"
1939 A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
1941 A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide
1942 who has the better lawyer.
1945 A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
1947 A lady with one of her ears applied
1948 To an open keyhole heard, inside,
1949 Two female gossips in converse free --
1950 The subject engaging them was she.
1951 "I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
1952 That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
1953 As soon as no more of it she could hear
1954 The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
1955 "I will not stay," she said with a pout,
1956 "To hear my character lied about!"
1959 A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
1962 A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
1963 in than some that do.
1964 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
1966 A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work
1967 by being declared to work.
1970 A Law of Computer Programming:
1971 Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
1972 will find the programmers cannot write in English.
1974 A limerick packs laughs anatomical
1975 Into space that is quite economical.
1976 But the good ones I've seen
1977 So seldom are clean,
1978 And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
1980 A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
1983 A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
1986 A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
1988 A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any
1991 A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in
1992 his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and
1993 exceptional ability in that particular field."
1995 A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
1998 A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
1999 believe everything positively stinks.
2002 A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"
2004 "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a
2005 sense of obligation."
2008 A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
2010 A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
2012 A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed
2013 on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new
2014 game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the
2015 pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly
2016 along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their
2017 heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn
2018 around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite
2019 direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the
2020 paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
2021 colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins
2022 fall over gently onto their backs.
2023 -- Audobon Society Magazine
2025 2001-02-02, from http://news.bbc.co.uk:
2027 For five weeks, a team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
2028 monitored 1,000 king penguins on the island of South Georgia as
2029 Lynx helicopters passed overhead.
2031 "Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over,"
2032 said team leader Dr Richard Stone.
2034 "As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped
2035 calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated
2036 with nests began walking away from the noise. Pure animal instinct,
2039 The conclusion, said Dr Stone, is that flights over 305 metres
2040 (1,000 feet) caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects"
2043 A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey. "It is out
2044 on loan," the teacher replied. At that moment, the donkey brayed
2045 loudly inside the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom
2046 do you believe," asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"
2048 A new dramatist of the absurd
2049 Has a voice that will shortly be heard.
2050 I learn from my spies
2051 He's about to devise
2052 An unprintable three-letter word.
2056 If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
2058 If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
2060 It is an ice cream koan.
2062 A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary.
2063 Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a round tuit now
2064 has no excuse for further procrastination.
2066 A New York City judge ruled that if two women behind you at the movies
2067 insist on discussing the probable outcome of the film, you have the
2068 right to turn around and blow a Bronx cheer at them.
2070 A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the
2071 rear of a Third Avenue street car -- if the car is in motion.
2073 A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
2074 "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
2077 A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power
2078 off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly:
2079 "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
2080 understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off
2081 and on. The machine worked.
2083 A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
2085 A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
2088 A penny saved is ridiculous.
2090 A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
2092 A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
2095 A pig is a jolly companion,
2096 Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
2097 A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
2098 Though mountains may topple and tilt.
2099 When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
2100 When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
2101 Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
2102 You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
2103 You'll never go wrong with a pig!
2104 -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
2106 "A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!"
2107 -- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra"
2109 A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
2113 It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
2115 It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
2117 It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
2118 upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
2119 to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
2121 And that is Fate? said the priest.
2123 Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
2125 That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was
2127 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
2129 A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
2131 "A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
2132 of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
2133 series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
2134 precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
2135 inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
2136 accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
2137 for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
2138 defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
2139 information in the first place."
2140 -- IEEE Grid news magazine
2142 A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
2143 your wife will give you for free.
2145 A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be
2146 too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which
2147 was intended for her preservation.
2150 A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as
2151 "you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if
2152 the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants
2153 to make a travesty of the game.
2156 "A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked
2157 out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon."
2160 "A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives."
2162 A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:
2164 Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying,
2165 "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny
2166 bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the
2167 lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and
2168 breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the
2169 Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of
2170 the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt
2171 thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then
2172 proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being
2173 the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand
2174 Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight,
2176 -- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
2178 A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
2179 that the system works.
2181 A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and
2184 A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
2185 objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
2186 scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
2187 concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
2188 dimensional objects ...
2190 A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may
2191 not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized
2194 A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
2195 contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
2196 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
2198 A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will
2199 keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those
2200 that are worth committing.
2203 A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard
2206 A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
2209 A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
2213 A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to
2214 Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it
2215 true," asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as
2216 Lisp?" Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt
2217 shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
2219 A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an
2222 A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
2223 undreamed of by its author.
2226 A system admin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over
2227 Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the
2228 other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing
2229 new versions of their own innards!
2232 A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
2234 A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
2235 and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
2236 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2238 A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
2241 A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene
2244 A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
2246 A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
2250 "A University without students is like an ointment without a fly."
2251 -- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
2253 A UNIX saleslady, Lenore,
2254 Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more.
2255 She found a good way
2256 To combine work and play:
2257 She sells C shells by the seashore.
2259 A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
2261 -- Tennessee Williams
2263 A very intelligent turtle
2264 Found programming UNIX a hurdle
2265 The system, you see,
2266 Ran as slow as did he,
2267 And that's not saying much for the turtle.
2269 A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
2272 "A witty saying proves nothing."
2275 A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets
2278 "A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to
2279 admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact
2280 remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one
2281 reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It
2282 is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of
2283 using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these
2284 matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times."
2285 -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
2287 A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe
2291 An organization for drunks who drive
2293 \a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\aAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
\a
2294 You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
2296 Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
2298 "About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the
2302 Absence makes the heart go wander.
2305 Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
2309 A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
2310 himself from the sphere of exaction.
2311 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2314 A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
2316 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2319 A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
2321 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2323 Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,
2324 because the stakes are so low.
2328 A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
2331 Accidents cause History.
2333 If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the
2334 Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not
2335 have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil
2336 could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and
2337 the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
2338 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
2340 According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person
2341 shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than
2342 fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening
2343 of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of
2346 According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath at least
2349 According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
2350 -- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
2352 According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
2355 According to the obituary notices, a mean and unimportant person never
2358 "According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to
2359 live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came
2360 in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much.
2361 Because we know that we could beat up their city anytime."
2365 A bagpipe with pleats.
2368 The vice of being right
2370 Acid -- better living through chemistry.
2372 Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality.
2375 A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well
2377 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2379 "Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from
2382 Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
2383 everyone glued in their seats!"
2384 Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of
2387 Actor: So what do you do for a living?
2388 Doris: I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
2389 dishes for Chinese restaurants.
2390 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
2392 Actors will happen even in the best-regulated families.
2395 Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
2396 Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA
2400 Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
2401 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2404 The stage between puberty and adultery.
2406 "Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
2411 To venerate expectantly.
2412 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2415 One old enough to know better.
2417 Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
2418 way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
2421 Advice to young men: Be ascetic, and if you can't be ascetic,
2422 then at least be aseptic.
2424 After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out.
2425 It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life
2426 more advanced than the lichen family.
2427 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
2430 After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
2432 After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not
2433 for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have
2434 simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
2437 After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
2440 After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose
2441 names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary
2442 Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted
2443 many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi
2444 Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two
2445 different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current
2446 developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer
2447 attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led
2448 to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today,
2449 skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously
2450 injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it
2451 hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
2452 that it sinks like a stone.
2453 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
2455 "After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
2456 the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the
2457 cost to others, to win advancement."
2460 After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
2462 After living in New York, you trust nobody, but you believe
2463 everything. Just in case.
2465 After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
2466 cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
2470 That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the
2473 Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a
2476 Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.
2480 That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we
2481 still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise
2485 Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
2488 For all dreams are not equal,
2489 some exit to nightmare
2490 most end with the dreamer
2492 But at least one must be lived ... and died.
2494 Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
2496 "Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
2497 Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact
2498 that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately
2499 unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep
2500 up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers."
2501 -- A analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic
2503 Air is water with holes in it
2505 Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
2506 -- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
2508 Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
2509 telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
2510 York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
2511 And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
2512 receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
2515 (1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
2517 (2) Always be backlit.
2518 (3) Sit down whenever possible.
2520 Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
2521 Aleph-null bottles of beer,
2522 You take one down, and pass it around,
2523 Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
2525 Alex Haley was adopted!
2527 Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
2530 Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
2531 them keeps paying for it.
2534 All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely
2538 All extremists should be taken out and shot.
2540 All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
2543 "All flesh is grass"
2545 Smoke a friend today.
2547 All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
2549 All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
2552 All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled
2553 by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ...
2555 All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power
2556 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
2558 All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are
2562 "All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us
2565 "All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
2569 All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
2570 -- The Book of Bokonon / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
2572 All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of
2576 All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
2578 All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
2580 All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
2581 every organism to live beyond its income.
2584 All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
2587 "All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right
2591 All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
2593 All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
2594 too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
2595 subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
2596 can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
2597 Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
2598 decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
2600 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
2602 All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
2606 All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
2607 the government in less than a second.
2610 All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
2613 All the world's a VAX,
2614 And all the coders merely butchers;
2615 They have their exits and their entrails;
2616 And one int in his time plays many widths,
2617 His sizeof being _
\bN bytes. At first the infant,
2618 Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
2619 And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
2620 And shining morning face, creeping like slug
2621 Unwillingly to school.
2622 -- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
2624 All theoretical chemistry is really physics;
2625 and all theoretical chemists know it.
2626 -- Richard P. Feynman
2628 All things are possible, except skiing thru a revolving door.
2630 All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for
2631 fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
2633 All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
2635 All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
2636 infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
2640 All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
2641 upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
2642 visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
2643 informing, stimulating and ennobling.
2647 In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
2648 their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
2649 separately plunder a third.
2650 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2654 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2656 Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight
2657 Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
2660 Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
2662 Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
2663 mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
2664 any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place
2665 to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer,
2666 Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a
2667 serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the
2668 same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely
2669 that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A
2670 penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job
2671 running the post office.
2672 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
2674 Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been
2675 reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the
2676 day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable
2677 interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on
2678 pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin,
2679 and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
2680 Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous
2681 material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the
2682 management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion
2683 the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical
2685 -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
2687 Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid
2690 Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
2692 "Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
2695 Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves.
2698 Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
2699 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2701 Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
2704 America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
2705 to decadence without touching civilization.
2708 America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him,
2709 until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and
2710 changed its name to "America".
2711 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
2713 American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective
2714 employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for
2715 employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference
2716 between the men's room and the women's room without having little
2717 pictures on the doors.
2718 -- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister"
2720 "Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it."
2722 An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
2723 people refuse to see it.
2724 -- James Michener, "Space"
2726 An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but
2727 is always polite to traffic cops.
2729 "An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to
2730 New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but
2731 not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax."
2734 An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
2736 An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it.
2738 An attorney was defending his client against a charge of first-degree
2739 murder. "Your Honor, my client is accused of stuffing his lover's
2740 mutilated body into a suitcase and heading for the Mexican border.
2741 Just north of Tijuana a cop spotted her hand sticking out of the
2742 suitcase. Now, I would like to stress that my client is *not* a
2743 murderer. A sloppy packer, maybe..."
2745 An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
2746 really care to know.
2748 An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
2750 An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
2752 An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded
2753 summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your
2754 arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey
2755 responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!"
2757 An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
2760 An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He
2761 wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is
2762 advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and
2763 Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in
2764 incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
2767 "The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
2768 discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able
2769 to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
2770 things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch
2771 parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a
2772 timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who
2773 doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
2774 Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
2775 school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as
2776 successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
2777 they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha."
2778 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
2780 An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
2782 An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these
2783 eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as
2785 -- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"
2787 An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
2789 "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge."
2791 Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
2794 And as we stand on the edge of darkness
2795 Let our chant fill the void
2796 That others may know
2798 In the land of the night
2803 -- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC.
2805 And I heard Jeff exclaim,
2806 As they strolled out of sight,
2807 "Merry Christmas to all --
2808 You take credit cards, right?"
2809 -- "Outsiders" comic
2811 And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
2813 And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and
2814 fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it
2815 looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own. One
2816 approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin
2817 is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then
2818 of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides
2819 gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode. So this
2820 procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom
2821 youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and
2823 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
2825 "...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
2828 And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a
2829 horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical
2830 columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory,
2831 ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the
2833 -- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
2835 And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have
2836 a sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks
2837 tragedy, and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets
2838 tragedy face to face, we have politics.
2839 -- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland, "Root Crops and
2842 Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
2843 Galileo: No, unhappy the land that _____
\b\b\b\b\bneeds heroes.
2844 -- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
2846 Angels we have heard on High
2847 Tell us to go out and Buy.
2850 Ankh if you love Isis.
2853 To grease a king or other great functionary already
2854 sufficiently slippery.
2855 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2857 Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
2859 Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
2860 television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom
2861 and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that
2862 offers whiter teeth *___
\b\b\band* fresher breath.
2863 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
2866 Anthony's Law of Force:
2867 Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
2869 Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
2870 Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
2871 corner of the workshop.
2874 On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
2878 The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
2880 Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
2883 Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a
2884 representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a
2885 representation of anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone
2886 capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
2889 Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
2892 Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that
2893 this country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a
2896 Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
2899 Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche
2900 -- a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance,
2901 my grandmother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off
2902 the fence." I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was
2906 Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
2909 Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger
2912 Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to
2913 exactly the point of most pressure.
2916 Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
2919 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
2922 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
2925 Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
2928 Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
2929 -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
2931 Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
2933 Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
2936 Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
2938 Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
2939 supposed to be doing at the moment.
2942 Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
2945 Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with
2948 Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
2949 is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
2950 make messes in the house.
2951 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
2953 Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
2956 Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
2959 Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
2960 account be allowed to do the job.
2961 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
2963 Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never
2964 tried taking candy from a baby.
2967 Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
2969 Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the
2970 price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
2971 means the price went way up.
2973 Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
2975 Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
2977 "Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution"
2980 A concise, clever statement.
2982 A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
2983 -- James Alexander Thom
2985 APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of
2986 the future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of
2989 "APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I
2990 can't read any of them."
2994 Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off
2996 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
2998 AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
2999 You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
3000 You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to
3001 be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same
3002 mistakes over and over again. People think you are stupid.
3004 Arbitrary systems, pl.n.:
3005 Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing
3006 general can be said."
3008 ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE --
3009 FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE
3013 "Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
3014 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
3016 ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
3017 You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You
3018 are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are
3021 Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
3026 To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
3028 Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
3029 (1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
3030 (2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
3031 (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
3034 Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
3035 measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you
3036 imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
3037 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
3039 Art is anything you can get away with.
3040 -- Marshall McLuhan.
3042 Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
3045 Arthur's Laws of Love:
3046 (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
3047 remind them of someone else.
3048 (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be
3049 delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of
3052 Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
3054 As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are
3055 interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick
3056 perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,
3057 "that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?" ...
3058 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
3060 "As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
3061 certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I
3062 became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can
3066 As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
3067 certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
3070 As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
3073 As I was going up Punch Card Hill,
3074 Feeling worse and worser,
3075 There I met a C.R.T.
3076 And it drop't me a cursor.
3079 Phosphors light on you!
3080 If I had fifty hours a day
3081 I'd spend them all at you.
3083 -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
3085 As I was passing Project MAC,
3086 I met a Quux with seven hacks.
3087 Every hack had seven bugs;
3088 Every bug had seven manifestations;
3089 Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
3090 Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
3091 How many losses at Project MAC?
3093 As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great
3094 industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free
3095 speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to
3096 myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist". You never hear a
3097 real American talk like that.
3098 -- Frank Hague (1896-1956)
3100 As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
3102 As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its
3103 fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be
3107 As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
3109 "As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500
3110 programs; a process that traditionally requires some debugging."
3111 -- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new
3114 As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
3115 wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
3116 to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized
3117 that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
3118 finding mistakes in my own programs.
3119 -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
3121 As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's
3122 so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
3125 As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
3126 is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
3127 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
3129 As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free
3132 As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple
3133 memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time
3134 to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A,
3135 E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
3136 -- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
3138 As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would
3139 interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the
3140 Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure
3141 out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on
3142 Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual
3143 organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result,
3144 birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never
3145 see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and
3146 stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations
3147 with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are
3148 talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both
3149 highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.
3150 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
3153 As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears. Unable to pull
3154 your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you.
3155 The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along
3156 with your complexion. You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall
3157 from the limbs of the tree. Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all
3158 over the ground. The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of
3159 a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head. Worse yet, the
3160 spider is suing you for damages.
3162 As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
3164 ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS.
3166 Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
3167 one went to Harvard).
3170 Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
3171 Station-to-Station rate.
3173 Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
3175 Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the
3176 bathtub, it tolls for thee.
3178 Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
3181 "Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old
3182 woman, director Roman Polanski told reporters, `The way I look at it,
3183 she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.'"
3187 The masculine of "lass".
3189 Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve.
3190 Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be
3191 strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum.
3192 Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check
3196 "At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los
3197 Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head
3198 under the exhaust of a bus until he revived."
3200 At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
3201 not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where
3202 it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
3203 -- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
3205 At first, I just did it on weekends. With a few friends, you know...
3206 We never wanted to hurt anyone. The girls loved it. We'd all sit
3207 around the computer and do a little UNIX. It was just a kick. At
3208 least that's what we thought. Then it got worse.
3210 It got so I'd have to do some UNIX during the weekdays. After a
3211 while, I couldn't even wake up in the morning without having that
3212 crave to go do UNIX. Then it started affecting my job. I would just
3213 have to do it during my break. Maybe a `grep' or two, maybe a little
3214 `more'. I eventually started doing UNIX just to get through the day.
3215 Of course, it screwed up my mind so much that I couldn't even
3216 function as a normal person.
3218 I'm lucky today, I've overcome my UNIX problem. It wasn't easy. If
3219 you're smart, just don't start. Remember, if any weirdo offers you
3224 At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
3225 challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
3226 -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
3228 "At least they're ___________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bEXPERIENCED incompetents"
3230 At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
3231 thumb with a hammer.
3234 At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
3235 find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
3238 Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
3241 Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
3242 -- Winston Churchill
3244 Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
3245 depths they were once able to plumb.
3249 A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
3252 Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
3253 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
3255 Avoid reality at all costs.
3257 "Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
3258 we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you."
3259 -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student
3262 A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
3264 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3267 1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually
3268 intermittently. 2. adj.: Failing hardware or software. "This
3269 bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar." Usage: verges on
3270 obscenity. Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the
3271 bag". Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS,
3274 Bagdikian's Observation:
3275 Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American
3276 newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a
3279 Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
3280 A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
3283 Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
3286 The removal of bruises on a banana.
3287 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
3289 Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
3292 An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own
3295 Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the
3296 floor -- especially in the dark.
3299 An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
3301 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3303 Barth's Distinction:
3304 There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
3305 types, and those who don't.
3307 Baruch's Observation:
3308 If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
3310 Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high
3314 Basic is a high level languish.
3315 APL is a high level anguish.
3317 "BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'."
3320 A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in
3321 that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
3324 The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water
3325 faucet is turned on to a certain point.
3326 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
3328 Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your
3331 BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts ...)
3333 Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
3334 get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
3336 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
3338 Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
3340 Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
3343 Be different: conform.
3345 Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so
3348 Be security conscious -- National defense is at stake.
3350 Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
3352 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
3354 Bees are very busy souls
3355 They have no time for birth controls
3356 And that is why in times like these
3357 There are so many Sons of Bees.
3359 Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's
3363 A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
3364 you won't have to watch commercials.
3366 Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh
3369 Beifeld's Principle:
3370 The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
3371 receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is
3372 already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better
3373 looking and richer male friend.
3375 "Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
3377 Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
3379 Bennett's Laws of Horticulture:
3380 (1) Houses are for people to live in.
3381 (2) Gardens are for plants to live in.
3382 (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
3384 "Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"
3387 Berkeley had what we called "copycenter," which is "take it down
3388 to the copy center and make as many copies as you want."
3391 Besides the device, the box should contain:
3393 * Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"
3395 * A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
3396 club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.
3398 YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram
3401 IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your
3402 spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
3403 that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
3404 without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's
3407 WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
3408 -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
3410 Best of all is never to have been born. Second best is to die soon.
3412 Better dead than mellow.
3417 santa claus <north pole >town
3419 cat /etc/passwd >list
3422 cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
3423 cat list | grep nice >giftlist
3424 santa claus <north pole > town
3428 who | egrep 'bad|good'
3429 for (goodness sake) {
3433 Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson
3434 Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate.
3435 Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and
3436 great effort pushing boulders into a single word.
3438 It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
3439 Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
3440 equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
3441 destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass
3442 both Parliament and Party.
3444 It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other
3445 planets, this may be the first message received from us.
3446 -- The Realist, November, 1964.
3448 "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
3452 Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!
3454 Beware of low-flying butterflies.
3456 Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
3457 -- Leonard Brandwein
3459 Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a
3460 drip under pressure.
3462 "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
3463 finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of
3464 murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
3465 their ignorance the hard way."
3466 -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
3468 Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
3469 nothing of interest is easy.
3472 Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
3474 "Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same
3478 Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
3482 The first and direst of all disasters.
3483 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3485 Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
3488 The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a
3490 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
3492 Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
3494 Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as
3499 Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
3501 Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
3504 Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is
3507 Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in
3508 plain sight. It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again. The legend has
3509 it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he was
3510 arrested for drunk driving. The snakes left because people kept
3511 throwing up on them.
3514 If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
3516 Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
3517 Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
3518 vividly manifests their lack of progress.
3520 Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
3521 Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
3523 BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
3526 You always find something in the last place you look.
3529 A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.
3533 A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
3534 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3537 (1) When in charge, ponder.
3538 (2) When in trouble, delegate.
3539 (3) When in doubt, mumble.
3542 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages
3543 the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss,
3544 in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
3548 Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
3549 finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
3551 Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry
3552 that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
3553 straightened out for a crowbar.
3556 Boy, life takes a long time to live
3560 A noise with dirt on it.
3562 Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least
3563 when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
3566 Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
3569 Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the
3570 unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only
3571 (gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend
3572 to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.'
3573 -- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking
3577 If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
3578 committee -- that will do them in.
3580 Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
3581 When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
3582 easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have
3585 Brain fried -- Core dumped
3588 The apparatus with which we think that we think.
3589 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3591 Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]:
3592 To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of
3593 error in an opponent.
3594 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3596 Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests,
3597 since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
3598 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
3601 A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
3602 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3604 Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
3605 revitalize the corner saloon.
3608 The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of
3609 Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by
3610 Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further
3611 believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the
3612 Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in
3613 the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you sleep with your
3614 head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth.
3615 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
3617 Broad-mindedness, n.:
3618 The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
3620 Brontosaurus Principle:
3621 Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
3622 in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when
3623 this occurs, they are an endangered species.
3624 -- Thomas K. Connellan
3627 Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
3628 discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it
3632 Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
3635 1: Kill by nailing onto style(9); "David O'Brien was brucified"
3636 2: Annoy constantly by reminding of potential improvements
3637 [syn: {torment}, {rag}, {tantalize}, {bedevil}, {dun},
3639 3: Fix problems that were indicated in an earlier brucification
3640 (of one of the two other meanings).
3641 The word 'brucify' originally comes from the style-reviews of Bruce
3642 Evans of the FreeBSD project, but is now also sometimes used for
3643 reviews just done in his spirit.
3646 A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
3647 intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".
3650 Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
3653 An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
3654 programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
3657 Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
3661 Small living things that small living boys throw on small
3664 BULLWINKLE: "You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the
3666 GENERAL: "What does that make YOU?"
3667 BULLWINKLE: "What else? An executive..."
3672 "All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
3676 A person who cuts red tape sideways.
3680 A politician who has tenure.
3682 Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise.
3684 Burn's Hog Weighing Method:
3685 (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a
3687 (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
3688 (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again
3690 (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
3693 "But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations
3696 "But I don't like Spam!!!!"
3698 But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
3699 system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
3700 analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
3701 -- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing
3704 "But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
3705 to the nearest gas station."
3707 But scientists, who ought to know
3708 Assure us that it must be so.
3709 Oh, let us never, never doubt
3710 What nobody is sure about.
3713 But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
3714 Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
3715 But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
3716 -- Mark "The Bard" Twain
3718 But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
3719 was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
3720 education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in
3721 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
3722 American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
3723 invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
3724 invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant
3725 adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
3726 electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
3727 electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
3728 part) sends it right back to the customer again.
3730 This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
3731 of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
3732 very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
3733 In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
3734 States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
3735 ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
3737 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
3739 "But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
3740 place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
3741 Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a
3742 kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs,
3743 poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I
3744 explained yet about the bytes?"
3746 "But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
3749 Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
3750 Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
3751 Less dear than army ants in apple pies
3752 Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
3753 Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
3754 Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
3755 They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
3756 Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
3757 Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
3758 And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
3759 Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
3760 Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
3761 Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
3762 Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
3764 By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
3765 completely overwhelm you.
3767 "By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact,
3768 it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
3769 invent. (R. Emerson)"
3770 -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
3771 (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
3772 [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
3773 misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
3775 "By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
3776 to suspect 'Hungry' ..."
3777 -- Gary Larson, "The Far Side"
3779 By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I
3783 Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
3784 point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
3785 fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
3786 often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
3787 from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
3788 that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____
\b\b\b\b\bthere. They often
3789 wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
3791 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
3794 A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more
3795 like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or
3796 anything else. It is either the best language available to the art
3801 A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
3803 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3805 "Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception."
3806 -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
3809 When all else fails, read the instructions.
3811 California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
3815 From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or
3816 Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or
3817 "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex."
3820 Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
3823 "Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target
3824 Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."
3826 "Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle."
3827 -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
3829 "Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
3833 Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two
3837 Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
3838 It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
3841 A .44 magnum beats four aces.
3843 Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents
3844 for postage and 30 cents for storage.
3845 -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial
3848 Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
3849 Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
3850 A root or two, a torus and a node:
3851 The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
3852 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
3854 CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
3855 You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
3856 problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things
3857 off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare
3858 recipients are Cancer people.
3861 The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true
3862 story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some
3863 annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a
3864 point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and
3865 eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used
3866 the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking.
3867 Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!"
3868 Stallman: "What did he say?"
3869 Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."
3871 CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
3872 You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do
3873 much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any
3874 importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
3875 they take root and become trees.
3877 Captain Penny's Law:
3878 You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
3879 the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
3881 Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than
3882 expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to
3883 complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their
3884 planning to reduce the time it takes.
3886 Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and
3887 trousers that don't match.
3889 Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
3890 The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
3891 dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
3892 putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
3893 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
3896 Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.
3898 Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
3901 Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
3903 CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
3905 Cecil, you're my final hope
3906 Of finding out the true Straight Dope
3907 For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat
3908 But none of my cats are at all like that.
3909 This unusual animal (so it is said)
3910 Is simultaneously alive and dead!
3911 What I don't understand is just why he
3912 Can't be one or the other, unquestionably.
3913 My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
3914 In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't.
3915 If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way
3916 And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
3917 But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
3918 Then I will *___
\b\b\band* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo.
3919 -- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium
3920 of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams
3922 Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
3924 Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the
3925 center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation
3926 works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
3927 -- Kelvin Throop III
3929 Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
3932 Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
3933 Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
3934 Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
3937 Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy?
3938 -- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
3940 Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
3941 walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They
3942 then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
3943 health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
3944 not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find
3945 only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
3946 others who have tried it.
3947 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3949 Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny--
3950 Did you ever try buying them without money?
3953 Character Density, n.:
3954 The number of very weird people in the office.
3957 The thirteenth month of the year. Begins New Year's Day and
3958 ends when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on his
3962 Any cook who swears in French.
3965 Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
3967 Chemistry is applied theology.
3968 -- Augustus Stanley Owsley III
3970 Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.
3973 Where the dead still vote ... early and often!
3975 Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36:
3976 Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn
3977 headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".
3978 -- Chicago Reader 3/27/81
3980 Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84:
3981 The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request
3982 for overheated passengers. When your timer pops up, the driver will
3983 cheerfully baste you.
3984 -- Chicago Reader 5/28/82
3986 Chicken Little only has to be right once.
3988 Chicken Little was right.
3991 An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin,
3992 cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure
3993 is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
3994 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
3996 Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every
3997 effort to teach them good manners.
3999 Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're
4000 going to catch you in next.
4001 -- Franklin P. Jones
4003 Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
4004 And that's what parents were created for.
4007 Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for
4008 word what you shouldn't have said.
4010 Chism's Law of Completion:
4011 The amount of time required to complete a government project is
4012 precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
4014 Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
4015 When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
4017 Chivalry, Schmivalry!
4018 Roger the thief has a
4021 Folks who are reading are
4023 Always Forgetting to
4024 Guard their own bac ...
4027 A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
4029 Churchill's Commentary on Man:
4030 Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
4031 time he will pick himself up and continue on.
4034 A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in
4038 The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which
4039 covers the floors of movie theaters.
4040 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
4043 A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that
4044 which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead.
4047 Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like
4048 shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
4051 Cleanliness is next to impossible.
4053 "Cleveland? Yes, I spent a week there one day."
4055 Cleveland still lives. God ____
\b\b\b\bmust be dead.
4057 Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
4059 Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
4063 COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
4065 Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
4067 Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
4068 "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
4069 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4071 "Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong."
4075 You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was
4078 Coincidences are spiritual puns.
4082 When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.
4085 When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own
4089 A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
4090 other fellow can spell.
4092 College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
4093 faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
4094 the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms,
4095 legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
4099 Colvard's Logical Premises:
4100 All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it
4103 Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
4104 This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
4108 Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
4110 Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
4111 And every vector dreams of matrices.
4112 Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
4113 It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
4114 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
4116 Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
4117 Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
4118 Their indices bedecked from one to _
\bn,
4119 Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
4120 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
4123 Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in
4124 such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.
4127 Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
4128 The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
4131 A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
4132 decide that nothing can be done.
4136 (1) Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner.
4137 (2) Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this
4138 stamps you as being wise.
4139 (3) Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the
4141 (4) When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed.
4142 (5) Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you
4143 popular -- it's what everyone is waiting for.
4145 Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to
4146 be appointed to do the work.
4148 Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at
4149 different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
4152 Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
4155 Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
4158 Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness
4159 of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
4162 Computer programmers do it byte by byte
4164 Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems
4167 Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
4169 Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
4172 Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in
4173 the world that just don't add up.
4175 Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more
4176 than the estimate the job will cost.
4178 Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
4182 Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
4185 Condense soup, not books!
4187 Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is
4191 Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the
4194 Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that
4195 would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that
4196 you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
4197 maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
4198 OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY
4199 UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
4200 IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
4201 WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND
4202 SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS,
4203 RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
4204 RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
4205 FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
4206 -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
4208 Connector Conspiracy, n:
4209 [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the
4210 KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of
4211 manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything)
4212 to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old
4213 stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive
4216 Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
4219 Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking
4222 Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
4224 Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you
4227 "Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."
4228 -- "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones]
4230 Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
4231 give it back to them.
4233 "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
4234 if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
4235 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
4237 "Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
4238 technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat."
4241 A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
4242 is called the listener.
4245 In any organization there will always be one person who knows
4248 This person must be fired.
4251 The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
4252 visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite
4254 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4257 In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
4259 Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a
4260 muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can
4264 Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job
4265 is to enforce the law and fight crime.
4266 -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
4269 A place where they dispense with justice.
4273 One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
4274 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4276 Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with
4277 nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
4278 -- Wernher von Braun
4280 Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
4284 A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
4286 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4289 If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?
4293 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
4295 "Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
4296 eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
4297 business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
4301 A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
4302 as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking
4303 out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
4304 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4307 One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced
4311 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
4313 Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
4315 Dave Mack: "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
4316 Allen Gwinn: "Yours is."
4319 The time when men of reason go to bed.
4320 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4322 Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
4324 %DCL-E-MEMBAD, bad memory
4325 -SYSTEM-F-VMSPDGERS, pudding between the ears
4327 Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also
4328 easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to
4332 I just want *___
\b\b\bone* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
4333 the other hand", again.
4336 My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's
4337 elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between
4338 courses, is all right. Which is correct?
4341 For the purpose of answering examinations in your home
4342 economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this
4343 principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now
4344 than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners
4348 Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from
4352 Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on
4355 Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part
4356 of this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old
4357 will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a
4358 commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as
4359 "Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a
4360 table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always
4361 says: "Part of this complete breakfast". Don't that really mean,
4362 "Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as this
4363 complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim
4364 if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a
4368 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
4370 Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
4372 Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business
4373 signs to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a
4374 word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR
4375 ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when
4376 creating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should put
4377 quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT
4378 DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
4379 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
4381 Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
4383 Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
4386 Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
4388 "Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'".
4390 Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down
4392 Death is only a state of mind.
4394 Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.
4396 Death to all fanatics!
4399 The person in your office who was unable to form a task force
4400 before the music stopped.
4402 Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really
4403 overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene
4404 language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the
4405 judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when
4406 addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
4407 -- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing
4410 "Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of
4411 marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a
4412 theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah,
4413 those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly
4418 [Possibly from Black English "De fault wid dis system is you,
4419 mon."] The vain attempt to avoid errors by inactivity. "Nothing will
4420 come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear.
4421 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
4423 #define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
4424 #define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \
4425 - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \
4426 - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))
4428 -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
4430 Definitions of hardware and software for dummies:
4432 Hardware is what you kick;
4433 Software is what you curse.
4436 The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is
4438 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4440 "Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow."
4442 Demand the establishment of the government
4443 in its rightful home at Disneyland.
4445 Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than
4447 -- George Bernard Shaw
4449 Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
4450 aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
4453 Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
4454 incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
4455 -- George Bernard Shaw
4457 Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
4460 Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
4464 Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
4467 Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
4468 are right more than half of the time.
4472 A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass
4473 meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy.
4474 Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights.
4475 Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate,
4476 whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion,
4477 prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
4478 Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
4479 -- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932),
4482 Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the
4483 board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
4486 A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
4487 coins out of one's pockets.
4488 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4490 Despising machines to a man,
4491 The Luddites joined up with the Klan,
4492 And ride out by night
4493 In a sheeting of white
4494 To lynch all the robots they can.
4495 -- C. M. and G. A. Maxson
4497 Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will
4498 be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over
4500 -- The Anarchist Cookbook
4503 If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
4506 Did I say 2? I lied.
4508 Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
4509 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4511 Did you know that if you took all the economists in the world and lined
4512 them up end to end, they'd still point in the wrong direction?
4516 That no-one ever reads these things?
4518 Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot
4519 that shot down the Korean jet? At one point he definitely states:
4521 "Natasha! First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and
4526 "Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
4527 conventional thing to happen to him."
4528 -- John Barrymore's dying words
4531 To stop sinning suddenly.
4534 Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
4536 Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
4537 Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
4539 Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
4541 Disc space -- the final frontier!
4543 Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my
4544 employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely
4545 coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is
4546 non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the
4547 absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader.
4548 The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for
4549 the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal,
4550 non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)
4552 Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be
4556 Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
4559 A different color or shape than our competitors.
4562 A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
4563 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4565 District of Columbia pedestrians who leap over passing autos to escape
4566 injury, and then strike the car as they come down, are liable for any
4567 damage inflicted on the vehicle.
4569 Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
4571 Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
4573 Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
4575 Do not drink coffee in early a.m. It will keep you awake until noon.
4577 Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to
4580 "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
4583 Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
4584 Violators will be prosecuted.
4585 (Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
4587 Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
4589 Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
4593 Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
4595 Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
4597 Do you have lysdexia?
4599 Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
4600 the time to take the dirt out of them?
4602 "Do you think what we're doing is wrong?"
4603 "Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!"
4604 "I've never done anything illegal before."
4605 "I thought you said you were an accountant!"
4607 Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
4608 when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
4611 Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must
4612 be good because the programmers hate it so much.
4614 Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
4616 Don: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was she
4618 W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of
4619 bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to
4620 sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia.
4621 Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
4622 W. C.: It's almost impossible.
4623 -- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson
4624 E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
4626 Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
4628 Don't be humble ... you're not that great.
4631 Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
4633 Don't change the reason, just change the excuses!
4636 "Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly,
4637 sincerely, extremely dangerously.
4639 They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs.
4640 They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They
4641 used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used
4642 finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used
4643 fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints.
4644 They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile.
4645 They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help.
4646 They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And
4647 what the hell, they caught him.
4649 -- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the
4652 Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
4654 Don't feed the bats tonight.
4656 Don't get even -- get odd!
4658 Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly
4659 misleading. Debug only code.
4662 "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes
4663 you nothing. It was here first."
4666 Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
4668 Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
4670 Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier.
4672 Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
4674 Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
4676 Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking
4679 Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone.
4681 Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
4683 Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy
4684 it today you can do it again tomorrow.
4686 "Don't say yes until I finish talking."
4689 Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business.
4693 Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in!
4696 Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
4699 Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out of it alive.
4701 Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
4703 "Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
4706 Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts
4708 -- The Old Farmer's Almanac
4710 "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
4711 good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
4714 Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already
4715 tomorrow in Australia.
4718 Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too
4719 busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
4721 Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
4723 Double-Blind Experiment, n.:
4724 An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is
4725 fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied by a
4726 belief in the tooth fairy.
4728 Down with categorical imperative!
4730 "Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
4732 Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
4733 The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front
4736 Drink Canada Dry! You might not succeed, but it *__
\b\bis* fun trying.
4738 Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
4740 Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic
4744 If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
4745 yourself as part of the problem.
4748 Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
4750 Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
4751 it holds the universe together ...
4754 Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
4755 has been discontinued.
4757 Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
4758 and captain of your soul.
4760 Due to lack of disk space, this fortune database has been
4763 During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several
4764 times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_
\a~{o[po ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_
\a~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o
4766 "Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have
4767 nothing whatever to do with it."
4768 -- W. Somerset Maugham
4773 Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more
4774 months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is
4775 an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)
4777 Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends
4779 /earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
4781 Earth is a beta site.
4783 "Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun."
4786 Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
4787 Black. Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the
4788 cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of
4789 the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this
4790 means the puzzle is solved.
4793 "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work."
4795 Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
4796 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
4799 Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K.
4801 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
4803 Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy
4804 would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it
4808 Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a
4809 percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
4812 Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
4815 Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
4818 Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!
4821 Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
4824 Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many
4825 people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable
4826 comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where
4827 the "nog" comes from.
4829 To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine gin and, if they are in
4832 Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
4833 of being a damned fool.
4837 A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
4838 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4840 Ehrman's Commentary:
4841 (1) Things will get worse before they get better.
4842 (2) Who said things would get better?
4844 Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
4845 -- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star
4848 Sits at the keyboard
4849 And waits for a line on the screen
4853 That will make the machine do some more.
4856 All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
4857 All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
4859 Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
4862 Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
4864 Elevators smell different to midgets
4866 Emerson's Law of Contrariness:
4867 Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
4868 can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
4870 Encyclopedia Salesmen:
4871 Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police
4872 and tell them your house is being burgled.
4873 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
4875 Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
4876 Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
4877 -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
4879 Entropy isn't what it used to be.
4881 Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
4882 otherwise require harder thinking.
4886 When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably
4887 something his wife can beat him at.
4889 Equal bytes for women.
4891 Error in operator: add beer
4893 Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven
4894 Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
4895 Und aller-m"
\bumsige Burggoven
4896 Dir mohmen R"
\bath ausgraben.
4897 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
4899 Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
4903 Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that
4904 were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed
4905 from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy"
4906 ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow."
4909 Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
4913 "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit
4917 "Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
4918 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
4920 Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
4921 States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only two cents a
4924 Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
4925 just how busy they are.
4927 Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what,
4928 exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men."
4929 All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with
4930 spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about:
4931 Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please
4932 take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something?
4933 My wife is available. No. How about ..."
4934 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
4936 Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
4938 Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
4940 Every four seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this
4943 "Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one
4944 idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's
4945 sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all
4946 of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two
4947 highly-motivated, caustic twits."
4948 -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
4950 Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
4951 signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
4952 fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
4953 spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
4954 genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
4955 of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
4956 humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
4957 -- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
4959 Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
4961 Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in
4962 front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an
4963 odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even
4964 and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
4965 legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
4966 there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse
4967 of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
4968 color"], that does not exist.
4970 Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
4971 -- Frank Moore Colby
4973 Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
4975 Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
4978 "Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95."
4980 Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
4981 -- Miguel de Cervantes
4983 "Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the
4984 richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work"
4987 Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis.
4989 It makes sense, when you don't think about it.
4991 Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
4992 instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
4993 program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
4995 Every program has two purposes -- one for which it was written and
4996 another for which it wasn't.
4998 Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
5000 Every solution breeds new problems.
5002 Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
5003 guarantee of eventual success.
5005 "Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it."
5007 Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
5010 Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
5013 Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
5015 Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
5016 taught how ___
\b\b\bnot to. So it is with the great programmers.
5018 Everyone is a genius. It's just that some people are too stupid to
5021 Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
5022 formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
5023 scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
5024 wholly unconcerned with what ____
\b\b\b\bdoes exist. Indeed, the banality of
5025 existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
5026 discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
5027 problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
5028 mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
5029 one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
5031 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
5033 Everyone talks about apathy, but no one ____
\b\b\b\bdoes anything about it.
5035 Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
5036 no one we know belongs.
5038 Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being
5039 that a belch is more satisfying.
5042 Everything journalists write is true, except when they write about
5044 -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav,
5045 June 1999, FreeBSD-Stable Mailing List
5047 Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
5049 Everything you know is wrong!
5051 Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
5052 obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
5053 solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
5054 There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no
5056 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
5058 Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike office water cooler.
5060 Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
5062 Excellent day to have a rotten day.
5064 Excellent time to become a missing person.
5066 Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
5067 acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
5068 -- W. Somerset Maugham
5070 Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
5072 Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do
5076 Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
5078 Expense Accounts, n.:
5079 Corporate food stamps.
5081 Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
5084 Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
5085 when you make it again.
5088 Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and
5089 the instruction afterward.
5091 Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old
5094 Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
5096 Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
5099 Someone who comes from out of town and shows slides.
5101 Extract from Official Sweepstakes Rules:
5103 NO PURCHASE REQUIRED TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE
5105 To claim your prize without purchase, do the following: (a) Carefully
5106 cut out your computer-printed name and address from upper right hand
5107 corner of the Prize Claim Form. (b) Affix computer-printed name and
5108 address -- with glue or cellophane tape (no staples or paper clips) --
5109 to a 3x5 inch index card. (c) Also cut out the "No" paragraph (lower
5110 left hand corner of Prize Claim Form) and affix it to the 3x5 card
5111 below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your
5112 computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL
5113 SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.) (e) Finally place 3x5 card
5114 (without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the the
5115 Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be
5116 disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595. Print
5117 this address correctly. Comply with above instructions carefully and
5118 completely or you may be disqualified from receiving your prize.
5120 F: When into a room I plunge, I
5121 Sometimes find some VIOLET FUNGI.
5122 Then I linger, darkly brooding
5123 On the poison they're exuding.
5124 -- The Roguelet's ABC
5126 f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
5128 f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
5130 F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!
5132 Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
5135 A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
5137 Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
5138 without looking to see whether the seeds move.
5141 That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be
5145 A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost
5146 religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to
5147 have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
5149 Familiarity breeds attempt
5151 Families, when a child is born
5152 Want it to be intelligent.
5153 I, through intelligence,
5154 Having wrecked my whole life,
5155 Only hope the baby will prove
5156 Ignorant and stupid.
5157 Then he will crown a tranquil life
5158 By becoming a Cabinet Minister
5162 Conspicuously miserable.
5168 (1) Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
5169 (2) Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
5170 (3) What happens if you touch these two wires tog--
5171 (4) We won't need reservations.
5172 (5) It's always sunny there this time of the year.
5173 (6) Don't worry, it's not loaded.
5174 (7) They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
5177 (1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
5178 (2) "You and what army?"
5179 (3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
5182 Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
5183 Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
5184 Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
5185 utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
5186 forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
5187 are a pretty neat idea ...
5188 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
5190 Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
5196 Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions ...
5198 Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children,
5201 Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
5202 If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
5205 If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you
5208 Fifth Law of Procrastination:
5209 Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
5210 there is nothing important to do.
5212 Fifty flippant frogs
5213 Walked by on flippered feet
5214 And with their slime they made the time
5217 Fights between cats and dogs are prohibited by statute in Barber, North
5221 Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
5223 Finagle's First Law:
5224 If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
5226 Finagle's fourth Law:
5227 Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes
5230 Finagle's Second Law:
5231 No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
5232 someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it
5233 happened according to his own pet theory.
5235 Finagle's Third Law:
5236 In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
5237 beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
5240 (1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
5241 (2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
5242 don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
5244 Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture
5246 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
5248 Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
5250 Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
5253 Functionality breeds Contempt.
5255 Finish the sentence below in 25 words or less:
5257 "Love is what you feel just before you give someone a good ..."
5259 Mail your answer along with the top half of your supervisor to:
5262 Baffled Greek, Michigan
5264 First, a few words about tools.
5266 Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of
5267 the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously
5268 injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If
5269 you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look
5270 particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for
5271 granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
5272 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
5274 First Corollary of Taber's Second Law:
5275 Machines that piss people off get murdered.
5278 First Law of Bicycling:
5279 No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
5282 First Law of Procrastination:
5283 Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
5284 for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed
5287 First Law of Socio-Genetics:
5288 Celibacy is not hereditary.
5290 First Rule of History:
5291 History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
5294 "First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
5295 -- Dr. Who, "Doctor Who"
5297 Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
5300 Flappity, floppity, flip
5301 The mouse on the m"
\bobius strip;
5304 In a chronodimensional skip.
5306 FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when
5307 the little hand is on the ....
5310 There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
5311 the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
5313 Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
5314 husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my
5317 "Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
5318 a moment. Perhaps they're mislead."
5320 "No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence. "I remember putting them
5321 in my burette ... We must call a copper."
5323 Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
5324 said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
5327 "We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
5328 dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can
5329 catch him there." With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
5330 activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
5331 -- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"
5334 [From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart
5335 "a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."]
5336 1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction
5337 problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation
5338 using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic
5339 doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for
5340 wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A
5341 thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's
5342 Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce
5343 flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate
5344 (a problem) with esoteric cartoons.
5345 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
5348 When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
5349 world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
5351 Flying saucers on occasion
5352 Show themselves to human eyes.
5353 Aliens fume, put off invasion
5354 While they brand these tales as lies.
5357 Excessively (often obnoxiously) bright lamps mounted on the
5358 fronts of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the
5359 driver's brain is in a fog.
5361 See also "Idiot Lights".
5363 Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
5364 -- Walt Kelly, "Putluck Pogo"
5366 For 20 dollars, I'll give you a good fortune next time ...
5368 For a good time, call (510) 642-9483
5370 For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a
5373 "For an adequate time call 555-3321"
5375 For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
5376 always old-fashioned.
5378 For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
5382 For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
5385 For large values of one, one equals two, for small values of two.
5387 For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire
5388 life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days
5389 now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets
5390 when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch
5391 in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have
5392 the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which
5393 means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are
5394 advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are
5395 the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their
5396 names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot
5397 ("part of this complete breakfast").
5398 -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
5400 For perfect happiness, remember two things:
5401 (1) Be content with what you've got.
5402 (2) Be sure you've got plenty.
5404 For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
5405 "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
5406 -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to
5409 For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
5411 "For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of
5412 a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with
5413 computers altogether?"
5416 For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they
5420 "For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but
5421 phone calls taper off."
5424 For what it's worth, if you -can- get Michelle Pfeiffer to model
5425 a latex daemon suit for the catalog, I strongly suggest you do.
5426 Breasts can sell anything. Shiny red latex body suits start
5429 -- Brian McGroarty <bvmcg@yahoo.com>
5431 For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
5432 I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
5433 But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
5434 Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
5435 -- Justin Richardson.
5437 For your penance, say five Hail Marys and one loud BLAH!
5440 A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their
5441 destitution of conscience.
5443 Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
5445 fortune: cpu time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped.
5447 FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS! #6
5449 RAZORBACK: Paul Harbride, 1984, 2 hours 25 min.
5450 One of the great Australian films of the early 1980's, and
5451 arguably the best movie ever made about a large, man-eating
5452 hog. Some violence. With Gregory Harrison.
5454 Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samuri
5455 sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
5457 Oh, and have a nice day!
5458 -- Bryce Nesbitt '84
5460 fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate:
5462 I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine.
5463 "Hey you, get off my plate"
5466 Fortune's Fictitious Country Song Title of the Week:
5467 "How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?"
5469 Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month):
5471 Don't Write On Walls!
5475 You want I should type?
5477 Fortune's Law of the Week (this week, from Kentucky):
5478 No female shall appear in a bathing suit at any airport in this
5479 State unless she is escorted by two officers or unless she is armed
5480 with a club. The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females
5481 weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it
5482 apply to female horses.
5484 Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
5485 Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an
5486 impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
5487 clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
5488 exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.
5490 DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
5491 having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
5492 HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
5493 DINGELL: They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter
5494 is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
5495 large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
5496 amounts of fertilization ...
5497 HOFFMAN: Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many
5498 teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
5500 Fortune's Office Door Sign of the Week:
5502 Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige.
5504 FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS #14
5506 Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good
5507 liquor at BYOB parties? Take along a candle, which you insert and
5508 light after you've opened the bottle. No one ever expects anything
5509 drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck.
5511 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #18:
5514 A: No, I'm divorced.
5515 Q: And what did your husband do before you divorced him?
5516 A: A lot of things I didn't know about.
5518 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #19:
5520 Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
5521 A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.
5523 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #29:
5525 THE JUDGE: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present
5526 information and prejudice from your minds, if you have
5529 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #32:
5531 Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now?
5532 A: I will be three months November 8th.
5533 Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th?
5535 Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time?
5537 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37:
5539 Q: Did he pick the dog up by the ears?
5541 Q: What was he doing with the dog's ears?
5542 A: Picking them up in the air.
5543 Q: Where was the dog at this time?
5544 A: Attached to the ears.
5546 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #3:
5548 Q: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were
5549 able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to
5550 go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with
5552 MR. BROOKS: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot.
5554 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #41:
5556 Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
5558 Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
5560 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:
5562 Q: What is your name?
5563 A: Ernestine McDowell.
5564 Q: And what is your marital status?
5567 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7:
5569 Q: What happened then?
5570 A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify
5575 Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
5576 The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
5577 instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
5580 Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
5581 except study for that instructor's course.
5583 Fourth Law of Revision:
5584 It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
5585 interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you.
5587 Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not
5588 almost one, it is damn near zero.
5591 Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a
5594 FreeBSD: everything but the fairings
5596 FreeBSD: Have you had your fairings today?
5598 FreeBSD: It's 3am at night. Do you know where your fairings are?
5601 If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
5603 Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
5605 I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
5606 The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
5607 The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caesar. The cool Brutus
5608 Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
5609 If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
5610 And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
5611 Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
5612 So are they all, all cool cats, --
5613 Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down.
5615 Frisbeetarianism, n.:
5616 The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the on roof and
5620 To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ.
5621 Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a
5622 frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
5623 sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless
5624 manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
5625 search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is
5626 turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
5627 he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
5628 screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
5629 turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
5631 Frobnitz, pl. Frobnitzem (frob'nitsm) n.:
5632 An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to
5633 electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to
5634 FROTZ, or more commonly to FROB. Also used are FROBNULE, FROBULE, and
5635 FROBNODULE. Starting perhaps in 1979, FROBBOZ (fruh-bahz'), pl.
5636 FROBBOTZIM, has also become very popular, largely due to its exposure
5637 via the Adventure spin-off called Zork (Dungeon). These can also be
5638 applied to non-physical objects, such as data structures.
5640 From a Tru64 patch description:
5642 Fixes a bug that causes a panic due to software error
5644 [From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology
5645 Association, in Rome]:
5647 The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria
5648 and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not
5649 spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods,
5650 or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in
5651 millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have
5652 reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology
5653 engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general,
5654 president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social
5655 schizophrenia in mass genocide.
5657 From the "Guiness Book of World Records", 1973:
5659 Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and
5660 the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the
5661 Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his
5662 candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground
5663 nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts,
5664 other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not
5665 qualify as nuts (unground)(other than ground nuts) by reason of their
5666 being nuts (unground)."
5668 From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was
5669 convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
5670 -- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults"
5672 [From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made
5675 The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT
5676 MATRIX LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is
5677 featured by permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality
5678 against low cost", "diversified functions with compact design",
5679 "flexibility in accessibleness and durability of approx. 2000,000,00
5680 Dot/Head", "being sophisticated in mechanism but possibly agile
5681 operating under noises being extremely suppressed" etc.
5683 And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help
5684 achieve "super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by
5685 HOST COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.
5687 From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the
5688 instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new
5689 experience in sound:
5691 5. Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees. The pin-spreading
5692 sound is normal for this type of connector.
5694 From too much love of living,
5695 From hope and fear set free,
5696 We thank with brief thanksgiving,
5697 Whatever gods may be,
5698 That no life lives forever,
5699 That dead men rise up never,
5700 That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
5704 If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well
5707 Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
5708 Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
5711 Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank
5712 even when you are the only person in line.
5713 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
5715 Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
5718 Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
5720 G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One
5721 of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
5722 secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
5723 `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And
5724 that's your chance, my boy."
5726 Garbage In -- Gospel Out.
5729 An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
5730 stockings and desolating the country.
5731 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5733 Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall
5734 on our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
5735 -- Adventures of Asterix.
5737 Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
5739 Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound
5740 than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference:
5741 "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
5743 Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
5744 speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
5745 long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
5746 your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
5747 so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed
5748 individuals and then grow ...
5749 Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
5750 signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
5751 everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on
5752 the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
5753 backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I
5754 think not, my friend, I think not.
5755 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
5757 "Gee, Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore."
5759 GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
5760 You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you
5761 because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much
5762 for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for
5765 GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20)
5766 Good news and bad news highlighted. Enjoy the good news while
5767 you can; the bad news will make you forget it. You will enjoy praise
5768 and respect from those around you; everybody loves a sucker. A short
5769 trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's room.
5772 The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
5773 determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and
5775 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
5777 Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
5780 Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
5785 A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with
5788 George Orwell 1984. Northwestern 0.
5789 -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
5791 George Orwell was an optimist.
5793 George Washington was first in war, first in peace -- and the first to
5794 have his birthday juggled to make a long weekend.
5797 Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
5798 (1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
5800 (2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
5801 (3) The energy required to change either one of these states
5802 will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
5803 much as to make the task totally impossible.
5805 Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
5807 Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
5811 (2) You can't break even.
5812 (3) You can't even quit the game.
5814 Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
5815 Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
5816 meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
5819 (1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
5820 (2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
5822 (3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the
5825 Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place
5826 to stand, and I will drain the world.
5828 "Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war."
5831 Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
5833 Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to
5836 Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
5838 "Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying
5839 around, I'd rather lie around. No contest."
5842 Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden:
5843 Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP
5844 machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
5845 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
5847 Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
5848 Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
5849 probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some
5853 A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to
5855 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
5857 Go climb a gravity well!
5859 Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
5860 be in owning a piece thereof.
5861 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
5863 Go 'way! You're bothering me!
5865 God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six
5866 days and then pulled an all-nighter.
5868 God doesn't play dice.
5871 "God gives burdens; also shoulders"
5873 Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the
5874 end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I
5875 can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why
5876 would he lie about a thing like that?
5877 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
5879 God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ...
5880 The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do
5881 not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman
5882 ... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on
5883 smoking and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and
5884 water is not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in
5885 the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at
5887 -- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
5889 God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
5891 God is a polytheist.
5900 God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's
5902 God is real, unless declared integer.
5904 God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the
5905 elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying
5909 God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
5912 God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
5914 God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
5916 God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
5919 God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
5922 God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
5924 God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
5927 God must love the Common Man; He made so many of them.
5929 God rest ye CS students now,
5930 Let nothing you dismay.
5931 The VAX is down and won't be up,
5932 Until the first of May.
5933 The program that was due this morn,
5934 Won't be postponed, they say.
5936 Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
5938 Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
5940 The bearings on the drum are gone,
5941 The disk is wobbling, too.
5942 We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
5943 Can't tell false from true.
5944 And now we find that we can't get
5949 Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
5950 school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
5954 A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It
5955 is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
5956 immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
5957 hasn't done anything to them.
5958 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
5960 Goldenstern's Rules:
5961 (1) Always hire a rich attorney
5962 (2) Never buy from a rich salesman.
5964 Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
5966 -- La Rouchefoucauld
5968 Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
5970 Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
5972 Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
5974 Good day to let down old friends who need help.
5976 Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
5978 Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
5980 Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
5982 Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
5985 "Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored."
5986 -- George Saunders' dying words
5989 If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing
5992 Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with
5993 time travel, you never can tell."
5994 -- Dr. Who, "Androids of Tara"
5996 //GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH
5999 Call Avogadro 6.02 x 10^23
6002 A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
6003 to complain about unstructured programmers.
6006 Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
6007 -- John Updike, "Couples"
6009 Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are
6012 Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know
6013 any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he
6018 2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
6020 Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
6022 Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.
6024 Grandpa Charnock's Law:
6025 You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
6027 Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
6029 Gray's Law of Programming:
6030 `_
\bn+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
6031 time as `_
\bn' tasks.
6033 Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
6034 `_
\bn+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_
\bn' trivial tasks.
6036 Great minds run in great circles.
6038 Green light in a.m. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for traffic
6042 Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
6045 Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
6048 "Grub first, then ethics."
6052 The red warning flag at the top of a club sandwich which
6053 prevents the person from biting into it and puncturing the roof of his
6055 -- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
6058 A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
6059 free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
6060 other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
6061 mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the
6062 other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
6063 offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
6064 torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
6065 -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
6067 H: If a 'GOBLIN (HOB) waylays you,
6068 Slice him up before he slays you.
6069 Nothing makes you look a slob
6070 Like running from a HOB'LIN (GOB).
6071 -- The Roguelet's ABC
6073 H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L.
6074 Mencken -- there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.
6075 -- Maxwell Bodenheim
6077 H. L. Mencken's Law:
6078 Those who can -- do.
6079 Those who can't -- teach.
6082 Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
6085 The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
6086 nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
6088 Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
6091 He sure is a fun god
6094 Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big
6095 enough majority in any town?
6096 -- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
6098 Half Moon tonight. (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)
6101 This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still
6102 crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference
6103 between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
6104 the difference between life and death.
6105 You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
6106 there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
6107 airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
6108 Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
6109 Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
6110 about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the
6111 man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
6112 Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
6113 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
6115 Hall's Laws of Politics:
6116 (1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
6117 (2) Citizens want honest politicians until they want something
6119 (3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend
6120 military spending, and conservatives social spending in
6121 their own districts).
6124 A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
6125 commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
6126 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6129 Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
6132 Hanson's Treatment of Time:
6133 There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
6136 Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
6139 Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
6143 An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
6145 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6147 Hard work may not kill you, but why take chances?
6150 The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
6152 Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
6153 The Duke is fond of kittens
6154 He likes to take their insides out
6155 And use them for his mittens
6156 From "The Thirteen Clocks"
6158 Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
6159 Advertising wondrous things.
6162 Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender. You stand
6163 convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.
6166 Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
6167 Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment
6171 All the good ones are taken.
6173 Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
6174 makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
6175 famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses
6176 probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
6177 have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like
6178 enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their
6179 attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock
6180 down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law,
6181 just like Richard Nixon."
6182 -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
6184 Hartley's First Law:
6185 You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
6186 on his back, you've got something.
6188 Hartley's Second Law:
6189 Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
6192 Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
6193 temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will
6194 do as it damn well pleases.
6196 "Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
6197 "Yes, I don't have one."
6198 "Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors ..."
6199 -- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
6201 Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
6202 typed with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
6203 keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
6204 of both hands. It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
6205 not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.
6208 A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
6210 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6212 Have an adequate day.
6214 Have people realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is
6215 to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a
6216 non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
6218 Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This
6219 still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or
6220 only serves to blunt the warning signs.
6222 Long live the revolution!
6225 Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell
6226 you, "There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time
6229 Have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs,
6230 I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood container
6231 filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite
6232 sex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in
6233 their hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes or
6234 mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything , which is why
6235 they are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week.
6236 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
6238 "Have you lived here all your life?"
6239 "Oh, twice that long."
6241 Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
6242 crack in your sidewalk?
6244 Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
6245 sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
6248 Have you reconsidered a computer career?
6250 HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
6251 SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their ___
\b\b\bOWN brains.
6254 "He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental
6255 effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable
6257 -- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails"
6259 "He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions"
6261 He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation
6262 perfectly delightful.
6265 He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and
6266 heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
6267 of ever behaving "normally."
6268 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
6270 He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
6273 "He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
6276 He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
6278 He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
6279 -- John Mason Brown, drama critic
6281 He thought he saw an albatross
6282 That fluttered 'round the lamp.
6283 He looked again and saw it was
6284 A penny postage stamp.
6285 "You'd best be getting home," he said,
6286 "The nights are rather damp."
6288 He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
6291 "He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him
6294 "He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both
6297 He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
6298 attacks democracy itself.
6299 -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
6301 He who Laughs, Lasts.
6303 Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
6305 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying
6310 A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
6311 their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
6313 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6316 Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
6318 "Heisenberg may have slept here"
6320 Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
6324 The first myth of management is that it exists.
6326 Johnson's Corollary:
6327 Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
6331 -- Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent
6333 Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
6335 HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN!
6338 Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
6340 Help fight continental drift.
6342 Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file!
6344 Help stamp out and abolish redundancy.
6346 Her locks an ancient lady gave
6347 Her loving husband's life to save;
6348 And men -- they honored so the dame --
6349 Upon some stars bestowed her name.
6351 But to our modern married fair,
6352 Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
6353 No stellar recognition's given.
6354 There are not stars enough in heaven.
6356 "Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
6357 Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ..."
6359 Here I sit, broken-hearted,
6360 All logged in, but work unstarted.
6361 First net.this and net.that,
6362 And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.
6364 The boss comes by, and I play the game,
6365 Then I turn back to net.flame.
6366 Is there a cure (I need your views),
6367 For someone trapped in net.news?
6369 I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,
6370 'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
6372 Here in my heart, I am Helen;
6373 I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
6374 I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"
\bel;
6375 I'm Salome, moon of the East.
6377 Here in my soul I am Sappho;
6378 Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
6379 In me R'
\becamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
6380 With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
6382 I'm all of the glamorous ladies
6383 At whose beckoning history shook.
6384 But you are a man, and see only my pan,
6385 So I stay at home with a book.
6388 Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
6389 lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
6390 your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
6391 Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
6392 pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
6393 but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
6394 important electrical lesson.
6396 It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed
6397 your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
6398 objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
6399 attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
6400 collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
6401 friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
6402 carpet, thus completing the circuit.
6404 Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
6405 touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
6406 finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you
6408 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
6410 "Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like
6411 `Psychic Wins Lottery'?"
6414 "He's just a politician trying to save both his faces ..."
6416 He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
6417 there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
6419 "He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ..."
6421 Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs,
6422 then they'd be algorithms.
6424 "Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
6427 "Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet.
6428 As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of
6429 equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney.
6430 Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you
6431 probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of
6432 course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my
6433 experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out
6434 of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser.
6436 "Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our
6437 motto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'"
6438 -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering"
6440 Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
6441 reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
6442 nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
6444 Hier liegt ein Mann ganz ohnegleich;
6445 Im Leibe dick, an Suenden reich.
6446 Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws
6447 Weil es uns duenkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head;
6448 We buried him today because
6449 As far as we can tell, he's dead.
6450 -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty
6451 Sue Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher;
6452 "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter
6457 Ruffled the critics by
6459 "Phooey on Freud and his
6461 Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
6464 Hindsight is an exact science.
6467 An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
6468 The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
6469 The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
6470 is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full
6472 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6474 Hire the morally handicapped.
6476 "His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had
6477 money, he went to Southern California."
6479 "His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice"
6482 "His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier."
6484 History is curious stuff
6485 You'd think by now we had enough
6486 Yet the fact remains I fear
6487 They make more of it every year.
6490 Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we
6491 learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from
6492 what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long
6494 -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
6496 History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
6499 If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
6500 will find an easier way to do it.
6502 Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
6503 Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
6507 It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
6508 Hofstadter's Law into account.
6510 Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
6513 Home of Doberman Propulsion Laboratories:
6514 The ultimate in watchdog weaponry.
6517 "Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense"
6519 Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
6522 Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
6524 Honk if you love peace and quiet.
6527 Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
6528 bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
6529 honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
6530 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6532 Horngren's Observation:
6533 Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
6535 Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
6539 Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.
6541 "Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed."
6544 How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
6546 How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
6548 How come wrong numbers are never busy?
6550 "How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows."
6552 How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
6555 How doth the little crocodile
6556 Improve his shining tail,
6557 And pour the waters of the Nile
6558 On every golden scale!
6560 How cheerfully he seems to grin,
6561 How neatly spreads his claws,
6562 And welcomes little fishes in,
6563 With gently smiling jaws!
6564 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
6566 How doth the VAX's C compiler
6567 Improve its object code.
6568 And even as we speak does it
6569 Increase the system load.
6571 How patiently it seems to run
6572 And spit out error flags,
6573 While users, with frustration, all
6574 Tear their clothes to rags.
6576 How doth the VAX's C-compiler
6577 Improve its object code.
6578 And even as we speak does it
6579 Increase the system load.
6581 How patiently it seems to run
6582 And spit out error flags,
6583 While users, with frustration, all
6584 Tear all their clothes to rags.
6586 How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
6589 How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
6590 None: "We'll fix it in software."
6592 How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
6593 None: "We'll document it in the manual."
6595 How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
6596 None: "The user can work it out."
6598 "How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being
6599 carried by a waiter at a nice party?"
6601 Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
6602 d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell
6603 what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then
6604 say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it
6605 back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another
6607 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
6609 How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to
6611 -- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey
6613 How to become a sysop:
6614 I grew a beard, started wearing only t-shirts and jeans, and
6615 developed a surly attitude. The group accepted me, and I've never
6616 worked a full day in my life since then.
6619 How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
6621 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
6622 #1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces.
6624 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
6625 #15 Your pet rock snaps at you.
6627 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
6629 #32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of
6633 Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
6635 However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
6636 manner ... sulking and nausea.
6639 HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill.,
6640 motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate
6641 amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits.
6642 The Senate amendment was an amendment to the House amendment to the
6643 Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the
6644 bill. The original Senate amendment was the conference agreement on
6645 the bill. Agreed to.
6646 -- Albuquerque Journal
6648 Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
6650 Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in
6651 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an
6652 operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a urethral
6653 catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of
6654 his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took
6655 the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the
6658 Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
6660 "Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
6663 Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
6664 The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
6665 to ..... to ........ uh ..............
6667 I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a
6668 professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any
6669 other minority viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority.
6672 What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?
6675 I am a PC technician - however, this has unfortunately caused my
6676 computer to be running Win98.
6677 -- seen on a FreeBSD mailing-list
6679 "I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder
6680 have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.
6681 This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's
6682 reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go
6684 -- timw@zeb.USWest.COM
6686 "I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person,
6687 of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell
6688 you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
6689 atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something
6690 inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering."
6691 -- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
6693 I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work.
6695 "I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!"
6698 "I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger."
6701 I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party.
6704 "I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
6705 -- English Professor
6707 "I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the
6708 great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
6709 -- Winston Churchill
6711 "I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
6712 has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."
6713 -- English Professor, Ohio University
6715 I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
6716 with an option to buy.
6718 "I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater."
6720 "I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of
6721 the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for
6722 you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway."
6723 -- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
6724 University of Tennessee at Knoxville
6726 "I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an
6727 argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and
6728 steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect,
6729 they don't even invite me."
6732 "I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean."
6735 "I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat."
6738 "I bet the human brain is a kludge."
6741 I brake for chezlogs!
6743 I call them as I see them. If I can't see them, I make them up.
6746 I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan
6747 prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very
6748 bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after
6752 I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
6754 "I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
6755 25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be
6759 "I can resist anything but temptation."
6761 "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
6764 I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
6765 of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ...
6766 -- F. H. Wales (1936)
6768 I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
6770 What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
6771 grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
6772 of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
6773 United States would have lost World War II."
6774 -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
6776 "I can't complain, but sometimes I still do."
6779 "I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling."
6780 -- Florence Henderson
6782 I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can
6784 -- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
6786 I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
6787 novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
6790 I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather
6791 dance with the cows till you come home.
6794 "I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps
6795 the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ..."
6798 "I didn't know it was impossible when I did it."
6800 I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions. The
6803 I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
6804 exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to
6805 minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary
6806 accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a
6807 mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the
6808 bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always
6810 -- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)
6812 "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them."
6815 "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
6816 with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use."
6819 "I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should."
6820 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
6822 "I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
6823 don't believe in astrology."
6824 -- James R. F. Quirk
6826 I don't believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just
6827 a BIG HOAX on the part of the plastic sign salesmen -- to sell more
6830 I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial. I don't like the idea of
6831 a frog jumping on my Breakfast.
6832 -- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82
6834 "I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
6838 "I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
6839 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
6841 "I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of
6842 people waiting to abuse me."
6843 -- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
6845 I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
6848 "I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd
6849 eat it, and I just hate it."
6852 "I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path."
6855 I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
6856 streets and frighten the horses.
6859 "I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?"
6861 "I don't think so," said Ren'
\be Descartes. Just then, he vanished.
6863 "I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other
6864 hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out."
6866 I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that
6867 the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress is
6868 thinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientists
6869 broadcast signals to alien beings. This would be a large mistake.
6870 Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons. You cannot cut off
6871 their federal programs as if they were merely poor people ...
6872 -- Davy Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE
6875 I doubt, therefore I might be.
6877 "I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
6878 on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
6879 he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual
6880 becoming, with a goal in front and not behind."
6881 -- George Bernard Shaw
6883 "I drink to make other people interesting."
6884 -- George Jean Nathan
6886 I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
6887 so I woke up from sheer boredom.
6889 I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
6890 accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
6891 the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
6892 can't be measured in monetary terms.
6894 Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
6895 that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
6896 subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
6897 someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
6898 understand his long delay.
6900 "I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words."
6902 "I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
6903 reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
6906 I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex. It was the most *__________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bhorrifying* 20
6909 'I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."
6912 I get up each morning, gather my wits.
6913 Pick up the paper, read the obits.
6914 If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
6915 So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
6917 I get up each morning, gather my wits.
6918 Pick up the paper, read the obits.
6919 If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
6920 So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
6922 Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
6923 My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
6924 But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
6925 And think of the places my get-up has been.
6928 "I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
6929 Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!"
6932 "I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense."
6934 "I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
6935 it's going to be up all night."
6938 "I hate quotations."
6939 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
6941 I have a simple philosophy:
6945 Scratch where it itches.
6948 "I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it
6951 "I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show,
6952 which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'."
6953 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
6955 I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth
6956 and they never believe me.
6957 -- Camillo Di Cavour
6959 I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it.
6962 "I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You
6963 sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an
6964 eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I
6965 have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of
6966 beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a
6967 guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more
6968 of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry."
6969 -- President Harry S Truman
6972 To spell hors d'oeuvres
6973 Which still grates on
6974 Some people's n'oeuvres.
6977 "I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming
6978 that I have never made one."
6979 -- James Gordon Bennett
6981 "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
6985 I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole
6987 -- from "Cerebus" #82
6989 "I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer."
6990 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
6992 "I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."
6995 "I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it
6996 scattered around the beaches of the world ... Perhaps you've seen it.
6999 "I have to convince you, or at least snow you ..."
7000 -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
7002 "I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking
7003 his keys in his car; the other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell
7004 beating up a child."
7007 I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
7008 at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
7011 "I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere."
7013 "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it."
7015 I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!
7017 "I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
7020 I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once.
7022 "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
7023 War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
7026 "I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
7027 The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building."
7030 "I like being single. I'm always there when I need me."
7033 I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
7034 promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want
7035 peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
7036 the way and let them have it.
7037 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
7039 "I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours."
7041 "I like your game but we have to change the rules."
7043 "I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what
7044 entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils."
7045 -- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
7047 "I love to eat them Smurfies
7048 Smurfies what I love to eat
7049 Bite they ugly heads off,
7050 Nibble on they bluish feet."
7052 "I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but
7053 don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the
7055 -- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk
7057 "I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
7058 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
7060 "I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
7061 week sometimes to make it up."
7062 -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
7064 I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
7066 "I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
7069 "I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like."
7071 I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
7072 -- George Bernard Shaw
7074 "I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"
7075 -- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
7077 "I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the
7078 kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled
7079 substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no
7080 restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we
7081 made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given
7082 powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative
7084 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
7086 I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow!
7088 "I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral
7090 -- William F. Buckley
7092 I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that
7093 the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
7094 congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile
7095 so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the
7098 But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such
7099 as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of
7100 the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never
7101 win large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually
7102 write about, such as nose-picking.
7103 -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
7106 I really hate this damned machine
7107 I wish that they would sell it.
7108 It never does quite what I want
7109 But only what I tell it.
7111 "I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person."
7113 I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope
7114 they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
7117 I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
7118 I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
7119 Bernoulli would have been content to die
7120 Had he but known such _
\ba-squared cos 2(phi)!
7121 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
7123 I sent a letter to the fish,
7124 I told them, "This is what I wish."
7125 The little fishes of the sea,
7126 They sent an answer back to me.
7127 The little fishes' answer was
7128 "We cannot do it, sir, because ..."
7129 I sent a letter back to say
7130 It would be better to obey.
7131 But someone came to me and said
7132 "The little fishes are in bed."
7133 I said to him, and I said it plain
7134 "Then you must wake them up again."
7135 I said it very loud and clear,
7136 I went and shouted in his ear.
7137 But he was very stiff and proud,
7138 He said "You needn't shout so loud."
7139 And he was very proud and stiff,
7140 He said "I'll go and wake them if ..."
7141 I took a kettle from the shelf,
7142 I went to wake them up myself.
7143 But when I found the door was locked
7144 I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
7145 And when I found the door was shut,
7146 I tried to turn the handle, But ...
7148 "Is that all?" asked Alice.
7149 "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
7150 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
7152 "I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck."
7153 -- Graffito in Los Angeles
7155 "I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full
7156 house and four people died."
7159 "I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to
7160 see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."
7163 I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do
7164 too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which
7165 direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After
7166 much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot
7168 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
7170 "I think it is true for all _
\bn. I was just playing it safe with _
\bn >= 3
7171 because I couldn't remember the proof."
7172 -- Baker, Pure Math 351a
7174 "I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it."
7176 I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
7177 and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
7178 country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people
7179 in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly
7180 not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
7183 I think that I shall never see
7184 A billboard lovely as a tree.
7185 Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
7186 I'll never see a tree at all.
7189 I think that I shall never see
7190 A thing as lovely as a tree.
7191 But as you see the trees have gone
7192 They went this morning with the dawn.
7193 A logging firm from out of town
7194 Came and chopped the trees all down.
7195 But I will trick those dirty skunks
7196 And write a brand new poem called 'Trunks'.
7198 "I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
7199 to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the
7200 farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
7201 into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
7202 the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
7203 off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
7204 color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
7205 out, it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars
7206 singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors."
7207 -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
7209 I think the world would be a more peaceful place if people
7210 could just keep their fingers out of the fortune files.
7211 -- Jordan K. Hubbard
7213 I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown
7214 ... HEY! PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT! I said I think
7215 we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today.
7216 When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that we
7217 are happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war. This point was
7218 driven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and Raisa
7219 Gorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin,
7220 were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteous
7222 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
7224 "I thought you were trying to get into shape."
7225 "I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
7227 I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in
7228 twenty minutes. It's about Russia.
7231 I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
7233 "I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance."
7235 "I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure."
7237 "I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my
7238 body. Then I realized who was telling me this."
7241 I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere
7245 I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to
7246 animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for
7247 anything connected with society except that which makes the roads
7248 safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women
7249 warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.
7252 "I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St.
7253 Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE
7255 -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"
7257 I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know
7258 anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is
7259 a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows
7263 "I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I
7264 put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured
7265 what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I
7266 should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
7267 get off my driveway."
7270 "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
7274 I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
7275 their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to
7276 buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
7277 -- Emile Henry Gauvreay
7279 "I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full
7280 house and four people died."
7283 "I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything
7287 I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained
7288 it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
7289 stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
7290 I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
7291 absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
7292 developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
7293 Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
7294 temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I
7295 chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to
7296 the point where it would not run at all.
7297 -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
7298 Holes and the Fate of Stars"
7300 "I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
7301 questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
7302 speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
7304 He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
7308 "I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in
7309 the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't
7313 "I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the
7314 statues that are in all the other museums."
7317 I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
7318 it took seven others to beat him!
7320 "I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
7321 There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work."
7324 "I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
7325 always worked for me."
7326 -- Hunter S. Thompson
7329 Its syntax worse than JOSS;
7330 And everywhere this language went,
7331 It was a total loss.
7333 "I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous."
7335 "I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
7338 "I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat."
7340 "I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I
7343 "I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in
7346 "I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my
7349 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my
7352 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from
7353 Julian to Gregorian."
7355 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for
7358 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered."
7360 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
7361 cottage cheese sculpture."
7363 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving."
7365 "I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night."
7367 "I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma
7370 "I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV."
7372 "I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never
7375 "I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to stay
7378 "I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
7379 need worrying about."
7381 "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
7383 Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box
7384 of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.
7386 Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like
7387 solitary confinement.
7390 The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the
7391 stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
7392 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
7395 A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
7396 affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
7397 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7399 If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
7402 If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape
7403 at about 30 miles/second.
7404 -- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming
7406 "If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far."
7409 If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus
7410 forecast is a camel's behind.
7413 If A equals success, then the formula is _
\bA = _
\bX + _
\bY + _
\bZ. _
\bX is work. _
\bY
7414 is play. _
\bZ is keep your mouth shut.
7417 If a group of _
\bN persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _
\bN-1
7418 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
7421 If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four
7422 hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where
7424 -- Joseph C. Goulden
7426 If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
7429 If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
7431 If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have
7432 dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to
7433 maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it
7434 must drop. The law of gravity supersedes the law of golf.
7437 "If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good
7438 attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to
7439 playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win --
7440 unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager
7441 can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?"
7444 If all be true that I do think,
7445 There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
7446 Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
7447 Or lest we should be by-and-by,
7448 Or any other reason why.
7450 If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
7452 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
7454 If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot
7455 platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave
7456 that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska.
7458 If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
7461 If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
7465 If an S and an I and an O and a U
7466 With an X at the end spell Su;
7467 And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
7468 Pray what is a speller to do?
7469 Then, if also an S and an I and a G
7470 And an HED spell side,
7471 There's nothing much left for a speller to do
7472 But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
7473 -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
7475 If anything can go wrong, it will.
7477 If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
7479 If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
7481 If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
7484 "If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?"
7486 If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
7488 If everybody minded their own business, the world would go
7489 around a deal faster.
7490 -- The Duchess, "Through the Looking Glass"
7492 If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
7494 If God didn't mean for us to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three
7497 If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
7499 If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
7501 If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit
7504 If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their
7507 If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
7510 If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
7512 If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
7515 If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger
7518 If God is dead, who will save the Queen?
7520 If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
7522 "If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
7525 If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
7528 "If I am elected, the concrete barriers around the WHITE HOUSE will be
7529 replaced by tasteful foam replicas of ANN MARGARET!"
7531 If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
7534 If I don't drive around the park,
7535 I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
7536 If I'm in bed each night by ten,
7537 I may get back my looks again.
7538 If I abstain from fun and such,
7539 I'll probably amount to much;
7540 But I shall stay the way I am,
7541 Because I do not give a damn.
7544 If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture.
7546 If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
7547 plantation and go home.
7548 -- Eugene P. Gallagher
7550 If I had any humility I would be perfect.
7553 "If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
7556 If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
7557 shoulders of giants.
7560 In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
7561 with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
7564 If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
7568 In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
7571 If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
7573 On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
7574 also a psychological interaction.
7576 The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so
7579 The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
7580 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
7582 If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
7583 As Dame Fortune did intend,
7584 Murphy would be there to tell me
7585 The pot's at the other end.
7588 If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
7590 If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
7592 If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.
7593 They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun
7597 "If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they
7598 forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll
7599 just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail.
7600 And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty*
7601 pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken!
7602 And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and
7603 think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to
7604 receive Net Mail ..."
7605 -- Leith (Casey) Leedom
7607 If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
7609 If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
7612 If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women
7613 you've got in the house.
7614 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
7616 If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
7619 If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
7621 "If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
7622 little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
7623 Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."
7624 -- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
7626 If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
7629 If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
7630 in my name at a Swiss bank.
7631 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
7633 If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
7635 If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
7636 having to accomplish anything.
7638 If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
7639 he should see how bad it is with representation.
7641 If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
7642 arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
7643 physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
7644 entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
7647 If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
7651 "If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem."
7652 -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
7654 If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
7655 presumably flunk it.
7658 If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
7661 If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to
7662 get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
7663 See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving
7664 the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
7665 that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The
7666 college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious
7667 and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to
7668 rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective.
7669 Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure
7670 interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by
7671 opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
7672 himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
7673 boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
7674 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
7676 "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for
7678 -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
7680 If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
7683 If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down. If
7684 the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down. If the
7685 bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will
7686 exceed all expectations.
7687 -- Reverend Chichester
7689 If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
7691 If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
7692 will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
7694 If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
7697 If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make
7698 something out of you.
7701 If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
7703 If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.
7705 If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
7707 If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was
7710 If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
7712 -- Lyndon Baines Johnson
7714 If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
7715 -- Laurence J. Peter
7717 "If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely"
7719 "If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage."
7721 If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
7722 in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
7723 qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
7724 -- Marguerite Emmons
7726 If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
7729 "If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
7732 If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
7734 If you can read this, you're too close.
7736 If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
7738 If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
7741 If you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful, give me a
7744 If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
7746 If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
7748 If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
7750 If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
7753 If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.
7756 "If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little
7757 Lavoris in the toilet."
7760 If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to
7761 either of you for the rest of the day.
7763 "If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
7764 have to get a toehold in the public eye."
7766 If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
7769 If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
7771 -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
7773 "If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
7774 make the rubble bounce"
7775 -- Winston Churchill
7777 If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
7779 If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
7781 "If you have to hate, hate gently"
7783 If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to
7784 boot yourself in the posterior.
7787 If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
7789 If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
7792 If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few
7793 people die past the age of a hundred.
7796 If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
7797 really make them think they'll hate you.
7799 If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
7802 If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
7803 can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
7806 If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
7807 you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
7810 If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
7811 you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
7814 If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
7815 this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
7816 somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
7818 If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're
7821 If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
7823 If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker,
7824 It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock.
7825 Or some joker who is slicker,
7826 Will trick you of your liquor,
7827 If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock.
7829 If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
7830 -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
7832 If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
7835 If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
7839 If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
7842 If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
7843 shopping center in the world?
7846 If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
7847 shopping center in the world?
7850 If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would
7851 be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call
7852 you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw
7853 another party next year.
7855 What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up
7856 several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've
7857 been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to
7858 avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning
7859 parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from
7860 having another one ...
7862 If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless
7863 your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
7864 through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure
7865 that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting
7866 someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
7868 If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them
7869 end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
7870 -- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
7872 "If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything."
7875 If you want divine justice, die.
7878 If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people
7882 If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
7883 Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
7884 statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington
7885 telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with
7886 titles beginning with the word "National".
7889 If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
7890 word you say, talk in your sleep.
7892 "If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
7893 memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it,
7894 even if they don't know what it means."
7895 -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
7897 If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
7899 If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for
7900 tomorrow morning, sleep late.
7903 If you're happy, you're successful.
7905 If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
7907 If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
7908 -- Benjamin Disraeli
7910 If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
7912 "If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round
7913 it off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the
7916 If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
7920 The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car
7921 door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!"
7922 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
7924 Il brilgue: les t^
\boves libricilleux
7925 Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
7926 Enm^
\bim'
\bes sont les gougebosquex,
7927 Et le m^
\bomerade horgrave.
7928 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
7931 There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly
7932 at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it.
7935 "I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
7936 carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia,
7937 I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun."
7940 I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd
7942 -- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire
7944 I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
7945 Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
7946 And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
7947 And in our bound partition never part.
7948 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
7950 "I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
7951 That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood."
7952 -- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones]
7954 Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the
7955 land He's trying to ignore.
7957 "I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from
7960 I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me!
7962 "I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my
7965 I'm changing my name to Chrysler
7966 I'm going down to Washington, D.C.
7967 I'll tell some power broker
7968 What they did for Iacocca
7969 Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
7970 I'm changing my name to Chrysler,
7971 I'm heading for that great receiving line.
7972 When they hand a million grand out,
7973 I'll be standing with my hand out,
7974 Yessir, I'll get mine!
7977 I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did.
7979 "I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
7983 I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.
7986 I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
7989 "I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?"
7990 -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
7992 i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
7996 I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
7997 N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
7998 I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
7999 She's traversed me seven times before.
8000 And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
8001 Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!)
8002 I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
8003 N-ary the tree I am, I am,
8004 N-ary the tree I am.
8006 "I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
8007 It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get."
8009 "I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday
8012 I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is
8013 -- I could be just as proud for half the money.
8018 "I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____
\b\b\b\bREAL
8021 "I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it
8022 (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage."
8023 -- English Professor, Providence College
8025 "I'm sorry, but after reading this thread, I'm having a hard time
8026 coming up with an explanation for this nonsense which doesn't involve
8027 you being a dumbass."
8028 -- Bill Paul <wpaul@FreeBSD.org>
8030 I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
8031 I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
8032 In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
8033 I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
8034 -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"
8036 "I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's
8039 Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
8040 -- Jules de Gaultier
8042 "Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
8043 usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
8044 thinks of complaining."
8045 -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
8047 Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has
8048 a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
8049 storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on
8050 voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
8051 What's the first question that the computer community asks?
8053 "Is it PC compatible?"
8055 Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
8058 Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
8062 Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
8063 espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
8064 conflicting opinions.
8065 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8067 Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
8068 mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
8072 (1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve;
8073 (2) I can't be bothered; (3) God can't be bothered. Meaning (3) may
8074 perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
8075 -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
8077 In 1750 Issac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of
8080 In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled
8083 In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't
8086 In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The
8087 creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across.
8089 In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred
8092 In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only
8093 we can't control when the five year period will begin.
8095 In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
8096 Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
8099 In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
8100 "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
8103 In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground
8104 with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call
8105 this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.
8107 In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
8108 of the risks he takes.
8111 In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so
8112 sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All
8113 those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the
8114 devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up
8115 as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you.
8116 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
8118 In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
8120 -- The Peter Principle
8122 In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
8123 are to be treated as variables.
8125 "In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of
8126 nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir."
8129 In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own
8130 at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.
8132 In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs.
8134 In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
8135 will be temporarily canceled.
8137 In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and
8140 In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle
8141 a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order
8142 to get her attention.
8144 In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride
8145 in any motor vehicle.
8147 "In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
8148 -- Winston Churchill, of Montgomery
8150 In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door
8153 In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.
8155 In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
8156 resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but
8157 inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
8158 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8160 In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
8161 programming languages.
8163 In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on
8164 the sidewalks when a concert is on.
8166 In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
8167 into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
8168 between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which
8169 will only make it mushy.
8172 In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your
8175 In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any
8176 pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while
8177 either flying or waiting to board a plane.
8179 In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless
8180 there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red
8181 flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.
8183 In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as
8184 to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
8185 speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
8187 "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
8189 -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
8191 In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
8192 intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from
8193 the cares of office.
8194 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8196 In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds
8197 and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.
8199 In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying
8200 of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public
8203 In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
8204 Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
8205 Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
8206 We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
8207 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
8209 In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that
8210 is over six feet in length.
8212 In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
8213 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
8215 "In short, _
\bN is Richardian if, and only if, _
\bN is not Richardian."
8217 In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
8219 In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a
8222 [In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You
8223 could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
8224 that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...
8226 And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
8227 over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we
8228 didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no
8229 point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum;
8230 we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....
8232 So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
8233 Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
8234 ___
\b\b\bsee the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
8236 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
8238 In the beginning was the word.
8239 But by the time the second word was added to it,
8241 For with it came syntax ...
8244 In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat
8245 hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am
8246 training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the
8247 net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any
8248 preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you
8249 close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be
8250 empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
8252 In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
8253 the proper order then why can't he?
8255 In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
8257 -- Egyptian Book of the Dead
8259 In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
8262 In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or
8263 a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it
8264 to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by
8265 forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you
8266 stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit
8267 punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong
8268 enough to punch you.
8269 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
8271 In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
8272 shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the
8273 Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million
8274 three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years
8275 from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long.
8276 ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such
8277 wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of
8281 In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
8282 drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
8286 In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take
8288 -- Winston Churchill
8290 In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
8291 the supervision of a licensed engineer.
8293 In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse
8294 along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.
8297 Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
8298 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8300 Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
8302 Individualists unite!
8305 The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven
8306 lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon
8310 Information Center, n.:
8311 A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is
8312 to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
8315 A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
8318 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
8319 -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
8322 A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
8323 water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
8325 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8327 Innovation is hard to schedule.
8330 Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
8332 Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the
8333 salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
8336 One who enables two persons of different languages to
8337 understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
8338 the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
8339 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8341 Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.
8343 Iron Law of Distribution:
8344 Them that has, gets.
8346 "Irrationality is the square root of all evil"
8347 -- Douglas Hofstadter
8349 Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
8350 meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a
8353 Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
8354 beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
8355 out, and such as are out wish to get in?
8358 Is your job running? You'd better go catch it!
8360 Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
8361 listen to weather forecasts and economists?
8362 -- Kelvin Throop III
8364 Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
8365 tellers take economists seriously?
8367 Issawi's Laws of Progress:
8369 The Course of Progress:
8370 Most things get steadily worse.
8372 The Path of Progress:
8373 A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
8375 It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working
8376 as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he
8377 had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked,
8378 "What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They discussed
8379 Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival
8380 came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer
8381 this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the
8382 Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so.
8383 To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's
8384 your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked,
8385 "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"
8387 It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown
8388 came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and
8389 applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I
8390 think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the
8391 wits, who believe that it is a joke.
8392 -- S. A. Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
8394 It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
8395 thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
8396 drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
8397 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8399 It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
8400 that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____
\b\b\b\bonly* by amusing oneself that
8402 -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
8404 It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
8405 been searching for evidence which could support this.
8408 It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
8410 It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
8411 program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
8412 organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
8416 It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of
8419 It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will
8420 not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves
8421 and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like
8422 mature human beings ...
8423 -- Playboy, January 1983
8425 It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
8426 pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
8427 sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
8430 It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
8431 they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
8432 that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
8433 much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins
8434 had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But
8435 conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
8436 intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
8438 Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
8439 destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to
8440 alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
8442 -- Douglas Admas "The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The
8445 It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
8449 It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?
8450 One in a million, perhaps.
8452 It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark
8454 It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three
8455 benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never
8459 It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
8460 incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
8461 twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
8464 "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
8466 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
8468 It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
8469 proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community
8470 a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to
8471 treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the
8472 focus of attention, the harder the task.
8475 It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
8478 It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
8480 It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
8483 It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
8484 if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
8486 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
8488 It is hard to predict, in particular about the future.
8489 -- Robert Storm Petersen
8491 It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood
8492 Boulevard at one time.
8494 It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia.
8496 It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry
8500 It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
8503 It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not
8504 desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
8507 It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our
8508 offense consists in doubting it.
8509 -- Justice Robert H. Jackson
8511 It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
8514 It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be
8515 privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to
8516 corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
8517 -- George Bernard Shaw
8519 It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
8522 It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
8523 damn thing over and over.
8524 -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
8526 It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
8527 -- Elizabeth Carpenter
8529 It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a
8532 It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
8533 virginity could be a virtue.
8536 It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their
8539 It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared
8540 to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
8543 It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to
8544 students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential
8545 programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
8549 It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
8550 lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
8553 It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
8554 statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
8555 glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
8556 which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
8557 day, that is the highest of arts.
8558 -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
8560 It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad
8561 crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed
8562 until the other has gone.
8564 It is the business of little minds to shrink.
8567 It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
8570 It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for
8571 five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But
8572 it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.
8574 It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
8576 It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
8577 good either if you speak when your head is empty.
8579 It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
8582 "It runs like _
\bx, where _
\bx is something unsavory"
8583 -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
8585 It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
8588 It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the
8590 -- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio
8592 "It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
8593 but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous."
8596 It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
8598 "It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set
8601 It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a
8602 breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was
8606 "It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps
8607 I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I
8608 don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
8609 the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual
8610 charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
8611 novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
8612 yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable
8616 It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly. It was more like
8617 the rose and the teeth were in the same glass.
8619 It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
8620 the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
8622 It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human
8623 nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant
8627 It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing
8628 warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or
8629 two things still safe to eat.
8632 It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
8635 "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone
8638 It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
8640 "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it."
8645 "It means summon's in trouble."
8646 -- Rocky and Bullwinkle
8648 It's a very *__
\b\bUN*lucky week in which to be took dead.
8651 It's always a long day; 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
8653 It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.
8655 "It's bad luck to be superstitious."
8658 It's better to be wanted for murder that not to be wanted at all.
8661 "It's easier said than done."
8663 ... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
8664 said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
8665 said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
8668 It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
8670 It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for
8673 "It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an
8677 It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
8679 It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
8680 is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It
8681 isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
8682 -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News
8684 It's just a jump to the left
8685 And then a step to the right.
8686 Put your hands on your hips
8687 And pull your knees in tight.
8688 It's the pelvic thrust
8689 That really gets you insa-a-a-a-ane
8691 LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
8693 -- Rocky Horror Picture Show
8695 "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
8702 and even the teddy bears
8705 It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
8708 "It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name."
8710 It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre.
8713 It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
8714 to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
8717 It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
8720 "It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
8721 -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
8723 It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
8726 "It's not just a computer -- it's your ass."
8729 It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's
8730 what you're taking for it...
8732 It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off
8736 It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
8740 It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
8743 It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that
8744 English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many
8745 other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.
8748 It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
8750 It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
8752 It's so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the
8753 Devil when he is the only explanation of it.
8755 It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which
8756 raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody
8758 -- Franklin P. Jones
8760 It's the thought, if any, that counts!
8762 I've built a better model than the one at Data General
8763 For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
8764 My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
8765 My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality.
8766 My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity,
8767 You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
8768 There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting;
8769 My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.
8771 I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point:
8772 There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point,
8773 Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral
8774 I've built a better model than the one at Data General.
8776 -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of
8777 "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance",
8778 by Gilbert & Sullivan)
8780 I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.
8782 I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was
8783 this little hole in the bottom ...
8786 I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
8788 I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
8791 I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes
8794 "I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer."
8796 "I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer"
8799 I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
8800 And from that full meridian of my glory
8801 I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
8802 Like a bright exhalation in the evening
8803 And no man see me more.
8806 Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
8807 No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
8808 legislature is in session.
8810 James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total
8811 indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
8819 But only Buddha pays Dividends.
8822 Telling your boss what he can do with your job.
8824 Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
8826 Johnson's First Law:
8827 When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
8828 most inconvenient possible time.
8830 Join in the new game that's sweeping the country. It's called
8831 "Bureaucracy". Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do
8834 Join the march to save individuality!
8837 The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
8841 Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
8844 Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
8845 endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction
8846 to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their
8847 original contribution.
8849 Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
8850 (and nobody cares about it).
8853 Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good
8854 solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires
8855 one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the
8856 winner. The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is
8857 because neither side has all the facts. Therefore, when the wise
8858 mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political
8859 motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the
8861 -- Stephen R. Schwambach
8863 Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has
8867 Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
8870 Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
8872 Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you
8873 get a prompt, type like hell.
8875 "Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
8877 -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"
8879 "Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
8880 of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?"
8881 -- Patricia O Tuama, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
8883 "Just remember, it all started with a mouse."
8886 Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
8887 twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
8889 `Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,
8890 As he landed his crew with care;
8891 Supporting each man on the top of the tide
8892 By a finger entwined in his hair.
8894 'Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
8895 That alone should encourage the crew.
8896 Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
8897 What I tell you three times is true.'
8899 Just think -- blessed SCSI cables! Do a big enough sacrifice and create
8900 a +5 blessed SCSI cable of connectivity.
8903 Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a
8906 Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven!
8907 -- Michael J. Wagner
8909 Justice is incidental to law and order.
8913 A decision in your favor.
8915 K: Cobalt's metal, hard and shining;
8916 Cobol's wordy and confining;
8917 KOBOLDS topple when you strike them;
8918 Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them.
8919 -- The Roguelet's ABC
8921 Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to
8925 Man and nations will act rationally when all other
8926 possibilities have been exhausted.
8928 Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
8930 Keep Cool, but Don't Freeze
8931 - Hellman's Mayonnaise
8933 Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
8935 Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
8937 Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
8938 (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
8939 straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
8940 force is technically termed "car suck").
8941 (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
8944 Keep your Eye on the Ball,
8945 Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
8946 Your Nose to the Grindstone,
8947 Your Feet on the Ground,
8948 Your Head on your Shoulders.
8949 Now ... try to get something DONE!
8951 Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
8952 automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
8953 numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
8954 driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
8955 dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
8958 Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
8959 Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
8960 and parking for the faculty.
8962 Kids have *_____
\b\b\b\b\bnever* taken guidance from their parents. If you could
8963 travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the
8964 original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate
8965 teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for
8966 grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate
8967 teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
8968 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
8972 An affliction of the blood
8974 Kinkler's First Law:
8975 Responsibility always exceeds authority.
8977 Kinkler's Second Law:
8978 All the easy problems have been solved.
8980 "Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack."
8982 Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through
8985 Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.
8987 Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
8989 Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
8991 Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within.
8995 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8997 Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
8999 Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
9002 Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
9003 The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
9004 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
9007 One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
9008 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9013 (3) Never volunteer for anything
9015 Lactomangulation, n.:
9016 Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
9017 that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
9018 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
9022 Your house is on fire,
9023 Your children will burn!
9024 So jump ye and sing, for
9026 The four lines above
9027 Have been put into rhyme.
9030 Laetrile is the pits
9033 (1) Everything depends.
9034 (2) Nothing is always.
9035 (3) Everything is sometimes.
9038 All laws are basically false.
9040 Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with
9041 was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting
9042 pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the
9043 farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
9044 sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
9045 you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
9046 What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
9047 of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
9048 the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops
9049 whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which
9050 Lassie filed the applications for.
9053 "Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment
9054 had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to
9055 my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?'"
9058 "Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police
9059 record. I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album. Cops have no sense
9062 Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won.
9064 Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
9066 "Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
9069 Law of Communications:
9070 The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
9071 between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of
9074 Law of Probable Dispersal:
9075 Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
9078 Law of Selective Gravity:
9079 An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
9081 Jenning's Corollary:
9082 The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
9083 directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
9085 Law of the Perversity of Nature:
9086 You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
9089 Laws of Serendipity:
9091 (1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
9093 (2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
9094 be engaged in making an inferior one.
9096 Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
9097 No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
9098 approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
9100 Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
9102 Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and
9103 everything else follows in the same way.
9106 Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
9108 Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the
9111 Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:
9112 "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour
9113 unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a
9114 drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he
9118 When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
9119 hold the hammer with both hands.
9121 LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
9122 You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are
9123 pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike
9124 honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people
9127 LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
9128 Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore.
9129 Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because
9130 you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of
9131 fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got
9132 a sick sense of humor.
9134 Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
9136 "Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a
9137 number. You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash
9138 and another number."
9143 Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!
9147 Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every
9148 relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you
9149 really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the
9150 end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the
9151 qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and
9152 bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind
9154 -- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn
9156 Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick
9157 your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as
9158 Mental Anguish. You would sue:
9160 * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions
9161 section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand
9162 into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls
9165 * The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious
9166 cretin like yourself.
9168 * Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this
9169 case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you
9170 a large cash settlement anyway.
9173 Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often
9174 overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of
9175 dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your
9176 tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to
9177 spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe
9178 money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will
9179 probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care?
9181 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
9183 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
9187 I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
9188 to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
9189 public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
9190 in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
9191 will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
9192 agricultural industry.
9195 Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
9198 Lewis's Law of Travel:
9199 The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
9203 A lawyer with a roving commission.
9204 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9206 Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
9207 -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
9209 LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
9210 Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your
9211 desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and
9212 polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.
9214 LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
9215 You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with
9216 reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay.
9217 Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most
9218 Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of venereal
9222 A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
9226 Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
9228 Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
9230 Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
9232 "Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to
9233 eat it nevertheless."
9236 "Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it."
9238 Life is like a simile.
9240 Life is like an analogy
9242 Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
9243 there is nothing in it.
9245 "Life is too important to take seriously."
9248 "Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
9249 -- Marvin, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
9251 "Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
9252 which I disapprove."
9254 "Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility"
9255 -- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
9257 "Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
9258 weren't for other people"
9261 Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
9263 Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
9264 sense from things she found in gift shops.
9265 -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
9267 Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
9268 for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
9271 Limericks are art forms complex,
9272 Their topics run chiefly to sex.
9273 They usually have virgins,
9274 And masculine urgin's,
9275 And other erotic effects.
9277 Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
9278 Kennedy exactly one hundred years later in 1946.
9280 Lincoln was elected president in November 1860.
9281 Kennedy in November 1960.
9283 Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who urged him not to go to
9285 Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln who advised against his going
9288 Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and ran off into a warehouse.
9289 Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran off into a theatre.
9291 Lincoln was succeeded by a Southerner named Johnson.
9292 Kennedy was succeeded by a Southerner named Johnson.
9294 The first Johnson was born in 1808.
9295 The second Johnson was born in 1908.
9297 -- Alistair Cooke, "Letter From America", 26nov2001
9299 Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
9301 Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe
9302 we should think only about today.
9304 No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
9307 Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
9310 Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
9313 Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted
9316 Lizzie Borden took an axe,
9317 And plunged it deep into the VAX;
9318 Don't you envy people who
9319 Do all the things ___
\b\b\bYOU want to do?
9321 Loan-department manager: "There isn't any fine print. At these
9322 interest rates, we don't need it."
9325 Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are
9326 squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the
9327 only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to
9328 eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial
9329 before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most
9330 ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime
9331 in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its
9332 unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of
9333 the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout,
9334 "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a
9335 memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe
9336 at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot.
9337 Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be,
9339 -- "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and Utensils
9340 into Excuses and Apologies"
9342 Lockwood's Long Shot:
9343 The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't
9344 one in a million, but once would be enough.
9346 Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_____
\b\b\b\b\bawful*.
9348 Logicians have but ill defined
9349 As rational the human kind.
9350 Logic, they say, belongs to man,
9351 But let them prove it if they can.
9354 Look out! Behind you!
\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a
9356 Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us
9357 to pay income taxes, too?
9358 -- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
9360 Loose bits sink chips.
9362 Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA,
9365 Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
9367 Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in
9370 Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
9372 Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
9373 world has ever seen.
9375 Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder.
9378 "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it
9379 flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
9382 Love is a word that is constantly heard,
9383 Hate is a word that is not.
9384 Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
9385 Love, I have read, is hot.
9386 But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
9387 And Love but a drug on the mart.
9388 Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
9389 But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
9392 "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
9393 the ideal never goes unpunished."
9396 Love is sentimental measles.
9398 Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
9401 Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
9403 Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
9406 Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up
9410 If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing
9413 LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
9415 Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
9416 There's always one more bug.
9419 The place where optimism most flourishes.
9421 Lysistrata had a good idea.
9423 "MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
9424 the smallest amount of thoughts."
9425 -- Winston Churchill
9427 Machine-Independent, adj.:
9428 Does not run on any existing machine.
9430 Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate,
9431 and play games -- but not with pleasure.
9435 Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
9436 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9438 Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them
9439 first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
9443 [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
9444 Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
9445 subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is
9446 rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
9447 reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
9448 operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
9449 MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
9450 variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
9451 security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
9452 more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an
9453 imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
9454 options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
9455 Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
9456 powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
9457 entire nodal aggravations.
9458 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
9460 Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism
9462 Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
9464 The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works
9465 of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
9466 with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
9468 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9471 Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping
9473 -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
9476 A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
9477 might be taught to talk.
9478 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9481 If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed
9485 (1) The bigger the theory, the better.
9486 (2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
9487 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
9488 obtain a correspondence with the theory.
9491 For every action there is an equal and opposite government
9495 If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
9497 Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
9500 Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
9502 Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
9503 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9506 That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
9508 Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist!
9510 Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users
9511 tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It
9512 has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is
9513 the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
9514 -- System V.2 administrator's guide
9517 Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
9519 Man 1: Ask me. "What is the most important thing about telling a good
9522 Man 2: OK, what is the most impo --
9524 Man 1: ______
\b\b\b\b\b\bTIMING!
9526 "Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."
9529 Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
9530 upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
9533 Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
9534 only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
9535 -- Wernher von Braun
9537 Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
9540 Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
9541 victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
9544 Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
9545 victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
9546 -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
9549 An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
9550 he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief
9551 occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which,
9552 however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole
9553 habitable earth and Canada.
9554 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9556 Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it
9560 Mandrell: "You know what I think?"
9561 Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you
9562 don't think, right?"
9565 Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
9566 dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
9567 man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
9568 air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
9571 What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as
9572 mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
9573 -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
9576 A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a
9577 given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The
9578 information you need in in the others.
9581 Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
9582 there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
9583 was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
9584 completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ...
9587 Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
9588 Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
9589 simple yes or no answer.
9591 Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
9594 Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on
9595 the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam
9597 -- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
9599 Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant.
9602 Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
9605 Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
9606 translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something
9608 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
9610 Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is
9611 described as being n-dimensional. Like modern sex, any number can
9613 -- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by
9616 "Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."
9618 Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
9621 Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
9624 May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts
9626 May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
9628 May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
9630 May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
9633 Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
9636 Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
9639 McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
9640 If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
9644 Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
9645 everyone you know, only more so.
9648 An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
9649 department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
9651 Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
9652 from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
9653 Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man
9654 had split before. Thus was the Empire forged.
9655 -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams
9657 Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
9658 The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
9660 Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
9661 The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
9662 cork makes when it is popped.
9664 Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
9665 All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
9667 Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
9668 Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
9669 is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can
9670 never hope to acquire it.
9672 Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and
9673 it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin
9674 very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
9675 tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...
9676 [EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important
9677 world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the
9678 next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.]
9679 ... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
9680 cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
9681 billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even
9682 more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a
9683 fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the
9684 older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and
9685 obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the
9686 window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger
9687 hotshot cells moving up from below.
9688 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
9691 A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
9694 There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
9697 MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.
9699 Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
9701 methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutamin-
9702 ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl-
9703 phenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu-
9704 taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl-
9705 glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylala-
9706 nylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylgluta-
9707 minylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylgly-
9708 cylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionyl-
9709 leucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleu-
9710 cylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylva-
9711 lylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyro-
9712 sylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleu-
9713 cylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphe-
9714 nylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylala-
9715 nylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylas-
9716 partylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosyl-
9717 glycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycyl-
9718 valylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleu-
9719 cylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparagi-
9720 nylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylse-
9721 rylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanyl-
9722 glycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalylly-
9723 sylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylpro-
9724 lylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyl-
9725 glutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.:
9726 The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protein, a
9727 1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids.
9728 -- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and
9730 Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
9733 Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
9735 "Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been
9736 watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks."
9738 "Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
9739 out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."
9741 Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
9742 Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO
9744 -- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
9747 If a string has one end, then it has another end.
9749 Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
9752 Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
9756 The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
9758 Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
9759 themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
9762 Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that
9763 politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum
9764 and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they
9765 are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to
9766 rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all
9767 the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert
9768 Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert
9769 Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when
9770 Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the
9772 -- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
9774 Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
9775 is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
9776 myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
9777 the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
9778 unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
9779 will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
9780 dead as a door-nail.
9782 Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
9784 Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap
9785 pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however.
9787 Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
9789 Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
9793 The kind of fortune that never misses.
9794 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9797 A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
9798 they are in the market.
9799 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9801 Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
9803 Mitchell's Law of Committees:
9804 Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
9807 MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
9809 Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers
9810 2 cups water 2 cups sugar
9811 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice
9812 Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine
9815 Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break
9816 RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar
9817 and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon
9818 juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
9819 with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top
9820 crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let
9821 steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
9822 is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
9823 -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
9825 Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
9827 Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked
9828 him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just
9829 last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew
9833 The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished
9834 from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
9835 closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
9836 matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the
9837 atom in that it is an ion ...
9838 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9840 Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
9841 If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
9842 it wasn't worth doing.
9844 Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
9847 In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
9848 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9850 Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
9852 Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots
9854 Money is the root of all wealth.
9857 1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
9858 hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).
9861 Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.
9863 More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One
9864 path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total
9865 extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
9868 Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
9869 Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
9872 Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex
9873 because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs
9874 and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little
9875 eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around
9876 and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the
9877 female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just
9878 dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven
9879 by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the
9880 truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of
9881 them that it doesn't make any difference.
9882 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
9885 Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently
9889 Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
9892 Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
9895 Mother is the invention of necessity.
9897 Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
9900 The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
9901 population is growing.
9903 "Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams)
9904 "365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365. He [ten-year-old
9905 Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his
9906 pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes
9907 in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be
9908 in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he,
9909 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!" An electronic
9910 computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much
9912 -- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics)
9915 Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
9916 women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything
9917 will be all right." And what happens? Nine months later, you're in
9920 Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
9923 Murphy's Law of Research:
9924 Enough research will tend to support your theory.
9926 "Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem ..."
9927 -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
9930 Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
9931 long it has become a science project.
9932 -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
9934 "My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on
9936 -- "Grendel", by John Gardner
9938 My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I
9939 threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste.
9940 First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the
9941 frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up
9942 the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed
9943 forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier
9944 perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through
9945 the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative
9946 crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a
9947 symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state
9948 in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I
9949 really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded
9951 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
9953 "My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless
9954 there are three other people."
9957 My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
9958 times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
9959 sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right
9960 through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
9961 listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
9964 "My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?"
9967 My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
9968 And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
9969 The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
9970 And the skies are sunlit for him.
9971 As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
9972 As the fragrance of acacia.
9973 My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
9974 And I wish he were in Asia.
9977 My love runs by like a day in June,
9978 And he makes no friends of sorrows.
9979 He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
9980 In the pathway or the morrows.
9981 He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
9982 Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
9983 My own dear love, he is all my heart --
9984 And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
9987 My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been
9991 My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
9993 My own dear love, he is strong and bold
9994 And he cares not what comes after.
9995 His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
9996 And his eyes are lit with laughter.
9997 He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
9998 Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
9999 My own dear love, he is all my world --
10000 And I wish I'd never met him.
10003 "My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling
10005 -- Zippy the Pinhead
10007 My pen is at the bottom of a page,
10008 Which, being finished, here the story ends;
10009 'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
10010 But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
10013 My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not
10015 -- Christopher Morley
10017 "My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"
10020 The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
10021 origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
10022 from the true accounts which it invents later.
10023 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10026 You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
10029 NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he
10031 GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
10033 -- George Bernard Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
10035 Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant
10036 said "My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next
10037 time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone
10040 Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the
10041 villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time,"
10042 said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the
10043 villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The
10044 remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he
10045 said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of
10046 my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually
10047 spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.
10049 Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to
10050 serve him. Nasrudin said, "First things first. Did you see me walk
10051 into your shop?" "Of course." "Have you ever seen me before?"
10052 "Never." "Then how do you know it was me?"
10054 Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
10055 than the sun." "Why?", he was asked. "Because at night we need the
10058 Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver
10059 pie. Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of
10060 meat from his hand. As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it,
10061 "Foolish bird! You have the liver, but what can you do with it without
10064 Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of
10065 scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
10066 -- Mary Ellen Kelly
10068 Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of
10069 conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the
10070 fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he
10071 is most likely to be creamed?
10074 Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
10075 God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
10077 It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
10078 Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
10080 Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it
10081 cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.
10084 Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
10085 character, give him power.
10088 Necessity is a mother.
10090 Neckties strangle clear thinking.
10093 Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
10095 Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
10097 Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
10099 Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off
10101 Never drink coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled
10102 with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations. People tend to
10103 change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually
10104 fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators
10107 Never eat more than you can lift.
10110 Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
10112 Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
10114 Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
10115 -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
10117 Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
10118 make it complex and wonderful.
10120 Never offend people with style when you can offend them with
10122 -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
10124 Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
10126 Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a
10127 law against it by that time.
10129 Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
10131 Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.
10133 Never try to outstubborn a cat.
10134 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
10136 Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
10137 -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
10139 "Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon."
10141 Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
10145 New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
10147 New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in
10148 any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
10150 New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
10151 Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.
10153 New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area.
10154 -- Monty Python's Big Red Book
10156 New systems generate new problems.
10158 New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
10159 his wife most often reminds him to act it.
10160 -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
10162 New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors.
10164 New York's got the ways and means;
10165 Just won't let you be.
10166 -- The Grateful Dead
10169 An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
10170 economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
10173 Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West
10174 German pole-vault champion.
10176 Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
10178 Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
10179 A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
10181 Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't
10182 have a lucky day this year.
10184 Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
10185 as an income tax refund.
10188 "Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice."
10191 Nihilism should commence with oneself.
10193 Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
10194 correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
10195 (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
10196 Americans call him by value.
10198 Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
10199 Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
10200 Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
10201 Three megs for system source;
10203 One disk to rule them all,
10204 One disk to bind them,
10205 One disk to hold the files
10206 And in the darkness grind 'em.
10208 Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
10209 And tapes without any tracks;
10210 Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
10211 And tapes mixed up on the racks --
10212 Take hold of the tape
10213 And pull off the strip,
10214 And then you'll be sure
10215 Your tape drive will skip.
10217 -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
10219 "Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they
10220 would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect
10224 Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
10225 The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
10226 the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
10228 "Nirvana? Thats the place where the powers that be and their friends
10232 No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless
10233 absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
10236 No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
10237 camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
10238 effectively under such difficult conditions.
10239 -- Laurence J. Peter
10241 "No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'"
10244 No good deed goes unpunished.
10245 -- Clare Boothe Luce
10247 No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
10249 -- Channing Pollock
10251 No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
10253 No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will
10254 seriously cramp his style.
10256 No matter what other nations may say about the United States,
10257 immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
10259 No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
10260 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
10262 "No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid."
10264 No one has a higher opinion of him than he has.
10265 -- Greg Lehey, FreeBSDcon 1999
10267 No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval
10268 system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of
10272 No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
10273 He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
10274 Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
10275 And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
10277 Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
10278 And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
10279 Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
10280 And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
10281 Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
10282 And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
10283 All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
10284 But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
10286 Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
10287 The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
10288 A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
10289 But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
10292 No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
10294 No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
10296 "No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
10297 occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
10298 indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining
10299 occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as
10300 an indication-applied occurrence."
10303 "No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of
10305 -- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
10306 taken over by Rupert Murdoch
10308 Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing
10310 -- Tallulah Bankhead
10312 NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION
10314 Nobody said computers were going to be polite.
10316 Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in
10317 order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the
10318 substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young
10322 Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with
10323 constructive praise.
10329 Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
10331 Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
10332 Negative expectations yield negative results.
10333 Positive expectations yield negative results.
10335 Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
10337 Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
10339 Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
10340 Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
10341 in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
10342 moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
10343 dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
10344 respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
10345 it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
10346 then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
10347 chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
10348 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
10350 "Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."
10353 "Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
10354 is from the wrong kind of tree."
10357 Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter
10358 of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund
10359 is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
10360 unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is
10361 careful not to make any poultry jokes ...
10364 Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
10366 Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
10368 Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...
10370 To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the
10373 Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
10376 Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires
10377 tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
10380 Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
10381 Conscience makes egotists of us all.
10384 Nothing recedes like success.
10387 Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited
10392 The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
10393 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10395 Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
10397 Now I lay me down to sleep
10398 I pray the double lock will keep;
10399 May no brick through the window break,
10400 And, no one rob me till I awake.
10402 "Now is the time for all good men to come to."
10405 Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next
10406 time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV
10407 to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for
10408 eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself
10409 the following questions:
10411 (1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a
10413 (2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
10414 exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
10415 (3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as
10416 prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with
10417 double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living
10418 right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like
10421 That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
10423 "Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
10424 Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
10425 were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ..."
10426 -- "The Begatting of a President"
10428 "Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a
10430 -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354
10432 [Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
10435 "Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."
10438 "Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
10439 normal routines, for children and adults alike."
10440 -- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack"
10442 "Nuclear war would really set back cable."
10445 Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
10447 (null cookie; hope that's ok)
10449 Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're
10453 Where the buffalo roam,
10454 Where the deer and the antelope play,
10455 Where seldom is heard
10456 A discouraging word,
10457 'Cause what can an antelope say?
10459 Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
10460 reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
10462 -- Thomas L. Martin
10464 Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
10467 Of all the words of witch's doom
10468 There's none so bad as which and whom.
10469 The man who kills both which and whom
10470 Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
10473 "Of ______
\b\b\b\b\b\bcourse it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a
10476 "Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power
10477 tools aren't soluble in alcohol ..."
10480 Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
10482 Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%.
10483 And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a
10486 Office Automation, n.:
10487 The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone
10488 you would want to talk with over coffee.
10491 The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
10494 Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo!
10496 Oh don't the days seem lank and long
10497 When all goes right and none goes wrong,
10498 And isn't your life extremely flat
10499 With nothing whatever to grumble at!
10501 Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
10502 I muck with indices and structs all day
10503 And when it works, I shout hoo-ray
10504 Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
10506 Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
10507 be irresponsible, too.
10510 Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
10511 And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
10512 Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
10513 Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
10514 You have not dreamed of --
10515 Wheeled and soared and swung
10516 High in the sunlit silence.
10518 I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
10519 My eager craft through footless halls of air.
10520 Up, up along delirious, burning blue
10521 I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
10522 Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
10523 And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
10524 The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
10525 Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
10526 -- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight"
10528 Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
10530 Oh, when I was in love with you,
10531 Then I was clean and brave,
10532 And miles around the wonder grew
10533 How well did I behave.
10535 And now the fancy passes by,
10536 And nothing will remain,
10537 And miles around they'll say that I
10538 Am quite myself again.
10541 Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
10543 "OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard."
10546 OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
10548 Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
10551 Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
10553 Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
10556 Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
10559 Omnibiblious, adj.:
10560 Indifferent to type of drink. "Oh, you can get me anything.
10563 OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS?? Oh, YEH!! First you need four GALLONS of
10564 JELL-O and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O
10565 as if it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... or ... I ... um ...
10566 WHERE'S the WASHING MACHINES?
10568 On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
10570 "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
10573 On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
10574 nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
10578 On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
10582 On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
10584 -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
10586 On the road, ZIPPY is a pinhead without a purpose, but never without a
10589 On the subject of C program indentation:
10591 "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
10592 indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
10593 -- Blair P. Houghton
10595 "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
10596 Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
10597 answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
10598 confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
10601 Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
10602 forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
10603 -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
10607 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10609 Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
10610 each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his
10613 In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
10614 called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka"
10615 and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
10616 passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
10617 Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
10618 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
10620 Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
10621 Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".
10622 Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your
10623 principals or your mistress".
10625 Once Law was sitting on the bench
10626 And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
10627 "Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
10628 Nor come before me creeping.
10629 Upon you knees if you appear,
10630 'Tis plain you have no standing here."
10632 Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
10633 "YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
10634 "Amica curiae," she replied --
10635 "Friend of the court, so please you."
10636 "Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
10637 I never saw your face before!"
10638 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10640 Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
10641 beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
10642 side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
10643 which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
10647 Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
10648 us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
10649 the smaller prime numbers.
10651 2: The Odd Prime --
10652 It's the only even prime, therefore it's odd. QED.
10653 3: The True Prime --
10654 Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true."
10655 31: The Arbitrary Prime --
10656 Determined by unanimous unvote. We needed an arbitrary prime
10657 in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election. 91
10658 received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
10659 next most. However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none
10662 Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are
10663 derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
10664 true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
10666 One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least
10667 somebody's listening.
10668 -- Franklin P. Jones
10670 "One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."
10672 Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
10673 The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
10674 -- Chuq Von Rospach
10676 One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
10677 how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
10678 -- Professor Charles P. Issawi
10680 One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
10682 One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell
10683 the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald
10684 announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to
10685 a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The
10686 captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth
10687 -- the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin,
10688 "to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if
10689 I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!"
10690 "Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
10692 One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
10695 One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
10696 never have to stop and answer the phone.
10698 One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
10699 -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
10701 One learns to itch where one can scratch.
10704 One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as
10705 one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will
10706 produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to
10707 represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as
10711 One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
10713 One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How
10714 will it live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net,
10717 One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
10719 One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible
10720 from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at
10721 least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts
10722 are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but
10723 when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
10724 -- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
10726 One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
10727 do and always a clever thing to say.
10730 One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
10731 create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bsomebody has to buy
10733 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
10735 One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
10736 seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best
10737 way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who
10738 fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become
10739 disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas.
10741 One Page Principle:
10742 A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch
10743 paper cannot be understood.
10746 "One planet is all you get."
10748 One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
10749 manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
10750 they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's
10751 say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding
10752 study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by
10753 sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,
10754 strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus
10755 rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also
10756 be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr.
10757 Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle
10758 Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save
10759 millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently
10760 support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that
10761 your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members
10762 of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are
10763 already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
10764 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
10766 One reason why George Washington
10767 Is held in such veneration:
10768 He never blamed his problems
10769 On the former Administration.
10770 -- George O. Ludcke
10772 One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
10774 One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh
10777 "One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
10778 sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of
10782 One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
10785 One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
10787 One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned
10788 at the stake while the votes were being counted.
10791 One-Shot Case Study, n.:
10792 The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which
10793 it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes
10797 The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
10800 Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
10802 Only God can make random selections.
10804 Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to
10805 use the editorial "we."
10807 Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
10809 Optimization hinders evolution.
10812 The ancient Italian art of pizza folding.
10815 Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
10818 Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry
10819 is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
10823 Variables won't; constants aren't.
10825 Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your
10828 O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
10829 Murphy was an optimist.
10831 Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
10832 they charge fifteen cents for them.
10834 Our documentation manager was showing her two year old son around the
10835 office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we
10836 were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of
10837 juice. But only *_
\b_
\bhe* had a lollipop.
10839 He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?"
10843 "He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it
10844 means to be a programmer."
10846 Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
10847 Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
10848 In kernel as it is in user!
10850 Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
10851 -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
10853 "Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it."
10856 Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
10857 -- General Omar N. Bradley
10859 "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
10860 it's too dark to read."
10863 Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now
10864 I can remember things that *have* happened before ...
10866 Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
10868 Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
10870 Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
10873 (1) If someone says he will do something "without fail," he
10875 (2) The more people talk on the phone, the less money they
10877 (3) People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
10878 (4) Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
10881 The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and
10882 exposing them to the critic.
10885 panic: can't find /
10887 panic: kernel trap (ignored)
10889 Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much
10893 Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
10895 Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
10897 Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.
10899 Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
10900 criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
10903 Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction.
10905 Pardo's First Postulate:
10906 Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or
10910 Everything else causes cancer in rats.
10913 Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
10915 Parkinson's Fifth Law:
10916 If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
10917 bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
10919 Parkinson's Fourth Law:
10920 The number of people in any working group tends to increase
10921 regardless of the amount of work to be done.
10927 Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
10929 "Pascal is not a high-level language."
10932 "Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat."
10933 -- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340
10936 A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
10937 his grave if he knew about it.
10940 To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the
10941 death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed.
10943 Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
10947 The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant
10948 under brain transplants.
10950 Paul Revere was a tattle-tale
10953 In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
10957 You can't fall off the floor.
10960 In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
10961 periods of fighting.
10962 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10966 4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk
10967 4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla
10968 4 cups shortening 14 cups flour
10970 4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt
10972 Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
10973 sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a
10974 Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a
10977 Pecor's Health-Food Principle:
10978 Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in
10982 The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the
10983 sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.
10984 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
10986 Penguin Trivia #46:
10987 Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were.
10988 -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
10990 People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
10991 -- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
10993 People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
10996 "People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense."
10999 People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
11001 People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better
11002 press than people who are just funny and smart.
11003 -- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"
11005 People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never
11006 slept in a room with a single mosquito.
11008 People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
11009 haven't what they want that they don't want it.
11012 People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
11013 Benjamin Franklin said it first.
11015 People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
11017 People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they
11020 Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
11021 "Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
11024 Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
11026 Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
11027 when there is no longer anything to take away.
11028 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
11030 Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!
11032 Peter Wemm Murphy Field, n.:
11033 A field of abnormally frequent and severe Murphy's Law events
11034 emanating from Mr. Peter Wemm. The field was first discovered and
11035 identified in Denmark during the initial FreeBSD SMP development.
11036 Mr. Wemm was residing in Australia at the time.
11038 Peter's Law of Substitution:
11039 Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
11042 Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
11043 exciting Camden, New Jersey.
11045 Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
11047 Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
11050 Pick another fortune cookie.
11052 "Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
11053 hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
11054 sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ..."
11057 An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race
11058 by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
11059 inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
11060 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
11062 PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
11063 You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being
11064 followed by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your
11065 associates and people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack
11066 confidence and you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible
11067 things to small animals.
11069 PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
11070 Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the
11071 American Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today, as
11072 nobody else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed. You will
11073 probably get run over by a bus.
11075 Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
11078 PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
11082 "Plaese porrf raed."
11083 -- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
11085 Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
11086 because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
11087 couldn't compete successfully with poets.
11088 -- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half
11091 Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill
11094 Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic
11096 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
11098 Please ignore previous fortune.
11102 Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas"
11103 until you are told that those rooms are "punched out". Once punched
11104 out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas,
11108 Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?
11111 (to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
11113 Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
11114 If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
11115 Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
11116 Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
11119 Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
11121 Police: Good evening, are you the host?
11123 Police: We've been getting complaints about this party.
11124 Host: About the drugs?
11126 Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns?
11127 Police: No, the noise.
11128 Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns
11129 or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the
11130 background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise?
11132 Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent
11133 complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could
11134 ask the host to quiet things down?
11135 Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive
11136 religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
11137 room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
11138 lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out
11139 onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind
11142 Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
11143 all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
11146 An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
11147 organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the
11148 agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared
11149 with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
11150 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
11153 From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or
11154 "face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face). Hence
11155 "polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
11158 Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even
11159 where there is no river.
11160 -- Nikita Khrushchev
11162 Politics is like coaching a football team. you have to be smart enough
11163 to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
11165 Polymer physicists are into chains.
11167 Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
11168 Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The
11169 white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before
11170 it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his
11171 name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with
11173 Half a pound of tuppenny rice
11174 Half a pound of treacle
11175 That's the way the chimney smokes
11177 The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of
11178 laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for
11179 hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron
11180 Hans Neizant B"
\bompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"
\boln in 1653.
11181 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
11184 Survives system reboot.
11187 Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
11188 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
11190 Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
11192 "Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat"
11193 -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987
11195 Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
11197 Power corrupts. Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.
11201 The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
11203 Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little
11204 more time for dreaming.
11207 Predestination was doomed from the start.
11209 President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
11210 forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
11212 President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the
11213 vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting.
11214 -- The Washington Post
11216 Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
11218 Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
11219 It's on the other side.
11221 [Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves
11223 -- Winston Churchill
11225 Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
11227 Probable-Possible, my black hen,
11228 She lays eggs in the Relative When.
11229 She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
11230 Because she's unable to postulate how.
11231 -- Frederick Winsor
11233 Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals have
11234 orgasms? The answer is yes, they have orgasms almost constantly, which
11235 is why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime.
11236 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
11239 Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data
11240 encryption standard and they came up with ...
11243 Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem.
11244 Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received a single point on
11245 his exam. Newell has now tossed five shutouts this quarter. Newell's
11246 earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
11248 Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
11249 build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
11250 to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
11254 Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
11256 This technique is used on equations with "_
\bn" in them. Induction
11257 techniques are very popular, even the military used them.
11259 SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
11261 We know it's true for _
\bn equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
11262 for every natural number less than _
\bn. _
\bN is arbitrary, so we can take _
\bn
11263 as large as we want. If _
\bn is sufficiently large, the case of _
\bn+1 is
11264 trivially equivalent, so the only important _
\bn are _
\bn less than _
\bn. We
11265 can take _
\bn = _
\bn (from above), so it's true for _
\bn+1 because it's just
11267 QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
11269 Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
11270 SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
11271 (1) Horses have an even number of legs.
11272 (2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
11273 (3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
11275 (4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
11276 (5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.
11278 Topics to be covered in future issues include proof by:
11280 Gesticulation (handwaving)
11282 Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
11284 Changing all the 2's to _
\bn's
11286 Lack of a counterexample, and
11287 "It stands to reason"
11289 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
11291 BBW Branch Both Ways
11292 BEW Branch Either Way
11293 BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full
11295 BMR Branch Multiple Registers
11297 BPO Branch on Power Off
11298 BST Backspace and Stretch Tape
11299 CDS Condense and Destroy System
11300 CLBR Clobber Register
11301 CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately
11302 CM Circulate Memory
11303 CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming
11304 CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip
11305 CRN Convert to Roman Numerals
11307 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
11309 DC Divide and Conquer
11310 DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key
11311 DO Divide and Overflow
11312 EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator
11313 EPI Execute Programmer Immediately
11314 EROS Erase Read Only Storage
11315 EXCE Execute Customer Engineer
11316 HCF Halt and Catch Fire
11317 IBP Insert Bug and Proceed
11318 INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out])
11319 PBC Print and Break Chain
11322 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
11325 POPI Punch Operator Immediately
11326 PVLC Punch Variable Length Card
11327 RASC Read And Shred Card
11328 RPM Read Programmers Mind
11329 RSSC reduce speed, step carefully (for improved accuracy)
11330 RTAB Rewind tape and break
11332 RWOC Read Writing On Card
11333 SCRBL scribble to disk - faster than a write
11334 SLC Search for Lost Chord
11335 SPSW Scramble Program Status Word
11336 SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk
11337 STROM Store in Read Only Memory
11338 TDB Transfer and Drop Bit
11339 WBT Water Binary Tree
11341 "Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
11342 than the both put together."
11344 Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
11345 three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
11347 Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well
11348 anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
11351 Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves
11352 to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way
11353 to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the
11354 cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in
11355 fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a
11356 lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of
11357 the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
11358 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
11360 Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off of the TV screen.
11362 Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
11364 Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
11366 Put no trust in cryptic comments.
11368 Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
11369 -- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
11372 Technology is dominated by two types of people:
11373 Those who understand what they do not manage.
11374 Those who manage what they do not understand.
11376 Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
11379 Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
11380 A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
11382 Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat?
11383 A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
11385 Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat?
11386 A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
11388 Q: How long does it take?
11389 A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've
11392 Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
11393 A: They replace your generator.
11395 Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
11396 A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb
11397 itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
11398 reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
11399 maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
11401 Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb
11405 Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
11406 A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
11408 Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
11409 A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
11411 Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
11412 A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001,
11413 Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of
11414 the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20%
11415 of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences
11416 of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
11418 Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
11419 A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
11420 light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government
11421 plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a pulitzer
11422 prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb
11423 assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
11425 Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
11428 Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
11429 A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
11430 to the earlier joke.
11432 Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
11433 A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
11434 Californians trying to share the experience.
11436 Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
11437 A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub
11438 with brightly colored machine tools.
11440 Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
11441 A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
11444 Q: What's a light-year?
11445 A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
11447 Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
11448 A: Because it was on the other side.
11450 Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
11451 A: To stamp out forest fires.
11453 Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
11454 A: To stamp out flaming ducks.
11456 Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
11457 A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
11459 Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What
11462 A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on
11463 believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be
11464 the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No
11465 time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if
11466 somebody else has made the correction.
11468 And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're
11469 the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have
11470 to inform the whole net right away!
11472 -- Brad Templeton, "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions
11475 Quality Control, n.:
11476 The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off
11477 a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.
11480 Man Invented Alcohol,
11481 God Invented Grass.
11484 Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!
11486 Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!!
11488 Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
11490 (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
11493 Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
11494 atttempt to use it.
11501 "Qvid me anxivs svm?"
11503 QWERT (kwirt), n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]:
11504 1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69
11505 kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering; 2. [colloq.] one
11506 thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry; 3. [anat.] a
11507 painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus; 4. [slang]
11508 person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert.
11509 -- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed.
11511 Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
11513 Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something
11514 I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of
11515 computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport
11516 store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
11517 all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all
11518 the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are
11519 they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current
11520 rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on
11521 Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be
11522 impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying
11523 goes, giving away the store?
11524 -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
11526 Ray's Rule of Precision:
11527 Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
11532 And drugs cause cramp.
11533 Guns aren't lawful;
11536 You might as well live.
11539 Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
11540 the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described
11543 Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
11544 Congress. But I repeat myself.
11547 Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic
11548 value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is
11549 much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice
11550 this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA.
11552 Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware
11553 has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing
11554 machines are so poor at I/O.
11556 Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are
11557 so long they can't afford the disk space.
11559 Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write
11560 in anything less portable than a number two pencil.
11562 Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker
11563 with `programming systems', but those are so high level that they
11564 hardly count (and rarely count accurately; precision is for
11567 Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run
11568 on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo
11569 sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
11571 Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured
11572 programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-
11573 trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise
11576 Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine
11577 doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell
11580 Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it
11581 should be hard to understand.
11583 Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the
11584 illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how
11585 much good it did them.
11587 Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
11588 you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
11589 wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
11590 spring up in the middle of the machine room.
11592 Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write
11593 in BASIC after reaching puberty.
11595 Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress
11596 freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who
11599 Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who
11600 can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
11602 Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
11604 Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use
11605 functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
11607 Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
11608 This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a
11609 computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
11611 Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and
11612 greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any
11613 moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that
11614 systems could be virtual at *___
\b\b\ball* levels. They would like personal
11615 computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your
11616 DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their
11617 Correctness Verification Aid packages.
11619 Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the
11620 job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like
11621 using an undocumented external procedure.
11624 Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
11627 Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never
11628 afraid to break your face.
11630 Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts
11631 down the system for days.
11633 Real Users hate Real Programmers.
11635 Real Users know your home telephone number.
11637 Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your
11638 program doesn't deliver it.
11640 Real Users never use the Help key.
11642 Real World, The n.:
11643 1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may
11644 be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To
11645 programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related
11646 to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and
11647 tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4.
11648 The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university.
11649 "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used
11650 pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking
11651 of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a
11654 Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
11656 Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
11658 Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?
11661 Reality is for people who lack imagination.
11663 Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
11665 Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.
11668 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go
11672 "Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"
11674 Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
11675 being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
11676 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
11678 Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
11679 lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
11680 but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
11681 Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3
11684 Reclaimer, spare that tree!
11685 Take not a single bit!
11686 It used to point to me,
11687 Now I'm protecting it.
11688 It was the reader's CONS
11689 That made it, paired by dot;
11690 Now, GC, for the nonce,
11691 Thou shalt reclaim it not.
11693 "Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe
11694 again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know
11695 which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
11696 spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
11697 starfield surrounding the ship.
11699 "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC
11700 announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they
11701 are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been
11702 intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and
11703 transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
11704 Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
11705 -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
11707 Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
11708 If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
11710 Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
11713 "Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used
11717 Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
11720 Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good
11723 Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
11725 Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
11726 worse in Cleveland.
11727 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
11729 Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
11732 Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
11735 A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
11737 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
11739 REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?
11741 SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that
11742 the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can
11743 carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."
11744 I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind
11745 of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to
11746 do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of
11747 ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we
11748 need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political
11749 career be being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
11750 that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I
11752 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
11754 Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
11756 Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
11758 Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
11759 -- Wernher von Braun
11761 Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
11762 another chance later on.
11766 (1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
11767 and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
11768 he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the
11769 Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?
11771 (2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
11772 twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
11773 every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off
11774 his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week?
11776 (3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
11777 the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
11778 pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
11779 Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?
11782 When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
11783 circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
11784 empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred,
11785 induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always
11786 for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage,
11787 material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or
11788 none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed,
11789 proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably,
11790 universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it
11791 becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
11793 "Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time."
11796 Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
11797 Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
11798 reject the proposal.
11800 ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
11801 MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
11802 door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
11804 Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.
11805 -- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With
11809 If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it
11812 Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
11813 Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
11814 be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person
11815 shall be deemed to be a cat.
11817 Rule of Creative Research:
11818 (1) Never draw what you can copy.
11819 (2) Never copy what you can trace.
11820 (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
11822 Rule of Defactualization:
11823 Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
11825 Rule of Feline Frustration:
11826 When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
11827 content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.
11830 When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
11831 thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
11834 (1) The boss is always right.
11835 (2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1.
11837 Rules for Academic Deans:
11839 (2) If they find you, LIE!!!!
11840 -- Father Damian C. Fandal
11842 Rules for driving in New York:
11843 (1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
11844 (2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers
11846 (3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the
11849 RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
11850 (1) Never eat on an empty stomach.
11851 (2) Never leave the table hungry.
11852 (3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
11853 (4) Enjoy your food.
11854 (5) Enjoy your companion's food.
11855 (6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to
11856 accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
11857 (7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare,
11858 for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a
11859 brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks?
11860 (8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
11861 (9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You
11862 can always eat it later.
11863 (10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
11864 (11) Avoid blue food.
11865 -- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet"
11867 SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
11868 You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless
11869 tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority
11870 of Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People
11871 laugh at you a great deal.
11873 San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
11877 Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.
11879 Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
11882 Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
11883 He must be a communist.
11884 And a beard and long hair,
11885 Must be a pacifist.
11887 What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
11890 Satellite Safety Tip #14:
11891 If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
11894 It works better if you plug it in.
11896 Saturday night in Toledo Ohio,
11897 Is like being nowhere at all,
11898 All through the day how the hours rush by,
11899 You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
11900 -- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio"
11902 Sauron is alive in Argentina!
11904 Save energy: be apathetic.
11906 Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
11908 Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda.
11910 "Saw a sign on a restaurant that said Breakfast, any time -- so I
11911 ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.
11914 SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
11917 Schapiro's Explanation:
11918 The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's
11919 because they use more manure.
11921 Schizophrenia beats being alone.
11923 Schlattwhapper, n.:
11924 The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down,
11925 hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face.
11926 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11929 A dog's practice of continuously nuzzling in your crotch in
11931 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11934 The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a
11936 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11938 Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
11939 of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
11940 is not necessarily science.
11941 -- Henri Poincair'
\be
11943 Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
11945 Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
11949 SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
11950 You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will
11951 achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of
11952 ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered.
11955 No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
11957 Scott's second Law:
11958 When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
11959 to have been wrong in the first place.
11962 After the correction has been found in error, it will be
11963 impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
11965 Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
11966 Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock?
11967 Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
11968 Kirk: Then it's of external origin?
11969 Spock: Affirmative.
11970 Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
11971 Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
11973 Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
11975 Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the
11979 Second Law of Business Meetings:
11980 If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
11981 will pick the wrong one.
11984 If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
11987 "Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
11988 In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a
11989 multiline message byte.
11990 In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message
11991 must be sent passive true.
11992 The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter:
11993 (1) The ANRS if DAV is false
11994 (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither:
11995 (a) The LADS is active
11996 (b) Nor LACS is active"
11998 -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for
11999 Programmable Instrumentation
12001 Security check:
\a\a\aINTRUDER ALERT!
12003 Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
12004 She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
12005 Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
12007 Sightlessly seeking
12008 Some savage, spectacular suicide.
12009 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
12011 "See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ... in a way ..."
12013 Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:
12014 Ice Cream cures all ills.
12016 Self Test for Paranoia:
12017 You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
12021 From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
12023 Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would
12024 notify you if the record has pornographic material or
12025 material glorifying violence?"
12026 Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me."
12027 Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's
12028 legs on the album cover is good indication that it's
12029 not for little Johnny."
12031 -- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock
12032 lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985
12035 A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
12039 Serenity through viciousness.
12041 Serocki's Stricture:
12042 Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
12044 Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
12046 Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a
12047 big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at
12048 reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's
12049 build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up
12050 like crabgrass all over the United States.
12051 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
12053 Sex is a natural bodily process, like a stroke.
12055 Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
12058 Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
12061 Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
12062 it's one of the best.
12065 Shamus, n. [Yiddish]:
12066 A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
12067 temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
12068 A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog
12069 functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
12070 A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
12071 middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be
12072 bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
12073 The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
12074 am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
12076 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
12078 Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
12079 during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
12080 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
12084 Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
12087 "She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to."
12090 She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
12093 She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them
12096 She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
12097 have poured on a waffle ...
12099 "She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing,
12100 you should hear me play piano.'"
12103 "Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
12104 taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an
12105 excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature."
12108 She's genuinely bogus.
12110 SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
12111 POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
12113 Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
12114 playing golf with his boss.
12116 Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
12118 Signals don't kill programs. Programs kill programs.
12120 Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
12121 -- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
12124 If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
12127 Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
12129 Since I hurt my pendulum
12130 My life is all erratic.
12131 My parrot, who was cordial,
12132 Is now transmitting static.
12133 The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
12134 The cat keeps doing poo.
12135 The only thing that keeps me sane
12136 Is talking to my shoe.
12139 Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're
12143 Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
12144 -- Bob "Mountain" Beck
12146 [Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
12148 -- Winston Churchill
12150 Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate
12151 Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
12152 excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text.
12153 This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally
12154 examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published
12155 Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be
12156 printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry
12157 comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had
12158 no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.
12160 Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
12161 That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
12162 or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should
12165 Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
12168 Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not,
12169 when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and
12170 apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I
12171 neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
12172 tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension: they
12173 were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of
12174 souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a
12175 testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from
12177 -- Frederick Douglass
12179 Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
12180 (1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
12182 (2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
12183 (3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
12184 attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
12185 attracted to dark objects.
12187 Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ...
12190 The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when
12191 it sits in the dish too long.
12192 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
12194 Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
12198 The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
12199 returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have
12201 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
12203 So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate
12204 your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and
12205 hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast
12206 array of 8-millimeter video equipment.
12208 ... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you
12209 were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format
12210 that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as
12211 toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be
12212 made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a
12213 format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*.
12214 -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics
12217 So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
12218 praise of intelligence.
12219 -- Bertrand Russell
12221 "So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
12222 pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
12223 its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
12224 imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
12225 and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
12226 and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
12227 gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
12230 So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway? And why can't he ever
12231 remember his Bible?
12234 Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
12238 Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
12240 Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.
12242 Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
12245 Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
12246 celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
12247 stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
12248 "The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind
12249 of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The
12250 government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
12251 Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
12252 billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
12253 it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
12254 thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
12255 the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money
12257 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
12259 Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
12260 people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
12261 -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
12263 Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have only
12264 one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
12266 Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
12269 Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic.
12271 Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when
12272 you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even
12276 Some points to remember [about animals]:
12278 (1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri,
12280 (2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
12281 front of your clothes;
12282 (3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs
12283 you have just kicked.
12284 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
12286 Some primal termite knocked on wood.
12287 And tasted it, and found it good.
12288 And that is why your Cousin May
12289 Fell through the parlor floor today.
12292 Some programming languages manage to absorb change but withstand
12295 Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand
12297 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12299 Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
12300 pens will multiply instead of disappear.
12302 Someone will try to honk your nose today.
12304 "Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
12307 Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
12310 Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.
12312 "Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
12313 Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
12314 intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
12315 and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our
12316 best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
12317 we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
12319 "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
12320 -- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
12322 Song Title of the Week:
12323 "They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change
12326 Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already
12327 paid may disregard this fortune).
12329 Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.
12331 Sorry, no fortune this time.
12333 Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
12334 bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
12335 road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
12336 -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
12338 "Spare no expense to save money on this one."
12341 Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
12342 If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
12343 if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question
12346 Speak roughly to your little boy,
12347 And beat him when he sneezes:
12348 He only does it to annoy
12349 Because he knows it teases.
12353 I speak severely to my boy,
12354 And beat him when he sneezes:
12355 For he can thoroughly enjoy
12356 The pepper when he pleases!
12359 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
12361 Speak roughly to your little VAX,
12362 And boot it when it crashes;
12363 It knows that one cannot relax
12364 Because the paging thrashes!
12368 I speak severely to my VAX,
12369 And boot it when it crashes;
12370 In spite of all my favorite hacks
12371 My jobs it always thrashes!
12375 Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
12377 Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
12380 Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am
12381 sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
12382 cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free
12383 the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a
12384 bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a
12385 controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before
12386 passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same
12387 memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well,
12388 no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously
12389 designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
12391 Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror:
12393 With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair
12394 He throws the spinning disk drives in the air!
12395 And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down
12396 As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds!
12397 Helpless users with projects due
12398 Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too!
12400 Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla!
12401 Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!"
12403 * VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation
12404 * DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc.
12407 Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently
12408 these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people
12409 to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't
12410 communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so
12411 on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real
12412 life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't
12413 communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very _____
\b\b\b\b\bleast
12414 he can do is to Shut Up!
12415 -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
12417 "Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
12419 Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
12420 The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
12421 number of times you have looked at it.
12423 Spelling is a lossed art.
12425 Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
12428 The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
12430 -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
12433 Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
12434 wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
12436 "Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
12437 drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to pur'
\bee of bat guano; and the
12438 greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll
12439 take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"
12442 Stay away from flying saucers today.
12444 Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
12446 "Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
12448 Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
12449 Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
12452 Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
12453 Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
12456 Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
12458 Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only
12462 Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is
12463 fight the solutions.
12466 Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
12468 Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
12471 90% of everything is crud.
12473 Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
12474 editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
12477 Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
12478 before it is understood.
12480 Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
12482 Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar
12483 without his duck ...
12485 (Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)
12487 To code the impossible code,
12488 To bring up a virgin machine,
12489 To pop out of endless recursion,
12490 To grok what appears on the screen,
12492 To right the unrightable bug,
12493 To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
12494 To mount the unmountable magtape,
12495 To stop the unstoppable crash!
12497 Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
12499 Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
12501 Support your local police force -- steal!!
12503 Support your local Search and Rescue unit -- get lost.
12505 Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!
12507 Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type
12508 in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving
12509 the room is punishable under law:
12513 Surprise due today. Also the rent.
12515 Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
12518 The language used by the National Enquirer to print their
12523 A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
12525 Swipple's Rule of Order:
12526 He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
12528 Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
12529 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12531 System/3! System/3!
12532 See how it runs! See how it runs!
12533 Its monitor loses so totally!
12534 It runs all its programs in RPG!
12535 It's made by our favorite monopoly!
12538 Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
12539 infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
12540 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12542 T: One big monster, he called TROLL.
12543 He don't rock, and he don't roll;
12544 Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
12545 He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
12546 -- The Roguelet's ABC
12548 Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
12552 The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
12554 Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
12556 Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
12558 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
12560 Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
12562 Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it
12563 needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
12566 Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit
12567 back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
12568 beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
12569 drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
12570 nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
12571 and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So
12572 Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw
12573 no need to improve ...
12574 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
12576 Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to
12577 your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
12578 and they'll call you crazy.
12579 -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
12581 Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
12584 Talkers are no good doers.
12585 -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
12587 Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
12588 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
12590 TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
12591 You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged
12592 determination and work like hell. Most people think you are
12593 stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist.
12595 Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
12599 Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
12603 Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
12606 Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he
12607 grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway.
12609 Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
12611 Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means
12612 for going backwards.
12616 An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
12617 advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
12620 Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
12621 Is those things arms, or is they legs?
12622 I marvel at thee, Octopus;
12623 If I were thou, I'd call me us.
12626 Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
12630 "Terence, this is stupid stuff:
12631 You eat your victuals fast enough;
12632 There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
12633 To see the rate you drink your beer.
12634 But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
12635 It gives a chap the belly-ache.
12636 The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
12637 It sleeps well the horned head:
12638 We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
12639 To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
12640 Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
12641 Your friends to death before their time.
12642 Moping, melancholy mad:
12643 Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
12646 "Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a
12647 surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one
12648 hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other
12649 hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother."
12650 -- Len Cool, "American Pie"
12652 Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
12653 pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
12654 until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
12655 ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
12656 because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
12657 fact, for he merely said:
12659 "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
12660 it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain
12661 because it is impossible."
12663 Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
12664 philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
12665 -- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
12667 (Tertullian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
12669 Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
12671 Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
12673 "Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
12674 one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
12675 -- J. Finnegan, USC.
12677 Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.
12678 -- Pogo, by Walt Kelly
12680 "That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver"
12683 "That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
12685 That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
12687 That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
12690 The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.
12692 The Abrams' Principle:
12693 The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
12695 The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
12696 -- Thomas Jefferson
12698 The Advertising Agency Song:
12700 When your client's hopping mad,
12701 Put his picture in the ad.
12702 If he still should prove refractory,
12703 Add a picture of his factory.
12705 "The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug
12707 -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340
12709 The answer is that libdialog, the library on which sysinstall depends
12710 for these menus, is genuinely evil. It is the unloved, satanic
12711 bastard child of multiple parents and torturing users like yourself
12712 constitutes the only joy in life it has left. Its source files are
12713 all chmod'd 0666 and dire README files warn against trespass by
12714 neophyte programmers. It is the 7th gate of Hell. It makes the baby
12715 Jesus cry. Were libdialog given anthropomorphic representation, it
12716 would be promptly burnt at the stake and its ashes scattered in the
12717 desert, to be then doused with holy water from altitude by
12718 fire-fighting aircraft.
12720 -- Jordan K. Hubbard on the evils of libdialog
12722 The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas
12723 River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little
12726 The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
12727 Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
12728 and color, but also on ability.
12731 The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
12734 The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use
12735 in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
12736 Declaration not for that, but for future use.
12739 The average income of the modern teenager is about 2 a.m.
12741 The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
12742 average man can see better than he can think.
12744 "The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by
12745 people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried
12747 -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore
12749 The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
12750 cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
12751 difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
12752 which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
12753 here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO
12754 RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you
12755 want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking
12756 lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a
12757 squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out
12758 and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,
12759 his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was
12760 neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking
12762 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
12764 The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit
12765 called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in
12766 writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would
12767 be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices
12768 immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a
12769 bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special
12770 Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of
12771 paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty
12772 would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning.
12773 The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to
12774 emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood
12775 Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
12776 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
12778 The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
12779 but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
12781 The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
12784 The best defense against logic is ignorance.
12786 The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
12788 "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and
12789 blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.
12790 You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
12791 night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only
12792 love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or
12793 know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only
12794 one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what
12795 wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust,
12796 never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
12797 dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a
12798 lot of things there are to learn."
12799 -- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"
12801 The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them
12805 The bigger the theory the better.
12807 The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
12811 The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss
12812 Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
12814 It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been
12815 known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and,
12816 in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two
12817 under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of
12818 people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a
12819 city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking
12820 umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of
12821 activity that frightens the horses on the street ...
12823 "The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch."
12825 The bogosity meter just pegged.
12827 The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
12828 in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
12830 The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
12831 To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
12832 program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and
12833 convert to the next higher units.
12835 The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be.
12836 Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in
12837 automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.
12840 The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding
12843 "The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
12844 flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language."
12846 The camel has a single hump;
12848 Or else the other way around.
12849 I'm never sure. Are you?
12852 The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
12853 greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
12854 inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner
12855 party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
12858 "The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."
12861 The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
12862 at the steam fitters' picnic.
12864 The chief cause of problems is solutions.
12866 The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions.
12869 The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will
12873 "The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
12876 "The Computer made me do it."
12878 The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
12881 The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his
12883 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
12885 The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other
12886 subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up
12887 every bird watcher in the country.
12888 -- John Mitchell, Atty. General 1969-1972
12890 The Consultant's Curse:
12891 When the customer has beaten upon you long enough, give him
12892 what he asks for, instead of what he needs. This is very strong
12893 medicine, and is normally only required once.
12895 The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
12896 none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
12897 Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
12898 Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
12900 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
12902 The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
12904 The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going
12907 The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to
12911 The Crown is full of it!
12912 -- Nate Harris, 1775
12914 The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should
12915 therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could
12916 hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to
12917 declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war,
12918 then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press.
12919 Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges.
12920 -- William Ellery Channing
12922 The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
12924 The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
12925 us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
12926 Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
12928 The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
12930 The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
12932 "The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell
12933 into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him
12934 out again, it would be a calamity."
12935 -- Benjamin Disraeli
12937 The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
12938 requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require
12942 The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the
12943 following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
12945 "I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish.
12946 Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is
12947 Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
12948 "Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
12949 Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
12950 Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
12951 Macaroons are ____
\b\b\b\bvery Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is
12952 goyish. Lime soda is ____
\b\b\b\bvery goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that
12953 Jews won't go near them ..."
12954 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
12956 The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on
12957 a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.
12959 The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
12960 really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
12961 -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
12963 The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show
12964 off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his
12965 next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the
12966 duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the
12967 duck and returned it to his master.
12968 "Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
12969 "Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't
12972 The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
12973 and owns the worm farm.
12976 The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
12978 The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and
12981 The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
12982 weather forecasters.
12983 -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
12985 "The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not
12986 Compute' -- I forget which."
12987 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12989 The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
12991 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
12993 The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
12994 symposium to follow.
12996 The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
12997 their children to speak it.
12998 -- George Bernard Shaw
13000 The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a
13001 remarkable Christian forbearance among men.
13004 The fact that it works is immaterial.
13007 The faster we go, the rounder we get.
13008 -- The Grateful Dead
13011 You have taken yourself too seriously.
13013 The First Commandment for Technicians:
13014 Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged
13015 capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
13016 untechnician-like manner.
13018 The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
13021 The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King
13022 Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a
13023 tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad
13024 forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously
13025 fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of
13026 threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked
13027 suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of
13028 foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead
13029 one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with
13030 dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found
13031 drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown
13032 and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have
13033 thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture
13034 of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left
13035 in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed
13036 crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave
13037 Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when
13038 a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful
13039 throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system.
13040 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
13042 The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of
13043 management is that success equals skill.
13046 The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
13047 child, was propounded to me by my father:
13048 "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and
13050 I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
13052 "A herring," said my father.
13053 "A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
13054 "So hang it there."
13055 "But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
13057 "But a herring isn't wet."
13058 "If it's just painted it's still wet."
13059 "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
13061 "Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it
13063 -- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
13065 "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
13066 hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do."
13067 -- McCloctnik the Lucid
13069 The First Rule of Program Optimization:
13072 The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
13076 The first time, it's a KLUDGE!
13077 The second, a trick.
13078 Later, it's a well-established technique!
13079 -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics
13081 The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
13082 Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
13084 As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
13085 logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
13086 appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
13087 four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
13089 Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
13090 blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves
13091 parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
13094 The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by
13095 people who want some.
13096 -- Dwight MacDonald
13098 The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
13099 a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
13101 "The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and
13105 The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the
13106 number of your kids by 32 teeth.
13108 The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
13111 The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
13113 The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the
13114 center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
13115 Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
13116 End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
13118 The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled
13121 The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
13122 least until we've finished building it.
13124 The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature
13125 is to build better mice.
13127 The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him
13128 love and he invented marriage.
13130 THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
13131 The one who has the gold makes the rules.
13133 "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
13134 make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
13135 have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
13136 man in the bonds of Hell."
13139 The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got
13142 The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
13143 statistics. These are raised to the _
\bnth degree, the cube roots are
13144 extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive
13145 displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every
13146 case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts
13147 down anything he damn well pleases.
13148 -- Sir Josiah Stamp
13150 The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
13151 who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
13152 -- Benjamin Franklin.
13154 The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog:
13155 The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in
13156 courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk
13157 clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods
13158 of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp
13160 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13162 The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
13163 of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
13164 -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
13166 The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
13169 The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a custom
13170 whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the contrary,
13173 The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
13174 You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
13176 The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent
13179 The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back,
13180 which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at
13181 least 5000 years old."
13183 The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
13184 lists of "Ten Best".
13187 "The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
13188 has gills through which it can see."
13191 The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity
13192 -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
13194 The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
13195 protein -- it rejects it.
13198 The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can
13199 remember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider
13200 struggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in
13201 spring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite and
13202 wonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your head
13203 off. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe.
13204 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
13206 The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
13209 The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
13210 procession but carrying a banner.
13213 The idea is to die young as late as possible.
13216 The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic
13217 devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,
13218 where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with
13219 sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed,
13220 consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than
13221 have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones
13222 repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist
13223 of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic
13224 devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
13225 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
13227 "The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."
13230 "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit
13234 The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
13235 has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know
13236 when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
13239 The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
13240 point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
13241 important thing to people.
13242 -- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
13244 The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the
13245 number of participants.
13248 The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
13249 by the number of people in the group.
13251 The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
13252 information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
13253 dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
13254 real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.
13256 So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never
13257 pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
13258 consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
13259 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
13261 The Kennedy Constant:
13262 Don't get mad -- get even.
13264 The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
13266 The ladies men admire, I've heard,
13267 Would shudder at a wicked word.
13268 Their candle gives a single light;
13269 They'd rather stay at home at night.
13270 They do not keep awake till three,
13271 Nor read erotic poetry.
13272 They never sanction the impure,
13273 Nor recognize an overture.
13274 They shrink from powders and from paints ...
13275 So far, I've had no complaints.
13278 "The last time somebody said, `I find I can write much better with a
13279 word processor.', I replied, `They used to say the same thing about
13283 The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
13284 poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
13288 The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the
13290 -- Henry David Thoreau
13292 "The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all
13293 men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the
13294 universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we
13295 presently imagine we own."
13298 The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
13301 The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
13303 The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get
13307 The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
13310 "The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
13311 we could with both of them."
13312 -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
13314 The makers may make
13315 and the users may use,
13316 but the fixers must fix
13317 with but minimal clues
13319 The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
13320 crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no
13322 -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
13324 The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
13325 will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
13328 The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
13329 soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
13330 when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
13332 The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
13334 The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
13335 devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
13338 The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might
13339 be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the
13340 law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was
13341 guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples
13342 Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking
13343 Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality
13344 of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive
13346 -- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
13349 The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.
13350 -- Laurence J. Peter
13352 The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
13353 -- Nicol Williamson
13355 The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
13357 The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
13359 "The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the
13360 lower the mailing cost."
13361 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
13363 The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and
13364 robbers there will be.
13367 The more things change, the more they stay insane.
13369 The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us
13372 The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
13375 "The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and
13376 to watch someone else do it wrong without comment."
13377 -- Theodore H. White
13379 The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
13380 discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
13383 The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
13385 "The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
13386 1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert."
13389 The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
13390 Support your right to bare arms!
13392 The net of law is spread so wide,
13393 No sinner from its sweep may hide.
13394 Its meshes are so fine and strong,
13395 They take in every child of wrong.
13396 O wondrous web of mystery!
13397 Big fish alone escape from thee!
13398 -- James Jeffrey Roche
13400 The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
13401 hope I don't get run over again.
13403 The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
13404 in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.
13406 But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for
13407 whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
13410 "The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The
13411 Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country.
13412 The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive
13413 and running the country ..."
13414 -- Robert J Woodhead
13416 The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
13418 -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
13420 The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
13422 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
13424 The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should
13425 serve the state is essentially a Communist notion ... In a free society
13426 these institutions must be wholly free -- which is to say that their
13427 function is to serve as checks upon the state.
13430 The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are
13434 The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly
13435 analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their
13436 occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve
13437 these problems when called upon.
13439 However, When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to
13440 remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
13442 The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:
13443 Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm,
13444 Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of Corporate
13447 The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
13449 The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader
13450 catch his own breath.
13451 -- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
13453 The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
13457 The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
13460 The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the
13461 `social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
13462 -- Ernest Rutherford
13464 The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
13467 "The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon."
13468 -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
13471 The only really decent thing to do behind a person's back is pat it.
13473 The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber
13474 has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture,
13475 finished, and put inside boxes.
13476 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
13478 The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any
13482 "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from
13486 "I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the
13488 -- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
13490 The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
13493 The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
13496 The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
13499 The optimum committee has no members.
13500 -- Norman Augustine
13502 "The other day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven ... I almost
13503 went back in time."
13506 The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
13508 -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
13510 The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
13511 were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
13514 The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
13515 Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
13516 Let others think his heart is big,
13517 I think it stupid of the Pig.
13520 The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter
13521 swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
13522 batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The
13523 center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
13524 his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
13527 The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.
13530 The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish
13531 to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it
13532 is equally important to accept and tolerate different standards of
13533 courtesy, not expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own
13534 preferences. Only then can we hope to restore the insult to its proper
13535 social function of expressing true distaste.
13536 -- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to
13537 Excruciatingly Correct Behavior"
13539 "The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more
13542 The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
13543 Were each of them once a kiddie.
13544 A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
13545 Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
13548 The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his
13549 brother's remark, "There's more Arabs in this country than there is
13550 Jews!". Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers.
13551 -- Baltimore, Channel 11 News, on Jimmy Carter
13553 The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday
13554 they might force their beliefs on us.
13557 The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired
13558 warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by
13559 changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped
13561 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
13563 The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
13564 constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
13565 appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
13566 statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
13567 also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
13568 -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
13570 The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough
13571 voters to win the next election.
13573 The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO"
13574 represents the secondary theme:
13576 Law Enforcement Officials
13578 The overall theme of SoupCon shall be:
13580 Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials
13582 The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
13583 stupidity of your action.
13585 The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
13586 Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
13587 using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
13588 Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
13589 etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
13590 bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None
13591 of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
13593 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
13595 The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go
13599 The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get
13602 The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy
13603 problems in order to get results.
13605 The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy
13606 problems in order to get results.
13608 The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
13609 pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
13610 -- Elizabeth Taylor
13612 The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
13614 The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's
13615 outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by
13616 mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once
13617 tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims
13618 the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding.
13619 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13621 "The pyramid is opening!"
13623 "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
13624 -- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
13625 Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
13627 The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's:
13628 "My brain is paged out to my liver"
13630 The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is
13631 it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television,
13632 that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of
13634 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
13636 The rain it raineth on the just
13637 And also on the unjust fella,
13638 But chiefly on the just, because
13639 The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
13641 The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is
13644 The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
13646 The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose",
13647 which is also sometimes called "grape sugar", and also because "Grape
13648 Nuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between Gerbil
13649 Food and Gravel", which is what it tastes like.
13650 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
13652 The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's
13656 The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
13657 persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
13658 progress depends on the unreasonable man.
13659 -- George Bernard Shaw
13661 The revolution will not be televised.
13663 The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
13666 The rhino is a homely beast,
13667 For human eyes he's not a feast.
13668 Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
13669 I'll stare at something less prepoceros.
13672 The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This
13673 means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
13675 "The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
13676 and to his imagination for his facts."
13679 The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
13680 -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
13682 "The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
13683 House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights
13684 you have and what rights you have not got."
13685 -- J. Parnell Thomas
13687 The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with
13691 The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
13692 one who is doing it.
13694 The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in
13695 his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on
13696 one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't
13697 take it too seriously.
13698 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13700 The rule on staying alive as a forcaster is to give 'em a number or
13701 give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
13702 -- Jane Bryant Quinn
13704 "The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
13706 The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
13707 showed that all had these things in common:
13709 (1) They all had moderate appetites.
13710 (2) They all came from middle class homes
13711 (3) All but two of them were dead.
13713 The scum also rises.
13714 -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
13716 The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,
13717 respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones
13718 from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
13719 milestones are lifted.
13720 -- George Bernard Shaw
13722 The Seventh Commandments for Technicians
13723 Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy
13724 fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in
13727 The sheep that fly over your head are soon to land.
13729 The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
13732 The Sixth Commandment of Frisbee:
13733 The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going
13734 in a direction you did not want. (Goes the wrong way = Goes a long
13738 "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
13739 and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted
13740 activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ...
13741 neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
13743 "The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their
13745 -- Ed Bluestone, "The National Lampoon"
13747 "The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!"
13749 The sooner you make your first 5000 mistakes, the sooner you will be
13750 able to correct them.
13753 The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
13755 The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's
13756 readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of
13757 some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet
13758 reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led
13759 the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well
13760 known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at
13761 Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program
13762 of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of
13763 psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three
13764 Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That
13765 these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a
13766 further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want
13767 something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from
13769 -- Marshall Brickman, Playboy, April, 1973
13771 The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.
13773 The steady state of disks is full.
13776 The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people who make
13778 -- Mayor Frank Rizzo
13780 "The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
13781 is an emerging underachiever."
13783 The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant
13786 "The subspace _
\bW inherits the other 8 properties of _
\bV. And there aren't
13787 even any property taxes."
13788 -- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
13790 The sum of the Universe is zero.
13792 The sun was shining on the sea,
13793 Shining with all his might:
13794 He did his very best to make
13795 The billows smooth and bright --
13796 And this was very odd, because it was
13797 The middle of the night.
13798 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
13800 The superfluous is very necessary.
13803 The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
13806 The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
13807 authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
13808 the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
13809 the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
13810 radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
13811 as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
13812 receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
13813 Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
13814 heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
13815 the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
13816 heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
13817 radiation, (_
\bH/_
\bE)^4 = 50, where _
\bE is the absolute temperature of the
13818 earth (~300K), gives _
\bH as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell
13819 cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
13820 fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
13821 burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means
13822 that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We
13823 have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
13824 -- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
13826 The Third Law of Photography:
13827 If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
13828 when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark
13831 The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
13833 The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.
13834 The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break
13836 The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
13838 The trouble with a kitten is that
13839 When it grows up, it's always a cat
13842 The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
13844 The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate
13846 -- Franklin P. Jones
13848 The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
13849 more important to do.
13851 The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
13852 appreciates how difficult it was.
13854 The trouble with superheros is what to do between phone booths.
13857 The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.
13860 The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And
13863 The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
13864 Which practically conceal its sex.
13865 I think it clever of the turtle
13866 In such a fix to be so fertile.
13869 "The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and
13872 The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
13873 annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
13876 The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are
13877 "100 percent American"...
13878 -- U. S. Army (1945)
13880 The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
13881 everybody and still nobody likes him.
13884 The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be
13887 The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
13888 combination is locked up in the safe.
13891 The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
13892 Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said
13893 to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his
13894 decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
13896 The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
13897 religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
13898 from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
13899 yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
13900 world put together.
13901 -- Sir Peter Medawar
13903 The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
13904 regarded as a criminal offense.
13907 The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes
13911 The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
13915 The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
13916 Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
13917 to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
13918 be one of the facts that needs altering.
13919 -- Dr. Who, "Face of Evil"
13921 "The voters have spoken, the bastards ..."
13923 "The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
13924 it's just a tired feeling:"
13926 The wages of sin are high but you get your money's worth.
13928 "The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
13929 that would be clearly understood."
13932 "The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
13933 with a large fortune."
13935 The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
13936 Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
13937 It must have blown through someone's feet,
13938 Like those of Caspar Weinberger.
13941 The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
13943 The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
13945 The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!
13947 The world's as ugly as sin,
13948 And almost as delightful
13949 -- Frederick Locker-Lampson
13951 The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
13952 four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
13955 Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
13957 He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan,
13958 then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open
13961 If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should
13962 not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself.
13964 Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
13965 Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
13966 Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
13967 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
13969 Then here's to the City of Boston,
13970 The town of the cries and the groans.
13971 Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks,
13972 And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
13973 -- Franklin Pierce Adams
13975 There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
13976 and praiseworthy ...
13977 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
13979 There are many intelligent species in the universe. They all own
13982 There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axis
13983 are chosen correctly.
13985 There are no games on this system.
13987 There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the
13988 existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any
13989 marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat
13990 engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is
13991 obviously impossible.
13992 -- Richard Davisson
13994 There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the
13995 truth without lying.
13997 There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
13998 vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
14001 "There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
14002 plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
14003 and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again,
14006 "There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells
14007 and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated
14008 pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving
14009 them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you
14010 stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your
14012 -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII
14014 There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
14017 "There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
14018 from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone
14019 loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor."
14021 There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
14022 offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin
14023 a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount
14024 of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of
14025 affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
14026 When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
14027 Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
14028 -- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
14030 "There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and
14031 engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far
14033 -- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
14035 There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring
14036 the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many
14037 facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next
14038 fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent
14039 Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's
14040 Factor; that's engineering.
14042 There are three things I always forget. Names, faces -- the third I
14046 There are three ways to get something done:
14047 (1) Do it yourself.
14048 (2) Hire someone to do it for you.
14049 (3) Forbid your kids to do it.
14051 There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is
14054 There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect
14055 the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the
14056 sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.
14057 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
14059 There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good
14060 sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
14063 "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
14064 make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
14065 other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
14069 "There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
14070 other is to read Pope."
14073 There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one
14076 There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a
14077 suitable application of high explosives.
14079 There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.
14082 There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
14085 There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer
14089 There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
14092 There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an
14096 There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
14097 paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
14099 There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
14101 There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
14102 tied during the month of April.
14104 There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.
14107 "There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor,
14108 Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and
14109 love of the Fatherland."
14112 There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
14113 what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
14114 disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
14117 There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
14118 -- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
14120 "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a
14122 -- Arthur C. Clarke
14124 There *__
\b\bis* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
14126 There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
14129 There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
14130 tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
14131 abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
14132 war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five,
14134 -- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
14136 "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their
14138 -- Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society
14141 There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
14142 -- George Bernard Shaw
14144 There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast
14147 There is no such thing as fortune. Try again.
14149 There is no time like the pleasant.
14151 There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be
14154 There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY.
14155 There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS I'm very probably wrong.
14157 "There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine,"
14158 said a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat. "And yet just
14159 a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with an unanswerable
14160 question," said Nasrudin. "I could have answered it if I had been
14161 there." "Very well. He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in
14162 the middle of the night?'"
14164 There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the
14165 ocean level wouldn't cure.
14168 There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
14169 that is not being talked about.
14172 There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
14173 returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
14176 There once was a girl named Irene
14177 Who lived on distilled kerosene
14178 But she started absorbin'
14180 And since then has never benzene.
14182 There once was a member of Mensa
14183 Who was a most excellent fencer.
14184 The sword that he used
14185 Was his -- (line is refused,
14186 And has now been removed by the censor).
14188 There once was an old man from Esser,
14189 Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
14190 It at last grew so small,
14191 He knew nothing at all,
14192 And now he's a College Professor.
14194 "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved
14196 -- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
14198 There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were
14199 left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley.
14200 Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so they
14201 started debating who should be allowed to stay.
14203 The Pope pointed out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all
14204 over the world, the President explained that if he died then America
14205 would be stuck with the Vice-President, and so forth. Then Mayor Daley
14206 said, "Look! We're not solving anything like this! The only fair
14207 thing to do is to vote on it." So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97
14210 There was a young lady from Hyde
14211 Who ate a green apple and died.
14212 While her lover lamented
14213 The apple fermented
14214 And made cider inside her inside.
14216 There was a young man who said "God,
14217 I find it exceedingly odd,
14218 That the willow oak tree
14220 When there's no one about in the Quad."
14222 "Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd,
14223 For I'm always about in the Quad;
14224 And that's why the tree,
14226 Signed "Yours faithfully, God."
14228 There was a young poet named Dan,
14229 Whose poetry never would scan.
14230 When told this was so,
14231 He said, "Yes, I know.
14232 It's because I try to put every possible syllable into that last line that I can."
14234 "There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
14235 both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
14236 talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
14240 There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of
14241 the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
14242 digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
14243 8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the
14244 transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
14245 stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
14246 feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
14247 systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
14248 first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
14249 satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
14250 telephone business?
14252 There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not
14255 There's a long-standing bug relating to the x86 architecture that
14256 allows you to install Windows.
14257 -- Matthew D. Fuller
14259 There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
14261 There's little in taking or giving,
14262 There's little in water or wine:
14263 This living, this living, this living,
14264 Was never a project of mine.
14265 Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
14266 The gain of the one at the top,
14267 For art is a form of catharsis,
14268 And love is a permanent flop,
14269 And work is the province of cattle,
14270 And rest's for a clam in a shell,
14271 So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
14272 Would you kindly direct me to hell?
14275 There's no easy quick way out, we're gonna have to live through our
14276 whole lives, win, lose, or draw.
14279 There's no future in time travel.
14281 There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
14284 There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get
14287 There's no room in the drug world for amateurs.
14289 There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
14293 "There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead
14295 -- Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner
14297 There's nothing so precious as a cafe full of Gap kiddies trying to
14298 work out whether you're really wearing rubber pants.
14301 "There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't
14304 There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
14305 what it is I'll get married again.
14308 There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
14309 becoming an endangered synthetic.
14312 "These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
14313 "These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
14314 "These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
14315 out of MEGATON MAN!"
14317 These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they
14318 used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
14320 They also surf who only stand on waves.
14322 "They make a desert and call it peace."
14323 -- Tacitus (55?-120?)
14325 They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
14326 always spell better than they pronounce.
14329 "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
14330 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
14331 -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
14333 "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"
14335 They told me you had proven it When they discovered our results
14336 About a month before. Their hair began to curl
14337 The proof was valid, more or less Instead of understanding it
14338 But rather less than more. We'd run the thing through PRL.
14340 He sent them word that we would try Don't tell a soul about all this
14341 To pass where they had failed For it must ever be
14342 And after we were done, to them A secret, kept from all the rest
14343 The new proof would be mailed. Between yourself and me.
14345 My notion was to start again
14346 Ignoring all they'd done
14347 We quickly turned it into code
14348 To see if it would run.
14350 They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
14352 "They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult
14356 Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
14358 Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
14360 Think big. Pollute the Mississippi.
14362 Think honk if you're a telepath.
14364 Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
14366 Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer
14369 Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
14371 "Thirty days hath Septober,
14372 April, June, and no wonder.
14373 all the rest have peanut butter
14374 except my father who wears red suspenders."
14376 This Fortue Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14
14378 This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need,
14379 please use the program "________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\brandchar". This program generates random
14380 characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
14381 something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be
14382 more profound than THIS program has ever been.
14384 This fortune intentionally not included.
14386 This fortune is false.
14388 This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
14390 "This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
14391 regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling
14394 "This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT
14398 "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
14399 actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?"
14401 This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly,
14402 because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under
14403 which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has
14404 "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the
14405 consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any
14406 rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for
14407 oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill
14408 Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers
14409 over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These
14410 innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been
14411 passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
14412 amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do
14413 apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark,
14414 and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
14415 -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
14417 This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
14419 This is for all ill-treated fellows
14420 Unborn and unbegot,
14421 For them to read when they're in trouble
14425 "This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back
14427 -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
14429 This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
14431 THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
14433 If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
14434 contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene? We cannot continue
14435 without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are
14436 contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We
14437 can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money
14438 for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
14439 difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
14440 and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to
14441 "fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before
14442 you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
14443 Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute
14444 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
14445 Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or
14446 more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
14448 This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
14449 power of computers:
14451 Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct
14452 the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
14453 minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The
14454 results are that one should eat each day:
14458 1 glass of skim milk
14459 27 heads of lettuce.
14460 -- Rev. Adrian Melott
14462 This is the ____
\b\b\b\bLAST time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!
14464 This is the story of the bee
14465 Whose sex is very hard to see
14467 You cannot tell the he from the she
14468 But she can tell, and so can he
14470 The little bee is never still
14471 She has no time to take the pill
14473 And that is why, in times like these
14474 There are so many sons of bees.
14476 This is your fortune.
14478 This land is full of trousers!
14479 this land is full of mausers!
14480 And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down!
14481 -- Firesign Theater
14483 This land is made of mountains,
14484 This land is made of mud,
14485 This land has lots of everything,
14486 For me and Elmer Fudd.
14488 This land has lots of trousers,
14489 This land has lots of mousers,
14490 And pussycats to eat them
14491 When the sun goes down.
14493 This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life,
14494 you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
14497 This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
14499 This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with
14503 This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of
14504 the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many
14505 solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were
14506 largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,
14507 which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of
14508 paper that were unhappy.
14511 "This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does
14512 something child-like."
14513 -- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
14515 This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
14516 student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
14518 One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
14519 Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
14520 computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
14521 which identifies errors in the original program.
14523 This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
14526 This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget
14529 Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those
14532 Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
14534 Those who can't write, write manuals.
14536 "Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics."
14539 Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
14542 Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
14543 for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
14546 Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often
14547 surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
14550 Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
14552 Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
14553 revolution inevitable.
14556 Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are
14557 men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
14558 without the roar of its many waters.
14559 -- Frederick Douglass
14561 Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
14562 the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
14563 Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
14564 whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A
14565 fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
14566 more about the matter than the others.
14567 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
14569 Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
14571 Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so.
14574 Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
14577 'Tis the dream of each programmer,
14578 Before his life is done,
14579 To write three lines of APL,
14580 And make the damn things run.
14582 To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
14591 "To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore
14592 this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to
14593 offer in response is based on information available to make no such
14596 To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
14597 call it the target.
14599 To envision how a 4-processor system running [SunOS] 4.1.x works, think
14600 of four kids and one bathroom.
14603 "To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System"
14605 To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
14607 To err is human, to moo bovine.
14609 To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.
14612 To generalize is to be an idiot.
14615 To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
14616 men, two of them absent.
14618 To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
14621 To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
14623 To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall.
14625 To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide
14628 To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
14629 system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
14630 inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence:
14631 precision and flexibility may be just as disfunctional in novel,
14632 uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar,
14633 well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures
14634 of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very
14635 secure ecological niche.
14636 -- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
14638 To understand this important story, you have to understand how the
14639 telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local
14640 computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is
14641 in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the
14642 lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.
14644 Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it
14645 suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the
14646 computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the
14647 one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe
14648 break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid
14649 incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,
14650 an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca
14651 pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's
14652 loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen
14653 and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
14654 -- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
14657 "To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?"
14659 "To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
14662 Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
14664 Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
14666 Today is the first day of the rest of the mess
14668 Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
14670 Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
14672 "Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
14673 except in major motion pictures."
14674 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
14676 Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
14678 And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
14679 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
14681 "Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
14682 cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
14683 spectacular adventure starring ... Tippy, the Wonder Dog."
14686 Toilet Toup'
\bee, n.:
14687 Any shag carpet that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus
14688 creating endless annoyance to male users.
14689 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
14691 Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
14693 Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
14695 Too clever is dumb.
14698 Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
14701 Too much of everything is just enough.
14704 Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available
14706 -- Governor Jerry Brown
14708 Top 10 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:
14710 10) Specifications are for the weak and timid!
14711 9) You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
14712 8) Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
14713 7) What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'.
14714 Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
14715 assurance people in its wake.
14716 6) Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments'
14717 - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
14718 5) Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
14719 4) A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
14720 3) Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features
14721 are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.
14722 2) You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
14724 1) Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship
14725 it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
14727 Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the
14728 earth's supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century.
14729 As man struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help.
14734 Follow these simple suggestions:
14736 (1) Walk with a light step. Carry helium balloons if possible.
14737 (2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
14738 (3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like
14740 (4) Avoid showers .. take baths instead.
14741 (5) Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big
14743 (6) Stop flipping pancakes
14745 Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
14747 Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful, wealthy, and live
14748 in eucalyptus trees.
14750 Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant
14754 Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
14757 Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
14760 Dumb and illiterate.
14761 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
14763 Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
14766 Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no
14769 Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done,
14770 is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written
14771 in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and
14772 pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer),
14773 defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the
14774 absolutely perfect future.
14777 Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
14779 Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
14780 specification is that it should run noiselessly.
14782 Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
14785 Trying to establish voice contact ... please ____
\b\b\b\byell into keyboard.
14788 The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
14792 Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
14794 TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
14795 -- Frank Lloyd Wright
14797 'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
14798 Did gyre and gimble in their cave
14799 All mimsy was the CS-VAX
14800 And Cory raths outgrabe.
14802 "Beware the software rot, my son!
14803 The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
14804 Beware the broken pipe, and shun
14805 The frumious system crash!"
14807 'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
14808 preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
14809 throughout our place of residence,
14810 Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
14811 possessors of this potential, including that
14812 species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
14813 Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
14814 edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
14815 Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
14816 imminent visitation from an eccentric
14817 philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
14818 is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
14820 Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
14823 Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
14826 Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man
14827 said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The
14828 second man said, "He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his
14829 chambers, and spent an hour trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded
14830 only in falling over and bruising his forehead. Returning to the
14831 courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten.
14832 If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and the case is
14833 dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it and
14834 must pay three silver pieces."
14836 Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
14838 "Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory.
14839 I forget the second."
14841 Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
14843 U: There's a U -- a Unicorn!
14844 Run right up and rub its horn.
14845 Look at all those points you're losing!
14846 UMBER HULKS are so confusing.
14847 -- The Roguelet's ABC
14849 "Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex."
14851 (Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)
14852 -- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
14854 UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
14856 "Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"
14858 "It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food,
14860 -- MacNelley, "Shoe"
14862 Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
14863 Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
14864 hammer or get a splinter in it.
14866 Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
14867 just man is also in prison.
14868 -- Henry David Thoreau
14870 Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it
14871 can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
14873 Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
14874 Superiority is recessive.
14876 Unfair animal names:
14878 -- tsetse fly -- bullhead
14879 -- booby -- duck-billed platypus
14880 -- sapsucker -- Clarence
14883 United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the
14884 Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
14885 all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of
14886 all the patriots of every persuasion.
14888 Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
14896 Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
14897 usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
14900 unix soit qui mal y pense
14902 UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on
14903 Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
14907 If it happens, it must be possible.
14909 Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out
14910 twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
14913 Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir
14916 A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
14919 The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
14920 -- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"
14922 Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
14925 Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
14926 opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
14929 Vail's Second Axiom:
14930 The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
14931 amount of work already completed.
14933 Valerie: Aww, Tom, you're going maudlin on me ...
14934 Tom: I reserve the right to wax maudlin as I wane eloquent ...
14938 An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
14941 Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of food,
14942 very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla
14943 extract! For example, "vanilla-flavored won ton soup" (or simply
14944 "vanilla won ton soup") means ordinary won ton soup, as opposed to hot
14945 and sour won ton soup.
14947 Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
14948 (1) If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
14950 (2) If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
14955 Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
14957 Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life."
14958 Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes
14959 waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
14961 Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
14964 Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the
14967 VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
14968 Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to
14969 ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this
14970 morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you
14971 wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of
14972 that old underwear you own.
14974 VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
14975 You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
14976 sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and
14977 sometimes fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus
14980 "Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
14982 Virtue is its own punishment.
14984 Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
14985 from where you left them to where you can't find them.
14987 Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
14989 VMS is like a nightmare about RSX-11M.
14993 Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and
14996 VYARZERZOMANIMORORSEZASSEZANSERAREORSES?
14998 "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
15001 Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
15002 1st customer: "I'll have tea."
15003 2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
15004 (Waiter exits, returns)
15005 Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?"
15007 Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser.
15009 War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
15010 -- Charles Edward Montague
15012 War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
15015 Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your
15016 mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of hair on
15017 your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of your favorite war.
15019 Warning: Do not look directly into laser with remaining eye.
15021 Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for
15022 those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking
15024 -- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
15026 Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with.
15028 Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
15031 Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
15033 Wasting time is an important part of living.
15036 The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
15037 number and significance of any persons watching it.
15039 We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which
15040 divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being
15041 correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
15044 We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
15047 We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.
15048 -- Winston Churchill
15050 We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
15051 -- Whole Earth Catalog
15053 We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
15054 -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
15056 We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
15057 socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The
15058 bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say
15062 "We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last
15064 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
15066 "We are upping our standards ... so up yours."
15067 -- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988.
15069 We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
15071 We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
15072 deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
15073 -- James E. Day, Postmaster General
15075 "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
15078 "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
15080 We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a
15083 We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the
15084 hardware, but we can *___
\b\b\bsee* the blinking lights!
15086 We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
15087 -- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
15089 "We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an
15090 hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down
15091 mill, and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on
15092 our grave singing Haleleuia ..."
15095 We have met the enemy, and he is us.
15098 We have only two things to worry about: That things will never get
15099 back to normal, and that they already have.
15101 "We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
15102 hands for masturbation."
15105 We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an
15106 official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death
15107 Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish
15108 you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that
15109 said "ELECTROCUTION".
15111 Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your
15112 teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing
15113 process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a
15114 couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways
15115 out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste
15116 stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom
15117 floor, which is how the police would find you.
15119 You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
15120 -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
15122 We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all
15123 purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start
15124 with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the
15125 playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is
15126 best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can
15127 buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.
15130 We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
15131 respect their good judgement.
15133 We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass
15134 no matter how self-seeking.
15135 -- F. G. Withington
15137 We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years ago
15138 people did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult.
15139 For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he had
15140 to drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his bare
15141 fist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered with
15142 primitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider how
15143 ugly paneling is to begin with.
15144 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
15146 We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best
15147 friends are trying to kill us.
15149 We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
15150 technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
15152 we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
15153 we will cry over things we used to laugh &
15154 our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile
15155 creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
15156 in the end a summer with wild winds &
15157 new friends will be.
15159 We wish you a Hare Krishna
15160 We wish you a Hare Krishna
15161 We wish you a Hare Krishna
15162 And a Sun Myung Moon!
15166 Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
15169 Weinberg's First Law:
15170 Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
15172 Weinberg's Principle:
15173 An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
15174 sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
15176 Weinberg's Second Law:
15177 If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
15178 then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
15180 Weiner's Law of Libraries:
15181 There are no answers, only cross references.
15183 Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if
15184 you run out of food.
15185 -- Dean McLaughlin.
15187 "Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is
15188 no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five
15190 -- The Mahabharata.
15192 "We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later."
15194 Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a
15195 lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a
15196 governor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and the
15197 reason you'll be reading about him is that he's one of the 50 top
15198 contenders for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. These men
15199 will spend the next 18 months going around the country engaging in the
15200 most degrading activities imaginable, such as wearing idiot hats and
15201 appearing on "Meet the Press". "Meet the Press" is one of those Sunday
15202 morning public interest shows that the public is not the least bit
15203 interested in. It features a panel of reporters who ask questions of a
15204 guest politician, who wins an Amana home freezer if he can get through
15205 the entire show without answering a single question ...
15206 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
15208 Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them
15209 back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds,
15210 or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they
15211 they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
15212 -- President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile
15214 "Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___
\b\b\bcan*
15216 -- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
15218 Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
15219 And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
15220 I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
15221 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
15223 If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
15224 Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
15225 'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
15226 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
15228 On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,
15229 But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
15230 Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
15231 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
15232 -- Core Dumped Blues
15234 "Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"
15236 "Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ...
15237 coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero."
15240 We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from
15241 the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging
15242 you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right
15243 in his bowl full of jelly.
15244 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
15246 We're only in it for the volume.
15249 Westheimer's Discovery:
15250 A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
15251 couple of hours in the library.
15254 Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
15256 We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
15257 of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
15258 but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
15261 "What are we going to do?"
15263 "Me, I'm examining the major Western religions. I'm looking for
15264 something that's soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a
15265 short initiation period."
15267 "What are you doing?"
15269 "Examining the world's major religions. I'm looking for something
15270 that's light on morals, has lots of holidays, and with a short
15271 initiation period."
15273 What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
15275 What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
15277 What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?
15279 What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
15281 What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
15283 "What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so
15284 that we wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our
15285 country. Nice try anyway, George."
15286 -- D.J. on KSFO/KYA
15288 What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
15291 What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow
15294 What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower
15295 stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed
15296 barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character
15297 from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of
15298 while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our
15299 dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up
15300 powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the
15301 bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any
15302 one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact
15303 lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where
15304 you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah",
15305 if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with
15306 that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it;
15307 they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to
15308 flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them.
15309 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
15311 What I tell you three times is true.
15313 "What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-
15314 sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up
15315 with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always
15316 came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at
15318 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
15320 What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
15322 What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I
15323 definitely overpaid for my carpet.
15324 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
15326 What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's
15327 worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
15328 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
15330 What is a magician but a practicing theorist?
15333 What is mind? No matter.
15334 What is matter? Never mind.
15335 -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
15337 What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern
15338 computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest
15339 and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
15341 "What is the Nature of God?"
15343 CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!=
15347 STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS.
15349 "I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."
15352 "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?"
15355 "What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
15356 which is the exact opposite."
15357 -- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical_Essays", 1928
15359 What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
15361 "What I've done, of course, is total garbage."
15362 -- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a
15364 What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
15365 to compare it with.
15367 What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism.
15368 It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books
15369 and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes
15370 and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes,
15371 women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate
15372 mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige
15373 and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort."
15376 What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
15377 -- Ursula K. LeGuin
15379 What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
15381 What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
15383 What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
15385 What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.
15387 What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent
15390 What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
15392 What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
15394 What this country needs is a good five cent nickel.
15396 What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
15398 What this world needs is a good five-dollar plasma weapon.
15400 What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
15401 -- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
15403 What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which
15404 nobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday
15405 Morning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-
15406 launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it just
15407 remains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradual
15408 process of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would still
15409 be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed.
15410 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
15412 What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it.
15414 Whatever became of eternal truth?
15416 Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for
15417 cocaine: "You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils
15418 as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding
15419 hundred dollar bills."
15422 Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not
15424 -- Collis P. Huntingdon
15426 "Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not
15430 "What's another word for Thesaurus?"
15433 "What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"
15436 When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
15440 When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
15441 thing," it's the money.
15444 When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
15447 When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is
15448 not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space
15449 travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
15452 When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the
15453 sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain
15454 relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
15455 -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
15458 When all other means of communication fail, try words.
15460 "When are you BUTTHEADS gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo
15461 tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?"
15464 When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
15465 the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
15466 -- Vine Deloria, Jr.
15468 When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask? Well, last year, I
15469 think it was a Tuesday.
15471 When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
15474 "When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great
15475 parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if
15479 When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a
15480 year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire
15481 winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.
15482 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15484 When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young
15485 ladies, and, of course, the goat.
15487 When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now
15488 I'm beginning to believe it.
15491 When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, "Daddy, will you
15492 take me to the zoo?" He answered, "If the zoo wants you let them come
15496 "When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any
15497 firearms with me. I said, `Well, what do you need?'"
15500 When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
15501 the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
15504 When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an
15505 act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A
15506 group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a
15507 six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things
15508 together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ...
15509 Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective
15510 responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military
15511 establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have
15512 been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things
15513 together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
15514 -- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"
15516 When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
15517 or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
15518 cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to
15519 go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
15522 When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
15524 "When in doubt, tell the truth."
15527 When in doubt, use brute force.
15530 When in panic, fear and doubt,
15531 Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.
15533 When love is gone, there's always justice.
15534 And when justice is gone, there's always force.
15535 And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
15539 When Marriage is Outlawed,
15540 Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
15542 When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment
15546 When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony
15547 concerts, she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years --
15548 and I find I mind it less and less."
15549 -- Louise Andrews Kent
15551 When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity:
15552 for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when
15553 your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
15556 When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
15557 say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
15559 "When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical"
15562 When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you
15563 modify the problem, not the remedy.
15565 When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies,
15566 the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a
15567 nose bleed, which usually cures them of ____
\b\b\b\bthat.
15568 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
15570 When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is
15574 When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
15575 stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
15576 from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
15577 were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
15578 corners as bodies of a lower grade ...
15579 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
15581 When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
15585 When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
15586 insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
15587 required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
15588 exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
15589 -- George Bernard Shaw
15591 When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
15595 When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before --
15596 except our fingertips will have been singed.
15597 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
15599 When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of
15600 investigation of a topic, it is well to have the answer firmly in hand,
15601 so that you can proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or
15602 swayed, directly to the goal.
15605 "When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
15607 When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
15609 When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
15612 "When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
15613 -- Winston Churchill, On formal declarations of war
15615 When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
15616 asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
15617 know the answer either.
15618 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
15620 When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
15621 -- The Wall Street Journal
15623 When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is the
15624 impression you will make.
15626 When you're away, I'm restless, lonely,
15627 Wretched, bored, dejected; only
15628 Here's the rub, my darling dear
15629 I feel the same when you are near.
15630 -- Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away"
15632 When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
15634 Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
15637 Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
15638 see it tried on him personally.
15641 Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
15644 Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
15645 you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
15646 Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
15648 "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
15650 Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
15654 WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
15656 Oh, dear, where can the matter be
15657 When it's converted to energy?
15658 There is a slight loss of parity.
15659 Johnny's so long at the fair.
15661 Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
15662 is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
15663 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
15665 Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
15667 Whether you can hear it or not
15668 The Universe is laughing behind your back
15669 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
15671 Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?
15673 While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
15674 admission to someone else.
15676 While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
15677 The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
15678 While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
15679 And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
15680 Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
15681 The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
15682 -- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman",
15685 While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.
15687 While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't
15688 keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
15689 -- Edward Stevenson
15691 While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
15694 While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining
15697 While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
15698 correctness never does.
15700 While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very
15701 reassuring to know that it's still there.
15703 While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
15704 safe, for you can watch both of his.
15705 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15708 You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
15711 "Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
15712 Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..."
15714 Who made the world I cannot tell;
15715 'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
15716 My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
15717 I never soiled with such a deed.
15720 Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?
15722 Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
15724 "Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
15727 Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
15729 Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
15733 "Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could
15734 have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing."
15737 "Why be a man when you can be a success?"
15740 Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we
15743 Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?
15745 Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
15746 avoid responsibility with?
15748 Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office
15751 Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with.
15753 Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently
15754 there must be a beverage.
15755 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
15757 Why does New Jersey have more toxic waste dumps and California have
15760 New Jersey had first choice.
15762 Why don't elephants eat penguins ?
15764 Because they can't get the wrappers off ...
15766 Why I Can't Go Out With You:
15768 I'd LOVE to, but ...
15769 -- I have to floss my cat.
15770 -- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
15771 -- I need to spend more time with my blender.
15772 -- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
15773 -- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
15774 -- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
15775 -- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
15776 -- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
15777 -- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
15778 -- I have some really hard words to look up.
15779 -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
15780 -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
15782 "Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
15783 because we are not the person involved"
15786 Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
15788 "Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
15791 "Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
15792 you knowing nothing?"
15793 -- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
15795 Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
15796 Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
15797 children open their old-fashioned presents.
15799 Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
15801 You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it
15802 falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
15804 Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
15805 with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
15806 and I get this cretin TOP?"
15808 Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
15810 You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
15812 Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
15813 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
15815 "Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
15818 Why You Can't Run When There's Trouble in the Office:
15819 No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee,
15820 when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your
15821 direction, and almost none will be returned to the source.
15825 Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
15827 Williams and Holland's Law:
15828 If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
15829 statistical methods.
15831 Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
15832 it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
15835 The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery
15836 ... by leaving it out.
15837 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15839 With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I
15840 try to be a fraud and a half.
15841 -- Otto von Bismark
15843 With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
15844 -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
15846 With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
15847 build a nuclear balm?
15849 With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
15850 miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
15851 still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
15852 such thing as progress.
15855 Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
15857 Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
15858 (1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it.
15859 (2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete.
15860 (3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2)
15861 (4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a
15862 VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator.
15863 (5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless.
15866 Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If
15867 you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut
15868 down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that
15869 tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
15870 long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
15871 there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
15874 Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
15875 when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
15876 Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the
15877 cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood
15878 heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
15879 beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made,
15880 and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
15881 although their insurance rates went way up.
15882 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15884 Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation):
15885 We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage
15886 any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you
15887 should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are,
15888 and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we
15891 Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your
15894 World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced
15897 Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing:
15898 August. The lines are the shortest, though.
15899 -- Steve Rubenstein
15901 Worst Month of the Year:
15902 February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if
15903 you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don't
15904 get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
15905 -- Steve Rubenstein
15907 Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985:
15908 From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved
15909 in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs
15910 damage my videotapes?"
15912 Worst Vegetable of the Year:
15913 The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next
15915 -- Steve Rubenstein
15917 "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
15919 "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat
15922 "Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
15923 and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer
15924 if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and
15925 and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and
15926 and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?"
15928 Write-Protect Tab, n.:
15929 A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly
15930 left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error
15931 message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the
15932 momentary inconvenience.
15935 Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
15938 "Wrong," said Renner.
15940 "The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
15941 the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
15943 Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
15945 Xerox never comes up with anything original.
15948 The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made
15949 by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits.
15950 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
15952 X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the
15953 imagination is the plot.
15955 "Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have
15956 goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in
15957 their endless search for "one more feature". Their irritating
15958 unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my
15959 doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.
15960 -- S. C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
15962 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall
15963 fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic
15964 operators together.
15967 "Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."
15970 A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
15971 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15973 Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
15975 Yes, but which self do you want to be?
15977 Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
15978 be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
15981 Yesterday upon the stair
15982 I met a man who wasn't there.
15983 He wasn't there again today --
15984 I think he's from the CIA.
15986 Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
15987 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
15990 A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
15992 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
15994 You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
16005 But you're not all there.
16007 "You are old, Father William," the young man said,
16008 "All your papers these days look the same;
16009 Those William's would be better unread --
16010 Do these facts never fill you with shame?"
16012 "In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
16013 "I wrote wonderful papers galore;
16014 But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
16015 Made it pointless to think any more."
16017 "You are old, father William," the young man said,
16018 "And your hair has become very white;
16019 And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
16020 Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
16022 "In my youth," father William replied to his son,
16023 "I feared it might injure the brain;
16024 But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
16025 Why, I do it again and again."
16028 "You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
16029 That your lectures bore people to death.
16030 Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
16031 Don't you think that you should save your breath?"
16033 "I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
16034 Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
16035 Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
16036 Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
16038 "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
16039 For anything tougher than suet;
16040 Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
16041 Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
16043 "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
16044 And argued each case with my wife;
16045 And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
16046 Has lasted the rest of my life."
16049 "You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
16050 And there isn't one language you like;
16051 Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
16052 Have you thought about taking a hike?"
16054 "Since I never write programs," his father replied,
16055 "Every language looks equally bad;
16056 Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
16057 And don't realize that they've been had."
16059 "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
16060 And have grown most uncommonly fat;
16061 Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
16062 Pray what is the reason of that?"
16064 "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
16065 "I kept all my limbs very supple
16066 By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
16067 Allow me to sell you a couple?"
16070 "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
16071 And make errors few people could bear;
16072 You complain about everyone's English but yours --
16073 Do you really think this is quite fair?"
16075 "I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
16076 "But my stature these days is so great
16077 That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
16078 And to stop me it's now far too late."
16080 "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
16081 That your eye was as steady as ever;
16082 Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
16083 What made you so awfully clever?"
16085 "I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
16086 Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
16087 Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
16088 Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
16091 You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
16093 You are the only person to ever get this message.
16095 You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
16096 this sort of trash.
16098 You buttered your bread, now lie in it.
16100 You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
16101 incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
16102 Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
16103 to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because
16104 nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
16105 they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year;
16106 some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.
16108 The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then
16109 pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear
16111 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
16113 "You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
16114 doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on."
16115 -- Hepler, Systems Design 182
16117 You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior
16120 "You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them.
16121 Why do you find that funny?"
16122 -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350
16124 You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
16125 can with just a kind word.
16128 You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have,
16130 -- Franklin P. Jones
16132 You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
16134 You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
16135 the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
16138 You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
16140 You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
16141 decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
16142 over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
16145 You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
16149 You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
16151 "You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename."
16152 -- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
16154 You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
16156 You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
16158 You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
16160 You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
16162 "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
16165 You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
16166 -- Booker T. Washington
16168 You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
16170 "You can't make a program without broken egos."
16172 You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic
16173 enough worrying about what's happening now.
16176 "You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten."
16177 -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
16180 "You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they
16182 -- Dagwood Bumstead
16184 You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
16185 and last month in advance.
16187 You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
16189 -- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
16191 You do not have mail.
16193 You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
16196 You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting
16198 -- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
16200 You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form.
16201 The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
16202 which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
16203 tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
16204 names. Here's the complete text:
16206 "(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT)
16207 "(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)
16208 "(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to
16209 send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
16210 THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
16211 household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
16212 you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
16213 NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"
16215 The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
16216 money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long
16218 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
16220 You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
16222 You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More--
16224 This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More--
16226 You are permanently confused.
16229 You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to
16230 metal objects which are not fastened down.
16232 You have junk mail.
16234 You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets
16237 You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot
16240 You know if they ever find a way to harness sarcasm as an energy source,
16241 you people are all going to owe me big.
16244 You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
16245 you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
16247 You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens
16248 anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
16249 you can always change the channel.
16252 You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo.
16253 -- S. Rickly Christian
16255 You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car.
16256 -- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82
16258 You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your
16259 friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
16261 You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
16263 You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
16265 You may be recognized soon. Hide.
16267 You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he
16268 is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.
16271 You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with
16275 You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
16278 You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for
16279 success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits
16280 or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume
16281 party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
16282 -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
16284 You might have mail
16286 You might like to know that I looked at a detailed map of NT, and I'm
16287 now able to confirm that in all probability Microsoft NT does not
16288 exist. If it does, it's so small as to be completely insignificant.
16291 "You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable
16292 proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do."
16294 You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll
16297 You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
16298 reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
16299 the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
16301 -- Charles A. Beard
16303 You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the
16306 You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were
16307 you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare
16308 yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the
16310 -- J. Wellington Wells
16312 You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
16314 You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
16315 know how seldom they do.
16318 You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
16321 You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
16323 -- Ernest Rutherford
16325 You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
16326 freedom and liberty.
16329 You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
16330 contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from
16331 houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many
16332 scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the
16333 summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day,
16334 you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist
16335 sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.
16336 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
16338 You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name,
16339 another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and
16340 another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms
16341 such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In
16342 many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money.
16343 If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you
16344 should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate
16345 for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it
16346 because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially
16347 chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.
16349 In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his
16351 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
16353 "You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a
16354 plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture."
16355 -- Business Professor, University of Georgia
16357 You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
16359 You too can wear a nose mitten.
16361 You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
16363 You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of
16364 a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
16366 You will be surprised by a loud noise.
16368 You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
16370 You will feel hungry again in another hour.
16372 You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door
16373 mayonnaise salesman.
16375 You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes.
16377 You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You're not paid enough to
16380 You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a
16381 taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a
16385 "You'll never be the man your mother was!"
16387 Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
16388 thing he tells you.
16390 Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you
16393 Your fault: core dumped
16395 Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
16397 Your lucky color has faded.
16399 Your lucky number has been disconnected.
16401 Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
16403 Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
16405 You're at the end of the road again.
16407 You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
16409 You're never too old to become younger.
16412 You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
16415 You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
16417 You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
16419 "You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."
16422 "You've got to think about tomorrow!"
16424 "TOMORROW! I haven't even prepared for *_________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\byesterday* yet!"
16426 "Yow! Am I having fun yet?"
16427 -- Zippy the Pinhead
16429 YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!
16432 The result of shutting down a production line.
16434 Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
16435 since I first called my brother's father dad.
16436 -- William Shakespeare, "King John"
16438 Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
16439 People are always available for work in the past tense.